Spintested

Wall Street Protests: Which Side Are You On?

Friday, September 30, 2011

Dylan Ratigan kicked off the campaign to GET MONEY OUT OF POLITICS this week.

Ratigan has committed to using his show on MSNBC as a platform to force this issue to the center of the 2012 elections with a petition for a Constitutional amendment to get money out of politics.

Here is the proposed Constitutional amendment:

"No person, corporation or business entity of any type, domestic or foreign, shall be allowed to contribute money, directly or indirectly, to any candidate for Federal office or to contribute money on behalf of or opposed to any type of campaign for Federal office. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, campaign contributions to candidates for Federal office shall not constitute speech of any kind as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution or any amendment to the U. S. Constitution. Congress shall set forth a federal holiday for the purposes of voting for candidates for Federal office."

Sign the petition, tell friends, Facebook it, Tweet it. #GetMoneyOut.

Or Text SIGN to +19177206888 to sign
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama's Approval Rating Is Underwater, But Don't Try To Predict 2012 Yet

Why do you believe Obama cares about the middle class? Let's remember that it was Obama who put SS and Medicare on the table, not the Republicans.

When politicians say that "SocialSecurity is the third rail of politics", they mean it with a hostility that should be reserved for their CorporateMasters.

You don't see politicians putting CampaignFinance and ElectionReform on their agenda from year to year as you do their continuing assaults on SocialSafetyNet programs for the People.

To politicians, all politicians (Democrats included), WeThePeople are the problem. If only they didn't have to deal with making us happy to get our votes that keep them employed. If only they didn't have to serve us, they'd be able to give large to BigBusiness, privatizing national resources owned collectively to us all, WeThePeople, and deregulate so that corporations wouldn't be constrained by anything, could become profit-making machines on steroids, unobstructed by piddling voter concerns, such as health, safety, environment, etc. And for accomplishing this, politicians would be amply rewarded, perhaps even enter the ruling class themselves.

You can choose to believe what you will about Democratic politicians, but the fact is that the DLC controls the DemocraticParty, and that Democrats in Congress and in the WhiteHouse have signed on to privatize public resources, utilities and deregulate (Democrats in Congress, despite all their campaign promises, have refused to regulate or perform their Constitutionally-required role of oversight, both in the Bush and Obama administrations -- What little regulating they've put in legislation the last 2 years is ineffective for a whole array of very sneaky moves). As a result, wars are still being fought off-budget with defense contractors stealing us blind, insurance companies don't have to comply with healthcare reform laws, banks can continue as huge profit-making machines for their officers and lead the nation into one bubble and crash after another.

You can choose to think of Obama and his intentions in whatever way makes you happy. What you can't do is explain how any of what Obama's done these past two years has been in the People's and not the Corporations' interests.

What's gotten lost in the news cycles these past months is Obama's new NAFTA-like treaties that means more Americans' jobs will be outsourced overseas. Then there's Obama's CatFoodCommission (and its plan for gutting SocialSecurity and Medicare), along with the renewed push on TheDreamAct, which means a flood of immigrants working for slave wages.

WeThePeople are being transformed, from sheep to sacrificial lambs.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama's Approval Rating Is Underwater, But Don't Try To Predict 2012 Yet

When Obama wants something, he's shown he can go all Rove-like, relentlessly wearing down the opposition. The problem is that he and the DLC-controlled DemocraticParty don't want what the Democratic voters put them into power to get.

We already know that cutting taxes does not create jobs and creating jobs is what is needed and what will solve our fiscal problems. Yet Obama has already capitulated to Republicans, caving to (at minimum) a $1 trillion plan that paves the way to slashing (and ending) Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

Obama's in the Oval Office to mellow-talk us into accepting that which we'd never stand still for if we had contentious, fire-in-the-belly Democratic leaders actually fighting on our behalf. Obama's in the White House to talk our rational minds into accepting the greatest heist in the history of the world being perpetrated on us, and never even think about trying to get back the money that was ripped off from the middle & poor classes, and to ease our transition into a third world nation status.

Obama is the grifter leading off the second half of the con game, which is to squeeze the rest of the dimes from the poor and middle classes. It began with part 2 of Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003 (high-priced junk health insurance that has no cost controls), and has continued with his push for more *AFTA treaties (outsourcing more Americans' jobs) and the Deficit (Cat Food) Commissions, 1 and 2 (and the 'Super Congress').

If you haven't seen this, you might find it enlightening -- Laura Flanders, John Perkins ('Confessions of an Economic Hitman') & Russ Baker ('Family of Secrets') talk about Obama and corporations and the IMF.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama's Approval Rating Is Underwater, But Don't Try To Predict 2012 Yet

Ditto for the head of his NationalEconomicCouncil. Although appointing LarrySummers might have been a bit of a stretch, despite his yeoman work in destroying financial regulation—thus enriching his old boss RobertRubin and helping cause the Crash of 2008—McCain could easily have found a JackKemp-like Republican “supply-sider” who would have duplicated Summers’ signal achievement of expanding the deficit to the highest level since 1950 (though perhaps with a slightly higher percentage of tax cuts than the Obama stimulus). The economy would have continued to sputter along, with growth rates and joblessness levels little different from today’s, and possibly even worse.

But McCain’s election would have produced a major political difference: It would have increased Democratic clout in the House and Senate.

Read more here.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama's Approval Rating Is Underwater, But Don't Try To Predict 2012 Yet

If McCain Had Won

McCain would probably have approved a failed troop surge in Afghanistan, engaged in worldwide extrajudicial assassination, destabilized nuclear-armed Pakistan, failed to bring Israel’s BenjaminNetanyahu to the negotiating table, expanded prosecution of whistle-blowers, sought to expand executive branch power, failed to close Guantanamo, failed to act on climate change, pushed both nuclear energy and opened new areas to domestic oil drilling, failed to reform the financial sector enough to prevent another financial catastrophe, supported an extension of the BushTaxCuts for the rich, presided over a growing divide between rich and poor, and failed to lower the jobless rate.

Nothing reveals the true state of American politics today more, however, than the fact that has undertaken all of these actions and, even more significantly, left the DemocraticParty far weaker than it would have been had McCain been elected. Few issues are more important than seeing behind the screen of a myth-making mass media, and understanding what this demonstrates about how power in America really works—and what needs to be done to change it.

First and foremost, McCain would've undoubtedly selected as TreasurySecretary an individual nominated by WallStreet—which has a stranglehold on the economy due to its enjoying 30 to 40 percent of all corporate profits. If he didn’t select TimGeithner, a reliable servant of financial interests whose nomination might have allowed McCain to trumpet his “maverick” credentials, whoever he did select would clearly have also moved to bail out the financial institutions and allow them to water down needed financial reforms.

About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama's Approval Rating Is Underwater, But Don't Try To Predict 2012 Yet

By Chris Hedges:

Barack Obama’s politically expedient decision to betray and abandon his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, exposed his cowardice and moral bankruptcy. In that moment, playing the part of Judas, he surrendered the last shreds of his integrity. He became nothing more than a pawn of power, or as Cornel West says, “a black mascot for Wall Street.” Obama, once the glitter of power fades, will have to grapple with the fact that he was a traitor not only to his pastor, the man who married him and Michelle, who baptized his children and who kept him spiritually and morally grounded, but to himself. Wright retains what is most precious in life and what Obama has squandered—his soul.

Read more here.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost