I'm still standing...!
Greetings, fellow Dot Calm Readers, Truth Crusaders, and Freedom Fighters!
Boy howdy, what a week I survived. Part of me can't believe I'm alive and well enough to tell about it. Part of me looks back and sees nothing but a huge blur. And part of me is...well, part of me is just wondering what's to eat. After getting barely one meal three days in a row, I seem to be ravenous. And the last part of me is apparently tossing up over whether to go after a nice cuppa coffee or an even nicer Fireball.
Like I said last time, we're still not sure whether we've dodged the bullet re having our mail diverted because our mail did start trickling in after I called our post office. The scammers did receive enough information to go online and file a change of address on our behalf without our consent. If they have a mailing address here in this country--like in Perry, Florida, where they claim their fake company is located--it would be possible for them to do that. I'm not sure whether they would be able to do it from a foreign address. It is a federal crime to tamper with the mail, so, if this is part of their modus operandi, I'm sure they have some way to cover their tracks if they are taking the risk...just as they have ways to cover their tracks for theft and ransomware despite putting out an ostensible company name and location.
Frankly, though, I am too exhausted to dig any further into it today. My job for today is to try to pick up the pieces of my mental and physical health and try to reassemble them in some way that makes sense...or that will hopefully make sense after what I hope will be a reasonably restful weekend. That's asking quite enough of me at the moment.
Last time, I promised to blog about the wealthy elite's intentional dumbing down of this country in an effort to preclude uprisings like we had in the 1960s. You know what's really funny? My Tea Party Christian friend now thinks that the corporations and the Koch brothers, all of whom were his biggest heros the last time I spoke with him, are LIBERAL! Isn't that about the funniest thing you've ever heard? But what can we expect from someone like him--he's been brainwashed and trained up by religion and politics to redefine inconvenient things based on his own tastes. Yep, his TV...televangelists and FUX Noise...has taught him well to label anything religious he dislikes as "of the devil" and anything political he disagrees with as "liberal." He is so confused he doesn't even know what "liberal" means any more (dictionary.com, anyone? Bueler? BUELER?). It's laughable listening to him describe what he thinks a liberal is...laughable but tragic because FUX has trained up so many of these mental midgets to think exactly the way my friend does...AND THEY VOTE. My friend's religious confusion is also laughable-but-tragic-AND-HE-VOTES...he claims to believe the Bible literally, but he also says he believes that the universe is old, the earth is not flat, the sky is not hard, and MRSA exists, all of which directly contradict the Bible...but he also believes that egg cells are literally dead--not even dormant, which they aren't either--until fertilized by sperm. If that's not about the most fantasy-based piece of biblical "science" you've ever heard, I'd like to hear yours. Of course, my friend disbelieves climate change. Of course, he thinks he knows more than every subject matter expert in every field, and, of course, he thinks he knows more than every doctor. Of course, he thinks his GED is bigger than any and every doctorate in any and every field of study. I'd have more respect for him if he believed what he actually says he believes--if he really did believe the Bible literally--but it is tragic to witness all the mind-phuquage he opens himself to daily that feeds him the unreality he lives in and the information bubble he hides in that bombards him with constant reinforcement of that unreality...AND HE VOTES. Republicans want to stop you from voting if you don't look like a Republican; I'm tempted to say, "Let's have a test. If you don't understand the bill of rights and can't demonstrate that you understand reality, then no voting for you!" That shouldn't but would wipe out the entire Republican party, from base to politicians to everyone in between.
But I digress.
Let's talk for a minute about those wealthy elites. The Trilateral Commission, founded by David Rockefeller in 1973, was intended to be bipartisan. And then there is the term "Rockefeller Republican," meaning a comparatively liberal Republican who leans libertarian on social issues, like gay rights and abortion--meaning "live and let live" rather than actual advocacy. This is where my poor friend is so confused--he stops listening after he hears the qualifier "liberal," meaning that he filters out the word "Republican" in "liberal Republican," and he equates libertarianism with liberalism...so he apparently filters out everything past the syllable "lib," too. On many social issues, many libertarians and liberals agree--they think that private issues like sex are not the government's business. But, on financial issues, there is a decided difference of opinion: liberals want a government that works for the people, but libertarians want the most minimal possible government and would rather do away with federal taxes and government entirely. Liberals want equal opportunity, fair pay, and social safety nets to catch the defenseless--young, old, poor, and sick people--and they actively advocate for equal rights. My libertarian friends advocate only with their votes. Of course, my Tea Party Christian friend also believes that liberals are authoritarians who want the government to run even the most private issues of people's lives...he doesn't see the irony between his fantasy of liberal authoritarianism and his own party's very real determination to regulate every vagina and every gay male's anus.
But I digress again.
So, getting back to Rockefeller Republicans and wealthy elites. If you've ever followed Scott Adams's blog, you'll see that he is a libertarian who, after amassing more money than he could spend in a lifetime, started giving to charity. He realized that his future was secure, and that allowed him to take a step back and adjust his perspective to the broader world. He decided he wanted to make a positive impact and create that legacy (in addition to all the great Dilbert cartoons and books). He theorizes that others who made their fortunes in their lifetimes had a similar experience. While that's possible, it's also possible that people like the Rockefellers (John D. made his fortune by exploiting cheap immigrant labor in unsafe working conditions) and Bill Gates (who made his fortune by shafting other people, businesses, and the government) turn to philanthropy out of guilt.
So, yeah, I don't buy that these people are liberals. Remember, I refer to the Clintons and Obama as center right, not liberal, based on their words and actions. I'll buy "libertarian" but only to the extent that they let non-white/male/straight/Christian people live AND only to the extent that they don't dick with the government to make it more authoritarian because, my friends, wanting a more authoritarian government makes them conservatives. And guess what--that's exactly what the Trilateral Commission did. They dicked with the government to dumb down public schooling so that the government could increase its authority over the people, making sure that the people work for the government and not vice versa.
So...
Here's what I'ma gonna dew. I'ma post Noam Chomsky's remarks about the Trilateral Commission and their book-length report, "Crisis of Democracy," and I'ma post the link to the report itself. Frankly, I'm just too tired today to read the whole report, but over what I did read, I raised an eyebrow in the same places and for the same reasons as Professor Chomsky. Like I said, liberal is as liberal does, and these people ain't liberals.
Don't forget to read Dot Calm's shadow's favorite independent sources of news and information:
Daily Kos
AlterNet
Democracy Now!
Conservatives are Destroying our Future
Conservative Clown Car--it's LOADED today!!
Americans Against the Republican Party
Americans Against the Tea Party
...And, whatever you do,
VOTE BERNIE!!!!!
Please send him a buck o' five--when people vote, Bernie wins; when Bernie wins, we win. Let's win in California!
Thanks for reading, thanks for being you, and have a safe and relaxing weekend. As for me...I'm going to do a faceplant as soon as I click "Publish," thank you very much.
- Dot Calm's shadow
P.S.--Consider Dot Calm's disclaimer still to be in effect.
Disclaimer:
Not responsible for keys getting in the
way when headed to the right ones.
Not responsible for misspellings. Too lazy
to look up the right spelling.
Not responsible for initial caps. You know
where they belong...put them in.
Not responsible for punctuation or grammar;
consider poetic license being in effect.
Drive a HYBRID.
Leave a lighter footprint on the planet.
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ATTENTION, REPUBLICANS!
The Kenyan Muslim
liberal fascist
weak dictator
Obama is coming
for your guns 'n' Bibles
November 8, 2016.
DO NOT
LEAVE YOUR HOUSE
THAT DAY
FOR ANY REASON!
The rights you save
may be your own!
Obama is coming
for your guns 'n' Bibles
November 8, 2016.
