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FreakinDJ's JournalRight-wing documentary targets Occupy
Citizens United, which specializes in making documentaries with strong right-wing messages, is currently in production for a film about the Occupy movement, a spokesman for the group confirms to Salon.
The landmark 2010 Supreme Court case that loosened campaign finance restrictions was brought by Citizens United and centered on an anti-Hillary Clinton movie made by the group. Opposition to that ruling has been a consistent message of participants in Occupy movement.
The new film is to be called “Mic Check: The Untold Story of the Occupy Movement.” A participant at Occupy Wall Street recently received an interview request from a Citizens United producer that included this description of the film:
http://politics.salon.com/2012/01/11/right_wing_lens_for_occupy_documentary/
Middle class dropouts - American Dream Deferred
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Nearly one third of Americans who were raised in the middle class dropped down the economic ladder as adults -- and that's before the Great Recession hit.
"Being raised in the middle class is not a guarantee that you'll have that same status as an adult," said Erin Currier, project manager at Pew's Economic Mobility Project. "With all the economic turmoil in the past four years, there's good reason to think that downward mobility is more severe."
Being middle class in the parents' generation meant a household income of roughly $33,000 to $64,000 in 1979. But their children had to earn between $54,000 and $111,000 to maintain their relative standing in society in the mid-2000s. (These figures are adjusted for inflation.)
http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/11/news/economy/middle_class_mobility/index.htm?iid=GM
Former congressman, Missouri charity director sentenced in terrorism case
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A long-running terrorist financing investigation centered in Columbia, Mo., ended Wednesday when a federal judge ordered two men, including a former U.S. congressman, to prison.
She sentenced three other defendants to probation for their work with a Missouri charity that purportedly had ties to Islamic extremists. Those ties had subjected the charity to intense scrutiny for 13 years.
All five men either were employees or associates of the Columbia-based Islamic American Relief Agency. The charity closed its doors in October 2004 after the U.S. Treasury Department declared it to be one piece of a global network that supported Osama bin Laden and other terrorists.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/01/11/135624/former-congressman-missouri-charity.html#storylink=cpy
Wasn't Grover Norquest a Lobyest for an Islamic Organisation in 1999
Foreclosures, bankruptcies fall, but problems remain
Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — The two major markers of financial distress — bankruptcies and foreclosures — declined in 2011 from the previous year, but the good news is a bit deceiving.
The 34 percent decline in foreclosure filings last year was due mainly to processing delays caused by legal concerns about proper documentation of paperwork, according to a new report by RealtyTrac, an online foreclosure database.
Foreclosures in the fourth quarter of 2011 had taken an average of 348 days to complete, compared with 305 days in the last quarter of 2010.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/01/12/135576/foreclosures-bankruptcies-fall.html#storylink=cpy
No wonder Air America died - Bain Capitol OWNs Clear Channel
“But Limbaugh hasn’t mentioned his own tie to the venture capital firm: Bain owns Clear Channel Communications, whose subsidiary inked a $400 million, eight-year syndication deal with Limbaugh in 2008.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/11/in-rush-to-attack-ben-smith-blows-it-on-limbaughs-bain-disclosure-video/#ixzz1jFXvahe3
Internet piracy bill splits technology, entertainment industries
Curtis Tate | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Legislation to thwart Internet piracy is dividing Capitol Hill lawmakers and has the entertainment industry facing off against the technology industry. At least one major social media website is planning a daylong blackout next week to protest the bill.
The Stop Online Piracy Act, authored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, would give the government the authority to order Internet providers to block access to foreign websites that post copyrighted content without permission and bar U.S advertisers and payment processors from doing business with them.
The Justice Department could go to court to make such sites disappear from Americans' computer screens, meaning, for example, that links from a Google search or a Facebook page might not work.
Members of both major parties are co-sponsoring the bill, but some lawmakers worry that the provisions go too far and wouldn't be effective anyway.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/01/11/135588/internet-piracy-bill-splits-technology.html#storylink=cpy
We needed a Roosevelt, but we got an Obama
No shortage of reasons why 95% of Americans feel our Congress is a corrupt dysfunctional Jona hanging around the collective neck of the working class. Democrats in the House and Senate are applauding their political coo of extending the “Social Security Payroll Tax Cut” which may very well be the final nail in coffin of what once was our Social Safety Net.
With little surprise groups such as Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party have sprung up in reply to Washington’s Shenanigans. President Obama upon taking office immediately began surrounding himself with the same Wall St Banking insiders and CEOs that have plunged this country into the Great Recession. Even after former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan publically admitted in his testimony to a Congressional Hearing that the Failed Policies of Trickle Down Economics were directly to blame for the current Global Economic Collapse, we still have our Government and Washington insiders pushing the Top-Down Economics of the Wealthy Elite.
