Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

*Taxpayer Dollars Paid A Third Of Richest Corporate CEOs
HP | Zach Carter | 08/28/13

More than one-third of the nation's highest-paid CEOs from the past two decades led companies that were subsidized by American taxpayers, according to a report released Wednesday by the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank.

... IPS has been publishing annual reports on executive compensation since 1993, tracking the 25 highest-paid CEOs each year and analyzing trends in payouts. Of the 500 total company listings, 103 were banks that received government bailouts under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, while another 62 were among the nation's most prolific government contractors. ... Read more

*How Highly Paid CEOs Rip Off Their Companies and the Public Via Fraud and Walk Away With Their Pockets Bulging
AlterNet | Sarah Anderson | 08/27/13

After exposing CEO scoundrels for 20 years, it's hard to keep them all straight. The guy who cooked the books to buy a golden shower curtain blends together with the one who used ill-gotten Iraq war windfalls to pay for his wife's racehorses and plastic surgery and the one who cashed in on subprime mortgages and sailed off on a yacht before the bubble burst. But then you stumble into a story that makes you realize you can still get riled up

... Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) Report: "performance review" of CEOs who made the annual top 25 highest-paid lists over the past 20 years. Theoretically, these CEOs should be the cream of the crop of American corporate leadership. But instead of stellar performance, we found that nearly 40 percent were bad performers -- even by the most narrow, incontrovertible definitions.   Twenty-two percent led firms that crashed or got bailed out in the 2008 crisis. Another eight percent had to pay massive settlements for fraud. And yet another eight percent wound up getting fired. Even the guys who got the boot didn't suffer too much. The size of their average golden parachute: $48 million. Read more
Report: Executive Excess 2013: Bailed Out, Booted, and Busted Report.pdf

War Games: The Syrian Military Theater Of Operations In Two Charts
ZeroHedge | author | 08/28/13

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says that US forces are "ready to go" if the administration decides to strike against alleged Syrian chemical weapon use. As Bloomberg notes in the infographic below, US Navy guided missile destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea are within range of Syrian targets.. and the ships have a combined inventory of more than 200 cruise missiles. On the other side, the Syrian Air Defense system is very robust, and as Stratfor notes, with an estimated 54,000 personnel, Syria's air defense network is twice the size of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's air force. ... Read more
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22 Reasons Why Starting a War In The Middle East Is A Really Bad Idea
ZeroHedge | author | 08/28/13
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*Undercover at the Tar Sands: What It's Really Like Working for Big Oil
Rolling Stones | author | 08/28/13

In recent months, many climate activists have focused their efforts on Canada's tar sands and the companies set on extracting fossil fuels from them. With the debate raging louder than ever, Rolling Stone is in contact with one of the workers helping to build a pipeline to bring oil from the tar sands to the U.S. Read on for that anonymous correspondent's second dispatch from one of the world's most controversial jobs.

On its surface, Fort McMurray, Alberta, looks like any other small Canadian city, with rows of new houses, condo developments and a Wal-Mart. Recycling bins line the streets, and residents schlep cloth bags to the store because the community banned plastic bags. But there's one big difference between Fort Mac and other towns: This is ground zero for Canada's controversial tar sands operations. Like tens of thousands of others, I saw green in the tar-like bitumen-drenched sand, and I came here to cash in. (I'm writing anonymously to protect my colleagues, my friends and myself.) ... Read more
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Global Warming's Terrifying New Math
Rolling Stones | Bill Mckibben | 07/19/13 older, but good

... Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest ever recorded for our nation -- in fact, it crushed the old record by so much that it represented the "largest temperature departure from average of any season on record." The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet's history. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Thursday, August 29 [12:37]

*DN | Syria Debate: Does U.S. Have the Evidence & Authority to Hit Assad for Alleged Chemical Attack? (08/29/13) [13:40]

*The Alberta Tarpits Abomination [6:31]

*Peak oil, energy, growth & the future (02/11/12) [34:53]

Executive Excess 2013: Bailed Out, Booted, and Busted (08/17/13) [2:19]

*6 Facts About the Rich
AlterNet | Paul Buchheit | 08/25/13

First of all, who are they? Mostly the 1%. But the top 2-5% have also done quite well, increasing their inflation-adjusted wealth by 75 percent from 1983 to 2009 while average wealth went down for 80 percent of American households. The rest of the top 20% have been prosperous, realizing a 32 percent gain in inflation-adjusted wealth since 1983