DO NOT
LEAVE YOUR HOUSE
THAT DAY
FOR ANY REASON!
The rights you save
may be your own!
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Today's Featured Story
The Carter Administration: Myth and Reality
by Noam Chomsky
Excerpted from Radical Priorities, 1981
Perhaps the most striking feature of the new Administration is the role played in it by the Trilateral Commission. The mass media had little to say about this matter during the Presidential campaign — in fact, the connection of the Carter group to the Commission was recently selected as “the best censored news story of 1976” — and it has not received the attention that it might have since the Administration took office. All of the top positions in the government — the office of President, Vice-President, Secretary of State, Defense and Treasury — are held by members of the Trilateral Commission, and the National Security Advisor was its director. Many lesser officials also came from this group. It is rare for such an easily identified private group to play such a prominent role in an American Administration.The Trilateral Commission was founded at the initiative of David Rockefeller in 1973. Its members are drawn from the three components of the world of capitalist democracy: the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. Among them are the heads of major corporations and banks, partners in corporate law firms, Senators, Professors of international affairs — the familiar mix in extra-governmental groupings. Along with the 1940s project of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), directed by a committed “trilateralist” and with numerous links to the Commission, the project constitutes the first major effort at global planning since the War-Peace Studies program of the CFR during World War II.
The new “trilateralism” reflects the realization that the international system now requires “a truly common management,” as the Commission reports indicate. The trilateral powers must order their internal relations and face both the Russian bloc, now conceded to be beyond the reach of Grand Area planning, and the Third World.
In this collective management, the United States will continue to play the decisive role. As Kissinger has explained, other powers have only “regional interests” while the United States must be “concerned more with the overall framework of order than with the management of every regional enterprise.” If a popular movement in the Arabian peninsula is to be crushed, better to dispatch US-supplied Iranian forces, as in Dhofar. If passage for American nuclear submarines must be guaranteed in Southeast Asian waters, then the task of crushing the independence movement in the former Portuguese colony of East Timor should be entrusted to the Indonesian army rather than an American expeditionary force. The massacre of over 60,000 people in a single year will arouse no irrational passions at home and American resources will not be drained, as in Vietnam. If a Katangese secessionist movement is to be suppressed in Zaire (a movement that may have Angolan support in response to the American-backed intervention in Angola from Zaire, as the former CIA station chief in Angola has recently revealed in his letter of resignation), then the task should be assigned to Moroccan satellites forces and to the French, with the US discreetly in the background. If there is a danger of socialism in southern Europe, the German proconsulate can exercise its “regional interests.” But the Board of Directors will sit in Washington….
The Trilateral Commission has issued one major book-length report, namely, The Crisis of Democracy (Michel Crozier, Samuel Huntington, and Joji Watanuki, 1975). Given the intimate connections between the Commission and the Carter Administration, the study is worth careful attention, as an indication of the thinking that may well lie behind its domestic policies, as well as the policies undertaken in other industrial democracies in the coming years.
The Commission’s report is concerned with the “governability of the democracies.” Its American author, Samuel Huntington, was former chairman of the Department of Government at Harvard, and a government adviser. He is well-known for his ideas on how to destroy the rural revolution in Vietnam. He wrote in Foreign Affairs (1968) that “In an absent-minded way the United States in Vietnam may well have stumbled upon the answer to ‘wars of national liberation.'” The answer is “forced-draft urbanization and modernization.” Explaining this concept, he observes that if direct application of military force in the countryside “takes place on such a massive scale as to produce a massive migration from countryside to city” then the “Maoist-inspired rural revolution may be “undercut by the American-sponsored urban revolution.” The Viet Cong, he wrote, is “a powerful force which cannot be dislodged from its constituency so long as the constituency continues to exist.” Thus “in the immediate future” peace must “be based on accommodation” particularly since the US is unwilling to undertake the “expensive, time consuming and frustrating task” of ensuring that the constituency of the Viet Cong no longer exists (he was wrong about that, as the Nixon-Kissinger programs of rural massacre were to show). “Accommodation” as conceived by Huntington is a process whereby the Viet Cong “degenerate into the protest of a declining rural minority” while the regime imposed by US force maintains power. A year later, when it appeared that “urbanization” by military force was not succeeding and it seemed that the United States might be compelled to enter into negotiations with the NLF [National Liberation Front] (which he recognized to be “the most powerful purely political national organization”), Huntington, in a paper delivered before the AID-supported Council on Vietnamese Studies which he had headed, proposed various measures of political trickery and manipulation that might be used to achieve the domination of the U.S.-imposed government, though the discussants felt rather pessimistic about the prospects….
