Yes! magazine article on occupy movement

Ten Ways the Occupy Movement Changes Everything

Isocrates quote

"Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress."A falsified quote invented during the 2010 financial crisis. Isocrates' actual, more nuanced, quote runs as follows:

Those who directed the state in the time of Solon and Cleisthenes did not establish a polity which ... trained the citizens in such fashion that they looked upon insolence as democracy, lawlessness as liberty, impudence of speech as equality, and licence to do what they pleased as happiness, but rather a polity which detested and punished such men and by so doing made all the citizens better and wiser." -Areopagiticus, 7.20 (Norlin)

(from wikiquote)

information on dept of homeland security

http://endthelie.com/2011/10/09/the-invisible-surveillance-state-dhs-and-the-end-of-america-as-we-know-it/#axzz1cbfYlLRN

when our state verbage stopped being secular

Here is a link to the full image, which notes a fear of socialism. I wanted to highlight the constitutional changes.

from Wikipedia page on Pledge of Allegiance:

The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy (1855–1931), who was a Baptist minister, a Christian socialist, and the cousin of socialist utopian novelist Edward Bellamy (1850–1898). The original "Pledge of Allegiance" was published in the September 8 issue of the popular children's magazine The Youth's Companion as part of the National Public-School Celebration of Columbus Day, a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas. The event was conceived and promoted by James B. Upham, a marketer for the magazine, as a campaign to instill the idea of American nationalism by selling flags to public schools and magazines to students.^[2][3][4][5]

Bellamy's original Pledge read as follows:^[6]

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

This history is also mentioned in the excellent book, Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. The Columbian Exposition of 1893 was not only a grand display for Chicago, it was seen as a unifying force for the entire country. The Pledge of Allegiance was promoted in public schools to intensify feelings of national unity. -Lauren

Camille Paglia's words of warning ring true 12 years later

How the Demos lost the White House in Seattle

Written by Camille Paglia, on Salon.com
December 8th, 1999 in response to the Seattle WTO protests:

The battle in Seattle forced a welcome if brief international consciousness on the mass TV audience, which has been preoccupied with domestic issues and celebrity scandals throughout this decade, an obliviousness barely dented by President Clinton’s outrageous boutique bombings abroad. The protesters’ success in hamstringing the WTO, which adjourned without reaching key agreements, will surely inspire more young people to social activism for a wealth of causes. I hope it’s curtains for another style spawned in Seattle — the apathy and whining asexuality of passive-aggressive grunge.

The danger is that this nascent coalition of Democrat-led trade unions with environmental and labor equity groups will get stereotyped as left-loony. When post-adolescent anarchist goons pledge total destruction of the system or when dinosaur Marxists denounce capitalism as “evil” and call all property “crime” (caught on camera in Seattle), this promising movement doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of gaining popular support.

Capitalism, in my view, is the best vehicle of social change. Free enterprise and free thought are inextricably and creatively intertwined. Over the past 200 years, capitalism has enormously advanced global prosperity, even if an unacceptable economic gap remains between the first and third worlds. Though you’d never know it from the snide rhetoric of cloistered liberal academics, modern feminism owes everything to capitalism, which gave women financial independence for the first time in history.

On the other hand, capitalism is inherently Darwinian, and a just society must provide a safety net for the poor. While intrusion by government into the market should be as minimal as possible, it is ethically imperative to monitor working conditions, product safety and environmental integrity. My lifelong scriptural texts are William Blake’s radical poems “The Chimney Sweeper” and “London” (discussed in my first book), which heartbreakingly dramatize the disparity between the powerful and the powerless in newly industrial, polluted England.

Adjusting tariffs or formulating trade guidelines is a very difficult matter when emerging nations interpret U.S. demands as a usurpation of their sovereignty. We need a stronger “green” lobby that will fruitfully ally with its foreign counterparts. And we urgently need a broad-based, rigorously rational progressive party that will, without succumbing to outdated Marxist formulas, challenge the corruption of the major political parties by big money; critique the escalating power of multinational conglomerates; and condemn flagrant corporate greed (as in the looting of company profits through the inflated salaries of top executives).

