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As Congressman Paul Ryan cracked a joke about him, Tom Nielsen found himself face down on the floor being handcuffed by police. The 71-year-old retired plumber from Kenosha was thrown to the ground, placed in handcuffs, and arrested for trespassing and resisting arrest after objecting to Ryan’s plans to gut Social Security and Medicare during his congressman’s only public appearance scheduled during the August recess — a $15 Rotary Club luncheon in West Allis on Tuesday.
Mitt Romney
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Corporations…Corporations who buy Supreme Court Judges are the luckiest people in the world. There’s Tea Baggers needing other Tea Baggers and yet letting their grown up pride hide all the need inside…acting more like children, than children. The Koch Brothers are very special people…they’re the luckiest billionaires in the world…With one person (Scott Walker) one very special person (Scott Walker) and feeling deep in your soul that said you were half and now you’re whole…No more Unions and Middle Class…But first be a Corporation who screws people…Corporations who screw American People are the luckiest people In the world!Supreme Court Justice Stevens hammered one last time from the bench that corporations “are not human beings…Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires.” He insisted that “they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.”
Watching as the Supreme Court turns a corporation into a real live boy..
Billionaires For Bush have a vision for a stronger America:
Billionocracy: Our Vision for the Future
For more info hit Ad Busters
A New Campaign from our friends at Adbusters
Our fight to get an anti-cosmetics industry subvertisement into the
pages of a teen magazine continues. Unsurprisingly, we’ve met a lot of
resistance. Seventeen and Teen Vogue rejected our attempts to buy ad
space outright, but CosmoGIRL might still be an option. We’re getting
lots of great feedback on the new MemeWars forum about our “Your Beauty, Your Way” poster. A full page ad is $97,270, so we want to make sure weget the message just right. Put in your two cents worth on the MemeWars forum.
Our favorite Adbusters constructive anarchy action included a 30-second TV anti-ad on CNN’s Moneyline News Hour just before the 2004 election: A closeup of a snorting pig…no text…no narration…just a pig.
Each year AB promotes “Buy Nothing Day”…the Friday after Thanksgiving which big corporations depend on as the biggest shopping orgy on their calander.
“World’s CEOs March in Support of World Child Labor Day”
Announce New Initiative to Empower Global Resource:
“No Child Laborer Left Behind” “Child Labor Builds Strong Bones.”
Company execs with a keen eye on the bottom line have been utilizing child labor for years and rightfully see it as a win-win. Not only are we happy to create jobs for every member of the family, but for every 16 hours a child spends working in one of our factories, that’s 16 hours they don’t spend in a ramshackle home.
And don’t forget that smaller people demand much smaller paychecks. Hell, sometimes we just give them the loose change we have rattling around in our pockets! And that makes our shareholders very happy.
But the greatest joy is watching tiny fingers learn to stitch together sneakers. Granting them the gift of a sort-of skilled mechanized trade is one of the more heartwarming experiences a Billionaire can have.
So put your hands together for World Child Labor Day, June 12th! But please don’t call it “labor”, it’s really “Play for Pay”.
Democrats Forum
Yeah, this miners’ story won’t go away. Reagan broke the unions. On the day he took office 33% of Americans belonged to a union and thus had full medical coverage for themselves, their spouses, children and parents. Are we better off today with less 10% of our workers union?
Union officials regulary inspected every work place under Carter.
Now, the fox inspects the henhouse. Only eight of twelve emergency oxygen units worked, and thus, only one miner survived.
A Great White Shark must move ever forward or die…never sleeps, never backs up to consider mistakes, never stops to consider the consequences of its actions…a GWS simply swims straight ahead, goobling up everything in its path, 24/7 or dies. American Corporations are the same. Reagan opened the cage with deregulation in the 1980’s and the beast now rages out of control.
Are giant corporations evil? Was a T-Rex evil? Or GWSs of today? Of course not! But these pea-brained monsters must be reined in again, regulated and tamed for the sake of survival of our planet.
Mussolini defined fascism as the marriage of corporation and the state. When a handful of conglomerates clutch virtually the entire media, repeating the official party line hour after hour, we approach a fascist state. A true patriot is born in the act of questioning and in acting upon a reasoned response…“A hero,” the Greek Nobel prize-winning poet George Seferis wrote, “is one who moves forward in the dark.”
