FBI coordinated crackdown on Occupy Protests

According to Naomi Wolf, the coordinated arrests and violence against protestors were not coincidentally timed.

It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.

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Tax hikes for everybody

According to Public Citizen's Consumer Blog, Compared to 2012, the Just-Enacted Tax Bill Hikes Taxes for Nearly Every U.S. Worker.

A tax increase for middle-class working class families is exactly what the new tax legislation -- The American Taxpayer Relief Act (ATRA) -- effectively imposes, compared to what those families had been paying. And the President, the Democrats, and the Republicans knew this when they supported ATRA. Why are workers' taxes going up? Because ATRA allowed the 2011 and 2012 payroll tax "holiday" to expire, meaning that, as of January 1, 2013, payroll taxes on wage income increased from 4.2% to 6.2%. But not on all wage income. The payroll tax is doubly regressive: Everyone pays the same rate, regardless of income, and only the first $113,700 in wage income is taxed.

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Layering photos

I'm glad that I invested ($60 sale price) in Joel Sartore's photography course at Great Courses. Sartore, who shoots for National Geographic, offers an immense amount of insight to aspiring photographers. He stresses that his course is not about buying lots of expensive equipment (though he certainly demonstrates what one can do with tripods, flashes and various types of lenses), but rather how to see, how to work a scene and how to cull through one's images for the ones that are really worth sharing. He does this in 24 30-minute lectures, most of which I have already watched, and I consider his course to be an excellent investment, at least at the sale price that was offered a few weeks ago. [More . . . ]

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