Electronic Pen

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH FOR TRUTHOUT

Many of the banks "too big to fail" don't want your money if you're one of the 99 percent.

No, it's not a joke, according to The New York Times. Basically, the banks are sitting on so much cash that they don't want more. That is why they are raising the costs of putting money into a bank and accessing your money. In essence, they don't really want your business unless you're in the top 1 percent or are willing to pay "access" fees.

This sounds absurd, but follow the non-job-creating logic of the banks, according to the Times:

Though financial institutions are not yet turning away customers at the door, they are trying to discourage some depositors from parking that cash with them. With fewer attractive lending and investment options for that money, it is harder for the banks to turn it around for a healthy profit....

Normally, banks earn healthy profits by taking in deposits and then investing them or lending them out at substantially higher interest rates than what they pay savers. But that traditional banking model has broken down.

Today, banks are paying savers almost nothing for their deposits.

The result: many Americans get as little as .01 percent interest on their savings; get charged as much as $20 a month for banking services such as checking unless they keep several thousand dollars in some big banks; and are, as BuzzFlash at Truthout has noted, even being assessed a monthly fee at Bank of America for using a debit card to access their own money.

But have interest rates on credit cards fallen as interest on savings accounts have just hovered over going into the negative zone? No, of course not; not only have interest rates on credit cards stayed excessively high, additional charges and increased fines are now being levied on credit card users.

This is almost like an absurdist comedy, except absurdity has become the reality today when it comes to "banks too big to fail."

They don't even want your money anymore; it might cut into their profits that come from putting you into debt. And too many Americans can't even afford loans, so the banks are just churning out dividends and bonuses.

It's enough to make you want to occupy Wall Street. But who would think of an idea like that?

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JACQUELINE MARCUS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Stop and think about this for a moment, because it's one of the central reasons why the U.S. is sinking from all sides of the ship.  A government that spends $750 billion dollars a year on defense cannot possibly sustain a vital economy, nor can it produce jobs.  NPR reported recently that the amount the U.S. military spends annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan, alone, is a whopping $20.2 billion, according to a former Pentagon official.

This is absurd, especially when solar panels can light up the entire Middle East with power.  Solar panels are cheap now, and that's creating a boom market for the green energy companies.  In an AP article, it's revealed that "solar energy may finally get its day in the sun."

The high costs that for years made it impractical as a mainstream source of energy are plummeting. Real estate companies are racing to install solar panels on office buildings. Utilities are erecting large solar panel "farms" near big cities and in desolate deserts. And creative financing plans are making solar more realistic than ever for homes.

What do all the U.S.-targeted countries have in common? Oil.  As John Pilger explained in his excellent assessment, U.S. Combat Troops Descend on Africa, it should surprise no one that Obama is sending combat troops in Africa after Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya: "Where the Americans bring drones and destabilization, the Chinese bring roads, bridges and dams. What they want is resources, especially fossil fuels."   China buys oil.  Unlike China, the U.S. oillionaires don't want to pay for oil when they can exploit our military forces to occupy the oil fields for free.  In any event, the American consumer is not going to benefit from the oil grab.

After a decade of lies, you can't blame Americans for being somewhat skeptical about the U.S. withdrawing from the devastated ruins of Iraq at the end of this year, and indubitably there's more to this story: read David Swanson's Goodbye Iraq? Not Exactly. "Thousands of mercenaries will be employed by the State Department. Iraqi police will be trained to U.S. specifications on the U.S. taxpayers' dime. We will maintain the world's largest embassy. And I have to assume the CIA is not departing."

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BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Capitalizing on political friends and contacts has been the name of the game throughout Allbaugh's career. Now he hopes to do for Rick Perry what he did for George w. Bush; help guide him to the White House.

In Quentin Tarantino's film Pulp Fiction, Harvey Keitel plays Winston Wolf, an underworld problem solver. When two hit men, Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winfield (Samuel L. Jackson) accidentally shoot their informant Marvin in the face while driving, "The Wolf" is called in take charge of the situation. Under "The Wolf's" direction, the car is meticulously cleaned, the body is hidden in the trunk, and their bloody clothes are disposed of. "The Wolf" has taken care of everything in a timely manner.

While there's no murder scene to be cleansed, Texas Governor Rick Perry's campaign is shot full of holes. His poll numbers are down, his debate performances were wretched, his credibility is shot, and his re-birthing of the birther card displayed continued poor judgment. His newly unveiled economic plan is a Forbesian rehash. For Team Perry and his billionaire backers, it's time to call in the big guns.

And that's where Joe Allbaugh, who, according to Karen Hughes' book Ten Minutes from Normal dubbed the Texas Bush team of Karl Rove, himself, and Karen Hughes, "the brain, the brawn and the bite," comes in. At 6 feet 4 inches and 275 pounds, Allbaugh was clearly "the brawn" of the group that was later called the "iron triangle" by the national media.'"