Sam Hamill from the introduction of Poets Against the War.
You must see Eugene Jarecki’s WHY WE FIGHT (Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival). See the trailer
Along those same lines: War profiteering didn’t begin during the cold war. Major General Smedley D. Butler became fed up with greedy screwheads and thus quit the Marine Corps and wrote War Is A Racket in 1935. Get a copy for $5 (cheap) at Veterans for Peace
Also check out a new doc on Walmart from Robert Greenwald (Outfoxed.
ABBIE award of the week to Robert Greenwald!
Towards a world where no industry lobbyist has to ask twice
With a one-party state in our grasp, we can stop worrying about pushing the envelope on corporate subsidies. We must gather our courage to reach a day when we can be honest that massive tax cuts are designed to make us rich and bankrupt the government so that it cannot afford wasteful programs like Social Security. We should dare to eliminate any remaining barriers between our lobbyists and the government itself. Let’s dare to hand not just Medicare and prisons but also the Army and public schools to corporate America. Why accept the end of the “era of big government,” when we can dare to eliminate government all together?
We’re not just about short-term handouts to corporations, we’re about creating a Billionaire-friendly America — forever. And with George W. Bush in the White House, we’re getting there. Fast. And when we do, our politicians and media companies will no longer be forced to serve Billionaire policies wrapped in the pearly white coating of the public interest. It’ll be sunny-side up policies, everyday! At last we will be able to shout aloud that government is of, by and for the Billionaires.
What will our Billionocracy look like? Here are some of our favorite ideas.
Perfecting the System
* Allow corporations to run for office. Eliminate the current, clumsy policy of having a mere representative of Enron in the Presidency, or of Halliburton in the Vice-Presidency, or of Big Pharma in Congress. Allow corporations to run for elected office directly. Much more efficient (and think of the advertising potential! — “Speaker of the House AstraZeneca!”).
* One Dollar, One Vote.
Forget fiddly campaign finance law, and forget the electoral college. To truly ensure America has a political system that answers to wealth, each person will get a number of votes equivalent to his net wealth — those in debt get negative votes. Whichever corporation running for President, or Congress, gets the most votes — i.e. financial backing — wins. Simple.
* Pay appointed officials and public servants in stock options. Public servants from Colin Powell to EPA employees need the right incentive structures. How are they meant to focus on the best Billionaire outcomes when they get a guaranteed, flat-rate wage from the public purse? Salaries tied exclusively to the relevant corporations’ stock price is the answer. A mix of defense, oil and construction companies for State Department officials; heavy industry companies for EPA employees, BigPharma for the Department of Health — you get the idea.
* Eliminate Corporate Liability. One of the costs weighing on our corporations is the right of any American to sue us for damages caused by us or our products. We are best placed to know what safety precautions are necessary and affordable, and activist judges should not be empowered to trump our judgment.
* Scrap all Social Programs. Who needs social security, public education and free health care? We certainly didn’t. Rather than slowly starve these programs of funds with more wars and more tax cuts, we would simply ditch them all.
Specific Policy Areas
* War on Economic Terror at Home. While our attention is drawn abroad, workers under our very noses are terrorizing patriotic companies through union organizing, legislating to raise the minimum wage, and striking for health coverage. Their demands threaten the Constitution’s guarantee of free-markets and private property and amount to nothing less than treason in this time of war. We would put the Department of Homeland Security on the case.
* Privatize War — Halliburton to invade Syria. Halliburton provides bases, supplies, food, vehicles, weaponry and ammunition to the army and has its own private security company to guard its installations. Our next war should be entirely privatized. This would insulate the administration from criticism, and allow Halliburton to sub-contract cheaper non-American combatants to absorb the casualties. The British Empire was built by the government allowing private corporations to conquer territory for their commercial gain; Billionaires would follow this example.
* Expand the prison-industrial labor force. Prisoners are the ideal workforce. They cannot demand raises or benefits, organize labor unions, or leave to find a better job. We would grow this invaluable pool of labor by expanding the war on non-violent drug users and by toughening mandatory/minimum sentences. This will be more effective than Bush’s current plan to import and throw out immigrants according to the needs of corporate America.