In short, Huntington is well-qualified to discourse on the problems of democracy.
The report argues that what is needed in the industrial democracies “is a greater degree of moderation in democracy” to overcome the “excess of democracy” of the past decade. “The effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups.” This recommendation recalls the analysis of Third World problems put forth by other political thinkers of the same persuasion, for example, Ithiel Pool (then chairman of the Department of Political Science at MIT), who explained some years ago that in Vietnam, the Congo, and the Dominican Republic, “order depends on somehow compelling newly mobilized strata to return to a measure of passivity and defeatism… At least temporarily the maintenance of order requires a lowering of newly acquired aspirations and levels of political activity.” The Trilateral recommendations for the capitalist democracies are an application at home of the theories of “order” developed for subject societies of the Third World.
The problems affect all of the trilateral countries, but most significantly, the United States. As Huntington points out, “for a quarter century the United States was the hegemonic power in a system of world order” — the Grand Area of the CFR [Council on Foreign Relations]. “A decline in the governability of democracy at home means a decline in the influence of democracy abroad.” He does not elaborate on what this “influence” has been in practice, but ample testimony can be provided by survivors in Asia and Latin America.
As Huntington observes, “Truman had been able to govern the country with the cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers,” a rare acknowledgement of the realities of political power in the United States. But by the mid-1960s this was no longer possible since “the sources of power in society had diversified tremendously,” the “most notable new source of power” being the media. In reality, the national media have been properly subservient to the state propaganda system, a fact on which I have already commented. Huntington’s paranoia about the media is, however, widely shared among ideologists who fear a deterioration of American global hegemony and an end to the submissiveness of the domestic population.
A second threat to the governability of democracy is posed by the “previously passive or unorganized groups in the population,” such as “blacks, Indians, Chicanos, white ethnic groups, students and women — all of whom became organized and mobilized in new ways to achieve what they considered to be their appropriate share of the action and of the rewards.” The threat derives from the principle, already noted, that “some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups” is a prerequisite for democracy. Anyone with the slightest understanding of American society can supply a hidden premise: the “Wall Street lawyers and bankers” (and their cohorts) do not intend to exercise “more self-restraint.” We may conclude that the “greater degree of moderation in democracy” will have to be practiced by the “newly mobilized strata.”
Huntington’s perception of the “concerned efforts” of these strata “establish their claims” and the “control over… institutions” that resulted is no less exaggerated than his fantasies about the media. In fact, the Wall Street lawyers, bankers, etc., are no less in control of the government than in the Truman period, as a look at the new Administration or its predecessors reveals. But one must understand the curious notion of “democratic participation” that animates the Trilateral Commission study. Its vision of “democracy” is reminiscent of the feudal system. On the one hand, we have the King and Princes (the government). On the other, the commoners. The commoners may petition and the nobility must respond to maintain order. There must however be a proper “balance between power and liberty, authority and democracy, government and society.” “Excess swings may produce either too much government or too little authority.” In the 1960s, Huntington maintains, the balance shifted too far to society and against government. “Democracy will have a longer life if it has a more balanced existence,” that is, if the peasants cease their clamor. Real participation of “society” in government is nowhere discussed, nor can there be any question of democratic control of the basic economic institutions that determine the character of social life while dominating the state as well, by virtue of their overwhelming power. Once again, human rights do not exist in this domain.