A longtime comrade of George W. Bush, Allbaugh worked as then-Texas Gov. Bush's chief of staff before running the Bush's 2000 campaign, including the ruckus in Florida over the recounting of votes.

As a reward for Bush's victory, Allbaugh was named the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

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ROBERT CREAMER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Last Thursday's Washington Post headline blared: "Debt panel's lack of progress raises alarm on Hill."

In fact, it is far better for everyday Americans if the so-called Super Committee fails entirely to get a deal.

The overarching reason is simple: any deal they are likely to strike will make life worse for everyday Americans - and worsen our prospects for long-term economic growth.

Of course that's not the view of many denizens of the Capitol, who are still obsessed by the notion that it is critical for the Congress to produce a "compromise" that raises revenue and cuts "entitlements."  There are three reasons why these people are wrong:

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PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

By now, every sensible American, and some Republicans, have recognized the folly in Herman Cain's 9-9-9 (or more aptly called the 9-0-9) plan. Even Cain himself is starting to see how unfair it is. He tweaked the plan to exclude poverty-level families from the 9% income tax burden.

But let's take a closer look at the effect of the plan on middle-income Americans. Congressional Budget Office figures show that the top quintile of Americans paid 25% of their incomes in federal income taxes in 2006. The middle quintile paid 14% of their incomes in federal income taxes. According to a study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the top quintile paid about 2% of their incomes in state and local sales and excise taxes, while the middle quintile paid approximately 5%.

So at this point, total taxes for the rich are 27% of their incomes (25% + 2%). Total taxes for the middle are 19% of their incomes (14% + 5%).

With 9-0-9, the federal income tax rate would go from 25% to 9% for the top quintile, and from 14% to 9% for the middle quintile. Since the average state and local sales tax rate is currently about 9%, a 9% federal rate would essentially double it. So sales taxes would go from 2% to 4% for the top quintile, and from 5% to 10% for the middle quintile.

So now, total taxes for the rich are 13% of their incomes (9% + 4%). Total taxes for the middle remain at 19% of their incomes (9% + 10%).

Overall, based only on income and sales taxes, the tax responsibility of upper-income Americans would suddenly be much less than that of middle-income Americans.

As for the third part of 9-0-9: despite all the clamor for corporations to pay SOMETHING (9% is better than nothing), the fact is that the top 100 companies in America paid an average tax of 12% from 2008 to 2010. With 9-0-9 they'd be paying less, too.

The Beatles' most famous nonsense song started "Number 9...Number 9...Number 9..." The sentiment is still relevant today.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

What a difference a city makes.

In Oakland the other night, the police violently stormed an Occupy Wall Street encampment in that city. "Dressed in riot gear, the police used rubber bullets, flash grenades, and gas canisters to forcibly evict and/or arrest the demonstrators who remained in the plaza," according to ThinkProgress.

But a few hundred miles to the south, in America's second-largest city, a sea of tents peacefully surrounds the Art Deco Los Angeles City Hall.

In fact, on October 12, the City Council of Los Angeles endorsed the occupation:

After nearly three hours of public comment dominated by Occupy Los Angeles demonstrators, the City Council voted Wednesday to support the movement calling attention to what activists say is a growing gap between the nation's rich and poor.

The resolution sponsored by Councilmen Richard Alarcon and Bill Rosendahl supports the "peaceful and vibrant exercise in First Amendment Rights carried out by 'Occupy Los Angeles.'"

Visiting the Los Angeles tent city of protest a little over a week ago, BuzzFlash at Truthout couldn't see even one police officer in sight - literally. It was so peaceful that, given the corporate mass media's attention to conflict, the Los Angeles occupation is getting little national attention.

Yes, the Los Angeles City Hall is located in a relatively deserted part of what is a relatively small downtown for the second-largest city in the US. Yes, there are virtually no residents around to use as an excuse for a crackdown, as is being done by Mayor Bloomberg of New York.

But there is something else at work here. The city of Los Angeles has been allegedly ripped off by big banks, according to TIME magazine. It has also been mulling a bank accountability proposal that would benefit consumers and homeowners, as well as ensure transparency in loans to the city:

First introduced more than two years ago, the proposal had lost steam until the zeal of Occupy Los Angeles gave it momentum, according to its sponsor, councilman Richard Alarcon. "We felt the resolution kind of captured the spirit of the entire movement," Alarcon says. "We were sort of kindred spirits." If implemented, the initiative would set up a report-card system to rate banks and deny them business if they score too low.

Banks' scores would be determined by factors such as the number of home-loan modifications they give to homeowners to prevent foreclosures, how much lending they do to small businesses and whether the institutions have committed fraudulent activity. And there is reason to suspect fraud. In 2008, the city of Los Angeles filed a lawsuit against 35 financial institutions alleging wrongdoing like rigging bidding processes to manage city debt. The suit has yet to be settled as the city waits for state and federal investigations to conclude amid similar accusations in other cities.

