YouTube - Keith Olbermann Exposes Congressional Opponents of Universal Health Care

Keith is calling them out. He hauls their foulness into the light. The Reich of the Corporations is Crumbling. Thank You Keith.

City Seeks New Powers in a Stalled Quest to Reduce Homelessness - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/nyregion/24homeless.html

If the measure passes, if the poor don't try hard enough, they -- and their children -- will be turned out onto the streets to find their own food, clothing, and shelter.

One question I have is, if the average annual cost to house a homeless family is $36,000, why not just pay the family's rent somewhere? Or move them into the zillion-some foreclosed, vacant homes that must be sitting around NYC?

Another question: if there are over 150 agencies that are contracted with by the city to not only provide housing to the homeless, but to help them learn life skills that will enable them to move out of the shelter, as well as act as liaisons with permanent housing for the homeless, why is it that the agencies aren't getting "de-contracted" if they show bad success rate? Read the article and let me know what you think about it.

"Save Our CEOs" Teaser for new Michael Moore film

YES! Can't wait to see this movie. Michael you da man.

The Clinic is Closed

This is one of those situations where intellectually a person might stand for one thing but feel with every other fiber of their being against it. I do not, can not, and will not support or condone any action, for any reason, thats end point is what is manifested in this photograph.

Murdered Doctor’s Clinic Is Shuttered - NYTimes.com

We are Fighting for our Homes

http://fightingforourhomes.com/

The Howls of a Fading Species, by Bob Herbert

The Howls of a Fading Species
By BOB HERBERT
Published: June 1, 2009

One can only hope that the hysterical howling of right-wingers against the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is something approaching a death rattle for this profoundly destructive force in American life.

It’s hard to fathom the heights of hypocrisy currently being scaled by the foaming-in-the-mouth crazies who are leading the charge against the nomination. Newt Gingrich, who never needed a factual basis for his ravings, rants on Twitter that Judge Sotomayor is a “Latina woman racist,” apparently unaware of his incoherence in the “Latina-woman” redundancy in this defamatory characterization.

Karl Rove sneered that Ms. Sotomayor was “not necessarily” smart, thus managing to get the toxic issue of intelligence into play in the case of a woman who graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, went on to get a law degree from Yale and has more experience as a judge than any of the current justices had at the time of their nominations to the court.

It turns the stomach. There is no level of achievement sufficient to escape the stultifying bonds of bigotry. It is impossible to be smart enough or accomplished enough.

The amount of disrespect that has spattered the nomination of Judge Sotomayor is disgusting. She is spoken of, in some circles, as if she were the lowest of the low. Rush Limbaugh — now there’s a genius! — has compared her nomination to a hypothetical nomination of David Duke, a former head of the Ku Klux Klan. “How can a president nominate such a candidate?” Limbaugh asked.

Ms. Sotomayor is a member of the National Council of La Raza, the Hispanic civil rights organization. In the crazy perspective of some right-wingers, the mere existence of La Raza should make decent people run for cover. La Raza is “a Latino K.K.K. without the hoods and the nooses,” said Tom Tancredo, a Republican former congressman from Colorado.

Here’s the thing. Suddenly these hideously pompous and self-righteous white males of the right are all concerned about racism. They’re so concerned that they’re fully capable of finding it in places where it doesn’t for a moment exist. Not just finding it, but being outraged by it to the point of apoplexy. Oh, they tell us, this racism is a bad thing!

Are we supposed to not notice that these are the tribunes of a party that rose to power on the filthy waves of racial demagoguery. I don’t remember hearing their voices or the voices of their intellectual heroes when the Republican Party, as part of its Southern strategy, aggressively courted the bigots who fled the Democratic Party because the Democrats had become insufficiently hostile to blacks.

Where were the howls of outrage at this strategy that was articulated by Lee Atwater as follows: “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff.”

Never a peep did you hear.

Where were the right-wing protests when Ronald Reagan went out of his way to kick off his general election campaign in 1980 with a salute to states’ rights in, of all places, Philadelphia, Miss., not far from the site where three young civil rights workers had been snatched and murdered by real-life, rabid, blood-thirsty racists?

We’ve heard ad nauseam Ms. Sotomayor’s comments — awkwardly stated but hardly racist — about what she brings to the bench as a Latina. But how often have we ever heard the awful, hateful position on race offered up by William F. Buckley, the right’s ultimate intellectual champion? He felt comfortable declaring, in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision ordering the desegregation of public schools, that whites had every right to discriminate against blacks because whites belonged to “the advanced race.”

Right-wing howls of protest? I think not.