There is no stopping the high-tech transformation of the world economy — except by Mother Nature, of course, with one of her standard cataclysms (a perennial Paglia prophecy). What is needed is massive educational reform — such as the development of trade schools and vocational programs serving students of every age. The social convulsion of job losses because of migration of industry abroad cannot be wholly prevented by artificial government manipulation. At present, American primary education is failing to provide either knowledge or skills for anyone but those already set on a professional track by their affluent, upper-middle-class families.

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Presently, many folks are crying out about the shrinking of the middle class and the burden of student debt. We have no manufacturing, we cannot complete with cheaper goods from abroad, and we have sent all our jobs out, so our unemployment is high. We have thousands of people occupying public spaces across the country to protest the wealth of the top corporate CEOs.

You can't say someone wasn't trying to warn you.
-Lauren

White House orders loan review after Solyndra fallout

The head of the administration's bailout programme, Herb Allison, will review the loans and issue a report.

Republicans in the House of Representatives are threatening to subpoena internal White House emails about Solyndra.

Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer highlighted by the administration, declared bankruptcy in August.

The company is also under investigation by the FBI.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is considering a subpoena as it questioned whether Obama campaign donors who were also investors in the project played a role in decisions on the loan.

The White House has released thousands of emails about the Solyndra loan, but has withheld thousands more.

Mr Allison, who previously served as assistant treasury secretary for financial stability, managing the Troubled Asset Recovery Program (Tarp), will not review the Solyndra case itself but will evaluate loans in the energy department's green programmes, worth tens of billions of dollars.

full article here

Uh oh. -Lauren

Rootstrikers

rootstrikers.org

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
-Henry David Thoreau


Finally, some good demands:

99 Percent Declaration

-Lauren

MOVE YOUR MONEY

http://moveyourmoneyproject.org/

Occupy Wall Street Backs a Nationwide Boycott Against Banks

Occupy Wall Street has developed a library

At Zuccotti Park, a People's Library

Walking past Occupy Seattle and hearing "this is what it looks like when the 99% rule" I thought: it looks like a bunch of people standing around shouting (albeit cooperatively)? This is not a society I would participate in. I want to see the Occupy Movement show America what it values. This library is a great example. What should it look like?

Obama should be sued and Nobel Peace Prize returned.

http://petitionbureau.org/obamapeaceprize

I fully supported Obama's campaign, but since we are still occupying 2 countries and will add a third soon enough, I don't understand why he should be lauded for upholding peace. Why would you give this to any politician?

Atlantic article on Occupy Wall Street: attack reality, not the symbol

Occupy Wall Street's Greatest Strength Is Neutering It

In the Joan Didion essay "Goodbye to All That," the California born writer observes that it is not possible for people in the East to appreciate what New York City means to other Americans. "To an Eastern child, particularly a child who has always had an uncle on Wall Street and who has spent several hundred Saturdays first at F.A.O. Schwarz and being fitted for shoes at Best's and then waiting under the Biltmore clock and dancing to Lester Lanin, New York is just a city, albeit the city, a plausible place for people to live," she writes. "But to those of us who came from places where no one had heard of Lester Lanin and Grand Central Station was a Saturday radio program, where Wall Street and Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue were not places at all but abstractions ("Money," and "High Fashion," and "The Hucksters"), New York was no mere city."

Instead it was "an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power," and so it remains. The Occupy Wall Street protestors beat their drums in lower Manhattan within sight of big financial firms and their suits. But their chants aren't aimed at Goldman Sachs and its board, or junior executives who commute in from Connecticut, so much as the average American's idea of Wall Street. The symbol is what gives the protestors and their movement the bulk of its strength -- and it is, at the same time, the movement's fatal weakness.

How to explain this seeming contradiction?

The protestors benefit by treating Wall Street as an abstraction because it permits them to tap into familiar narratives. Allies are made of everyone who believes, as so many do, that dishonest financial elites take advantage of the basically honest masses; that big, greedy corporations maximize their profits by screwing regular folks; that the top one percent of Americans possess wealth that is obviously incommensurate with what they've earned relative to "the 99 percent."