When looking for the potential of Occupy Wall Street to redresses grievances through action, perhaps one should follow the famous quotation from the 1800s: "Go West young man."

In this bicoastal nation, it is gratifying to see a Los Angeles tilt toward occupying Wall Street.

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MICHAEL GALINSKY FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Presaging in many ways the context of Occupy Wall Street, Battle for Brooklyn (see trailer here) is a gripping documentary about how the 1% at the top squeeze the bottom 99% by literally evicting them from their homes and businesses.  In this case, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his elite allies used the power of eminent doman, which is meant for public projects, to clear a Brooklyn neigborhood.  The catch was that the eminent domain power in this case was intended to enhance the profits of a private developer at the expense of tearing down a community. This is how the 1% operate and Mayor Bloomberg, when asked about the lofty goals of the building project being met, assured the media and New Yorkers that he had the word of the developer, Bruce Ratner, and that was good enough for him.  But, as is often the case with "crony capitalism," there is no accountability now that Ratner's promises have not been met.

The project, known as the Atlantic Yards, is currently basically a big parking lot (due to the economy) except for the construction of a stadium to house the now "Brooklyn Nets."  Michael Galinksy, who co-directs the documentary with Suki Hawley, wrote this reflection on why OWS gets it right in taking on "crony capitalism."

My 9 year old daughter loves to come with me to the movie theater when we show our film, Battle for Brooklyn.  She was one and a half years old when we started making it, and we finished it this year. Last week on the way to a screening of the film she said, "I don't get why certain words are bad.  Like it really doesn't mean anything if I say  sh#t, sh#t, sh#t.  It's just a word."  I grew up with a psychologist father who talked like a sailor, so I'm to blame for her casual relationship with curse words.  "It's cultural," I explained.  "It's a way of being in the world that is deeply ingrained and re-enforced over time.  At a certain point, everyone believes it's bad, so it gains a kind of power through the collective understanding." I then tried to bring up the idea of frames as different perspectives on society, but that was a little over her head.

Speaking of frames, when I showed the first draft of this to my partner Suki, she complained that it wasn't focused enough. This is true. It isn't focused enough for the hyper-focused kind of writing we have come to expect.  However, we are entering a new era of intellectual and emotional curiosity, so please allow me to stretch my revolutionary wings and write in a more open/Occupy inspired manner.

This discussion with my daughter got me thinking a lot about our film and our work in general. We make movies about people who are usually just outside the mainstream culture, fighting to be heard, and fighting for what they believe in.  Our films are just as much about media as they are about the people in them.  Essentially, our characters (and our films really) are often up against a culture that looks at the world through a slightly different frame. When media, or the culture, expects one kind of story and are given something else, they think that the storyteller has failed.   As with this piece, my partner thought she would be reading a super-focused blog post connecting Occupy Wall Street to our film.  Since that was her expectation, in her eyes I had failed.  Rather than looking at intention as a measure of success, our culture looks at expectation.  Through this frame of mind it's easy to see why the media initially dubbed the Occupy Wall Street movement a failure. The protesters hadn't show up with press releases, and a "clear" message that could be easily packaged or angled for the 5 o'clock news.  However, the movement was in many ways a reaction against precisely that type of frame.

Occupy Wall Street is about smashing the overriding cultural frame on the ground and stomping on it. It's no surprise that the media, which is so dependent on that very frame, had a violently negative reaction to the message.  It's exciting to see how fragile the frame was though, and how easily it is falling apart.  For the past dozen years, as we have worked on films that deal with media, we have found a somewhat intractable frame in both the making and distribution of our films.  As my Facebook friends will tell you, I have been excited about this movement from day one.

In 1999 we began a documentary about an underground publisher who was trying to re-publish a discredited bio of G.W. Bush.  In short, the publisher and the author had a very hard time trying to revive the book, and the media didn't make it any easier.  We, as the filmmakers, also had difficulty getting the media and the general public to understand what we were trying to do.  The film was titled Horns and Halos because it was about showing the good and the bad in the situation, as the book had tried to show all sides of Bush.  At our screening in Washington D.C., half of the audience thought the movie didn't attack Bush enough, and half thought we hadn't been hard enough on the publisher and author.  We had tried to step outside the divisive frame of left vs. right, but the people weren't having it.

As we were distributing Horns and Halos, we began shooting Battle for Brooklyn.  In a nutshell, the film is about a community fighting to save itself from being bulldozed for a basketball arena and 16 skyscrapers.  We read about the "development" project, branded Atlantic Yards by the developer, in the New York Times, and were immediately struck by the fact that the article sounded like a press release.  When we saw a flier screaming, "Stop the Project!" we knew that we had a way in.  We filmed the fight for well over 7 years, and increasingly focused in on the story of Daniel Goldstein, who ended up leading the fight against the project and being one of the last people in the footprint as the project was pushed through.

