Co-Op(erate?)

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Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.

Six Waltons Have More Wealth Than the Bottom 30% of Americans

Does anyone "get" that the extreme wealthy and MULTI-national corporations don't care about national boundaries? Hence the term "multinational". They're not beholden to a Pledge of Allegiance or some ideal that is anything other than profit... It's not about service, it's about PROFIT. So, why ON EARTH would they reinvest their money (that isn't taxed) back into a society that they don't care about... They'll invest it in their own version of "The Dollar Spot" - cheap labor, which is elsewhere. And because we end up BUYING that shit, you know what we get? Toasters that last 5 months. And I'm rather certain that "they" don't mind that we have to buy a new toaster every 5 months. I mean really, why own 1 or 2 through your lifetime when you can own 130?

Sorry. I haven't had my second cup of coffee yet and my mechanic just really pissed me off.

"Worker-Owners of America, Unite": Will Cooperative Workplaces Democratize U.S. Economy? As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to protest record levels of wealth and income inequality, we turn to an author who says the U.S. economy might be becoming more democratic. Gar Alperovitz argues in an op-ed in today’s New York Times that we may be in the midst of a profound transition toward an economy characterized by more democratic structures of ownership. Alperovitz finds that 130 million Americans are members of some kind of cooperative, and 13 million Americans work in an employee-owned company. He says the United States may be heading toward something very different from both corporate-dominated capitalism and from traditional socialism. "I think we’re seeing a change in attitude, both increasing doubts about what’s now going on in the economy, deep doubts, very deep doubts—thanks to Occupation, it’s crystallized—but this other trend of saying, 'What do you want? Where are we going?' in some ways to democratize the economy in a very American way," Alperovitz says.

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*ATTENTION! MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE...* Will ALL LOBBYISTS please report to Hell. Thanks.

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Report: Obama Has Weakened More Lobbyist-Opposed Health, Public Safety Regulations Than Bush

A new report shows that despite a campaign pledge to get lobbyists out of Washington, the Obama White House has weakened regulation in favor of corporate interests more than the Bush administration. The study, "Behind Closed Doors at the White House: How Politics Trumps Protection of Public Health, Worker Safety, and the Environment,” examines more than a thousand meetings that took place over a decade between lobbyists and a little known regulatory office, then checks to see how proposed rules were weakened to accommodate industry requests. It found the Obama White House changed rules 76 percent of the time, while Bush changed them just 64 percent of the time. EPA rules were changed at a significantly higher rate — 84 percent. We speak to the report’s lead author, Rena Steinzor, professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law and President of the Center for Progressive Reform.

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"Shared Sacrifice"? Where...

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Greed has never brought anything good. Not ever...

How you live matters.

Silence is compliance.

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Greed Run Amuck (Results: Mass Murder)

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U.S. Wasting Billions While Tripling No-Bid Contracts After Decade of War in Iraq, Afghanistan

As the war in Afghanistan approaches its 10th anniversary, a pair of new reports reveal how the Pentagon has squandered tens of billions of dollars while tripling the amount of no-bid contracts. The bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting concludes that between $31 billion and $60 billion spent on projects in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 10 years has been lost to waste and fraud. In Afghanistan, the commission found the United States is indirectly funding the Taliban as money diverted from U.S.-backed projects is paid out to militants to ensure safety. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s use of no-bid contracts has tripled since the United States was attacked on 9/11, in spite of promises to reform the controversial practice. A new investigative report from the Center for Public Integrity says no-bid spending has ballooned from $50 billion in 2003 to $140 billion in 2011. We speak with Charles Tiefer, a member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan and a professor of government contracting at the University of Baltimore Law School, and with Sharon Weinberger of the Center for Public Integrity, author of the investigative series "Windfalls of War." "There are as many contractors in the war zone as there are soldiers. But we haven’t adjusted our thinking for it. We haven’t adjusted our structure for it," Tiefer says.

We call it "war", or "defense", or a "necessary evil" - I particularly love that one.

It's delusion. Because it's murder. Mass murder. And we support it with our tax payer dollars. So a few can get really "rich".

Just so we're all on the same page...

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Fat Cats

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As Economy Lags, New Study Reveals 25 Top Firms Pay More to CEOs than in Taxes

A new study reveals that 25 of the nation’s largest corporations paid more money to their CEOs last year than they did to the federal government in income taxes. Often using overseas tax havens, many of the corporations managed to make billions in profits but paid little to nothing in federal taxes. In many cases the companies received large tax rebates. The list includes some of the country’s best-known companies, such as Ford, Coca-Cola, Verizon, General Electric and eBay. The same study found that the ratio of CEO pay to that of the average worker in the United States jumped to 325-to-1 last year. We speak to the study’s co-author, Chuck Collins, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and director of its Program on Inequality and the Common Good. "What these companies do is they use a variety of tax loopholes, corporate loopholes, to game down their taxes. So, these are what I would call the sort of champion in the tax gymnastics department," says Collins.

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The Infection of Greed (and its antidote)

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Thucydides was a Greek historian who was born in Alimos between the years 460 and 455 B.C and died between 411 and 400 B.C.

He also said, "The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."

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Maybe... Well, Maybe Not. But, Maybe... Or... Well... Umm... Everyone? Look At Michelle's Dress.

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OOOOHHHH - AAAHHHH...

And the apathetic, uneducated, narrow-minded herd of mainstream Americans are just as much to blame.

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Expressing Outrage at a U.S. Travesty

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He's right.

And something a friend said to me the other day, "You don't fuck the poor. You just don't."

And he's right too.

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“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”

~ Abraham Lincoln

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