Jun 01 2015 - News Jun 2015 - News - Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Monday June 01, 2015

News Articles

Challenging Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders Gains Momentum in Iowa
NYTimes | Trip Gabriel | 05/31/15

A mere 240 people live in the rural northeast Iowa town of Kensett, so when more than 300 crowded into the community center on Saturday night to hear Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, many driving 50 miles, the cellphones of Democratic leaders statewide began to buzz.

Kurt Meyer, the county party chairman who organized the event, sent a text message to Troy Price, the Iowa political director for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mr. Price called back immediately. "Objects in your rearview mirror are closer than they appear," Mr. Meyer said he had told Mr. Price about Mr. Sanders. "Mrs. Clinton had better get out here." ... Read more

Seven Years Later, Wall Street Hasn't Learned Anything
TheAtlantic | Bourree Lam | 05//15

It's been said many times, in many places, even well before the Great Recession: The culture on Wall Street is terrible. It encourages bad behavior. More recently, there are concerns that the Wall Street that caused the financial crisis is back.

A new report by The University of Notre Dame, commissioned by the law firm Labaton Sucharow, which represents whistleblowers, has some alarming numbers to add to this well-trodden narrative. The report surveyed more than 1,200 people in the financial-services industry--account executives, wealth advisors, financial analysts, investment bankers, operations managers, and portfolio managers--in both the U.S. and the U.K. ...

Report/Survey Results

47% of respondents find it likely that their competitors have gaged in unethical or illegal activity in order to gain an edge in the market. This represents a spike from the 39% who reported as such when surveyed in 2012. This figure jumps to 51% for individuals earning $500,000 or more per year.
More than one-third (34%) of those earning $500,000 or more annually have witnessed or have first hand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace.
23% of respondents believe it is likely that fellow employees have engaged in illegal or unethical activity in order to gain an edge, nearly double the 12% that reported as such in 2012.
25% would likely use non-public information to make a guaranteed $10 million if there was no chance of getting arrested for insider trading. Employees with less than 10 years' experience are more than two times as likely as those with over 20 years' experience, reporting 32% and 14% respectively.
In the UK, 32% of individuals said they would likely engage in insider trading to earn $10 million if there was no chance of getting arrested, compared to 24% of respondents from the US.
Nearly one in five respondents feel financial services professionals must at least sometimes engage in illegal or unethical activity to be successful.
27% of those surveyed disagree that the financial services industry puts the best interests of clients first. This figure rises to 38% for those earning $500,000 or more per year.
Nearly one-third of respondents (32%) believe compensation structures or bonus plans in place at their company could incentivize employees to compromise ethics or violate the law.
33% of financial services professionals feel the industry hasn't changed for the better since the financial crisis.

Wall Street Is Using the Power of Dodd-Frank Against Itself
NYTimes | author | 05/27/15

Regulating Wall Street is an Old Testament sort of affair: Like Leviticus, it is all about the persnickety details. But politicians try to talk about it in New Testament terms, with sinners and saints, salvation and damnation. Only they can't agree on who the sinners are -- the bankers or the bureaucrats -- and wherein lies salvation. Such moralizing, however, does very little to shine light on the benefits and drawbacks of the byzantine 2010 banking regulations known as Dodd-ÂFrank.

Dodd-ÂFrank is a sprawling piece of legislation, divided into 16 sections that together represent the most drastic change in financial regulation since the Great Depression. The law created multiple government bodies tasked with monitoring and intervening in financial markets. In the event of crisis, it stipulates new ways to dissolve large banks without requiring government bailouts. The law also created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, increases the regulation of hedge funds and does several thousand other things, big and small. ... Read more

BillMoyers: Morning Reads

On Thursday, Pataki said, "Today, there is one former member of Congress lobbying for every current member and the first thing I would do is ban members of Congress from ever lobbying. If you serve one day, you are banned, go home."
On Wednesday, Rick Santorum said, "American families don't need another president tied to big government or big money."
On Tuesday, Bernie Sanders said, "American democracy is not about billionaires being able to buy candidates and elections... we need one person, one vote.
Will Martin O'Malley continue the trend this weekend? Previously, he has called for overturning Citizens United and endorsed the Government By the People Act.