When we had first started the film, I would discuss the development project, and our documentary, with my neighbors (we live near the project site).  They all thought there was no use in even looking into it because it was a "done deal."  The mayor, the governor, and the senator all supported it.  "How can it be stopped?" they asked. "They shouldn't even bother, they'll drive themselves crazy."

Meanwhile, the elected officials who actually represented the direct area where the project was to be built were against it.  Most of the people living within the project site agreed with my skeptical neighbors. Six months after the project was announced, faced with the threat of eminent domain and a multi-year battle to save their homes, almost all of the condo-owners in the footprint accepted a buyout from the developer. It was later learned the buyouts had actually been paid for with public money. This left Daniel Goldstein as the only person living in his 31-unit building.  The media portrayed him as a NIMBY who was standing in the way of necessary and publicly beneficial "progress."  Thousands of his neighbors stood with him, and appreciated what he had done, but outside the circle of people who really knew what was going on, there was an effort to characterize him as a villain.

The larger community surrounding the project's footprint was somewhat divided about the development plan, but there was a strong base of opposition.  To counter this movement, the developer went right to the corporate playbook and started to buy off community groups and purchase help from others to support the project.  When the press treats reporting like theater, reality gets lost in the shuffle.  In the papers and on TV,  the community group actively fighting the project and supported by thousands of donations from local residents, gets the he said/ she said treatment in relation to the developer.  Nearly every news story gets launched by a corporate press release, and just like Occupy Wall Street, people who don't go down to check out the situation for themselves have no idea of what's going on.  One thing that has driven the OWS movement, though, is that people have gone down, and they've found a very different picture than what they've been told.  The papers are telling them one thing and Facebook is telling them another.  This process leads to deeper questions about the media, and what is really being delivered to the public.

When a developer spends millions of dollars to control a narrative, it is quite effective. In one scene, which didn't make it into the film, ACORN Executive Director Bertha Lewis announces that her group has negotiated a 50/50 housing deal.  According to this deal, half of the apartments in the complex will be "affordable."  She is asked about the people who live in the project site, and replies that they will all be offered comparable apartments in the new complex.  Afterwards, Daniel Goldstein confronts her with the fact that most of the people in the footprint have already been forced out.  She admits that she hasn't actually started talking to residents yet.  Two weeks later, the developer announced that they were adding 2300 condos, and all of a sudden the 50/50 housing deal looked more like 70/30.  A couple of years later it was revealed that the developer had given a financially troubled ACORN a $500,000 dollar gift, and a $1 million low-interest loan that was never repaid.

One scene that did make the film's final cut reveals that another group that supported the project had expected to receive all of its funding from Forest City Ratner Companies.  In fact, of the six groups that signed a community benefits agreement with the developer, only two, including ACORN, had a significant track record of working with their communities in a large-scale way.  Four of them did not even exist before the project was announced.

Now the project has been forced through.  Nearly 1,000 people and businesses were displaced, and a heavily subsidized, privately-owned arena is under construction  All the buildings have been torn down and there are no apparent plans for the promised housing.  Instead, there are at least 16 acres of demolished and empty lots. Much of this now dormant space will persist as massive parking lots until economic conditions improve.  Of the 15,000 jobs promised, the amount of workers on site has fluctuated between a few hundred to five or six hundred.  Of those jobs, only a handful have gone to local residents.

A project that was sold as a panacea for poverty, unemployment and a housing crisis has ended up as a mostly vacant quagmire in the middle of Brooklyn.  Still, two days after officer Bolonga maced people in the face at Occupy Wall Street, the developer of the Atlantic Yards project and the government put on a big show (with Jay Z and his Maybach on display) to announce that ...drum roll please...they would be changing the name of the New Jersey Nets to the Brooklyn Nets!  Rome was burning, and the press was eating free food and dutifully reporting on this major announcement while ignoring the real situation that was going on just over the bridge.  There were literally hundreds of press people present for the Jay Z-Nets announcement, and for the most part, they all printed their stories and ran their footage as requested.  It was a giant magic trick:  Look over here at the shiny car and the celebrity and ignore all of the broken promises.

As with Horns and Halos, we've had a bit of a difficult time getting people to understand what we were trying to do with the Battle for Brooklyn, and frankly we released it before people were quite ready for its narrative.  Essentially it is the Occupy Wall Street film before OWS.  Michael O'Keefe laid it out well in his article in the Daily News on October 18th.

Our film lays bare all of the elements that have enraged the masses.  An extreme version of corptocracy-a willing government taken over by corporate interests against the interests of the people-in which a developer plans a project, calls all the shots, and gets the government to steamroll the public process and provide unbelievable levels of subsidies. The media follows the corporate script, reporting on the story when the developer issues press releases, and dutifully repeating ridiculous assertions about revenues, housing, and jobs without doing any due diligence whatsoever.  As a citizen, it was infuriating and mind numbing.  As a filmmaker, it was painful.  As we are not "accredited media," we were shut out of the dog and pony show on numerous occasions.