The report does briefly discuss “proposals for industrial democracy modeled on patterns of political democracy,” but only to dismiss them. These ideas are seen as “running against the industrial culture and the constraints of business organization.” Such a device as German co-determination would “raise impossible problems in many Western democracies, either because leftist trade unionists would oppose it and utilize it without becoming any more moderate, or because employers would manage to defeat its purposes.” In fact, steps towards worker participation in management going well beyond the German system are being discussed and in part implemented in Western Europe, though they fall far short of true industrial democracy and self-management in the sense advocated by the libertarian left. They have evoked much concern in business circles in Europe and particularly in the United States, which has so far been isolated from these currents, since American multinational enterprises will be affected. But these developments are anathema to the trilateralist study.
Still another threat to democracy in the eyes of the Commission study is posed by “the intellectuals and related groups who assert their disgust with the corruption, materialism, and inefficiency of democracy and with the subservience of democratic government to ‘monopoly capitalism'” (the latter phrase is in quotes since it is regarded as improper to use an accurate descriptive term to refer to the existing social and economic system; this avoidance of the taboo term is in conformity with the dictates of the state religion, which scorns and fears any such sacrilege).
Intellectuals come in two varieties, according to the trilateral analysis. The “technocratic and policy-oriented intellectuals” are to be admired for their unquestioning obedience to power and their services in social management, while the “value-oriented intellectuals” must be despised and feared for the serious challenge they pose to democratic government, by “unmasking and delegitimatization of established institutions.”
The authors do not claim that what the value-oriented intellectuals write and say is false. Such categories as “truth” and “honesty” do not fall within the province of the apparatchiks. The point is that their work of “unmasking and delegitimatization” is a threat to democracy when popular participation in politics is causing “a breakdown of traditional means of social control.” They “challenge the existing structures of authority” and even the effectiveness of “those institutions which have played the major role in the indoctrination of the young.” Along with “privatistic youth” who challenge the work ethic in its traditional form, they endanger democracy, whether or not their critique is well-founded. No student of modern history will fail to recognize this voice.
What must be done to counter the media and the intellectuals, who, by exposing some ugly facts, contribute to the dangerous “shift in the institutional balance between government and opposition”?
How do we control the “more politically active citizenry” who convert democratic politics into “more an arena for the assertion of conflicting interests than a process for the building of common purposes”? How do we return to the good old days when “Truman, Acheson, Forrestal, Marshall, Harriman, and Lovett” could unite on a policy of global intervention and domestic militarism as our “common purpose,” with no interference from the undisciplined rabble?
The crucial task is “to restore the prestige and authority of central government institutions, and to grapple with the immediate economic challenges.” The demands on government must be reduced and we must “restore a more equitable relationship between government authority and popular control.”
The press must be reined. If the media do not enforce “standards of professionalism,” then “the alternative could well be regulation by the government” — a distinction without a difference, since the policy-oriented and technocratic intellectuals, the commissars themselves, are the ones who will fix these standards and determine how well they are respected. Higher education should be related “to economic and political goals,” and if it is offered to the masses, “a program is then necessary to lower the job expectations of those who receive a college education.” No challenge to capitalist institutions can be considered, but measures should be taken to improve working conditions and work organization so that workers will not resort to “irresponsible blackmailing tactics.” In general, the prerogatives of the nobility must be restored and the peasants reduced to the apathy that becomes them.
This is the ideology of the liberal wing of the state capitalist ruling elite, and, it is reasonable to assume, its members who now staff the national executive in the United States….
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Read it for yourself:Trilateral Commission report, "Crisis of Democracy"
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I saw this story and have to correct the meme: the suspicious language was calculus, which uses but is not algebra. The woman thought the man was writing in Arabic...which is partly true because we do use Arabic numbers, and algebra is an Arabic invention....
As for the passenger?
SHE VOTES!
