How Wall Street Occupied America

[georgephillip]

Bill Moyers on his roots:

"During the prairie revolt that swept the Great Plains in 1890, populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease exclaimed, 'Wall Street owns the country…. Money rules…. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us."

"She should see us now. John Boehner calls on the bankers, holds out his cup and offers them total obeisance from the House majority if only they fill it.

"Barack Obama criticizes bankers as “fat cats,” then invites them to dine at a pricey New York restaurant where the tasting menu runs to $195 a person...

"Let’s name this for what it is: hypocrisy made worse, the further perversion of democracy.

"Our politicians are little more than money launderers in the trafficking of power and policy—fewer than six degrees of separation from the spirit and tactics of Tony Soprano.

"Why New York’s Zuccotti Park is filled with people is no mystery. Reporters keep scratching their heads and asking, 'Why are you here?' But it’s clear they are occupying Wall Street because Wall Street has occupied the country."

How Wall Street Occupied America | Common Dreams

Republicans AND Democrats: 0 degrees of separation from the spirit and tactics of Wall Street.

 

[georgephillip]

"Henry and Ruby Moyers were 'common laboring people.' My father dropped out of the fourth grade and never returned to school because his family needed him to pick cotton to help make ends meet.

"Mother managed to finish the eighth grade before she followed him into the fields.

"They were tenant farmers when the Great Depression knocked them down and almost out. The year I was born my father was making $2 a day working on the highway to Oklahoma City. He never took home more than $100 a week in his working life, and he made that only when he joined the union in the last job he held.

"I was one of the poorest white kids in town, but in many respects I was the equal of my friend who was the daughter of the richest man in town.

"I went to good public schools, had the use of a good public library, played sandlot baseball in a good public park and traveled far on good public roads with good public facilities to a good public university.

"Because these public goods were there for us, I never thought of myself as poor. When I began to piece the story together years later, I came to realize that people like the Moyerses had been included in the American deal. 'We, the People' included us."

How Wall Street Occupied America | Common Dreams

 

[DiamondDave]

Oh look... Georgie Pordgie with another winger link from commie dreams

 

[georgephillip]

Oh look... Georgie Pordgie with another winger link from commie dreams

"The rise of the money power in our time goes back forty years.

"We can pinpoint the date.

"On August 23, 1971, a corporate lawyer named Lewis Powell—a board member of the death-dealing tobacco giant Philip Morris and a future justice of the Supreme Court—released a confidential memorandum for his friends at the US Chamber of Commerce.

"We look back on it now as a call to arms for class war waged from the top down."

How Wall Street Occupied America | Common Dreams

Stop thinking like a slave, Davey-Dip.

 

[Charles_Main]

Kooo Kooo

 

[georgephillip]

Kooo Kooo

"Recall the context of Powell’s memo.

"Big business was being forced to clean up its act. Even Republicans had signed on. In 1970 President Nixon put his signature on the National Environmental Policy Act and named a White House Council to promote environmental quality.

"A few months later millions of Americans turned out for Earth Day. Nixon then agreed to create the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Congress acted swiftly to pass tough amendments to the Clean Air Act, and the EPA announced the first air pollution standards. There were new regulations directed at lead paint and pesticides.

"Corporations were no longer getting away with murder."

Share your "thoughts" on why corporations and the richest 1% should be allowed to get away with murder?

How Wall Street Occupied America | Common Dreams

 

[editec]

The revolt of the plutocrats was ratified by the Supreme Court in its notorious Citizens United decision last year. Rarely have so few imposed such damage on so many. When five pro-corporate conservative justices gave “artificial legal entities” the same rights of “free speech” as humans, they told our corporate sovereigns that the sky’s the limit when it comes to their pouring money into political campaigns.

Bingo!


The smoking gun showing us the SHAM that democracy has become.

The SCOTUS betrayed the ideal that America was founded on that every citizen's vote was equal and that CITIENS mattered more than MONEY.

 

[gslack]

Sorry to be a pain in the ass, but socialism is the bankers government.. If you want socialism/communism you are in effect supporting what a bank would want most of all.

 

[WatertheTree]

Kooo Kooo

The only thing Kooo Kooo is the apathy and ignorance of Americans.

 

[georgephillip]

The revolt of the plutocrats was ratified by the Supreme Court in its notorious Citizens United decision last year. Rarely have so few imposed such damage on so many. When five pro-corporate conservative justices gave “artificial legal entities” the same rights of “free speech” as humans, they told our corporate sovereigns that the sky’s the limit when it comes to their pouring money into political campaigns.

Bingo!


The smoking gun showing us the SHAM that democracy has become.

The SCOTUS betrayed the ideal that America was founded on that every citizen's vote was equal and that CITIENS mattered more than MONEY.

Corporate lawyers and judges have been hard at work for the last two centuries giving corporations authority and powers they could not have acquired through legislation. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad is another poster child for the rise of private tyrannies in the US.

"At the California Constitutional Convention of 1878-79, the state legislature drew up a new constitution that denied railroads 'the right to deduct the amount of their debts [i.e., mortgages] from the taxable value of their property, a right which was given to individuals.'[1]

"Southern Pacific Railroad Company refused to pay taxes under these new changes. The taxpaying railroads challenged this law, based on a conflicting federal statute of 1866 which gave them privileges inconsistent with state taxation (14 Stat. 292, §§ 1, 2, 3, 11, 18).

"San Mateo County, along with neighboring counties, filed suit against the railroads to recoup the massive losses in tax revenue stemming from Southern Pacific's refusal to pay. After hearing arguments in San Mateo County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, the California Supreme Court sided with the county.

"Using the Jurisdiction and Removal Act of 1875, a law created so black litigants could bypass hostile southern state courts if they were denied justice, Southern Pacific was able to appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.[2]"

SCOTUS refused to rule on the issue of corporate personality; however, that didn't prevent the "court reporter" from beginning his headnote with the claim it did.

Who was this "court reporter"?
Wiki knows:

"The court reporter, former president of the Newburgh and New York Railway Company, J.C. Bancroft Davis, wrote the following as part of the headnote for the case:

"'The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.'"[4]

"In other words, the headnote indicated that corporations enjoyed the same rights under the Fourteenth Amendment as did natural persons.[5] However, this issue was not decided by the Court."

Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Corporate personalty: one more issue that isn't affected by "choosing" between Republican OR Democrat in the voting booth.