People are fed up with outsourcing their rage to groups like MoveOn, and thinking that the few extra bucks a month they pay for their Credo phone will change anything.

We had one great line in the film that we eventually took out, because we found a way to show it instead of tell it, but it's relevant here: "It's in the interest of the developer to keep the community divided, because if the community is divided he can get what he wants pushed through."  In early cuts of the film the audience felt cheated out of their own discovery of this concept when it was handed to them so directly.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is largely related to this idea.  The people are uniting, and it will be much harder for those who want to defeat them this time.

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TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

More proof that those

Fond of the NRA

Tend not to have had a

Very high GPA.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Who is causing the most disruption to residents in southern Manhattan? The New York City Police Department (NYPD).

As BuzzFlash at Truthout has noted, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been developing a PR contingency strategy to shut down Occupy Wall Street (OWS). One of his primary media claims is that the OWS encampment at Liberty Park is disturbing and inconveniencing residents of the area.

But, in reality, the massive deployment of the NYPD in the Wall Street district is itself a large-scale disruption of the community in that area. If Mayor Bloomberg's alleged standard of not "bothering" neighborhood residents and workers is any means test for obeying the law, the NYPD "occupation" of lower New York City should be halted.

At a recent hearing of two of the many New York City-area neighborhood advisory committees - the combined Quality of Life and Financial District Committees - a Firedoglake blogger was able to record some of the comments on the issue under discussion: what to do with OWS in Liberty Park.

Interestingly, many of the attendees complained about the massive police presence:

Another woman says she lives in area and the real problem is the police. They won't let her pass through on her bike to get home. She supports OWS.

Yet another WASPY patrician looking woman says that she has been made a prisoner in her own apt, but not by OWS, by the police. She thinks they are overreacting. She supports OWS

71 year old woman says police barricades are endangering her life, not OWS.

Local merchant complains about the barricades too. Say the barricades are disrupting business not OWS.

Young woman gets up, says that she has grown up in NY all her life, that the city has always been loud and dirty and folks should just get used to it.

Yes, some residents did complain about OWS, but some of these objections were political, such as the man who said "that protestors aren't occupying Wall Street, but because it's near Ground Zero they are occupying Ground Zero!" (Liberty Park is adjacent to the old Twin Towers site.)

Tom Engelhardt of TomDispatch recently wrote about the militarized occupation of Wall Street by the NYPD:

Their stakeout in Zuccotti Park is geared to extreme acts, suicide bombers, and terrorism, as well as to a conception of protest and opposition as alien and enemy-like. They are trying to herd, lock in, and possibly strangle a phenomenon that bears no relation to any of this. They are, that is, policing the wrong thing, which is why every act of pepper spraying or swing of the truncheon, every aggressive act (as in the recent eviction threat to "clean" the park) blows back on them and only increases the size and coverage of the movement.

Engelhardt also confirmed to BuzzFlash at Truthout that the area is heavily barricaded and that police cars are everywhere, not to mention the helicopter flyovers and the watchtower over Liberty Park itself. Engelhardt estimates that "on an everyday basis, a squad of 10 or 15 friendly police officers could easily handle the situation."

But Bloomberg has deployed - as BuzzFlash at Truthout has already pointed out - a publicly financed police force with access to advanced technological powers and prone to primitive outbursts of brutality to annoy, harass and wail away the night with sirens, disrupting the sleep of area residents.

In this case, who will arrest the police and Bloomberg for disrupting, inconveniencing and violating the rights of residents and workers in the financial district?

It should be noted that the combined committee hearing did end with a recommendation calling for more limited drumming -- which has become a contentious issue both within and without OWS in terms of whether or not to limit it -- and increased sanitation facilities, which the city could provide instead of spending such excessive funds on unnecessary police force. The recommendation was a defeat for the New York City Real Estate Board, which was hoping for a recommendation to close Liberty Park at night.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Consistent with the Wall Street standard operating procedure of privatized profits and socialized risks, the Bank of America has allegedly transferred 75 trillion dollars in potentially toxic derivatives to enable the money to be covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

What does this mean in plain English?

It means that we, the taxpayers, are once again insuring the casino gambling financial bets of another bank too big to fail. So, while the Tea Party and the Republicans in Congress rail about cutting taxes, they are saying nary a word about taxpayers covering the shady financial gambling of big banks. The potential loss of $75 trillion, insured by government money, dwarfs budget deficit "austerity" talks.

And the Bank of America - although it is the largest US bank in total financial assets according to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) - is not a good investment for taxpayers right now, even though it recently showed a profit on paper. According to Bloomberg:

Moody's Investors Service downgraded Bank of America's long-term credit ratings Sept. 21, cutting both the holding company and the retail bank two notches apiece. The holding company fell to Baa1, the third-lowest investment-grade rank, from A2, while the retail bank declined to A2 from Aa3....

