Occupy Wall Street has gone nationwide, with protests today in Los Angeles and Maine. But the group of young people who started the march in New York didn’t take the day off today, they took their protests to the next level and were joined by various unions as well. A faction of the group in New York eventually ended up on the Brooklyn Bridge, less than a mile away from Wall Street.
Below is an unedited video showing some of the protesters, as they shut down the bridge. Reports suggests that some 400 people were arrested.
Occupy Wall Street started about 3 weeks ago by a group of individuals tired with the way Wall Street have manipulated the system and the negative way their actions have affected the economy.
Russell Simmons, who recently wrote an article demanding that the rich pay their fair share in taxes, is beginning to take another look at the 12 day old protest on Wall Street. In an interview today on MSNBC, Simmons, worth almost $350 million, told Martin Bashir;
… if I get involved really heavily in this one, we find the agenda and have a common ground… we can bring hundreds of thousands of people… small seeds are planted, but it could grow into something very big.”
Occupy Wall Street began as a small grassroot protest meant to send a message to the wealthy that middle class Americans are mad as hell, and they’re not gonna take it anymore! Since it started, the money controlled Media have totally ignored the protesters until recently, when unnecessarily aggressive crowd control measures by the New York police department got an entire segment on The Last Word on MSNBC.
Russell Simmons and a few hundreds of thousands more protesters will be a nice little addition.
Jim Cramer, CNBC host of Mad Money is considered one of the main voices of Wall Street. He is known as an outspoken financial expert who is not afraid to speak his mind. The financial expert went on Hardball with Chris Mathews today, and was asked one main question – why does Wall Street hate President Obama, when they are making record profits?
Cramer attempted to answer for Wall Street, stating that what investors are concerned about is that President Obama is anti-business. Shocked by Cramer’s claims, Chris Mathews points out the facts: that under President Obama, the stock market rose 31%, and Corporations have gained 88% of all income. Chris asked the question again, “Why do they hate this guy?”
This is as slime-ball low as slime-ball low goes. A story in the Huffington Post details a scheme by Governor Rick Perry of Texas to make money off the dead.
The scheme, according to the report, spoke about an arrangement the Perry administration proposed, where Wall Street investors would bet on how long retired teachers would live. Perry’s administration would act as the middle man, introducing the insurance provider USB to the unsuspecting retired teacher. Wall Street would then bet on that teacher’s longevity, and upon their passing, Perry would take the insurance money and reward the winning investor. The state of Texas would get a percentage for introducing USB insurance, The Wall Street investor and the deceased.
The family of the deceased, predictably, will not get anything from this arrangement
According to the notes, which were authenticated by a meeting participant, the Perry administration wanted to help Wall Street investors gamble on how long retired Texas teachers would live. Perry was promising the state big money in exchange for helping Swiss banking giant UBS set up a business of teacher death speculation.
All they had to do was convince retirees to let UBS buy life insurance policies on them. When the retirees died, those policies would pay out benefits to Wall Street speculators, and the state, supposedly, would get paid for arranging the bets. The families of the deceased former teachers would get nothing.
Calling Perry a slime ball is wrong. My apologies to the real slime-balls of the world. You wouldn’t sink this low.
I was just doing my usual Sunday routine, watching CNN, browsing the internet, getting ready for my Monday morning commute when Don Lemons of CNN broke in to say that President Obama will be making a major announcement. A major announcement? On a Sunday?
And so–the speculations began on Twitter. At about 10:40 PM, John King of CNN stated, that according to his sources, the news President Obama was getting ready to broadcast to the world was that Osama bin Laden is dead!
I stared at the television as the words left King’s mouth, and I felt the news, this particular news, should have been given by the President himself. But as the initial shock wore off, a sense of relief came over me…and then the flashback.
On September 11, 2001, I was working on Wall Street. No, not as a broker, but in another capacity. And I remember the havoc and horror as I stood, with thousands of people, literally three blocks from The World Trade Center on the corner of Broadway and Pine Street, not sure what was happening, but sure that whatever it was, something major was taking place. We all stood together trying to make sense of the scenes taking place all around us.
Then the second plane hit and we all knew, collectively, that we were under attack. People began leaving the area. Others, like myself, continued to stay and watch. Downtown Manhattan was in chaos. I remembered looking up, way up, and saw what I thought were debris falling down from the WTC. I later realized that what I thought was debris, were in fact people.
And as news began to circulate that other planes were hijacked we became angry. Then the first tower came down. We ran, knowing that many lives were lost.
Two more towers fell and 3,000 more innocent lives were lost.
And now, 10 years later, President Obama at about 11:35PM, announced that on his command, American troops entered Pakistan and killed Osama Bin Laden, the man responsible for the attacks on America in 2001.
It’s a joyous time here in America and around the world!
Seems like Wall Street has found a friend in the Republican Party. According to a research done by The Center for Responsive Politics, Wall Street has moderately increased its donations to Democrats, while drastically increasing the payout to Republicans in congress. The Boehners of the world are finally seeing the rewards of their fight against Financial Reform materialized.
The research, that focused on the 2009 and 2010 donations by Wall Street, found in 2009 when the talks about Financial Reform were just talks, Democrats received the majority of all donations from the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate Sectors.
The Center also looked into the donations of Commercial Banks and Securities and Investment companies, and found the same to be true. Democrats were happy in 2009.
Then 2010 rolled around, and so did Financial Reform legislations. And the GOP, led by the Boehner, increased their opposition to any regulations of Wall Street. In one of his more famous speeches, the Boehner told American Bankers Association to fight!
“Don’t let those little punk staffers take advantage of you and stand up for yourselves. All of us are hearing from our friends and constituents on lack of credit, you can’t get a loan, the more your government takes and taxes, the more regulations you have to comply with the more cost you have there and less amount you are going to have available to loan to customers.”
Boehner however, wasn’t the only GOP congressman working hard for his increased donations from Wall Street. Mike Pence, (R) for Indiana’s 6th Congressional District had this to say;
“This bill can be summed up in two words: ‘government control’ and it will serve as the latest piece of the president’s job-killing agenda. This represents another defeat for Hoosier families, small businesses and family farms, who continue to wonder when Washington Democrats will set aside their big government programs and work with Republicans on ideas that can actually put Americans back to work.”
And Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate Minority Leader did not want the Senate to even talk about Wall Street Reforms. In one of his more mind boggling statement on the subject, McConnell said;
“We can solve this problem. But we wont solve the problem if we vote for cloture tonight. A vote for cloture is a vote that says we’re done listening to the American people on this issue. And a vote against ending this debate is a vote for bipartisanship.”
Huh? In other words, if we continue to filibuster this issue, we will somehow eventually became bipartisan or the Financial Reform issue will die. Either way, McConnell earned his pay-raise from Wall Street.
It’s a simple equation. Democrats voted for the American people and Financial reform and saw no real change in their donations. Republicans went to bat for Big Banks and Wall Street and received their pay in the form of huge donations from Big Banks and Wall Street.
The report shows the following:
2009/2010 – 1st Quarter: Financial Sector:-
Democrats donations from Financial, Insurance and Real Estate went from $10.1 million in 2009 to $10.5 million in 2010. In the same quarter, this sector’s payout to Republicans went from $5.1 million in 2009 to $16.9 million in 2010
Commercial Banks:
Democrats went from $747,000 to $862,000 while Republicans pay increased from $505,000 to $1.4 million
Securities/Investment:
Democrats went from $2.8 million in 2009 to $3 million in 2010, while Republicans went from $881,000 in 2009 to $5 million in 2010
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