Today we herald Jobs Numbers that formerly would have a negative reaction as a much needed improvement. The SEC announced a Small Number of cases of Wall St. Fraud would no longer be allowed to plead “No Fault” and we consider that a significant breakthrough. The Administration announces a new plan to sell huge blocks of Foreclosed Homes to Wall St. Investment Firms, (the same firms that created the demise of our economy) so they can make room for MORE foreclosures, and it received barely a blurb in the News Cycle much less massive protest in the streets.
The Re-instatement of Glass-Steagall Act is bogged down in Committee. The Corporate Tax Code still provides financial incentives for Multinational Corporations to Outsource Jobs to China. The Wealthy Elite still pay a significantly lower percentage of income to taxes then the Working Class.
Mr Obama – to quote a famous American – “Lead, Follow, or Get the Fuck Out the Way”
Bonnie and Clyde were not the “sharpest tools in the shed” The fact they got away with what they did for as long as they did was really a lot of foreclosed upon Americans enjoyed watching the Banks who foreclosed upon their homes get a little “Pay-Back”
This time Mr Obama it is You, and our Corrupt Federal Governence that continues to look on ignoring the Bonnie and Clydes of Wall St
Rally procession brings attention to health coverage
Kathy Robertson
Nurses, medical students, seniors, doctors and members of the Occupy movement rallied in downtown Los Angeles and at the Capitol in Sacramento on Monday to rouse support for guaranteed health coverage for all Americans.
The local rally started at Third Street and Capitol Mall at 11 a.m. and progressed to the Capitol steps at noon. The Occupy movement planned to target insurance denials by health plans.
A New Orleans-style funeral procession remembering those who die every year without coverage gave way to a rally in support of Assembly Bill 810, which seeks to establish a single-payer system in California.
The bill was suspended on the Assembly floor late last session by author Mark Leno, a Democrat from San Francisco. Proponents argue the bill would address California’s budget emergency by lowering state expenditures through a more rational, more cost-effective health care system. They have been trying for at least eight years to get a single-payer system into law. Health insurers oppose it.
http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2012/01/09/sacramento-rally-health-care-occupy-prot.html
Billionaires with 1% tax rates
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- In case you haven't heard, President Obama wants the wealthiest to pay more in taxes.
Noting the rise in income inequality in recent years and the need to reform the U.S. tax system, the president on Tuesday said that some of the wealthiest in America pay far less in federal taxes as a percentage of their income than many lower down the income scale.
"A quarter of all millionaires now pay lower tax rates than millions of middle-class households. Some billionaires have a tax rate as low as 1%," Obama said in a speech in Kansas.
Here are some of the facts behind the claim: In 2006 roughly 25% of those with adjusted gross incomes over $1 million paid a smaller portion of their income in federal taxes -- income, payroll and corporate -- than 10% of those with AGIs below $100,000, according to a recent study from the Congressional Research Service.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/06/news/economy/obama_income_inequality/index.htm?iid=EL
19 Facts About The Deindustrialization Of America That Will Make You Weep
The United States is rapidly becoming the very first "post-industrial" nation on the globe. All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers have left them, but the pace at which America is accomplishing this is absolutely amazing. It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution.
It was America that showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles to televisions to airplanes. It was the great American manufacturing base that crushed Germany and Japan in World War II. But now we are witnessing the deindustrialization of America. Tens of thousands of factories have left the United States in the past decade alone. Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost in the same time period. The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces increasingly little. Do you know what our biggest export is today?
Waste paper. Yes, trash is the number one thing that we ship out to the rest of the world as we voraciously blow our money on whatever the rest of the world wants to sell to us. The United States has become bloated and spoiled and our economy is now just a shadow of what it once was. Once upon a time America could literally outproduce the rest of the world combined. Today that is no longer true, but Americans sure do consume more than anyone else in the world. If the deindustrialization of America continues at this current pace, what possible kind of a future are we going to be leaving to our children?
Any great nation throughout history has been great at making things. So if the United States continues to allow its manufacturing base to erode at a staggering pace how in the world can the U.S. continue to consider itself to be a great nation? We have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world in an effort to maintain a very high standard of living, but the current state of affairs is not anywhere close to sustainable. Every single month America does into more debt and every single month America gets poorer.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/deindustrialization-factory-closing-2010-9#the-united-states-has-lost-a-whopping-32-percent-of-its-manufacturing-jobs-since-the-year-2000-13#ixzz1ipSup6o5
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