Bank of America's rating is now four grades below the one Moody's assigned to JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), the biggest U.S. bank by deposits at midyear, and a level below the rating given to Citigroup Inc. (C), the third-biggest. Bank of America is the only U.S. lender that lacks a rating of A3 or higher among the five firms listed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as having the biggest derivatives books.

So the free market isn't really "free." Wall Street depends upon hard-working Americans to keep them from the negative results of taking bad risks in an effort to turn large profits and big bonuses. If you own a small business and take such risks and they fail, you go bankrupt. If you run a Wall Street bank "too big to fail," average Americans cover your losses. Call it Wall Street socialism.

Ominously, in regards to that 75 trillion dollars that we are now backing with our dollars, a Reuters columnist recently wrote a commentary headlined, "Is Bank of America preparing for a Chapter 11?"

It would be great to go to Vegas and have all your gambling debts covered by the house. That's the Wall Street way - and the US government is the house.

The taxpayers are holding up Wall Street, not the other way around.

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NIKOLAS KOZLOFF FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

After a couple of weeks trying to find their groove, Occupy Wall Street protesters are now on a high and are set to take their movement to the next level. First came the announcement that New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg would not dismantle the encampment at Liberty Plaza, and then, as anti-capitalist demonstrators took to the streets in cities as far afield as Madrid and Rome, activists may have sensed that Occupy Wall Street stood to become truly global in scope. With the mushrooming of protest across the United States, corporate executives are sitting up and taking notice, while both the Republicans and Democrats have been forced to recognize the growing power of demonstrations. With the 2012 presidential election just a year away, it is not inconceivable that Occupy Wall Street will exert a political impact upon the campaign.

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ANN DAVIDOW FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

It is decision-making time in our country - - not just time to pick the right candidates for the upcoming election but for beginning a process that will illustrate just what kind of people we are. The sad part of this exercise is that we are up against people whose moral imperatives stretch the limits of truth and decency until they are so weak and ineffectual they could be drowned in a bathtub.

Leaders and wannabe power brokers fail to pose realistic solutions, choosing instead to let politics guide them through a thicket of complicated options. And having chosen partisanship over rational processes they commit us to dead-end policies that limit our ability to develop thoughtful procedures that might actually lead to more fruitful endeavors. Partisan maneuvering is a shaky premise upon which to build a viable governing structure and it keeps us from approaching our condition from a common-sense perspective. Having a political point of view shouldn't mean we give up conducting our lives in a thoughtful manner. But today too many of us seem to have chosen the easy way out of adopting an ideological premise and sticking with it to the bitter end regardless of what evidence might otherwise suggest.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

In his new book, available from Truthout with a contribution, Glenn Greenwald states it bluntly: "The central promise of the American founding - that all would stand equal before the rule of law no matter what other political and economic inequality was allowed - has been abandoned."

Moreover, the ruling elite and the wealthiest Americans have become exempt from a uniform standard of justice, Greenwald argues in "With Liberty and Justice for Some":

Instead, the United States now has the exact opposite of a single set of laws before which everyone is equal. It has an entrenched two-tiered system of justice: the country's most powerful political and financial elites are virtually immunized from the rule of law, empowered to commit felonies with full-scale impunity and to act without any constraints, while the politically powerless are imprisoned with greater ease and in far greater numbers than in any other country on the planet.

According to an October 19 Reuters article: "Citigroup Inc will pay $285 million to settle charges that it defrauded investors who bought toxic housing-related debt that the bank bet would fail, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said on Wednesday."

Please notice the word defrauded in the description of Citigroup's action. The law is divided into basically two areas: civil and criminal. Defraud generally is an action that falls into the criminal class of law. Throughout the follow-up to the near collapse of the American economy caused by Wall Street's defrauding, mismanagement, malfeasance and greed, the basic reaction of the Obama administration has been to let the perpetrators of a crime so large it defies comprehension go free. Not only have they gone free, but many of them are still in charge of nearly monopolistic financial entities that, in many practices, amount to - at least in part - criminal enterprises that gouge consumers and defraud investors alike.

Yes, a few "guppies" have been prosecuted, and financial firms like Citigroup have paid some fines that they will just recover in write-offs and more financial scams. It's not just a slap on the wrist; it's giving the appearance of punishment, when it is really no skin off the hide of the criminally negligent banks. Furthermore, Citigroup is claiming -- and the SEC isn't disputing -- that it clears them of liability for other charges against the bank. It's a public relations move by the SEC, not a finding with any legal repercussions - for the firm or for individuals.

For weeks, under orders from Mayor Bloomberg - and with the likely cooperation of the FBI - protesters have been treated like criminals by a highly militarized police force. In essence, the New York Police Department has become a publicly paid security force to protect the "Masters of the Universe" on Wall Street, who have committed unfathomable crimes against the nation.

If you cash a bum check in many states - even if it's just for a few dollars in groceries - you can go to jail for years ("three strikes and your out"). But if you bring down an economy and keep engaging in fraud and high-risk schemes with other people's money, causing trillions of dollars in losses, you are a member of the privileged elite who enjoys a separate system of justice: one that lets you go free to pillage again.

