Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

That FL CEO Who Said He'd FIRE Everyone if Obama Elected? Guess What Happened...
DailyKos.com | author | 07/25/14

"The Queen of Versailles" was a film documentary based on the sleazy time-share mogul, David Siegel, and his wife, Jackie. David had major financial troubles following Bush's 2008 economic crises. He even had to stop work on his private home, dubbed "Versailles", which was to be the largest home in the U.S. Poor guy.

Naturally, Obama was to blame for this. As you may recall during the peak of the presidential campaign, Mr. Siegel penned a letter threatening to fire all his employees and close down his Orlando-based company, Westgate, if Obama was elected. A snippet from the full letter: ... Read more

Robert Reich: Just Imagine If People Were Paid What Their Work Is Really Worth to Society
AlterNet | Robert Reich | 08/04/14

Does anyone seriously believe hedge-fund mogul Steven A. Cohen is worth the $2.3 billion he raked in last year, despite being slapped with a $1.8 billion fine after his firm pleaded guilty to insider trading?

On the other hand, what's the worth to society of social workers who put in long and difficult hours dealing with patients suffering from mental illness or substance abuse? Probably higher than their average pay of $18.14 an hour, which translates into less than $38,000 a year.

How much does society gain from personal-care aides who assist the elderly, convalescents, and persons with disabilities? Likely more than their average pay of $9.67 an hour, or just over $20,000 a year.

What's the social worth of hospital orderlies who feed, bathe, dress, and move patients, and empty their ben pans? Surely higher than their median wage of $11.63 an hour, or $24,190 a year.

Or of child care workers, who get $10.33 an hour, $21.490 a year? And preschool teachers, who earn $13.26 an hour, $27,570 a year?

Yet what would the rest of us do without these dedicated people? ... Read more

America's Massive National Security State Is the 4th Branch of Government
AlterNet | Tom Engelhardt | 08/03/14

As every schoolchild knows, there are three check-and-balance branches of the U.S. government: the executive, Congress, and the judiciary. That's bedrock Americanism and the most basic high school civics material. Only one problem: it's just not so.

During the Cold War years and far more strikingly in the twenty-first century, the U.S. government has evolved. It sprouted a fourth branch: the national security state, whose main characteristic may be an unquenchable urge to expand its power and reach. Admittedly, it still lacks certain formal prerogatives of governmental power. Nonetheless, at a time when Congress and the presidency are in a check-and-balance ballet of inactivity that would have been unimaginable to Americans of earlier eras, the Fourth Branch is an ever more unchecked and unbalanced power center in Washington. Curtained off from accountability by a penumbra of secrecy, its leaders increasingly are making nitty-gritty policy decisions and largely doing what they want, a situation illuminated by a recent controversy over the possible release of a Senate report on CIA rendition and torture practices. ... Read more

40 Million People Depend on the Colorado River. Now It's Drying Up.
MotherJones | Tom Philpott | 08/04/14

And here's what GRACE researchers found in the Colorado River Basin region: To make up for the gap between what the Colorado River supplies and what people and agriculture demand, farmers, landowners, and municipalities are dropping wells and tapping underground aquifers at a much faster rate than had been assumed. Between December 2004 and November 2013, the Colorado Basin surrendered almost 53 million acre-feet of underground water--roughly equal to about 1.5 full Lake Meads, siphoned away in just nine years.

"Quite honestly, we are alarmed and concerned about the implications of our findings," study coauthor Jay Famiglietti, a senior water scientist at NASA and a professor of at the University of California-Irvine, wrote in a blog post. "From a group that studies groundwater depletion in the hottest of the hot spots of water stress around the world--in India, the Middle East, and in California's Central Valley--that says something." ... Read more
Running Dry (National Geographic) [1:40]