Ms. Sotomayor’s nomination is a big deal because never before in the history of the United States has any president nominated a Latina to the highest court. Only two blacks have ever been on the court, and the one selected by a Republican has been like a thumb in the eye to most African-Americans.

The court is a living monument to America’s long history of exclusion based on race, ethnic background and gender. Where is the right-wing protest against that?

It was always silly to pretend that the election of Barack Obama was evidence that the U.S. was moving into some sort of post-racial, post-ethnic, post-gender nirvana. But it did offer a basis for optimism. There is every reason to hope that we’ve improved as a society to the point where the racial and ethnic craziness of the Gingriches and Limbaughs will finally have a tough time finding any sort of foothold.

Those types can still cause a lot of trouble, but the ridiculousness of their posture is pretty widely recognized. Thus the desperate howling.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/opinion/02herbert.html?scp=9&sq=&st=nyt

Max Baucus holds cards on healthcare reform | Muckety.com - See the news

http://news.muckety.com/2009/05/21/max-baucus-holds-the-cards-on-healthcare-reform-and-most-everything-else/15961

muckety.com is an amazing site, where you can see interconnections

Report Details Abuses in Irish Reformatories

SARAH LYALL
May 20, 2009
in The New York Times

LONDON — Tens of thousands of Irish children were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by nuns, priests and others over 60 years in a network of church-run residential schools meant to care for the poor, the vulnerable and the unwanted, according to a report released in Dublin on Wednesday.

The 2,600-page report paints a picture of institutions run more like Dickensian orphanages than 20th-century schools, characterized by privation and cruelty that could be both casual and choreographed.

“A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions,” the report says. In the boys’ schools, it says, sexual abuse was “endemic.”

The report, by a state-appointed commission, took nine years to produce and was meant to help Ireland face and move on from one of the ugliest aspects of its recent history. But it has infuriated many victims’ groups because it does not name any of the hundreds of individuals accused of abuse and thus cannot be used as a basis for prosecutions.

It was delayed because of a lawsuit brought by the Christian Brothers, the religious order that ran many of the boys’ schools and that fought, ultimately successfully, to have the abusers’ names omitted. In 2003, the commission’s first chairwoman resigned, saying that Ireland’s Department of Education had refused to release crucial documents. The report covers a period from the 1930s to the 1990s, when the last of the institutions closed.

It exposes for the first time the scope of the problem in Ireland, as well as how the government and the church colluded in perpetuating an abusive system. The revelations have also had the effect of stripping the Catholic Church, which once set the agenda in Ireland, of much of its moral authority and political power.

The report singles out Ireland’s Department of Education, meant to regulate the schools, for running “toothless” inspections that overlooked glaring problems and deferred to church authority.

The report is based in part on old church records of unreported abuse cases and in part on the anonymous testimony of 1,060 former students from a variety of 216 mostly church-run institutions, including reformatories and so-called industrial schools, set up to tend to neglected, orphaned or abandoned children.

Most of the former students are now 50 to 80 years old.

Some 30,000 children were sent to such places over six decades, the report says, often against their families’ wishes and because of pressure from powerful local priests. They were sent because their families could not afford to care for them, because their mothers had committed adultery or given birth out of wedlock, or because one or both of their parents was ill, drunken or abusive. They were also sent because of petty crime, like stealing food, or because they had missed school.

Many of the former students said that they had not learned their own identities until decades later. They also said that their parents had unsuccessfully tried to reclaim them from the state.

In a litany that sounds as if it comes from the records of a P.O.W. camp, the report chronicles some of the forms of physical abuse suffered in the boys’ schools:

“Punching, flogging, assault and bodily attacks, hitting with the hand, kicking, ear pulling, hair pulling, head shaving, beating on the soles of the feet, burning, scalding, stabbing, severe beatings with or without clothes, being made to kneel and stand in fixed positions for lengthy periods, made to sleep outside overnight, being forced into cold or excessively hot baths and showers, hosed down with cold water before being beaten, beaten while hanging from hooks on the wall, being set upon by dogs, being restrained in order to be beaten, physical assaults by more than one person, and having objects thrown at them.”

Some of the schools operated essentially as workhouses. In one school, Goldenbridge, girls as young as 7 spent hours a day making rosaries by stringing beads onto lengths of wire. They were given quotas: 600 beads on weekdays and 900 on Sundays.

Girls were routinely sexually abused, often by more than one person at a time, the report said, in “dormitories, schools, motor vehicles, bathrooms, staff bedrooms, churches, sacristies, fields, parlors, the residences of clergy, holiday locations and while with godparents and employers.”

