Sunday, September 29, 2013

David Gregory obliterates Ted Cruz on Meet The Press

Things have gotten so bad for Ted Cruz that even David Gregory destroyed him on Meet The Press. Gregory painted Cruz as a total failure, and told the Senator, ‘You haven’t moved anyone.’


Calling out Ted Cruz's faux filibuster lie | The Ed Show

Sen. Cruz distorted a story about a student from New Jersey to try and make a point about defunding healthcare and student loans.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Healthcare Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

25 Sept 2013 | The Daily Show
Texas Senator Ted Cruz casts himself as Churchill to Obama's Chamberlain in the great fight against Hitler's healthcare exchanges.


Friday, September 27, 2013

Bernie Sanders flames 'extreme right wing extremists' for threatening government shutdown

27 Sept 2013
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Friday tore into what he called "extreme right-wing Republicans" for threatening to shut down the government and default on the nation's debts if President Barack Obama's health care reform law was not defunded. 



Matt Taibbi on how Wall Street hedge funds are looting the pension funds of public workers | Democracy Now

26 Sept 2013

In his latest article for Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi reports that Wall Street firms are now making millions in profits off of public pension funds nationwide. "Essentially it is a wealth transfer from teachers, cops and firemen to billionaire hedge funders," Taibbi says. "Pension funds are one of the last great, unguarded piles of money in this country and there are going to be all sort of operators that are trying to get their hands on that money."



SOURCE:

Across America, Wall Street is grabbing money meant for public workers

Matt Taibbi | RollingStone.com
26 Sept 2013


[Excerpt]  This is the third act in an improbable triple-fucking of ordinary people that Wall Street is seeking to pull off as a shocker epilogue to the crisis era. Five years ago this fall, an epidemic of fraud and thievery in the financial-services industry triggered the collapse of our economy. The resultant loss of tax revenue plunged states everywhere into spiraling fiscal crises, and local governments suffered huge losses in their retirement portfolios – remember, these public pension funds were some of the most frequently targeted suckers upon whom Wall Street dumped its fraud-riddled mortgage-backed securities in the pre-crash years.

Today, the same Wall Street crowd that caused the crash is not merely rolling in money again but aggressively counterattacking on the public-relations front. The battle increasingly centers around public funds like state and municipal pensions. This war isn't just about money. Crucially, in ways invisible to most Americans, it's also about blame. In state after state, politicians are following the Rhode Island playbook, using scare tactics and lavishly funded PR campaigns to cast teachers, firefighters and cops – not bankers – as the budget-devouring boogeymen responsible for the mounting fiscal problems of America's states and cities.

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Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Saturday, September 21, 2013

How the GOP might be helping 'Obamacare' | All In

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Obamacare government shutdown | The Colbert Report

19 Sept 2013
Republicans threaten to shut down the federal government if Democrats don't vote to defund Obamacare.

Robert Reich on 'Inequality For All' | Bill Moyers



20 Sept 2013 | BillMoyers.com
This week marks both the fifth anniversary of the fiscal meltdown that almost tanked the world economy and the second anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, the movement that sparked heightened public awareness of income inequality. Yet the crisis is worse than ever – in the first three years of the recovery, 95 percent of the economic gains have gone only to the top one percent of Americans. And the share of working people in the U.S. who define themselves as lower class is at its highest level in four decades.

More and more are fighting back. According to Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s secretary of labor: “The core principle is that we want an economy that works for everyone, not just for a small elite. We want equal opportunity, not equality of outcome. We want to make sure that there’s upward mobility again, in our society and in our economy.”

This week, Reich joins Moyers & Company to discuss a new documentary film, Inequality for All, opening next week in theaters across the country. Directed by Jacob Kornbluth, the film aims to be a game-changer in our national discussion of income inequality. Reich, who Time magazine called one of the best cabinet secretaries of the 20th century, stars in this dynamic, witty and entertaining documentary.

SOURCE:

Ex-U.S. House leader Tom DeLay's conviction overturned

19 Sept 2013 | Associated Press

AUSTIN, TX -- A Texas appeals court tossed the criminal conviction of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on Thursday, saying there was insufficient evidence for a jury in 2010 to have found him guilty of illegally funneling money to Republican candidates.

snip

The Travis County District Attorney's office issued the following statement: "Today, two judges sitting on the Third Court of Appeals reversed and acquitted former United States House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who was convicted of felony offenses by a jury in November of 2010.

We strongly disagree with the opinion of Judges Goodwin and Gaultney that the evidence was insufficient. We are concerned and disappointed that two judges substituted their assessment of the facts for that of 12 jurors who personally heard the testimony of over 40 witnesses over the course of several weeks and found that the evidence was sufficient and proved DeLay's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

We are preparing a response to this opinion and will ask the full Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to review the ruling."

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Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich calls for a new era of citizen activism | Part 2

16 Sept 2013 - In this exclusive, unedited interview, economist Robert Reich discusses getting big money out of politics, interning for Robert Kennedy, and media mud wrestling. Scroll down for Part 1.

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich calls for a new era of citizen activism | Part 1

16 Sept 2013 - In this exclusive, unedited interview, Robert Reich looks to the past for future economic solutions.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Labor redefines itself in Los Angeles

Michael Winship, Moyers & Company
11 Sept 2013




“It’s time to turn America right side up!” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka exhorted those in attendance at the labor alliance’s quadrennial convention in Los Angeles on Monday. Time, he said in his keynote address, to change the ratio of power, to put the 99 percent in charge rather than let the richest one percent dominate government, politics and society.

“Since 2009, the pay of America’s corporate CEOs has gone up nearly 40 percent,” Trumka noted. “Imagine for a second what kind of country we would live in if ordinary people’s incomes had increased like CEO’s. Almost no one would live in poverty.”

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren addresses the delegates of the AFL-CIO 2013 Convention.





Monday, September 09, 2013

LEAKED mockumentary: The Internet Must Go

In John Wooley's hilarious 30-minute mockumentary The Internet Must Go, he plays a marketing shill hired by the big cable operators and phone companies to convince Americans to accept corrupt, non-neutral Internet connections where your ability to reach sites and services online is based on whether your ISP has a deal with the company offering it


Wooley's playing a Colbert-esque useful idiot, and he never breaks character as he interviews Susan Crawford, Al Franken, John Hodgman, Tim Wu, Larry Lessig, and many others, giving them the chance to play out the arguments for a neutral, fair Internet. The climax is a visit to North Carolina, where the big telcos have successfully gotten legislation passed banning municipalities from offering high-speed Internet, even in towns where the cable and phone companies have no plans to offer high-speed connections.

Learn more and take action: www.theinternetmustgo.com



Uncle Jonny Stew's Good Time Syria Jamboree

Saturday, September 07, 2013