Campaign Finance/Elections

Wall Street Journal: Former SEC Officials Want Disclosure of Corporate Political Donations (here)
Free Speech for People: Actress Debra Winger Joins Congressman Jim McGovern in Cambridge Calling for a 28th Amendment to Reclaim Democracy (here)
New York Times: Polluted political games (here)
Texas Tribune: Ethics Reform: A Guide to What's Still Alive (here)
Campaign Legal Center: New Litigation Summary from CLC Reveals Ongoing Flood of Challenges to Campaign Finance Laws (here)
Brennan Center: Courts Shine Light on Dark Money (here)
The Nation: The Conservatives Who Gutted the Voting Rights Act Are Now Challenging 'One Person, One Vote' (here)
The Atlantic: Could Hillary Clinton Be the Champion Campaign-Finance Reform Needs? (here)

Congress/Admin/2016

CNN: Congress flocks to Taylor Swift concert (here)
Buzzfeed: Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert Indicted On Federal Charges (here)
Heh. RT @DavidAxelrod: One irony of Hastert's statement to FBI about not "trusting banks" is that the lobbying firm for which he worked represents them. (here)
National Journal: Jeb Bush's History of Outsourcing His Campaign So He Can Raise Big Money (here)
Buzzfeed: Hillary Clinton Campaign Outlines Plans For Fundraising and First Big Speech (here)
Washingtonian: Metro Bans Political Advertisements for the Rest of the Year (here)
CNN: Will Democrats keep hammering the Kochs? (here)
POLITICO: Rand Paul's money problem (here)
Bloomberg: Chris Christie and Ted Cruz Slam Iran at Adelson Event (here)
QC Times: Sanders: 'It's not about me...it's about you' (here)
Yahoo: Here's where George Pataki will look for campaign money (here)
Yahoo: Here's where Rick Santorum gets his campaign money (here)
The Hill: Bush 41 fundraises for Jeb super-PAC (here)
National Journal: Lindsey Graham Allies Form Super PAC Ahead of 2016 Run (here)
NYT: Gay Hotelier Who Hosted Ted Cruz Made a Campaign Donation, Too (here)
OpenSecrets: Chemical safety law rewrite triggers strong reactions (here)
On June 17th, you can have a "Conservation with John Podesta" at this Clinton campaign fundraiser hosted by the PAC of lobby firm McGuire Woods and former Senator Evan Bayh. (here)
AJC: Private fundraiser serves as Clinton's campaign debut in Atlanta (here)
NYT: On Trade, Unions Open Aggressive Ad Campaign Against Democrats (here)
Good point on Foster Friess saying he'll give to dark money groups to help Rick Santorum: RT @NickConfessore: Consider: a donor says he wants to give money to elect a candidate but will give through groups that claim not to be electing candidates. (here)
POLITICO: Ex-Schock aide dishes to FBI (here)

More News

Senate lets NSA spy program lapse, at least for now (Reuters)
Draghi Deflation Relief Means Little With Greek Threat Unsolved (BBG)
Tepid factory data add to Asian gloom (FT)
Citigroup Likely to Close Banamex USA (WSJ)
Frugality of High Earners in U.S. Shows Long Shadow of Recession (BBG)
Greece's Tsipras Warns Bell May Toll for Europe (BBG)
Carnegie Mellon Reels After Uber Lures Away Researchers (WSJ)
RomÃ¡rio leads drive for Brazilian probe into Fifa (FT)
Faster than China? India's road, rail drive could lay doubts to rest (Reuters)

DemocracyNow - http://www.democracynow.org/

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, June 01 [10:39]

*DN | Glenn Greenwald: As Bulk NSA Spying Expires, Scare Tactics Can't Stop "Sea Change" on Surveillance (06/01/15) [11:48]

DN | Gay High School Student Delivers Valedictorian Speech He Was Barred from Giving (06/01/15) [18:02]

Good & Great Documentaries

*PBS Frontline | Obama at War (05/26/15) [54:14]

Untold History of United States by Oliver Stone

*Untold History of United States - Bush & Obama: Age of Terror () [59:00]
MORE Untold History Of The United States

Four Horsemen

*Four Horsemen - is an independent feature documentary which lifts the lid on how the world really works. [1:38:54]

