PETITION: Let Elizabeth Warren Police Wall Street |
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is advising the White House not to put Elizabeth Warren in charge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- a watchdog agency she invented! |
| Can you sign our urgent petition to the President? |
PETITION TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: Elizabeth Warren has proven that she is willing to stand up to Wall Street on behalf of consumers and is the logical choice to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Tim Geithner is a longtime Wall Street insider, and if he's recommending against Elizabeth Warren that's all the more reason to appoint her. Read more at act.boldprogressives.org |
[Watergate was] "only a little break-in by a couple of guys..." The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) did not commit voter fraud, and it didn't misuse federal funding in the last five years, according to a recently released report prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a nonpartisan investigational arm of Congress. |
The CRS report was requested by House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Michigan) and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank in September. |
| ACORN critic Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) told The American Spectator that he was disappointed that the Democratic-controlled Congress and the Obama administration aren't doing much about what he considers wrongdoings by ACORN |
| the House Judiciary Committee member describes the ACORN saga as "the largest corruption crisis in the history of America" and says, "It's thousands of times bigger than Watergate because Watergate was only a little break-in by a couple of guys."Read more at www.truthout.org |
Jacob Hacker of The Great Risk Shift is one of my favorite thinkers. Here he highlights some positives of the health bill and makes some suggestions for improvements the House and the president can insist on before signing.
Importantly, he reminds us that every year we can all work together towards putting the public option back on the table. | Senate bill fails to include a public health insurance option to provide an affordable, secure alternative to private insurance |
| Senate’s dramatic vote on health care reform early Monday morning |
| moved the United States a major step closer to joining the company of other affluent democracies |
| new requirements on insurers and create a new means — the so-called exchanges — through which individuals and small employers can gain access to the same sorts of group health plans that workers at large companies take for granted. |
| while the public option is gone, it has not been forgotten |
| a series of stronger regulatory checks on the insurance industry. The manager’s amendment sets a floor on the number of premium dollars insurers must spend on care and requires insurers to issue rebates to policyholders if they do not live up to this standard |
| House bill offers Americans living at 250 percent of poverty or below (about $55,000 for a family of four) far greater affordability protectionsRead more at www.politico.com |
No job growth in the past ten years - interesting graphs that plot our journey to nothingness. The lost decade for the economy |
The U.S. economy has expanded at a healthy clip for most of the last 70 years, but by a wide range of measures, it stagnated in the first decade of the new millennium. Job growth was essentially zero, as modest job creation from 2003 to 2007 wasn't enough to make up for two recessions in the decade. Rises in the nation's economic output, as measured by gross domestic product, was weak. And household net worth, when adjusted for inflation, fell as stock prices stagnated, home prices declined in the second half of the decade and consumer debt skyrocketed. |
Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999 -- and the number is sure to have declined further during a difficult 2009. The Aughts were the first decade of falling median incomes since figures were first compiled in the 1960s.
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| net worth of American households |
This may take some time, but we will get there. Senate Speech Heralds New Social Movement |
| When the Senate initiated its debate on health insurance reform, Senator Bernie Sanders offered a single-payer amendment |
| Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid skipped over it |
But nationwide events on International Human Rights Day, the delivery of paper "bodies" to the senate offices, non-violent civil disobiedience including nine arrests at Senator Schumer's office, and hundreds of thousands of emails and phone calls and faxes to the Senate evidently changed Reid's mind. |
| Sanders introduced his amendment |
| Reid demanded that Sanders withdraw |
| Sanders agreed. In return he got 30 minutes |
| Sanders' speech was riveting |
| He spoke about having the courage to stand up to the medical-industrial complex |
| Single payer started this year "off the table." But the accumulating efforts of millions of people delivered it to the floor of the United States Senate |
I've Got the Light is included as a history lesson on effective organizing for sustained change by SNCC. | young people, they often tell me, “Nothing anyone does can ever make a difference.” |
| a phrase I never once heard forty years ago |
| The labor movement of the Thirties to the Sixties had improved the lives of millions |
| young people assume that they arose spontaneously, or, perhaps, charismatic leaders suddenly called them into existence |
| current anti-war movement's weakness, however, is very much alive in young people's experience. They cite the fact that millions turned out in the streets in the early spring of 2003 to oppose the pending U.S. attack on Iraq, but that these demonstrations had no effect |
| Aha! Activism = self-expression; organizing = movement-building. |
The article recommends spending your vacation from exercise with lighter active fare like walking, or "gentle" swimming, bicycling - moving around but without the intensity of ' three sets of 30 reps.' | Will hours spent popping chocolates in front of the TV and skipping the gym mean the past 12 months’ effort will count for nothing as your figure and fitness go to pot? |
“Rest and recovery are often overlooked, but are as important as exercise itself,” says John Brewer, professor of sport at the University of Bedfordshire. “Even elite athletes have one easy day a week to allow their bodies to recover from the stresses of training and to encourage the positive physiological changes, such as muscle growth, that are induced by hard workouts.” |
| each body part generally needs 24 hours to recover from hard exercise |
| Getting enough sleep underpins the body’s restorative processes after long periods of working out |
| subjects were asked to sleep for 10 hours a night, their performance in the drills improved significantly and they were able to run faster |
| “detraining effect” can show within days |
| no more than three days of complete time-out |
| aerobic capacity begins to fall within three or four days |
And by "poors" I mean all of us not of the top 2% of the country who control 98% of the wealth.
Kucinich 2012! "Don't tell me about class warfare," he continued. "Come to my neighborhoods in Cleveland. I will show you class warfare. I’ll show you hollowed out areas. I’ll show you businesses that went down because they don’t have access to capital. And on Wall Street it is fat city. Don’t tell me about class warfare." |
Kucinich, who voted against the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (also known as the Wall Street bailout), lamented it as a catalyzing force for the rising inequality of income in the United States. |
"You could say that it helped stabilize the American economy, but what I see is the separation between the real economy and Wall Street. Wall Street is stabilizing, markets are a lot better, banks are doing well -- they parked their money at the Fed for a while so they could get higher interest rates." |
| Billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch are the wealthiest, and perhaps most effective, opponents of President Obama's progressive agenda. They have been looming in the background of every major domestic policy dispute this year. Ranked as the 9th richest men in America, the Koch brothers sit at the helm of Koch Industries, a massive privately owned conglomerate of manufacturing, oil, gas, and timber interests |
| Over the years, millions of dollars in Koch money has flowed to various right-wing think tanks, front groups, and publications. At the dawn of the Obama presidency, Koch groups quickly maneuvered to try to stop his first piece of signature legislation: the stimulus. The Koch-funded group "No Stimulus" launched television and radio ads deriding the recovery package as simply "pork" spending |
Cheesy title, but I couldn't resist Most entrepreneurs say they are in stealth because they are worried about competitors stealing their ideas. This can be a risk if you have such a simple idea that just by hearing it, someone can replicate it. If this is the case, then you do have a lot to worry about. But even in this case, what will ultimately make the difference between success and failure isn’t your idea but your ability to execute and dominate your market very fast. You need a superb management team including top notch marketing and sales staff, great industry connections, and deep-pocked investors. You aren’t going to get any of these things by staying locked up in your basement. |
| If a startup can’t innovate faster than a much larger competitor, stealth isn’t going to make the difference |
| fear of big companies is overblown: those who have worked for one know that it’s incredibly hard to get a manager at a big company to do something newRead more at www.techcrunch.com |
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