The Vatican had no response. But leaders of various religious orders — who often argued during the investigations that the abuse was a relic of another time, reflecting past societal standards — issued abject apologies on Wednesday, taking care to frame the problem as something that is now behind them.

Cardinal Sean Brady, the Catholic primate of All Ireland, said in a statement that he was “profoundly sorry and deeply ashamed,” adding, “I hope the publication of today’s report will help heal the hurts of victims and address the wrongs of the past.”

David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, a group based in St. Louis, said that while the report had failed in its duty to bring the perpetrators to justice, it had been clear about the failings of the church.

“While horrific, widespread reports of abuse and cover-up are sadly quite common, the significance here is that a government panel is conclusively saying that the finger-pointing and blame-shifting and excuse-making of the church hierarchy is bogus,” he said in an interview.

The commission was formed in 2000, after an explosive series of radio programs and documentaries in the 1990s began exposing a terrible secret that had been kept by an entire society: the details of what went on in the children’s homes. In 1999, Bertie Ahern, then the prime minister, issued a blanket apology to the victims of the abuse.

Since then, the accusations and the question of justice have been a preoccupation across Ireland and among Irish emigrants around the world. In 2002, the Catholic Church in Ireland agreed to pay $175 million to compensate victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy. A separate group has paid out some $1.5 billion so far to more than 10,000 people who have claimed they were abused in state and church-run institutions.

Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, an American group that maintains an Internet archive of material related to Catholic abuse, said that the report had failed by not going far enough.

“The report is significant in that it provides a detailed anatomy of how the abuse occurred and the institutions in which it occurred,” he said in an interview. “The problem is that you spend almost 10 years and who knows how much money, and you never get to the point of saying who was responsible.”

Wall Street bubbles; -- Always the same

J Ottman Lithographic Company

Created/Published May 22, 1901

Mortgaging the White House

by: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Finally, here we are at the end of this week of a hundred days. As everyone in the Western world probably knows by now, this benchmark for assessing presidencies goes back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who arrived at the White House in the depths of the Great Depression. In his first hundred days, FDR came out swinging. He shut down the banks, threw the money lenders from the temple, cranked out so much legislation so fast he would shout to his secretary, Grace Tully, "Grace, take a law!" Will said Congress didn't pass bills anymore; it just waved as they went by. President Obama's been busy, but contrary to many of the pundits, he's no FDR. Our new president got his political education in the world of ward politics, and seems to have adopted a strategy from the machine of that city's longtime boss, the late Richard J. Daley, father of the current mayor there. "Don't make no waves," one of Daley's henchmen advised, "don't back no losers."Your opinion of Obama's first 100 days depends, of course, on your own vantage point. But we'd argue that as part of his bending over backwards to support the banks and avoid the losers, he has blundered mightily in his choice of economic advisers. Last week, at a hearing of the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) monitoring the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner tried to correct AFL-CIO General Counsel Damon Silvers. "I've practiced law and you've been a banker," Silvers said. Never, Geithner replied, "I've only been in public service." We beg to differ. Read Jo Becker and Gretchen Morgenson's front-page profile of Secretary Geithner in Monday's New York Times, and you'll see how Robert Rubin protege Geithner, during the five years he was running the New York Federal Reserve, fell under the spell of the big barons of banking to whom he would one day help shovel overly generous sums of money at taxpayer expense. During "an era of unbridled and ultimately disastrous risk-taking by the financial industry," the Times reported, "... He forged unusually close relationships with executives of Wall Street's giant financial institutions. "His actions, as a regulator and later a bailout king, often aligned with the industry's interests and desires, according to interviews with financiers, regulators and analysts and a review of Federal Reserve records." Wined and dined at the Four Seasons, and in corporate dining rooms and fine homes by the very men whose greed and judgment helped bring on the Great Collapse, Geithner became so much a favorite of the Club that former Citigroup chairman Sandy Weill talked with him about becoming the bank's CEO. According to Becker and Morgenson, "Even as banks complain that the government has attached too many intrusive strings to its financial assistance, a range of critics - lawmakers, economists and even former Federal Reserve colleagues - say that the bailout Mr. Geithner has played such a central role in fashioning is overly generous to the financial industry at taxpayer expense." The two reporters write that Geithner "repeatedly missed or overlooked signs" that the financial system was self-destructing. "When he did spot trouble, analysts say, his responses were too measured, or too late." In choosing a man to manage the bailout of the banks who's so cozy with its players, and then installing as his White House economic adviser Larry Summers, who in the Clinton administration took a laissez-faire attitude toward the financial industry which would later enrich him, the president bought into the old fantasy that what's best for Wall Street is best for America. With these two as his financial gatekeepers, President Obama's now in the position of Louis XVI being advised by Marie Antoinette to have another piece of cake until that rumble in the streets has passed on by. In fact, other Wall Street insiders - many of them big contributors to the Obama presidential campaign, and progressive in their concern for the public interest - privately are expressing serious concerns that Geithner, Summers and their associates are leading the president and taxpayers down a path toward further economic disaster. This week, as Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin of Illinois unsuccessfully fought for a congressional amendment he said would have helped 1.7 million Americans save their homes from foreclosure, the senator told a radio station back home that, "The banks - hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created - are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place." He could say the same of the White House.

Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program, "Bill Moyers Journal," which airs Friday nights on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at "http://www.pbs.org/moyers" www.pbs.org/moyers

swine flu is flu revisited from 1918??

Just finished watching a repeat of a documentary on PBS that aired about 2 years
ago, talking about the flu epidemic of Spain in 1918. They seem to have
narrowed the place it originated down to a military camp in 1915 in a small town
in France. There it had all of the elements one of the virologists said it
needed that would work together to create the virus: the presence of swine, the
presence of birds (chickens), and horribly cramped quarters full of humans.

One of the scientists talked about the records of doctors who studied and
documented the epidemic. Towards the end of the program, one of the scientists
said he felt compelled to "bring the virus back to life" and do animal studies
to try and understand it better. And then he proceeded to it if I got it
straight. My mind began to wander at that point.

As I was listening, like a jack hammer pounding on the back of my brain, was
uncomfortable fear thinking about a book I read 20-some years ago, by Richard
Addams, called, _The Plague Dogs_, which was about two dogs in an experimental
research lab that have been injected with a horrible plague virus and end up
escaping out into the countryside. I also remember vividly a scene in _12
Monkeys_ where a mad scientist willingly turns a lethal virus loose upon the
planet.

Call me paranoid, but this swine flu thing sounds a helluva lot like the
"purulent pneumonia" that struck France in 1918.

rgds,
lisa


From stanford u website:
The Influenza Pandemic of 1918

The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.

(click on link to take you to the stanford u site)

Tea Party on April 15, 2009, in Lansing, Michigan

I wonder why the major media moguls did not cover this?

Tax Day Tea Party

http://taxdayteaparty.com/

t r u t h o u t | Suspected Nazi Guard to Arrive in Germany From US

picture to go with the reuters link, which you can follow below the big article below

Federal court halts deportation of Demjanjuk

By M.R. KROPKO

CLEVELAND (AP) - The return of alleged Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk to Germany for trial on war crimes was delayed again Tuesday by a federal court, shortly after six immigration officers removed the retired autoworker from his suburban Cleveland home in a wheelchair.

A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay until it could further consider Demjanjuk's motion to reopen the U.S. case that ordered him deported, in which he says painful medical ailments would make travel to Germany torturous.

The government planned to continue its legal battle in court, said Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney.

An arrest warrant in Germany claims Demjanjuk (pronounced dem-YAHN'-yuk) was an accessory to some 29,000 deaths during World War II at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Once in Germany, he could be formally charged in court.

Citing the need to act because of the possibility of Demjanjuk's imminent deportation, the court issued the stay without addressing the U.S. government's argument that the court had no jurisdiction to rule on Demjanjuk's appeal.

Former son-in-law and family spokesman Ed Nishnic said the family was relieved the stay was granted.

"We're delighted. We're prepared to make our arguments with the 6th Circuit, and it's just a shame that Mr. Demjanjuk had to go through the hell that he went through once again this morning," he said as he walked into a federal building in Cleveland where Demjanjuk was being held.

It was unclear whether Demjanjuk would be returned to his home in Seven Hills. Nishnic was allowed access to Demjanjuk while he was in custody but was told that no decision had been made on whether he would be released.

As Demjanjuk's wheelchair was loaded into a van at their home, his wife, Vera, sobbed and held her hands to her mouth. As the van moved down the street, Vera turned and waved, sobbing in the arms of a granddaughter.

Several family members, including a 10-year-old grandson, were in the home when the officers removed Demjanjuk.

Nishnic said Demjanjuk, a native of Ukraine, told his family, "I love you," in Ukrainian and was aware that the officers were there to take him to Germany.

Nishnic said his former father-in-law moaned in pain as he was placed in the wheelchair.

"It was horrendous. He was in such pain. I wouldn't want to see anyone go through something like that," said granddaughter Olivia Nishnic, 20.

John Demjanjuk Jr., who filed the appeal with the 6th Circuit earlier Tuesday, said the government hadn't lived up to earlier understandings of how his father would be removed.