* Introduce Efficiency Tracking for Public Schools. Rather than waste resources educating every child, we must recognize that most will end up in service jobs. Billionaires would help the government develop an early tracking program to weed these Potential Low-Wage-earners (PLOWS) at the age of 5 and save them the trouble and us the cost of formal education.
* Corporate Sponsorship of College Students. Replace what’s left of federal financial aid programs with corporate sponsorship. We fund students’ degrees, then they give us a minimum of twenty years free service.
* Move EPA inside Chamber of Commerce. Economic growth and environmental sustainability are compatible, but we should never lose sight of the money that can be made from wrecking the environment. Only experts can properly spot and exploit these opportunities. The Chamber is the right place for the EPA.
* Increase Oil and Coal Subsidies. We cannot afford to move towards energy efficiency or alternatives that would make America less vulnerable militarily, economically and environmentally. There’s no money in that kind of stability. We would increase subsidies to our big energy companies as the best way of maintaining the status quo (and making a bit more money on the side).
* Repeal Unjust Ban on International Bribery. The current Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prevents us from bribing foreign officials. Since we bribe our own officials, it is racist and unjust not to offer the same currency - er, courtesy, to officials from poorer countries. Halliburton has blazed a trail in giving over $180 million in bribes to Nigerian officials. We should transform their act of civil disobedience into a full-fledged campaign to overturn this unjust law.
Abramoff Says He Met Bush ‘Almost a Dozen’ Times
By Andy Sullivan, Reuters
WASHINGTON (Feb. 10) - Jack Abramoff said in correspondence made public on Thursday that President Bush met him “almost a dozen” times, disputing White House claims Bush did not know the former lobbyist at the center of a corruption scandal.
“The guy saw me in almost a dozen settings, and joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids. Perhaps he has forgotten everything, who knows,” Abramoff wrote in an e-mail to Kim Eisler, national editor for the Washingtonian magazine.
1/30: Mobil/Exxon posted the largest quarterly profit of any American corporation in history. Do you think the savings will be passed on at the pump? If the American Empire seizes all of the oil in the world, will prices go up or down? Something to consider: if we win the war on terrorism (brown people hoarding our oil) will the average American be forced to pay $20 a gallon for gas? Corporate greed has no limits.
1-4: So sad to watch the Sago Mine tragedy unfold. An unfortunate accident, you say? Perhaps…but check out the facts: Great White Corporate Shark, International Coal Mine bought the mine in March and immediately kicked out the pesky union. They racked up 208 safety violations in 2005 (up from 68 in 2004) including several for failure to dilute coal dust which can lead to explosions. How has the Bush Adminstration helped?…stripped most power from OSHA and smaller state agencies like the Office of Miners’ Health and Safety. Inspectors now write a ticket for safety violations and big corporations sneer, pay a small fine (usually $60) and then toss the annoying paper into the trash. American workers deserve better.
Update 2-2: Two more miners died in separate disasters. Finally the governor of West Virginia shut down 500 death holes and called for inspections. You cannot begin to imagine the horrible deaths these non-union 18 men faced. I can and I forgive your ignorance…You got yours, Halliburton got theirs and much more, Exxon got more than they could ever have dreamed.
12-25: Those of us who seldom visit your planet are confused by Christmas in America. The stores launched a brutal hard-sell campaign before Halloween this year and earthlings spent most of your free time shopping, wrapping, mailing, opening and exchanging. Few of you honored His birthday (isn’t that the point?). Fewer remembered the Guy who threw the money lenders out of the temple (separation of greed and religion)…the Guy who owned nothing but the clothes on His back and never gave or received useless material gifts after His first day on Earth. Which brings us to the strange story of three wise men honoring His birth with gold, room refreshener and embalming fluid. Inquiring minds of the Galaxy want to know: “If these men were so wise why couldn’t they come up with gifts more appropriate for a newborn? And, what happened to these gifts? They are never mentioned again…Did His parents sell them off and squander the money? (This was afterall many centuries before the Jackie Coogan Child Star Law).
But, wait …come to think of it, one his peers did receive thirty pieces of silver. Is that the origin of your custom? Zardoz
11-25: THIS IS BUY NOTHING DAY!
Published by Greg at 09:06 AM on September 30, 2011