SHE VOTES!
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From the Mailbag
| WOMEN'S HEALTH Policy Report |
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Somehow, someway ... Donald Trump just got a whole lot worse for veterans. Here's a headline from today's Wall Street Journal:
GOP front-runner would likely push VA toward privatization"
Every major veterans group opposes turning over veterans to for-profit health care companies and making them fight for their earned benefits. It's not stretch to say that when you take Donald Trump's position on veterans' care hand-in-hand with his desire to send more troops to the Middle East to fight in Iraq and Syria, that he is anti-veteran. In fact, Trump is maybe the most anti-veteran candidate in quite some time.
And if there's one group who can succeed in stopping Donald Trump where others have not, it's veterans. At VoteVets, we've been preparing for this moment for some time now. All we need is you to stand with us:
Contribute to VoteVets to help elevate the voices of veterans in the campaign to keep Donald Trump out of the White House in 2016.
If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:
The problem with Donald Trump -- as it is with regards to most other issues -- is his ignorance on the issue of veterans' health care. He does not seem to know or care that many times veterans require specialized care for things like PTSD or brain injury that private hospitals are not equipped to provide. He doesn't get that, while there should always be evolution at the VA, most veterans actually like their care! And private studies have found it to be as good or often better than private care.
But we'll make sure he gets that message loud and clear by the time we're done with him this fall. That's why your contribution is so important.
All my best,
Jon Soltz
Iraq War Veteran & Chairman
VoteVets.org
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From Steve Santarsiero for Congress
On this issue, the choice is clear.
My Republican opponent wants to defund Planned Parenthood, leaving women with fewer options for safe and affordable access to healthcare.
I have a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood.
Donate $5 right now and stand up to the attacks on Planned Parenthood.
The choice for voters this year is simple: a 100% women’s health rating or $0 funding for Planned Parenthood?
Will you stand with Planned Parenthood and support a pro-choice Democrat to win in one of the nation’s closest swing districts?
- Steve
On this issue, the choice is clear.
My Republican opponent wants to defund Planned Parenthood, leaving women with fewer options for safe and affordable access to healthcare.
I have a 100% rating from Planned Parenthood.
Donate $5 right now and stand up to the attacks on Planned Parenthood.
The choice for voters this year is simple: a 100% women’s health rating or $0 funding for Planned Parenthood?
Will you stand with Planned Parenthood and support a pro-choice Democrat to win in one of the nation’s closest swing districts?
- Steve
Paid for by Santarsiero for Congress
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| |
| Donald Trump: Racist, sexist and sponsored by Google?!? | |
| Google just announced that its YouTube division will be the official
livestream provider of the Donald Trump-led Republican convention,
despite massive pressure from activists demanding the company stand up
for its alleged values of diversity and inclusion in the face of Trump’s
racism, xenophobia and misogyny. Google’s planned sponsorship of the Republican convention will help legitimize and normalize Trump’s platform of hate. It’s appalling that access to political power is more important to Google than standing up for its stated values. It’s not too late for Google to reverse course. That’s why we put together this short video to show Google exactly what it’s getting with its sponsorship of Trump. Will you watch the video and share it with your friends? Click here to watch the video.
Click here to share the video on Facebook. Click here to share the video on Twitter. If you want to email your friends, here's the direct link to the video: http://act.credoaction.com/go/ Now that Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee, it’s more important than ever to stand up against his fascist platform. Keeping the pressure on Google, and on other corporations considering whether or not to sponsor the Republican convention, is an important step in helping to marginalize Trump’s message and his values. The more we can share this video, the stronger that message will be. Thank you for your activism. Heidi Hess, Senior Campaign Manager CREDO Action from Working Assets | |
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© 2016 CREDO. All rights reserved.
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Urge your Rep. to support the Conyers amendment to block the transfer of cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia.