They told me that they would have an ambulance. They told me we would have three to five days' notice, and obviously you can't believe everything the government tells you," he told The Associated Press by phone while headed back to Cleveland from the federal appeals court in Cincinnati.

He predicted his father would not survive long enough in Germany to stand trial.

"If he is deported, if this madness and inhumane action is not stopped by the 6th Circuit, he will live out his life in a (German) hospital. He will never be put on trial," he said. "It makes absolutely no sense that the Germans, after nearly killing him in combat, would try to kill him once again."

The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center said it was undeterred.

"We remain confident that John Demjanjuk will be deported and finally face the bar of justice for the unspeakable crimes he committed during World War II when he was a guard at the Sobibor death camp," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, Wiesenthal Center founder.

"His work at the Sobibor death camp was to push men, women and children into the gas chamber. He had no mercy, no pity and no remorse for the families whose lives he was destroying forever," Hier said.

Deborah Dwork, a professor of Holocaust history at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., said the Demjanjuk case illustrates that there is no statute of limitations on the crime of genocide.

"The issue is holding him accountable, no matter what his age," she said.

Dwork said she believes German prosecutors acted cautiously and deliberately in bringing their case because they can't afford to run a weak trial. Germany's image in the eyes of the international community would be tarnished if Demjanjuk is acquitted, she said.

Demjanjuk, a native Ukrainian, has denied being a Nazi guard and claims he was a prisoner of war of the Germans. He came to the United States after the war as a refugee.

Demjanjuk had been tried in Israel after accusations surfaced that he was the notorious Nazi guard "Ivan the Terrible" in Poland at the Treblinka death camp. He was found guilty in 1988 of war crimes and crimes against humanity, a conviction later overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.

A U.S. judge revoked his citizenship in 2002 based on Justice Department evidence showing he concealed his service at Sobibor and other Nazi-run death and forced labor camps.

An immigration judge ruled in 2005 he could be deported to Germany, Poland or Ukraine.

---

Associated Press Writers Thomas J. Sheeran in Cleveland, Terry Kinney in Cincinnati, Kantele Franko and Matt Leingang in Columbus, Devlin Barrett in Washington and Roland Losch in Munich contributed to this report.

t r u t h o u t | Suspected Nazi Guard to Arrive in Germany From US

Weirdos Riot: What's Wrong With the Buffalo News?

The article simultaneously inspires -- that many people gathered together non-violently for peace -- and disgusts -- the fed po po disrupting the gathering, causing an incident, then having zombie reporters twist it around. Go to: http://artvoice.com/issues/v7n29/getting_a_grip to see the whole story.

MySpace.com Blogs - Ron Paul MySpace Blog

The Front Fell Off.

This is a selection from an Onion-like site based in Australia. It seems too close to real for comfort....

Speech from MI U.S. Senator Carl Levin, on AIG Bonuses

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 18, 2009

Contact: Senator Levin's Office
Phone: 202.224.6221
Senate Floor Speech: A.I.G. Executives Should Follow Autoworkers Example

Mr. President, much has already been made of the recent action by A.I.G. to distribute $165 million in bonuses for some of the very employees that contributed to the company’s near collapse, the loss to our treasury of tens of billions of dollars, and the severe damage to our economy. I joined with 43 of my colleagues yesterday in signing a letter to the chief executive officer of A.I.G. to express our outrage that this kind of money could go out the door when the only reason the company survives today is the $170 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars that have been pumped into A.I.G. over the past 6 months.

I recognize that my disgust with this situation is not unique. But I want to briefly discuss the appalling double standard that has been revealed by the treatment of hundreds of thousands of honest autoworkers who are victims of the current financial crisis, compared to the treatment a few hundred over-paid financial executives whose poor judgment and greed helped cause A.I.G.’s and our nation’s financial crisis.

Right now, in large part because of the mortgage fraud, sleazy lending practices, outrageous financial engineering, and inadequate regulatory oversight that caused the financial crisis, we are in a deep recession. The recession means that people aren’t buying cars, and many of those who want to buy a car can’t get a loan because credit is so tight. No one foresaw those circumstances back in 2007, when the U.A.W. last negotiated a labor contract for this country’s autoworkers. That four-year contract was supposed to last through 2011. When the bottom fell out on the economy, the future of the Big Three auto companies was called into question. The auto industry came to the federal government for help, and we offered assistance in the form of bridge loans with the understanding that all the stakeholders would have to sacrifice to make this a fair deal for taxpayers.

The autoworkers response was not, “We signed a four year contract, and we aren’t changing a word.” They could have taken that position, but they didn’t. Instead, the workers renegotiated their contract. They agreed to significant reductions in their pay and benefits. They are doing what they can to help their companies survive and help get our nation out of this economic ditch.

