THE PERIMETER PRIMATE: Why more and more people will #OccupyWallStreet

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Why more and more people will #OccupyWallStreet

These are recent Tweets from Bernie Sanders @ http://twitter.com/#!/senatorsanders @SenatorSanders. Senator Bernie Sanders is the longest serving independent in congressional history. Tweets are from the senator's staff. http://sanders.senate.gov

October 2, 2011

In 2009 Exxon Mobile made $19 billion in profits, paid no federal income taxes and took a $156 million rebate from the IRS.
Ford's federal income tax rate was just 2.3 percent in 2009 even though it made $3 billion in profits.
GE took a $1.1 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, even though it made over $10 billion in profits in 2009.
The US has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country in the industrialized world.

October 1, 2011

Bernie's audit of the Fed showed that $16 trillion was loaned to American & foreign banks & businesses. http://ow.ly/6Kv4M
In their heydays, 40% of total profits in America went to the financial sector. Today, the top 6 financial institutions in the US have assets equal to more than 60% of our GDP.
From '98 to '08 the financial sector spent over $5 billion in campaign contributions & lobbying to deregulate
After adjusting for inflation, middle class families earned more income in 1998 than they do today.

September 30, 2011

Hedge fund managers who made a billion dollars last year now pay a lower effective tax rate than many teachers.
Between 1980 and 2005, 80% of all new income created in this country went to the top 1%.
The percentage of income going to the top 1 percent has nearly tripled since the 1970s.
During the Bush years, the wealthiest 400 Americans saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion and are now worth over $1.3 trillion.

September 29, 2011

Today, the richest 400 American families own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans.
3 out of the 4 largest financial institutions are bigger today than before the financial crisis began.
Today, 1 in 4 credit card holders are paying interest rates of more than 20%. That is usury.
This year alone the financial sector spent over $170 million on lobbying & campaign contributions to gut Dodd-Frank.
From 1998 to 2008 the financial sector spent more than $5 billion on campaign contributions & lobbying.
Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year, even though it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.

September 28, 2011

Since 2000, nearly 12 million more Americans have slipped into poverty.
The official unemployment rate has been 8.6% or higher for 30 consecutive months, the longest on record.
Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, even though it made $4.4 billion in profits.
Corporate tax revenue in 2010 was 27% smaller than 2000, even though corporate profits are up 60% over the last decade.
A record-breaking 50 million Americans have no health insurance & 45,000 die every year because they don't have access to health care.

You get the idea. Make no mistake, the American public is absolutely fed up.

Listen to Senator Sanders amazing speech of December 2010: http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/search/label/Bernie%20Sanders

1 comment:

nikto said...: Some new Eli Broad news here. for all you "Eli Fans":

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/8096; October 3, 2011 at 11:07 AM

Inform yourself about the Gulen movement!

1. WATCH the Gulen Movement 101: Session One webinar presentation (1/22/2014)
2. READ the "Expose the Gulen Movement" report.
3. LISTEN to my interview with At The Chalk Face , slide marker to 32:00 min. (5/19/2013)
4. WATCH the 60 Minutes segment "U.S. charter schools tied to powerful Turkish imam" broadcast. (5/13/2012)
5. READ my response to the 60 Minutes piece.
6. READ my guest article about Gulen charter schools published by The Washington Post. (3/27/2012)
7. WATCH my interview talking about Gulen charter schools, or my presentation at LaborFest (segment between 49:18 min. & 1:07:36 min.)
8. READ my postings labeled "Gulen movement" HERE.

As one observer tweeted, "U.S. media have focused too much on the Islamic nature of the Gulen movement. Real concern is its shady dealings and improprieties."

Please be aware that Gulenists have created a large number of anonymously-operated damage control websites. They started to appear a few months after publication of Greg Toppo's article in USA Today (August 2010).

WE CAN DO IT!

Jim Hightower on populism:

"... what populism is at its essence is just a determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government."

Jim Hightower on plutocracy:

"Plutocracy and democracy don't mix."

More Jim Hightower HERE.
Read his Lowdown newsletter HERE.

Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth. In a plutocracy, the degree of economic inequality is high while the level of social mobility is low.

On Bill Gates' ed reform

Joel Shatzky's comment on Huffington Post:

The inferior "test-prep" agenda which bases the pedagogically fraudulent "data" standardized test scores serves as a way of diverting the concerns of working parents who hope that better test scores will lead to better job opportunities for their children. If they realized that they were being given a con job, they might consider other, more "active" forms of political and social protest than simply lobbying for more money for charter and public schools.

New wealth gap report

Research and Policy Brief from the Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Brandeis University, May 2010:

"New evidence reveals that the wealth gap between white and African-American families has more than quadrupled over the course of a generation."

You absolutely must click on this link to view the graph.

Now compare that graph to the one you'll see here.

Now read this entry.

And if you are a person who blames the schools, or believes they are responsible for fixing these problems, you can stop that type of thinking right now.

A Keeper

Posted on the Oakland Public School Parents listserv by a member:*

As a public health nurse, I am working with a generation of young parents who were drug-exposed, who are now having children who are drug-exposed, and it's a whole new ballgame. Many who were premature and will carry some deficits for life.

There are also many other families who have several generations of all kinds of abuse, not enough to eat, violence in and out of their homes, as well as chronic exposure to pollution and nutritional deficits. And there are regular people in the same neighborhoods who are just trying to live, but are poor and can't get ahead.

And there is major grief, and continuous LOSS. So many folks have lost so many folks, people around them dying, of one thing or another, every month almost. Young people (cousins, brothers, friends) dying from violent means, the elders dying too young of chronic disease and disparities in health care, among other things.

What we know about learning and development is that stressed nervous systems CANNOT learn, and that's what we have. Children with many major stressors. Abandonment, attachment disorders, fear, post traumatic stress, sadness, inability to trust or sleep. Many children. Many.

Resulting in: Lack of impulse control, lack of executive function, difficulty in expressing and controlling emotions, difficulty in sleeping, holding still, and paying attention, not to mention following directions and prioritizing tasks.

Our teachers will (perhaps already do) need more training, support, and smaller class sizes. They need major support and help with mental health issues. We really need some kind of expanded vocational track for those who can't perform even at the community college level.

We can't expect teachers to undo years and years of living. The availability of universal preschool would help. Sometimes a classroom is the first kindly, safe, structured, stimulating environment a child encounters.

Wise insights such as these are never uttered by people like Eli Broad, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, Joe Williams, or any others who are of this type of school reform ilk. And this is why I know for certain that they just don't "get it." Maybe they don’t want to, OR maybe they don’t care.

* Thank you, B.R.

What Children Need

From Playing to Learn by Susan Engel (New York Times, 2/1/2010):

"Our current educational approach — and the testing that is driving it — is completely at odds with what scientists understand about how children develop during the elementary school years and has led to a curriculum that is strangling children and teachers alike.

…Simply put, what children need to do in elementary school is not to cram for high school or college, but to develop ways of thinking and behaving that will lead to valuable knowledge and skills later on."

And to tag onto that, check out this video about the wood shop at one of Oakland's middle schools.

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Sunday, October 2, 2011

Why more and more people will #OccupyWallStreet

1 comment: