Publictakeover's Weblog

Bernie Sanders Introduces Bill To Lift The Payroll Tax Cap

Bernie Sanders Introduces Bill To Lift The Payroll Tax Cap, Ensuring Full Social Security Funding For Nearly 75 Years | ThinkProgress.

Nebraska Governor Writes of Sensible Objection to Pipeline

Dave Heineman, GOP governor of Nebraska, writes in a letter to Hillary and The Cave Man, saying:

I want to emphasize that I am not opposed to pipelines. We have hundreds of them in our state. I am opposed to the proposed Keystone XL route because it is directly over the Ogallala Acquifer.

Letter from prison: Tim DeChristopher speaks | Grist

This guy Tim DeChristopher would doubtlessly be in prison this weekend for one reason or another. If he weren’t already locked up, I’m sure he would have been at the Whitel House protesting the Keystone XL pipeline.

But, he’s really making the most of his opportunity, and turning out to be as tough and sagacious as he needs to be.

With civil disobedience cases, however, the government puts an extra value on an apology. By its very nature, civil disobedience is an act whose message is that the government and its laws are not the sole voice of moral authority. It is a statement that we the citizens recognize a higher moral code to which the law is no longer aligned, and we invite our fellow citizens to recognize the difference. A government truly of the people, for the people, and by the people is not threatened by citizens issuing such a challenge. But government whose authority depends on an ignorant or apathetic citizenry is threatened by every act of open civil disobedience, no matter how small. To regain that tiny piece of authority, the government either has to respond to the activist’s demands, or get the activist to back down with a public statement of regret. Otherwise, those little challenges to the moral authority of government start to add up.

via Letter from prison: Tim DeChristopher speaks | Grist.

Who’s in charge of America?

Reverend Al has taken over Cenk Uyger’s spot. This is from 2 weeks ago when the Alec convention was meeting in New Orleans..

C.I.A. Fights Memoir of 9/11 by F.B.I. Agent **Updated 9/8/11

What’s astonishing about this article is the lack of quotations from the Constitution or its defenders, the lack of evidence of CIA disinformation and counterintelligence outside as well as inside the U.S., as well as the absence of references to the current stories about the CIA’s attempts to control the anti-terror task force in the NYPD.

In what amounts to a fight over who gets to write the history of the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath, the Central Intelligence Agency is demanding extensive cuts from the memoir of a former F.B.I. agent who spent years near the center of the battle against Al Qaeda.

But the real jaw-dropper is that the publisher is buckling to the pressure.

Facing a deadline this week, the publisher, W. W. Norton and Company, decided to proceed with a first printing incorporating all the C.I.A.’s cuts.

*******************
Update: This inspector general’s report

A Joint Forces Intelligence Command former employee [sic] alleged in May 2006 to the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General that the Joint Forces Intelligence Command had not disclosed all original material in response to the 9/11 Commission.

It’s starting to percolate down through the layers of alternative media, just in time for the 9/11 anniversary.

Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?

By whitewashing the files of some of the nation’s worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG. With a few strokes of the keyboard, the evidence gathered during thousands of investigations – “18,000 … including Madoff,” as one high-ranking SEC official put it during a panicked meeting about the destruction – has apparently disappeared forever into the wormhole of history.

Here’s another great scoop by Matt Taibbi I linked a few days ago. Like most stories about high level finance and government corruption these days, it hasn’t gotten any play in the commercial media. Who has time to think about law and order–protecting the little guy from the banksters–when simultaneously there might be a hurricane approaching from off the coast of Florida, or a dictator is being overthrown by our heroic and technologically supreme armed forces and their loyal allies?.

We can’t let unscrupulous banks off the hook

Here’s one of those CREDO/True Majority peititions that’s going around.  I forwarded it to about twenty-five people today.

Readers of this blog will note the relevance of the subject matter.

Dear Friend,

The notorious robo-signing scandal is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to wrongdoing by the mortgage industry. And New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is one of a handful of state attorneys general standing up to make sure the Wall Street crooks who illegally cheated millions of people don’t get a free pass.

But the Obama administration and federal banking regulators are pressuring Attorney General Schneiderman to back down and accept a settlement with the major mortgage firms that would impose no criminal penalties for breaking the law.

As the Attorney General of New York, Eric Schneiderman has a unique opportunity and a unique obligation to stand up for the victims of unscrupulous Wall Street firms. And the Obama administration and federal regulators should stop trying to strong-arm him.

I just signed a petition telling the Obama administration and federal banking regulators that you stand with Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and attorneys general like him who are fighting to hold banks accountable for criminal activity.

I hope you do too.   Just click the link below.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/back_schneiderman/?r_by=26301-455517-XbjYCox&rc=paste1

Schneiderman Is Said to Face Pressure to Back Bank Deal

Thought things couldn’t get much worse? What about if the profiteers who engineered the theft of trillions and caused the financial crisis walk away with a slap on the wrist and a promise from The Cave Man not to investigate any bank wrongdoing? NYTimes.com.

I missed the times article, but I saw this by Cenk.

Matt Taibbi was all over it.

It’s incredible how the commercial media gag has kept this story out of the consciousness of the American people. [Libya! Hurricane Irene!]

… Now this: Shake-Up In Mortgage Investigation

he opposes any deal that gives participating banks a release from other litigation surrounding their mortgage activities.

Personally, I trust Schneiderman more than anybody else, practically, in all of government. He was my State Senator for at least ten years.

Obama Sides With Dirty Bankers

Matt Taibbi is reaching colossal stature as the muckraker of this generation. Obama must really hate him.

This Labor Day We Need Protest Marches, Not Parades | AlterNet

Robert Reich via AlterNet

Not only are 25 million unemployed or underemployed, but American companies continue to cut wages and benefits. The median wage is still dropping, adjusted for inflation. High unemployment has given employers extra bargaining leverage to wring out wage concessions.

Just today Bloomberg reports an increase in jobless claims! We gotta tell “The Cave Man” to get out his club and start swinging!