Contrast those autoworkers with A.I.G. executives. When the economy began tanking, A.I.G.’s stock nosedived, its assets plummeted in value, and the company lost its AAA credit rating. Due to hundreds of billions of dollars in commitments which A.I.G. had issued, called credit default swaps, but which they failed to support with reserves, A.I.G.’s executives came hat in hand to the government. The government responded with billions of dollars in aid, not to protect A.I.G., but to safeguard the U.S. economy from the threat posed by an A.I.G. collapse.

A.I.G.’s executives, including the Financial Products Division that helped bring A.I.G. down, were saved from bankruptcy. To recover from A.I.G.’s financial fiasco and repay the government loans, it should have been clear that everyone at A.I.G. would have to make sacrifices to sustain the company and rebuild the U.S. economy. Unlike the autoworkers, however, A.I.G.’s executives didn’t step up to the plate. The 400 or so A.I.G. employees at the Financial Products Division signed employment contracts in the spring of 2008 that promised millions of dollars in bonuses and retention payments. When A.I.G. attempted to renegotiate those employment contracts, the Financial Products executives refused. They demanded their millions, and A.I.G. complied at the same time the company is borrowing tens of billions from American taxpayers.

This week, according to information obtained by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, 73 A.I.G. executives received so-called “retention” bonuses of $1 million or more. That’s 73 millionaires out of the A.I.G. fiasco that is taking billions of taxpayer dollars to fix. 11 of those millionaires took the money and left – they don’t even work at A.I.G. anymore.

Wall Street has been out of control for years now, with high-risk financial concoctions and with excessive compensation that is too often unrelated to performance or shareholder value. But the contrast between assembly line workers in the auto industry giving up their bonuses and benefits to keep the Big Three in business, while executives who drove A.I.G. over a cliff thumb their noses at the very taxpayers bailing them out is too much to go unnoticed.

The greed and chutzpah shown by these executives is reprehensible – unacceptable to me, unacceptable to my constituents, and unacceptable to every American who believes, as I do, that our nation perseveres through hard times by working towards our common interests and making shared sacrifice. American taxpayers are pouring billions into A.I.G., even as millions of Americans have lost their jobs. Many more have made sacrifices like the autoworkers to help their employers and their families survive.

A.I.G. employees need to be clear: without the U.S. government, there would be no A.I.G., and they would have no job and no salary, let alone a bonus, let alone a million-dollar bonus. In these exceedingly difficult times, A.I.G. executives should follow the example set by American autoworkers: renegotiate their employment contracts and accept compensation that doesn’t shock and offend the American taxpayers who are keeping their company and this economy afloat.

Toward a Declaration of a Global Ethic

Here is a version another group came up with a few years back that a friend (Hi Brad) directed me to. If you click on this site you'll see a link that will take you to The Principles.