Reps. Conyers (MI), Grijalva (AZ), Ellison (MN), and McGovern (MA) have introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act which would prevent any money in the bill from being used to facilitate the transfer of cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has used U.S.-supplied cluster bombs in civilian areas in Yemen, killing and wounding civilians, in defiance of U.S. law. Take Action
Urge your Rep. to support the Conyers-Grijalva-Ellison-
Passage of this amendment would be a step towards compliance with Human Rights Watch's demand that the U.S. stop the production and transfer of cluster bombs completely, consistent with the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It would also be a step towards fulfilling the demands of Sens. Murphy and Paul and Reps. Yoho and Lieu that U.S. weapons transfers to Saudi Arabia be conditioned on efforts to limit casualties in the Saudi war in Yemen.
It was taboo to criticize Saudi Arabia. Now even Republicans are doing it. A former Republican member of the 9/11 commission said yesterday he believes there was clear evidence that Saudi government employees were part of a support network for the 9/11 hijackers and that the administration should move quickly to declassify a long-secret congressional report on Saudi ties to the 9/11 attack.
Urge your Representative to support the Conyers-Grijalva-Ellison-
Thanks for all you do to help make U.S. foreign policy more just,
Robert Naiman, Avram Reisman, and Sarah Burns
Just Foreign Policy
Help support our work!
If you think our work is important, support us with a $15 donation.
http://www.justforeignpolicy.
© 2016 Just Foreign Policy
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Malawi: Stop the killing of people with albinism
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On April 24th David Fletcher, a child with albinism in Malawi, was abducted and later killed. People with albinism in Malawi live in fear of being abducted or killed, their body parts to be sold for use in religious rituals. Tell the authorities in Malawi to urgently search for David’s killers and put measures in place to protect people with albinism. He was walking to a soccer game in Malawi and that was the last his friends and family heard from him. David’s story is not unique—thousands of people with albinism live in fear for their lives every day in Malawi. With attacks against people with albinism increasing, families have withdrawn children from schools for fear of attacks, and some people with albinism have moved to urban areas for safety. Demand the Malawi government uphold its responsibilities to protect people with albinism. Take action today. Together in activism, Zeke Johnson Managing Director, Individuals at Risk Amnesty International USA |
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Wall Street's top lobbyist just claimed banks have a “constitutional right” to billions of dollars in public subsidies.
That's absurd. Tell the Federal Reserve to ignore Wall Street’s ridiculous claim – and end banks’ $7 billion public subsidy >>
That's absurd. Tell the Federal Reserve to ignore Wall Street’s ridiculous claim – and end banks’ $7 billion public subsidy >>
This is so crazy I can hardly believe I’m writing it.
After Congress passed a law removing $7 billion in pointless public subsidies for the biggest banks, Wall Street’s top lobbyist just claimed banks have a constitutional right to that free public money.
WHAT?!?
That wild assertion is one of only 8 public comments filed at the Federal Reserve on this question, so it’s
critical that we call on the Fed to ignore Wall Street’s ridiculous
claim – and finalize the rule ending this wasteful public subsidy.
I realize this sounds nuts – because it truly is – so let me break it down:
Each year, banks have gotten a guaranteed 6% dividend on stock they own in the Federal Reserve, rain or shine.
That means they make their money back over
and over – in addition to all the huge benefits they get from being a
member bank in the Federal Reserve system.
What makes this even more spectacular for the
banks — and more ridiculous for the public — is that it’s completely
risk free for the banks! Even if the Fed disbanded they would get all
their money back.
Sign the petition: Tell the Federal Reserve to end the $7 billion public subsidy to the Wall Street!
When a staffer in Congress uncovered this giveaway, both Democrats and Republicans agreed to repeal this wasteful subsidy and redirect the money to the federal highway trust fund.
That would put $7 billion over the next 10 years into repairing our nation’s highways instead of enriching bankers!
Wall Street isn’t happy about losing all this free money. The
country’s top bank lobbyist, Rob Nichols at the American Banking
Association, wrote a letter to the Federal Reserve saying banks are
constitutionally “entitled” to this public subsidy – and essentially
threatened to sue if the Fed finalizes the rule.