TRNN News - http://therealnews.com/

TRNN | Shir Hever says: Israel Second Most Unequal Economy in World (06/01/15) [8:20]

TRNN | Professor Edward Hanna says: New Evidence Linking Climate Change to Extreme Weather (05/31/15) [6:34]

TRNN | Prabir Purkayastha and Seema Mustafa discuss: Unresolved Economic and Geopolitical Issues in India-China Relations (06/01/15) [10:07]

TYT News - http://www.tytnetwork.com/

TYT | What Will Change If The Patriot Act Expires? (05/31/15) [4:26]

*TYT | Saudi Arabia + ISIS -- It's Complicated (05/31/15) [7:15]

*TYT | Why Do We Tolerate Wall Street's Epic Corruption? (05/31/15) [6:12]

*TYT | Wall Street Is FIFA On Steroids (05/31/15) [10:23]

"It's been said many times, in many places, even well before the Great Recession: The culture on Wall Street is terrible. It encourages bad behavior. More recently, there are concerns that the Wall Street that caused the financial crisis is back.

A new report by The University of Notre Dame, commissioned by the law firm Labaton Sucharow, which represents whistleblowers, has some alarming numbers to add to this well-trodden narrative. The report surveyed more than 1,200 people in the financial-services industry--account executives, wealth advisors, financial analysts, investment bankers, operations managers, and portfolio managers--in both the U.S. and the U.K. to look at whether increased regulations, along with calls for a cultural change, have had any demonstrable effects.

So how does the financial-services industry view its own behavior, legally and ethically? Not so great, it turns out. Nearly half of the respondents felt that it was likely that a competitor has engaged in unethical or illegal activity in order to gain an edge."

RT - http://www.rt.com/

*RT | CrossTalk: Empire USA (05/27/15) [24:40]

RT | Keiser Report: We Are All Greeks Now (E764) (06/01/15) [25:25]

Ring of Fire - http://ringoffireradio.com/

Thom Hartmann - www.thomhartmann.com/

06.01.2015. 11:15

NPR

PBS

Special Interest Important stuff

GOOD Shorts Videos

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Newer Documentaries You Might Not Have Seen

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Lindsey Graham Mashups

Lindsey Graham

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the quiet part aloud on why he’s still so close to former President Donald Trump: because we can use him for our goals. "President Trump has gotten people who wouldn't give me or Romney or anybody else the time of day. They believe he is on their side," the senator told the America First Agenda Summit crowd on Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

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Environment & Climate Change

Environment

The term "climate change" is often used to refer specifically to anthropogenic climate change (also known as global warming). Anthropogenic climate change is caused by human activity, as opposed to changes in climate that may have resulted as part of Earth's natural processes.

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AI - Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning | Deep Learning

AI - Artificial Intelligence

AIArtificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, as opposed to the natural intelligence displayed by animals including humans. AI research has been defined as the field of study of intelligent agents, which refers to any system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of achieving its goals.

The term "artificial intelligence" had previously been used to describe machines that mimic and display "human" cognitive skills that are associated with the human mind, such as "learning" and "problem-solving". This definition has since been rejected by major AI researchers who now describe AI in terms of rationality and acting rationally, which does not limit how intelligence can be articulated.
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Quantum mechanics | AI - Artificial Intelligence

Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, quantum field theory, quantum technology, and quantum information science.
Classical physics, the collection of theories that existed before the advent of quantum mechanics, describes many aspects of nature at an ordinary (macroscopic) scale, but is not sufficient for describing them at small (atomic and subatomic) scales. Most theories in classical physics can be derived from quantum mechanics as an approximation valid at large (macroscopic) scale.
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Economy, Wall Street and Banksters

Wall Street and Banksters

Wall Street is an eight-block-long street running roughly northwest to southeast from Broadway to South Street, at the East River, in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial services industry (even if financial firms are not physically located there), or New York-based financial interests.

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Intelligence Agencies/Deep State?

Intelligence Agencies/Deep State?

An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, and foreign policy objectives. Means of information gathering are both overt and covert and may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis,.

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Daniel Ellsberg | Pentagon Papers

Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg and Paul Jay explore Ellsberg's latest book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. In the introduction to the book, Ellsberg writes: "No policies in human history have more deserved to be recognized as immoral or insane. The story of how this calamitous predicament came about and how and why it has persisted over a half a century is a chronicle of human madness".

