Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Trump unwinds the 20th century
Axios | Steve LeVine | 07/11/18

As President Trump meets other leaders of NATO in Brussels, the backdrop is his role in tearing at the post-World War II order.

The big picture: But a future is taking shape of a 21st century United States without many of the basic institutions that many consider key 20th century advances. Just some of the pieces of this riptide:

1. Unions: A decimation of the 120-year-old union movement, most recently with last month's Supreme Court ruling weakening the funding of public unions.
2. Black voting: In 2013, the Supreme Court invalidated a key part of the Voting Rights Act, and last month the court decided that counties can purge voter rolls of people who don't regularly vote.
3. Women's rights: A primary conservative goal is the invalidation or weakening of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion.
4. International order: Trump is part of a wave of leaders challenging the post-war order, established to avoid another world war.
5. Many, many, many more

Brett Kavanaugh Ruled Against Workers When No One Else Did
HP | Dave Jamieson | 07/10/18

WASHINGTON ? In 2005, a group of workers at a meatpacking plant in Brooklyn voted to join a union. Their employer, a kosher meat wholesaler called Agri Processor, fought the organizing effort as best it could. Once the workers were unionized, the company refused to bargain, arguing that most of them weren't covered by collective bargaining law because they were undocumented immigrants.

Ultimately, neither the National Labor Relations Board nor the majority of judges on a panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with Agri Processor. The only one who did was Brett Kavanaugh, the circuit judge who wrote a dissent in the case and is now President Donald Trump's nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. ... Read more

A Guatemalan Family Faces Endless Obstacles as They Struggle to Recover a 9-Year-Old Boy From U.S. Custody
TheIntercept | Ryan Devereaux | 07/10/18

THE COUPLE WALKED into Emily Fanjoy's office carrying a shopping bag full of receipts and scribbled paperwork. Fanjoy, a social service provider in the coastal Oregon city of Tillamook, knew the pair. She has worked with the couple off and on for a while, informally linking them up with local immigration and health services. The man has lived in the United States for more than 40 years; the woman has been here for about 26. They arrived after fleeing Guatemala amid one of the most brutal civil wars in Latin American history. They are legal U.S. residents, but experience has taught them to be cautious with authorities nonetheless.

The two originally gravitated to Fanjoy because, owing to a stint in the Peace Corps a decade ago that landed her in the couple's corner of Guatemala for two years, Fanjoy is part of a small population of people able to speak the Mayan dialect of their native region. The walk-ins were normal, Fanjoy told The Intercept recently. It's easier that way. "They never call me on the telephone if they can avoid it," she said. "It's too hard. They need to be able to be in person."

In a mix of Q'anjob'al, Spanish, and extremely limited English, the couple explained that the woman's adult nephew and his 9-year-old son had disappeared crossing the border a month ago. Nobody had heard a thing from them. Then, one day, the nephew called. He was in U.S. immigration custody in the Otero County Processing Center in Chaparral, New Mexico. He was alone. More than a month after being apprehended, his aunt and uncle told Fanjoy, the man still had no idea what the U.S. government had done with his child. ... Read more

Trump Says White Supremacist Terror Is Fake News. These Chilling Cases Prove Otherwise.
MotherJones | Mark Follman | 07/11/18

Four days after a homemade bomb blew through the window of a mosque in Bloomington, Minnesota, in August 2017, Sebastian Gorka, then a national security aide to President Donald Trump, commented about the attack. Though the culprits were still unknown, Gorka suggested that the bombing may have been a "fake hate crime" ginned up by leftists. He also scoffed at journalists who had raised questions about right-wing domestic terrorism: "It's this constant, 'Oh, it's the white man. It's the white supremacists. That's the problem.' No, it isn't."

Seven months later, federal prosecutors charged three suspects in the bombing. The accused, all white men who belonged to a militia group called the White Rabbit 3 Percent Illinois Patriot Freedom Fighters, allegedly hoped to "scare [Muslims] out of the country" by telling them, "You're not welcome here -- get the fuck out." ... Read more