Inside Job [2010 documentary]

Winner of 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature

Inside Job is a 2010 documentary film about the late-2000s financial crisis. The film is described as being about "the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption". In five parts, the film explores how changes in the policy environment and banking practices helped create the financial crisis.
Inside Job Documentary from Splashy on Vimeo.

The Top Ten things Black America will have to show for eight years of President Obama — none of them are good

In 2017, it will be routine for US presidents to unilaterally murder with or without announcement of cause anybody, anyplace on the planet within the reach of US drones, special operators and mercenaries.

Bruce A. Dixon | alternet.org
30 April 2013

When Barack Obama leaves the White House in January 2017, what will black America, his earliest and most consistent supporters, have to show for making his political career possible? We'll have the T-shirts and buttons and posters, the souvenirs. That will be the good news. The bad news is what else we'll have... and not.

To hear our black political class tell it, the election of the first black US president was its ultimate achievement to date, a giant step toward fulfillment of a previous generation's insurgent agenda for social transformation. Is that real? Has the career of Barack Hussein Obama really advanced any of the historic goals of the Freedom Movement? Is the question even fair?

With corporate media already speculating about next year's midterm elections, and the presidential contest of 2016, it's entirely appropriate to discuss the president's legacy. And fair is fair --- the black political class doesn't want its meager achievements compared to the agenda of those who fought for our freedom a half century ago, it probably ought to abandon its ceaseless self-promotion as the inheritors of that tradition.

It was the overwhelming black and brown vote, along with the utter, unwavering and uncritical support of African America which made President Obama's career possible. When he leaves office in January 2017, what will be the top ten things we can say black America gained or lost from his two terms in the White House?

READ THE TOP TEN:

Rick Perry's $487 million corporate slush fund doesn't need your stinkin' audit

The Texas governor doesn't agree that his corporate-handout fund needs an audit—because he and two other GOP pols already monitor it.

Dana Liebelson | Mother Jones
20 March 2013

snip

 Perry maintains that the fund gives Texas a competitive edge and has brought more than 56,000 new jobs to the state and generated more than $14.7 billion in capital investment. But the watchdog group Texans for Public Justice found that by the end of 2010, companies getting cash from the fund were only creating about 37 percent of the number of jobs promised. The administration has lowered standards in the past so that companies could create fewer jobs than they had promised, and it has canceled contracts after criticism over companies such as Bank of America's Countrywide, which continued to be an Enterprise grantee as it collapsed and laid off thousands of workers nationwide.


snip

"Perry's office is basically accommodating a process by which taxpayer money is transferred to corporations, not invested in state infrastructure," says Matt Angle, the director of the Lone Star Project, a political action committee devoted to strategic communications and research for Democrats. He would like to see Enterprise funds start going to education, family planning, and roads. (In 2011, Perry cut $5.4 billion in state funding from public schools, and he is turning down $100 billion to expand Medicaid while also shuttering 53 family planning clinics.)"

READ IT ALL:

Anti-union, pro-fossil fuel forces are the real reason the Post Office is struggling

February 14, 2013

Best-selling author and progressive radio talk show host Thom Hartmann tells Current TV’s John Fugelsang that the U.S. Postal Service is struggling to survive not because of the rise of email and the Internet, but because of a concerted right-wing effort to destroy the USPS.

“As the second -largest employer in the United States, behind Wal-Mart, which is not unionized, they’re the largest union employer in the United States. And ever since 1981, when Ronald Reagan declared war on union workers, the Republican war against unions has been relentless,” Hartmann says.

SOURCE:

Republican 'deficit hawk' hypocrites

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders lays out a brief history of Republic hypocrisy concerning the deficit.

Greed and Debt: The true story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital | Rolling Stone

By MATT TAIBBI | rollingstone.com
August 29, 2012

Four years ago, the Mitt Romneys of the world nearly destroyed the global economy with their greed, shortsightedness and – most notably – wildly irresponsible use of debt in pursuit of personal profit. The sight was so disgusting that people everywhere were ready to drop an H-bomb on Lower Manhattan and bayonet the survivors. But today that same insane greed ethos, that same belief in the lunatic pursuit of instant borrowed millions – it's dusted itself off, it's had a shave and a shoeshine, and it's back out there running for president.

Mitt Romney – a man whose own father built cars and nurtured communities, and was one of the old-school industrial anachronisms pushed aside by the new generation's wealth grab – has emerged now to sell this make-nothing, take-everything, screw-everyone ethos to the world. He's Gordon Gekko, but a new and improved version, with better PR – and a bigger goal. A takeover artist all his life, Romney is now trying to take over America itself. And if his own history is any guide, we'll all end up paying for the acquisition.

Read more:

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Wall Street greed

14 May 2012 | The Ed Show | MSNBC

Bill Moyers essay: It pays to be rich

Published on Apr 13, 2012 by MoyersandCompany With help from the government, the tax code, and their own money, there's no limit to how rich the super-rich aim to be -- disconnecting themselves further and further from the American people as a result. Bill Moyers examines the gap.