For Occupy Wall Street, the problem is that a counter-narrative every bit as familiar also appeals to many Americans. These are people who believe that wealth in this country accrues to talented people who work hard and benefit their fellow man through the market; that envying the successful is a kind of poison corrosive to any society; that to attack Wall Street is the same as declaring that you've got no confidence in capitalism itself; and that for all its flaws, our free market economic system has generated tremendous wealth and prosperity for rich and poor alike.

So long as the protestors in the financial districts of American cities attack symbolic Wall Street, they'll attract folks who see the world the same way that they do. As Matt Yglesias writes, it's "an incredibly useful platform for engagement and education." But an attack on symbolic Wall Street inevitably provokes a backlash by defenders of symbolic Wall Street, for whom it symbolizes different things. The ensuing debate is no likelier to end in a declared winner than a long conversation about political philosophy between Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter.

There is a time for battling over first principles and political philosophy, especially for those of us who enjoy doing it. But it isn't all the time. How remarkable that in America, where the political spectrum is so narrow relative to other countries, and the consensus in favor of being a mostly free market liberal democracy so large, our politics is so frequently mired in ideological battles; and waged in rhetoric that is absurd when one reflects on the continuity in ideology and policy from one Congress and presidency to another. It's no wonder that so many Americans are frustrated by political debate, political protest, and political campaigns. More often than not, they're all conducted at a level of abstraction that is both needless and maddening.

What drum circle would I join?

One dedicated to the proposition that it's often enough to grapple with the world as it is -- to see that we're not confronted by the impossible question, "Is Wall Street basically good or malign;" what we must actually answer are questions like, "What sort of regulations, if any, should govern the market for derivatives of mortgaged backed securities," and "Should the federal government subsidize home ownership," and "What should the reserve requirements be for lending institutions.”

Those are contentious questions, and they can't be totally separated from value judgments or political philosophy. But they're manageable, in a society that agrees about as many things as ours, if we take them discretely, and avoid elevating them into symbolic battles about bigger things whenever it is possible. Figuring out precisely how to feel about Occupy Wall Street or "We are the 53 Percent" is difficult for many. Much easier to decide that it's wrong to create a mortgage-backed security filled with loans you know are going to fail so that you can sell it to a client who isn't aware that you sabotaged it by intentionally picking the misleadingly rated loans most likely to be defaulted upon; or that it actually doesn't make sense to blame Wall Street for inflation in college costs, the student loan market they spurred, and the culture that sent a message to too many young people that borrowing for education is always a good investment.

What I wonder is how many of the protestors realize that the case against symbolic Wall Street is actually much weaker than the one against actual Wall Street. Symbolic Wall Street is the financial center of earth's most prosperous country. Actual Wall Street's most powerful firms bear responsibility for the most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression. At times, actual Wall Street violated the law. It squandered many billions of dollars, inflating the market for mortgage backed securities that the people in charge didn't even understand. Taxpayer money was subsequently redistributed to these firms. That is a powerful case that reform is needed.

There is, however, a robust market in America for ideological thinking, for turning every matter into an epic battle in the war between right and left, red and blue, "the 53 percent" and "the 99 percent." Doing so swells the profits of Fox News and the email lists of Occupy Wall Street organizers and their allies, among many others. They're all in theoretically defensible businesses; but perverse incentives are at play, and we ought to insist, regularly, that we won't go along.

We ought to avoid always treating politics as "an infinitely romantic notion," for while there is a time for doing so, it's too often indulged. We too seldom address problems with solutions characterized by pragmatism and narrowness; we too seldom celebrate a proposal precisely because it permits us to improve the status quo without having to grapple with the bigger questions.

re: Occupy Seattle and wanting 'democracy back'

Post on Occupy Seattle's twitter feed today, as protesters were being arrested (peacefully):

"OUR VOICES WILL BE HEARD we WANT our DEMOCRACY BACK!"

Back? Do you think we had successful democracy in the States? When was that? Do you want to return to it? You think we can return to it? There is no other governance structure you would like to develop or serious reforms you would like to see happen?

One of the best things you can do is protest peacefully. Good work to those standing in Westlake today for Occupy Seattle.

I am sorting out what I think ideal government (oxymoron?) would look like and have a few ideas about how I would like American federal gov't to be changed. In the meantime, while I am upset about the society I live in, I think about how I can change myself. (I read in the Kite Runner, an Afghan proverb says, "If you do not like the image in the mirror do not break the mirror but break your face.")

Thing #2 is to change your lifestyle. Trying living 100% debt free to start. That will change what you buy and do- maybe you wouldn't buy a new car or a large conventional house. These are two huge ticket items in American lives that people think they have rights to, which are built and created mostly out of our country and shipped in. If you are upset about our economy, back out of it for a second. Have a local seamstress repair your clothes, shop at Goodwill, look into earthen building, think about growing and preserving your own food, look into commuting to work, look into working less than 40 hours a week so you can practice self-sufficiency skills and spend more time with your family.

Also- think about NOT going 'back to school'. Think about the price of a large university education. Think about taking out a small loan from a credit union or family member to pay your living expenses while you intern, volunteer, or apprentice with someone who knows how to do what you want to do.

Everyone wants to take off and travel- why? where? We are all supposed to be following our personal legend, following our bliss, and on the path of the hero and the warrior, but does that really mean you should leave for x number of months and hope life in the States will be better when you return? I think it might. I think you will be better. Better at looking with a more worldly view, possibly more patient, maybe more compassionate. Will you be able to transmit that understanding to your friends, family, and neighbors? I hope so.

I think it might also be good to move around within your city, within your region, or within your country. I think regions are unbelievably undervalued. I have lived in Seattle for 4 years and have received unbelievable kindness from other Midwesterners who also live here. We underestimate the power of shared cultural values and overestimate the power of political regulations. Are some aspects of life better governed on State, County, or City level better than federal?

A friend of mine read some portions of Thoreau's Walden and also Civil Disobedience to me a while ago. I was amazed to hear Thoreau's sense of wonderment for his own back acres sound similar to my experience visiting India. If your eyes and heart are open, you are bound to notice a few things. How can we open up in our own community? What sacrifices would need to be made? If you weren't afraid of your debt, would you have a different job? Hang out with different people? Pursue your passions? If our country wasn't crumbling under its debt, what could it do?

op-ed in NYTimes: comparing current political climate to that of the 30s

Why the Antichrist Matters in Politics

By MATTHEW AVERY SUTTON

Published: September 25, 2011

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THE end is near — or so it seems to a segment of Christians aligned with the religious right. The global economic meltdown, numerous natural disasters and the threat of radical Islam have fueled a conviction among some evangelicals that these are the last days. While such beliefs might be dismissed as the rantings of a small but vocal minority, apocalyptic fears helped drive the antigovernment movements of the 1930s and ’40s and could help define the 2012 presidential campaign as well.

Christian apocalypticism has a long and varied history. Its most prevalent modern incarnation took shape a century ago, among the vast network of preachers, evangelists, Bible-college professors and publishers who established the fundamentalist movement. Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals and independents, they shared a commitment to returning the Christian faith to its “fundamentals.”

Biblical criticism, the return of Jews to the Holy Land, evolutionary science and World War I convinced them that the second coming of Jesus was imminent. Basing their predictions on biblical prophecy, they identified signs, drawn especially from the books of Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation, that would foreshadow the arrival of the last days: the growth of strong central governments and the consolidation of independent nations into one superstate led by a seemingly benevolent leader promising world peace.

This leader would ultimately prove to be the Antichrist, who, after the so-called rapture of true saints to heaven, would lead humanity through a great tribulation culminating in the second coming and Armageddon. Conservative preachers, evangelists and media personalities of the 20th century, like Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple McPherson, Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell, shared these beliefs.

Fundamentalists’ anticipation of a coming superstate pushed them to the political right. As the government grew in response to industrialization, fundamentalists concluded that the rapture was approaching. Their anxieties worsened in the 1930s with the rise of fascism. Obsessed with matching biblical prophecy with current events, they studied Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin, each of whom seemed to foreshadow the Antichrist.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt troubled them as well. His consolidation of power across more than three terms in the White House, his efforts to undermine the autonomy of the Supreme Court, his dream of a global United Nations and especially his rapid expansion of the government confirmed what many fundamentalists had feared: the United States was lining up with Europe in preparation for a new world dictator.

As a result, prominent fundamentalists joined right-wing libertarians in their effort to undermine Roosevelt. That this mix of millennialism and activism seemed inconsistent — why work for reform if the world is destined for Armageddon? — never troubled them. They simply asserted that Jesus had called them to “occupy” until he returned (Luke 19:13). Like orthodox Marxists who challenge capitalism even though they say they believe it represents an inevitable step on the road to the socialist paradise, conservative Christians never let their conviction that the future is already written lead them to passivity.

The world in 2011 resembles the world of the 1930s in many respects. International turmoil and a prolonged economic downturn have fueled distrust of government, as has the rise of a new libertarianism represented in the explosive growth of the Tea Party.

For some evangelicals, President Obama is troubling. The specious theories about his place of birth, his internationalist tendencies, his measured support for Israel and his Nobel Peace Prize fit their long-held expectations about the Antichrist. So does his commitment to expanding the reach of government in areas like health care.

In 2008, the campaign of Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, presciently tapped into evangelicals’ apocalyptic fears by producing an ad, “The One,” that sarcastically heralded Mr. Obama as a messiah. Mr. McCain was onto something. Not since Roosevelt have we had a president of charisma and global popularity, who so perfectly fits the evangelicals’ Antichrist mold.

While Depression-era fundamentalists represented only a small voice among the anti-Roosevelt forces of the 1930s, evangelicals have grown ever savvier and now constitute one of the largest interest groups in the Republican Party. In the past, relatively responsible leaders like Mr. Graham, who worked with Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, and even Mr. Falwell, who reined in evangelical excess in exchange for access to the Reagan White House, channeled their evangelical energy.

Not now. A leadership vacuum exists on the evangelical right that some Republicans — Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and even Ron Paul — are exploiting. How tightly their strident anti-statism will connect with evangelical apocalypticism remains to be seen.

The left is in disarray while libertarianism is on the ascent. A new generation of evangelicals — well-versed in organizing but lacking moderating influences — is lining up behind hard-right anti-statists. While few of the faithful truly think that the president is the Antichrist, millions of voters, like their Depression-era predecessors, fear that the time is short. The sentiment that Mr. Obama is preparing the United States, as Roosevelt did, for the Antichrist’s global coalition is likely to grow.

Barring the rapture, Mrs. Bachmann or Mr. Perry could well ride the apocalyptic anti-statism of conservative Christians into the Oval Office. Indeed, the tribulation may be upon us.

CNN article on moral debate over drone 'terrorist' killing

from CNN: U.S. drone killing of American al-Awlaki prompts legal, moral debate

Moral debate? Whoever thinks they are on "the other side" of this "moral debate" disgusts me. Anyone remember when US citizens were given fair trails? This is not only illegal, it is sickening to think of our government's disregard for human life.

USA for KGB 2011!

-Lauren

how do you feel about American Democracy?

That idea we injected all over the world?
NY Times article:

As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe

Democracy beat out socialism, but neither works, anyone want a monarchy? Something else? Suggestions please.

-Lauren

perspective: Billion Dollar Gram

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/the-billion-dollar-gram/

if teaparty supporters are anti-lightrail, they ought to be pro-bike

Tea Party Says Don't Build Light Rail, It Might Attract Terrorists

by Lloyd Alter, Toronto

The Georgia Tea Party has come up with a novel reason for opposing a regional transportation tax ** that will pay for a light rail project: It might become a terrorist target. Chairman J.D. Van Brink explains:

"Now, if we have a more decentralized mass transit system using buses, if the terrorists blow up a single bus, we can work around that. When they blow up a rail, that just brings the system to a grinding halt. So how much security are we going to have on this rail system, and how much will it cost?"

So the Tea Party has gone BANANAs, Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything, who knows what might attract terrorists. Chairman Brink reminds us of London and Madrid, but by his logic, one shouldn't build anything where people gather.

And to carry this logic further, one might point out that bikes, with only one person on each, are by far the most decentralized and therefore the safest means of transport. It is also really hard to hide things under spandex. So if the Georgia Tea Party is really concerned about security, it should be promoting bike lanes. Or as they headlined the post at the Awl, Let's Not Build Anything Ever Again, Never Forget.

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**I believe in a regional transportation tax more than a federal one. -Lauren

Osama's Legacy: American Drift

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/02/osamas-legacy-american-drift_n_856365.html

NEW YORK -- It takes no degree in psychology to understand why Americans flocked to the obvious gathering places -- Ground Zero, the White House -- celebrating news of Osama's demise. A decade ago we watched people we knew or might have known hurtle to their deaths from a landmark building. Someone had to pay.

The trouble is that we ourselves paid as a nation. And we have kept paying even as the price has climbed to impossible heights, via disastrous choices made in anger and vengeance more than reason and enlightened self-interest. We rushed into Afghanistan without the will to remake it. We embarked on an unnecessary war in Iraq, chasing the phantom of our national fears. We squandered our treasure on ill-conceived military misadventures just as we needed it most here at home, to rebuild our schools and invest in productive industries that might put people back to work.

Last night, on city streets in New York and in Washington, the jubilant crowds chanted and sang as if we had won some sort of sporting event, the championship banner hung in a final statement of achievement. A chorus spoke of closure and justice and healing. But we have won nothing -- even as one rightly hopes that Osama's death will weaken al Qaeda's capacity to sow terror. We completed no mission of decisive national import. Real victory will continue to elude us until we focus on rebuilding our own country, recovering from the self-inflicted wounds that have resulted from taking Osama's bait.

The attack inflicted by bin Laden's terrorist organization on September 11, 2001 came with its own unique opportunity. Here was an invitation to reckon with the limits of military strength as a vessel of foreign policy. Here was a moment that suddenly made the world sympathetic to the American situation. But the tactical brilliance of the al Qaeda strike went beyond the terrifying images that filled our television screens, provoking that sickening feeling of vulnerability combined with rage over murder: It was as if Osama and his minions placed a bet on our national character, reckoning that such an attack would tap into the hot center of the American mindset, prompting a response that would be damaging to our long-term interests. We would react in anger and fear, and hurt ourselves in the process.

Survey the last decade and it is hard to escape the conclusion that this is precisely what unfolded. Inside the prisons at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, we wasted international support and made ourselves something close to a pariah. When a hurricane wrecked New Orleans, we seemed to lack the resources to provide relief. As another American metropolis, Detroit, slipped inexorably toward the status of a failed city, we did little to arrest the decline. From California to New Jersey, we have accepted dilapidated classrooms, crumbling roads and elevated rates of unemployment as unalterable facts of contemporary life, as if we are powerless to invest in something better.

In the middle of every policy debate lies the sentiment that the country is broke and has no other option but diminished expectations. We did not fall into debt because of Osama bin Laden. A terrible recession layered atop tax cuts for wealthy Americans mostly brought us here. But the trillions we have spent in Iraq and Afghanistan exacerbated our debt troubles, and these campaigns have concentrated our focus on military entanglements, leaving little attention for the crisis at home.

And now, just as we should be having a sustained discussion about how to invest in a more bountiful future and repair the communities we have neglected, we are instead engaged in a festival of political pandering ostensibly about cutting the deficit. Cities are slashing support for public transportation. The federal government is trimming an inadequate social safety net. Congressional Republicans are threatening to vote against lifting the debt ceiling -- a step that courts panic in global financial markets -- unless they gain a blessing for another round of budget cuts that will intensify harm for the most vulnerable people. We never did find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but we have one right here in our midst, loaded and set to detonate inside the Congress through this mindless debate.
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Osama bin Laden is gone, and that is better than the alternative. But the celebration over his death feels misplaced. The remnants of his most successful strike on American soil remain intact through the collective sense of powerlessness that frames the conversation. He has proven to our adversaries that, when we are frightened, we lose our way. Until we find our way back, standing in the street, high-fiving his death may feel good, but our circumstances are little changed.

YES! Men GE return tax refund hoax, on Democracy Now!

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/14/its_a_hoax_ge_does_not

Infrastructure Loan Program Proposal

http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/loans-based-on-merit-not-clout-29468/