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Nukes

Nukes

Nuclear weapons have come a long way and come in all types of different sizes. Some are relatively small while others are enormous, so big they boggle the mind at what they can be capable of, i.e. the Soviet 'Tsar Bomba' is/was 3,000 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb.

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Rana Foroohar and Fall of American Business

Rana Foroohar

Ms. Foroohar says financialization delivers stagnant wages, inequality and economic crisis; the Financial Times columnist and author of "Makers and Takers" says the financial sector represents only 7 percent of the U.S. economy, but takes around 25 percent of all corporate profit while creating only 4 percent of all jobs.

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The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone & Petere Kuznick

The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone & Petere Kuznick | 2014 | 10 Episodes

Oliver Stone and American University historian Peter J. Kuznick began working on the project in 2008. Stone, Kuznick and British screenwriter Matt Graham cowrote the script. It covers "the reasons behind the Cold War with the Soviet Union, U.S. President Harry Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, and changes in America's global role since the fall of Communism." Stone is the director and narrator of all ten episodes.

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Kuznick Interviews

Kuznick Interviews

Historian Peter Kuznick says Eisenhower called for decreased militarization, then Dulles reversed the policy; the Soviets tried to end the cold war after the death of Stalin; crazy schemes involving nuclear weapons and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba put the world of the eve of destruction - with host Paul Jay

The Untold History of the United States by Kuznick, Peter.mobi | Book | 6.99 MB

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China Valley of Tunnels

China Valley of Tunnels

A report written by a Georgetown University team led by Phillip Karber conducted a three-year study to map out China’s complex tunnel system, which stretches 5,000 km (3,000 miles). The report determined that the stated Chinese nuclear arsenal is understated and as many as 3,000 nuclear warheads may be stored in the underground tunnel network.

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911

911

On September 11, 2001, 19 terrorists attacked the Unites States. They hijacked four airplanes in mid-flight. The terrorists flew two of the planes into two skyscrapers at the World Trade Center in New York City. The impact caused the buildings to catch fire and collapse. Another plane destroyed part of the Pentagon (the U.S. military headquarters) in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Officials believe that the terrorists on that plane intended to destroy either the White House or the U.S. Capitol. Passengers on the plane fought the terrorists and prevented them from reaching their goal. In all, nearly 3,000 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks.

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The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's ten-part, 18-hour documentary series, THE VIETNAM WAR, tells the epic story of one of the most consequential, divisive, and controversial events in American history as it has never before been told on film. Visceral and immersive, the series explores the human dimensions of the war through revelatory testimony of nearly 80 witnesses from all sides--Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, as well as combatants and civilians from North and South Vietnam. Ten years in the making, the series includes rarely seen and digitally re-mastered archival footage from sources around the globe, photographs taken by some of the most celebrated photojournalists of the 20th Century, historic television broadcasts, evocative home movies, and secret audio recordings from inside the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations.

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Trump's Mashups

Trump's Mashups

Donald Trump talks a lot, but what is he actually saying? VICE News' "Trump Talk" mashup series tries to answer that. And, we're happy to say, it was just nominated for two Webby Awards. Now you can watch all the nominated videos.

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Trump's Sexcapades

Trump's Sexcapades.

Jessica Leeds (1980s)
Kristin Anderson (1990s)
E. Jean Carroll (1995 or 1996)
Lisa Boyne (1996)
Cathy Heller (1997)
Temple Taggart McDowell (1997)
Karena Virginia (1998)
Mindy McGillivray (2003)
Jennifer Murphy (2005)
Rachel Crooks (2005)
Natasha Stoynoff (2005)
Juliet Huddy (2005 or 2006)
Jessica Drake (2006)
Ninni Laaksonen (2006)
Cassandra Searles (2013)
Allegations of pageant dressing room visits(1997)
Mariah Billado,
Victoria Hughes,
and three other Miss Teen USA contestants
Bridget Sullivan (2000)
Tasha Dixon (2001)
Unnamed contestants (2001)
Samantha Holvey (2006)

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Trump's Speeches | Rallys |Interviews

Trump's Speeches | Rallys

Donald Trump talks a lot, but what is he actually saying? Watch Trump at some of his rallys and see what you think.

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