Lawrence O'Donnell: Franklin Graham's true agenda

Surprise! Rev. Franklin Graham's true agenda is to elect Republicans. It's not about serving with humility as a Christian. It's not about giving up everything to follow Jesus Christ. It's about getting on TV to promote his politics for the people who pay his salary: Republicans.

Republicans undiscover fire

"The economy didn't just crash under a Republican president, it crashed under Republican policies. It crashed with low taxes. It crashed with deregulated markets. It crashed with huge restrictions on union activity. It crashed with massive cuts in environmental regulations. It crashed with lowered trade barriers. It crashed with big fat Pentagon spending."

Mark Sumner | Daily Kos
12 Feb 2012

"The truth is that the Republicans have nothing to offer. Not even anything that looks like a governing philosophy. Conservatism has moved out of the ranks of political theories and simply become a cult; one that requires that certain phrases be mouthed, that certain hatreds be nourished, and that purity be maintained regardless of cost. That schism with reality is increasingly large and increasingly obvious. They try to paper over that gap by dismissing little things like science, reason, history. Real science fails to support their contentions, so they have to write it off.

"Reason doesn't work for them, so any question must be met with red-faced indignity — every question a gotcha question. Real history is full of warts, quirks, and unfortunate truths that don't fit their ritualized beliefs. So they have to try to rewrite history, giving us rewrite Reagan who never raised a tax or increased a debt, rewrite FDR who created the issues he actually solved, rewrite Lincoln who championed the Confederate cause, rewrite founding fathers who never owned slaves, never supported government regulation of the economy, never wavered in their ardent love for a form of religiosity that didn't yet exist. Tricorner hats are the new tinfoil."

The whole story:

How the right wing destroyed the U.S. Postal Service

By SamSeder | 9 Sept 2011
The Majority Report

Steps taken during the Bush administration are the reason why the once successful U.S. Postal Service is currently in financial trouble. Sam takes a look at the Right Wing cause to privatize the mail and destroy a U.S. institution.





Truth Out article on this by Allison Kilkenny:

Ex-Dallas mayor Tom Leppert, failed banker-turned Senate candidate, funds ‘End the Occupation’ site

Stephen C. Webster | rawstory.com
17 Oct 2011

In what appears to be an effort to garner email addresses for his U.S. Senate campaign, a Texas Republican who formerly served on Washington Mutual’s board of directors has launched a website called “End Occupy,” which blames young Americans and their “false sense of entitlement” for the country’s current economic status.

“The Occupy Wall Street crowd represents the same flawed values that got our country into this economic mess,” Tom Leppert’s “EndOccupy.com” claims. “They possess a false sense of entitlement and think they should be receiving government handouts and run up the debt on an imaginary credit card by making hard-working Americans and future generations pay for the bill.” It goes on to ask for petition signatures, which will be sent to President Barack Obama.

But for Leppert, who’s running to replace Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), that allegation may just produce a round of laughter from the occupied streets of New York all the way to his home in Dallas, Texas, given his history. Leppert was one of the last chairmen of Washington Mutual’s audit committee, right before the company earned the title of largest bank failure in U.S. history, fleecing shareholders of $63 billion.

Before it went down, WaMu was cited as one of the worst offenders in offering the junk loans that inflated the housing bubble. When that bubble popped, WaMu was seized by government regulators, then sold to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion. Chase shortly thereafter received a $25 billion bailout financed by U.S. taxpayers, which it has since paid back.

Luckily for Leppert, he didn’t have to manage that morass, finding himself in a new job just before the crisis hit: Mayor of Dallas, an office he held from 2007-2011.

The rest of the story:

The #OccupyWallStreet Statement, read by Keith Olbermann

Geraldo Rivera abandons ‘Occupy Wall Street’ as protesters chant, ‘Fox News lies!’

Occupy Wall Street: the next viral video

DC Douglas has put together a brilliant 3-minute video which boils down the situation and just what the hell should be done about it.

Sanders skewers the ‘class warfare’ of America’s ‘economic royalists’

The men who crashed the world - Meltdown - Al Jazeera English

The first of a four-part investigation into a world of greed and recklessness that led to financial collapse.

In the first episode of Meltdown, we hear about four men who brought down the global economy: a billionaire mortgage-seller who fooled millions; a high-rolling banker with a fatal weakness; a ferocious Wall Street predator; and the power behind the throne.

The crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing more than 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the edge of insolvency. Wall Street turned back the clock to 1929.

But how did it all go so wrong?

Lack of government regulation; easy lending in the US housing market meant anyone could qualify for a home loan with no government regulations in place.

Also, London was competing with New York as the banking capital of the world. Gordon Brown, the British finance minister at the time, introduced 'light touch regulation' - giving bankers a free hand in the marketplace.

All this, and with key players making the wrong financial decisions, saw the world's biggest financial collapse

Watch the video here.

Elizabeth Warren on Debt Crisis, Fair Taxation

Elizabeth Warren on Debt Crisis, Fair Taxation

“I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,’” Warren said. “No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.

“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.

“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Rick Perry whistles Dixie

Dennis Kucinich: "We have to put an end to the thinking that the Constitution is a doormat!"