The Initial Declaration is printed below. The Principles were written as explication of the Declaration. As you read, please keep in your mind that this is a document created by fallible women and men. It is an attempt to articulate principles, common to the ancient guidelines for human behavior found in the teachings of all the religions of the world, that are pertinent for today and the time to come. Consider its words from your own perspective, remembering the guidance imparted to you by the wise ones of your tradition, whatever that may be.
If you reproduce this material, please note that it is copyrighted by the Council for the Parliament of the World's Religions.
The Declaration of a Global Ethic
The world is in agony. The agony is so pervasive and urgent that we are compelled to name its manifestations so that the depth of this pain may be made clear.
Peace eludes us ... the planet is being destroyed ... neighbors live in fear ... women and men are estranged from each other ... children die!
This is abhorrent
We condemn the abuses of Earth's ecosystems.
We condemn the poverty that stifles life's potential; the hunger that weakens the human body, the economic disparities that threaten so many families with ruin.
We condemn the social disarray of the nations; the disregard for justice which pushes citizens to the margin; the anarchy overtaking our communities; and the insane death of children from violence. In particular we condemn aggression and hatred in the name of religion.
But this agony need not be.
It need not be because the basis for an ethic already exists. This ethic offers the possibility of a better individual and global order, and leads individuals away from despair and societies away from chaos.
We are women and men who have embraced the precepts and practices of the world's religions:
We affirm that a common set of core values is found in the teachings of the religions, and that these form the basis of a global ethic.
We affirm that this truth is already known, but yet to be lived in heart and action.
We affirm that there is an irrevocable, unconditional norm for all areas of life, for families and communities, for races, nations, and religions. There already exist ancient guidelines for human behavior which are found in the teachings of the religions of the world and which are the condition for a sustainable world order.
We Declare:
We are interdependent. Each of us depends on the well-being of the whole, and so we have respect for the community of living beings, for people, animals, and plants, and for the preservation of Earth, the air, water and soil.
We take individual responsibility for all we do. All our decisions, actions, and failures to act have consequences.
We must treat others as we wish others to treat us. We make a commitment to respect life and dignity, individuality and diversity, so that every person is treated humanely, without exception. We must have patience and acceptance. We must be able to forgive, learning from the past but never allowing ourselves to be enslaved by memories of hate. Opening our hearts to one another, we must sink our narrow differences for the cause of the world community, practicing a culture of solidarity and relatedness.
We consider humankind our family. We must strive to be kind and generous. We must not live for ourselves alone, but should also serve others, never forgetting the children, the aged, the poor, the suffering, the disabled, the refugees, and the lonely. No person should ever be considered or treated as a second-class citizen, or be exploited in any way whatsoever. There should be equal partnership between men and women. We must not commit any kind of sexual immorality. We must put behind us all forms of domination or abuse.
We commit ourselves to a culture of non-violence, respect, justice, and peace. We shall not oppress, injure, torture, or kill other human beings, forsaking violence as a means of settling differences.
We must strive for a just social and economic order, in which everyone has an equal chance to reach full potential as a human being. We must speak and act truthfully and with compassion, dealing fairly with all, and avoiding prejudice and hatred. We must not steal. We must move beyond the dominance of greed for power, prestige, money, and consumption to make a just and peaceful world.
Earth cannot be changed for the better unless the consciousness of individuals is changed first. We pledge to increase our awareness by disciplining our minds, by meditation, by prayer, or by positive thinking. Without risk and a readiness to sacrifice there can be no fundamental change in our situation. Therefore we commit ourselves to this global ethic, to understanding one another, and to socially beneficial, peace-fostering, and nature-friendly ways of life.
We invite all people, whether religious or not, to do the same.
Given at the 1993 Parliament of the World's Religions, September 4, 1993, in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Text of Declaration and Principles © 1993, Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions

http://www.conjure.com/CTS/ethic.html

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Karen Armstrong is the lady speaking.

Charter For Compassion :: home

http://charterforcompassion.org/

Why I'm Not Now and Have Never Been the Democrats' "Rush Limbaugh"

by Michael Moore
Oscar and Emmy-winning director
Posted March 6, 2009 | 04:46 AM (EST)



I have watched with mild amusement this week the self-immolation of the Republican Party as it bows before the altar of Rush Limbaugh, begging for mercy, pleading for forgiveness, breathlessly seeking guidance and wisdom from The Oracle.
President Obama and the Democratic Party have wasted no time in pointing out to the American people this marriage from hell, tying Rush like a rock around the collective Republican neck and hoping for its quick descent to the netherworld of irrelevance.
But some commentators (Richard Wolffe of Newsweek, Chuck Todd of NBC News, etc.) have likened this to "what Republicans tried to do to the Democrats with Michael Moore." Perhaps. But there is one central difference: What I have believed in, and what I have stood for in these past eight years -- an end to the war, establishing universal health care, closing Guantanamo and banning torture, making the rich pay more taxes and aggressively going after the corporate chiefs on Wall Street -- these are all things which the majority of Americans believe in too. That's why in November the majority voted for the guy I voted for. The majority of Americans rejected the ideology of Rush and embraced the same issues I have raised consistently in my movies and books.
How did this happen? Considering how, for the past eight years, the Republican machine thought they could somehow smear and damage the Democrats if they said it was "the party of Michael Moore," it appears that the American public heard them loud and clear and decided that, 'hey, if you say Michael Moore is connected to the Democrats, then the Democrats must be OK!'