Thanks for fighting back,
David Segal
Executive Director
Executive Director
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From EMILY's List--women deserve equal pay
| It’s 2016 and America still has a gender pay gap that isn’t shrinking
fast enough. For full-time work, the average woman makes only 79 cents
for every dollar a man makes.
Sign if you agree: It’s time to end this gender discrimination. Now more than ever, we need to elect women to Congress who will fight for equal pay to support women and families across the country. Over and over, we’ve seen Republicans vote against key legislation to make progress on equal pay. Republicans in the Senate have opposed legislation like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. Equal pay for equal work is an issue that affects working families in every state. By expanding economic opportunity for women, we can guarantee more income to households across America, lifting up entire families. When it comes to supporting key efforts to shrink the wage gap, EMILY’s List candidates are up to the task. Equal pay is long overdue, and families can’t afford to wait any longer. Click here to help us elect pro-choice Democratic women to Congress who will fight for America’s families and make equal pay a reality. Keep Fighting, Carissa Miller, Daily Kos Paid for by EMILY's List, www.emilyslist.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. |
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Dot Calm, this one's for you!
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Did you know
that there was no such thing
as atmospheric water vapor
before Noah's flood?
If atmospheric water vapor
If atmospheric water vapor
had existed before Noah's flood,
then there would have been rainbows
after EVERY rainstorm--
even the very first one!
-- Dot Calm's shadow
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Democracy Now!
Stories |
Brazil's former vice president, Michel Temer, assumed power as interim president Thursday after the country's Senate voted to suspend President Dilma Rousseff and ... Read More →
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We
go behind bars to get an update on the end of a 10-day strike by
Alabama prisoners to protest severe overcrowding, poor living conditions
and the 13th ... Read More →
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As
the death toll in Syria's five-year conflict reportedly reaches half a
million people, we look at how Syrians are working at the local level to
survive and organize in the ... Read More →
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Stories |
The
groundbreaking human rights attorney Michael Ratner has died at the age
of 72. For over four decades, he defended, investigated and spoke up
for victims of human ... Read More →
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On Wednesday,
the trailblazing attorney Michael Ratner died at the age of 72. In
recent years, Ratner served as the chief attorney for WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange and ... Read More →
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Michael
Ratner's activism and human rights work dated back to the 1960s. He was
a student at Columbia Law School during the 1968 student strike. He
joined the Center ... Read More →
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Daily Kos
Facing a massive boycott, Target CEO doubles down on support of LGBTQ rights with these words
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Why does Ted Nugent wear a landing strip
just below his mouth?
Why does Ted Nugent wear a landing strip
just below his mouth?
-- Dot Calm's shadow
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AlterNet
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Is it just me,
or do my star banners get funnier
when I'm sleep deprAved?
Is it just me,
or do my star banners get funnier
when I'm sleep deprAved?
-- Dot Calm's shadow
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Movie time!
John Oliver on morning news science reports (should be required viewing for all Americans--especially our politicians!)
So sad...this video was posted two years ago, and we STILL haven't done anything about it!
Selling drugs to doctors
Belated but good Mother's Day message
Do you have a passion for fashion and a craving for saving? Then don't miss this piece by John Oliver. It's why I try to buy exclusively-American-made clothes whenever I can.
Many Americans have the right to discriminate against many other Americans. Did I say "right"? I meant "WRONG."
TYT: if God said Cruz should run, why didn't Cruz win? What about the rest of the Republican field who "heard" from God they should run? Methinks Rafael, Sr., has some mansplainin' to do!
TYT interviews Sy Hersch--the official story on killing bin Laden is bullshit....as if we didn't know...but the details are interesting nonetheless.
And now...one of my favorite excerpts from one of my favorite episodes of one of my favorite cartoons!
posted by Dot Calm @ 11:23 AM