Greenwald gets it right: "Courtrooms, indictments, and prisons are there for ordinary Americans, not for the ruling classes, and virtually never for our highest political leaders."

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BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

There may be isolated incidents of anti-Semitism within the Occupy movement but there is little evidence that it is a driving force.

During an Occupy LA protest, Patricia McAllister, a substitute teacher with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), told Reason TV that "the Zionist Jews who are running these big banks and our federal reserve -- which is not run by the federal government -- they need to be run out of this country." In a later interview with Fox11, she said "Jews have been run out of 109 countries throughout history, and we need to run them out of this one."

Whatever else she may be, McAllister, who was not a speaker at the rally and who was subsequently fired by the District for her comments, has become the poster child for the right; proof positive that the Occupy Movement is brimming with anti-Semites.

Are there a significant number of participants in the Occupy Movement engaged in anti-Semitic behavior? Where is the anti-Semitism coming from? How does a "leaderless" movement deal with its outliers?

Just as it was important to point out the anti-Semitic and racist signs that were visible at Tea Party rallies and events, it is important to scrutinize the Occupy Movement as well. It is also important to note that incidents of Tea Party racism were broadly spread across the movement. (See "Race and the Tea Party Movement" -- http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/2159.)

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SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 - Hundreds of defense contractors that defrauded the U.S. military received more than $1.1 trillion in Pentagon contracts during the past decade, according to a Department of Defense report prepared for Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Sanders (I-Vt.) called the report "shocking." He said aggressive steps must be taken to ensure taxpayer dollars aren't wasted.

"The ugly truth is that virtually all of the major defense contractors in this country for years have been engaged in systemic fraudulent behavior, while receiving hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money," said Sanders. "With the country running a nearly $15 trillion national debt, my goal is to provide as much transparency as possible about what is happening with taxpayer money."

The report detailed how the Pentagon paid $573.7 billion during the past 10 years to more than 300 contractors involved in civil fraud cases that resulted in judgments of more than $1 million, $398 billion of which was awarded after settlement or judgment for fraud.  When awards to "parent" companies are counted, the Pentagon paid more than $1.1 trillion during the past 10 years just to the 37 top companies engaged in fraud.

Another $255 million went to 54 contractors convicted of hard-core criminal fraud in the same period. Of that total, $33 million was paid to companies after they were convicted of crimes.

Some of the nation's biggest defense contractors were involved.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

A recent article in the New York Observer highlights the ongoing challenge Occupy Wall Street faces in preventing the New York Police Department (NYPD) and perhaps FBI infiltrators from creating acts of violence that will turn the nation against the movement.

Mayor Bloomberg and the FBI know that nothing will change the mood of support for Occupy Wall Street faster than having them portrayed as a "violent mob." So, there have been ongoing incidents of what appear to be provocations by the police or infiltrators to create an image of an unruly group of lawbreakers. (Just remember the Brooklyn Bridge incident for one.)

BuzzFlash at Truthout warned of this likely ongoing effort in a commentary on October 4, "The NYPD and FBI Are Trying to Infiltrate Wall Street Protest to Discredit It: Of This You Can Be Sure."

Among the recurring reports of police infiltration and provocateurs is an account today of the incident that led to the NYPD arrest of more than 20 protesters trying to close their Citibank accounts over the weekend.

One of the persons arrested at the Citibank branch, Marshall Garrett, told the Village Voice:

But what was unknown to us and to a lot of people that day, including those in Times Square, was that there were undercover cops already there, paid to be disruptive and to be loud. One undercover cop present [at Citi] was louder than the entire group.

He arrested one of the protestors outside, and slammed her into the wall, and pushed her back into the bank. We all saw him at the precinct with us. He was laughing with the fellow white shirt cops, telling them about what we'd been saying, basically. It was a bit startling how inside their information was - how they were being paid to go to these protests and put us in situations where we'd be arrested and not be able to leave.

In fact, you can see one of the undercover police officer provocateurs in this alarming video. Watch through to the point where this plainclothes NYPD cop arrests a young woman, who is a Citibank customer, for merely being outside the bank branch because she was involved in the protest, but not inside the branch building. It is quite chilling indeed. Four or five NYPD officers just make the woman disappear.

The biggest challenge for Occupy Wall Street will be to uproot covert efforts to discredit the movement by law enforcement agencies that are supposed to protect the Constitution instead of subverting it.

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PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The sales tax on a pair of shoes is 6%. The sales tax on a financial transaction is 0%.

That's right, a struggling homeowner getting the kids ready for school is subsidizing the millionaire buyers of the high-risk derivatives and credit default swaps that nearly wrecked our economy. Meanwhile, the super-rich divert our attention from the injustice, claiming "class warfare" at any attempt to fix the system. And it needs fixing. Speculative purchases of financial transactions are subject only to a tiny fee that helps the Securities and Exchange Commission keep the lucrative system in place.