During this past election, a Democrat in Michigan, Mark Schauer, was running against the incumbent Republican congressman, Rep. Tim Walberg. Schauer asked me to endorse him and campaign for him, and I did. The Republicans were thrilled. They acted like they had been handed manna from heaven. They filled the airwaves with attack ads showing pictures of me and asking voters, 'is this the guy you want influencing your congressman?' The voters of western Michigan said "YES!" and threw the Republican out of office. The newly elected congressman told me his poll numbers had gone up once the Republicans started running ads likening him to me.
There have been over a half-dozen attack documentaries on me (Michael Moore Hates America, Fahrenhype 9/11, etc.), plus a feature film starring Kelsey Grammer and James Woods that had me being slapped silly for 83 minutes. Several books have been written by the Right in a concerted attempt to denounce me. One book, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, had me listed at #1. The author was so sure people would know why, he didn't even bother to write a chapter on me like he did for the other 99. You just get to the end of the book and all it says is "#1" with nothing but a big picture of me that takes up a full page.
What made the Republicans so sure that Americans would recoil upon the mere mention of my name, or by simply showing a photo of my face?
The result of this was one colossal backfire. The more they attacked me, the more the public decided to check out who this "devil" was and what he was saying. And -- oops! -- more than a few people liked what they saw. Overnight I went from having a small, loyal following to having millions go to movie theaters to watch... documentaries? Wow.
Yes, the more the Right went after me, the more people got to hear what I was saying -- and eventually the majority, for some strange reason, ended up agreeing with me -- not Rush Limbaugh -- and elected Barack Obama as president of the United States, a man who promised to end the war, bring about universal health care, close Guantanamo, stop torture, tax the rich, and rein in the abusive masters of Wall Street.
Think about this road I've traveled. At the beginning of the Bush years, I was pretty much an outsider, referred to as being on the "far left." I usually found myself holding viewpoints that differed from the majority of the people in this country. When I spoke out against the war -- before it even started -- I was marginalized by the mainstream media and then booed off the Oscar stage in "liberal Hollywood" for commenting about a "fictitious" president. Seventy percent of the public back then supported the war and approved of the job George W. Bush was doing.
But I stuck to what I believed in, kept churning out my movies, and never looked back. The Right and the White House spokespeople came after me time after time. President Bush 41 called me an "a**" on TV, and I became a favorite punching bag at both the 2004 and the 2008 Republican National Conventions in speeches by John McCain and Joe Lieberman. On the front page of this morning's Washington Post, Mark McKinnon, a top adviser to George W. Bush, revealed -- for the first time -- the Bush White House strategy of singling me out in the hopes of turning the country against me and the Democratic Party. Here's what the Post said:
Mark McKinnon, a top adviser in President George W. Bush's campaigns, acknowledged the value of picking a divisive opponent. "We used a similar strategy by making Michael Moore the face of the Democratic Party," he said of the documentary filmmaker.
In the end it all proved to be a big strategic mistake on their part. Thanks to the Republican attacks on me, average Joes and Janes started to listen to what I had to say. Contrary to Richard Wolffe's assessment that "there were no Democrats as far as I can remember who were saying they stood with Michael Moore," Democrats, in fact, have stood side by side with me during all of this. Here's the Congressional Black Caucus supporting me on Capitol Hill in 2004. Here's Terry McAuliffe, the head of the Democratic National Committee, enthusiastically attending the premiere of "Fahrenheit 9/11" with two dozen senators and members of Congress. Here's a group of Democratic congresspeople endorsing my film Sicko in the chambers of the House Judiciary Committee in 2007. And here's President Jimmy Carter inviting me to sit with him in his box at the Democratic National Convention. Far from making me into a pariah, the Republicans helped the Democratic leadership realize that to identify themselves publicly with me meant reaching the millions who followed and supported my work.
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Though John Kerry lost in 2004, my focus that year had been to get young voters registered and out to vote (I visited over 60 campuses). And so, just a few short months after the release of Fahrenheit 9/11, America's young voters became the only age group that John Kerry won. They set a new record for the largest 18 to 24-year-old turnout since 1972, when 18-year-olds were given the right to vote, thus sending a signal about what would happen four years later with the youth revolution that ignited Obama's campaign.
After Fahrenheit, I kept speaking out, the Republican machine kept attacking me, and two years later, in 2006, the American public sided with me -- not Rush Limbaugh -- and voted in the Democrats to take over both houses of Congress.
And then, finally, two years after that, we won the White House.
That's the difference -- The American people agree with me, not Rush.
The American public believes that health care is a right and not a commodity.
They want tougher environmental laws and believe that global warming is real, not a myth.
They believe that the rich should be taxed more.
They want to go after the crooks on Wall Street who got us into this mess and the politicians who enabled them.
They want more money invested in education, science, technology and infrastructure -- not in more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
They believe that, whether Democrats or Republicans have been in power, wealthy corporations have been calling the shots for the past few decades and the American people's voices have not been heard as their country has slowly been driven into the ground. Our politicians and our media have been bought and paid for by the highest bidders and we don't trust them anymore.
Finally -- they want us to get the hell out of Iraq and to investigate the criminals who sent us there for fictitious reasons.
Obama and the Democrats going after Rush is a good thing and will not do for him what the Republican attack plan did for me -- namely, the majority of Americans will never be sympathetic to him because they simply don't agree with him.
The days of using my name as a pejorative are now over. The right wing turned me into an accidental spokesperson for the liberal, majority agenda. Thank you, Republican Party. You helped us elect one of the most liberal senators to the presidency of the United States. We couldn't have done it without you.

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