Legislators around the country, hesitant to take on their powerful friends in the corporate world, instead cut school budgets, services for the poor, and police departments while raising utility fees and sales taxes.

It's a lot easier to pick on the middle class than on the people who control the media.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Maybe there's more to Mayor Bloomberg of New York backing down from having the New York Police Department (NYPD) eradicate Occupy Wall Street than his incestuous and profitable relationship with Wall Street (given his $19.5 billion in wealth from the financial industry and his "personal" link with the owners of Liberty Park).

Bloomberg has used the NYPD as a militarized occupation force in southern Manhattan to contain and suppress a group of Americans intent on outing the financial mismanagement of Wall Street. But he's in a fix.

Apparently, New Yorkers don't agree with the baronial mayor, who likes to give the appearance of being a "common man" from time to time.

The fifth paragraph of a New York Times article updating the mayor's continued thinly veiled disdain for the growing movement for accountability from the financial titans - and for a just society - reveals that the multibillionaire defender of oligarchical rule (after all, he is a role model in this area) is facing overwhelming opposition to his position:

A Quinnipiac University poll released on Monday found broad support for Occupy Wall Street; 72 percent of New York City voters, including 52 percent of Republicans, said the protesters should be able to stay as long as they wanted if they continued to obey the laws. The telephone survey, of 1,068 registered voters, was conducted from Thursday to Sunday.

Those are landslide numbers of New York City residents who support Occupy Wall Street protesters exercising their rights in a democracy.

In New York State, Bloomberg's use of a public police force to defend the entrenched, gluttonous and counterproductive-to-the-national-interest leadership and practices of much of the financial industry is also facing a stiff pushback, according to The Associated Press:

The push for a higher tax on New Yorkers making more than $1 million a year is getting fresh life with a new poll showing overwhelming support, a high-profile rally on Monday and the strengthening Occupy Wall Street protest in New York City.

The Siena College poll found 72 percent of New York voters support the tax to avoid further budget cuts. Just 26 percent oppose the proposal by powerful Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

Mayor Bloomberg is using taxpayer money on deploying an occupying police force to try to close down a demonstration of taxpayers guaranteed in the Constitution.

He sounds a bit like King George just before the American Revolution.

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BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Last month I wrote a piece for this website called "The Not So Stealth Campaign to Silence Critics of Religious Extremism" (http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13036). The essence of the piece was to call attention to a column in USA Today by Mark I. Pinsky attacking researchers, writers, reporters and critics of two trending developments on the Christian right, Dominionism and the New Apostolic Reformation.

The liberal Pinsky -- as several conservative writers had done previously -- asserted that the NAR and other Dominionists were neither broad-based movements embraced by the evangelical community, nor, as some on the left were claiming - a particular political threat. In developing his argument, Pinsky demeaned critics and made the bizarre assertion that Pastor John Hagee and conservative Christian historian David Barton were marginal figures on the conservative evangelical landscape.

Pinsky's column, and a subsequent endorsement of his views by the Rev. Jim Wallis, the president of Sojourners and a person associated with more liberal religious leaders, led to the writing of an "An Open Letter to Jim Wallis from Writers about American Religion and Politics." The letter was signed onto by fourteen authors, journalists and bloggers that have written about these issues for years (http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/10/6/11493/4209).

That letter resulted in a lively, albeit largely sequestered discussion on a number of websites.

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STEVEN JONAS, MD, MPH, FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

In The New York Times "Sunday Review" of Sept. 25, 2011, Michael Kazin, a co-editor of Dissent magazine, published an article entitled "Whatever Happened to the American Left?" It is drawn from a new book of his entitled American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation.  In the article (full disclosure: I have not read the book, only the review that appeared in The Times Sunday Book Review on Sept. 18) Mr. Kazin attributed the aforementioned decline to a number of factors.  They included: unlike the (relatively) powerful left of the 1930s, the modern left, unlike the modern Right, has not been germinating for very long; in the 1970s they started leaving traditional "left" issues such as "class justice" for such things as rights for minorities and women; the failed promises of the Democratic Party, post pre-Viet Nam Lyndon Johnson; dependence on "politicians;" and "not reconnecting with ordinary Americans." So, you see, the "decline of the US left" is all the left's fault.

Well, historical developments like the decline, indeed the virtual disappearance of any real, socialistically-oriented left as real as its cousin, the "liberal/progressive" left, don't happen in an historical vacuum.  Indeed in this case it would appear that what the Right-wing, Corporate Power has done to the US left since the height of its power during the New Deal is the primary cause of its decline. Further it would appear that the failure of self-styled US leftists to recognize and come to grips with the amazingly powerful legal, legislative, and propagandistic forces that  the US Corporate Power mobilized against the left, and then organize to oppose it with strength, is also a major cause of the US left's decline.

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