News October 2015

From the week of October 18th to October 25th, 2015

1. How to Fight Homelessness. This deserves at least one sign for next week’s meeting: fight homelessness: stop foreclosures.
2. Rise Up October: Actions Oct. 22-24 against police brutality. Major march at Washington Sq. Park on Saturday, Oct. 24 at 11 am.
3. Iceland sentences 26 bankers to a combined 74 years in prison
4. Economist Raj Chetty’s Proposals on Inequality Interesting across the Isle
5. Bernie Sanders’s Highly Sensible Plan to Turn Post Offices Into Banks
6. Benton County Debtors Prison lawsuit
   • Ending modern day debtors prisons
7. Prosecuting corporate executives
   • At Sunday’s meeting, we discussed who might be prosecuted. We nominated:
     • Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase)
     • HSBC (for violating deferred prosecution agreements)
     • Many other bank executives under Sarbanes Oxley (a law passed after Enron to hold CEO’s responsibility — the DoJ seems to have forgotten it exists)
     • Eric Holder (betraying public trust)
     • VW and other auto executives (falsifying emissions)
     • Democracy Now and others are nominating Exxon
8. Occupy as Meaning-making.  Has anyone noticed that a promising psychic rebellion against neoliberal thought has been a new a focus on meaning in life (not of life). Is that what we do at Occupy OWS?  Is that what Occupy is? Gerald kinda started this conversation a few weeks ago when he talked about meditation as a political practice of sorts, while also critiquing the fad surrounding it. Here are some podcasts on the subject.
   1. Meaning in Life from the RN’s the Philosopher Zone
   2. The Accidental Atheist from RN’s Earshot
   3. Should Universities Ignore the Meaning of Life from RN Minefield.
   4. And a bit less directly related, Yuval Harari talking about his mega-best seller Sapiens on Econ Talk.
9. Great Exchange in Crane’s.  Labor and the Re-entry community amazingly joined forced this week to rip apart a union bashing opinion piece by Koch-brothers flack, Richard Berman, purporting to cynically carry the mantel of racial inequality in bashing the Building Trades.  Follow it here.

From the week of October 12th to October 18th, 2015

1. Microfinance is mostly a scam (mathbabe)
2. TPP: Foie Gras for Corporations; Dead Rats for Workers
   • Here’s the leaked Trans-Pacific Partnership document that has some high-powered advocates worried
   • National Mobilization Against Global Corporate Domination (TPP, TISA, TTIP and more)
   • TPP Agreement Reached But Not a Done Deal
3. VW is not the only emissions cheater.
4. Occupy Radio: Thomas Linzey, Fight Against Corporations
   • First 6 minutes is a general news analysis
   • Then, long interview of Thomas Linzey — long but good and you can get a sense of what its about fairly quickly which is.
     • Corporations’ rights are deeply embedded in our legal system. For communities to gain control, they need to reform the whole structure
5. Color of Debt: How Collection Suits Squeeze Black Neighborhoods
6. An Interview with Edward Snowden, remember him?
7. The 158 Families funding the presidential election.
8. Investigating the mystery of soaring generic drug prices.  What mystery? Martin Shkreli and Turing were the worst, but drug companies are widely taking advantage of a flawed system.
9. McTeachers? Really? Our schools are now so desperate that they are marketing for McDonalds?
10. Prosecuting CEOs. The U.S. has said they will begin prosecuting executives for corporate wrong-doing. Here is the first case. Should we put together a list of who else should be prosecuted?
11. Walmart Heirs See $11 Billion Disappear in a Day as Shares Tank
12. WTF!!!   NYC Map The Homeless
13. Bernie Sanders Rejects Donation From Greedy Pharma CEO Martin Shkreli
14. Sanders campaign reports bringing in $1.4 million from Dem debate
15. Danny Meyer Restaurants to Eliminate Tipping
16. Structural Reform Beyond Glass-Steagall: Break up banks, put shareholders at risk.
17. Conference on Platform Cooperativism: The Internet, Ownership, Democracy. FREE REGISTRATION.
18. March on October 24th against police brutality.
    • actions on Oct. 22 and 23 as well.

From the week of October 5th to October 11th, 2015

1. Trans-Pacific Partnership deal inked, now it gets on a “fast track” to Congress.
   • Worst deal you’ve never heard of.
   • Free Trade Charade
   • Good sites for TPP info: Popular Resistance, Global Trade Watch, Trade Justice Metro
   • Now that you are informed and angry, get active
2. High lead levels in Flint, Michigan water after unelected manager switches source Another part of the story of what happens when elected governments are replaced with appointed managers who see their mandate as making creditors happy.
   • background on this topic. Michigan’s Hostile Takeover
3. Former Fed Chair Bernanke: Wall St Execs Should Have Gone to Jail for Crisis. What took him so long to speak up? Why is he saying this now? To sell books, I guess.
4. U.S. “accidentally” bombs of hospital in Afghanistan for over an hour. We claim we are there in an “advisory and counter-terrorism capacity”.
5. Children today could work until they are 100, predicts futurologist
6. The Color of Debt: How Collection Suits Squeeze Black Neighborhoods. ProPublica’s first-of-its-kind analysis shows that the suits are far more common in black communities than white ones.
7. The Best Way to Reduce the Prison Population. The Economist magazine argues that “though sentencing reform is obviously needed too, the election of just a handful of “smart-on-crime” DAs in and around big cities like Houston, Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles could cut America’s incarceration rate even more dramatically”.
8. Making Money from Misery? Disaster Capitalism from the Migrant Crisis to Afghanistan and Haiti
9. Student Debt is Worse than You Think. The terrible statistics of historically black colleges reflects just how hard it is to help the people who need it most in the current system.

From the week of September 28th to October 4th, 2015

1. Hedge Funds: the Ultimate Absentee Landlords
2. the CFPB, Disparate Impact, and Conflict of Interests
3. Phishing for Phools
   •  “But, inevitably, the competitive pressures for businessmen to practice deception and manipulation in free markets lead us to buy, and pay too much for, products we do not need , to work at jobs that give us little sense of purpose, and to wonder why our lives have gone amiss.”
   • Notable comment considering both co-authors are Nobel winners and one is married to Fed Chair Janet Yellin.
4. Support for Planned Parenthood is down, support for its federal funding is not
5. Sexism and executive pay: Is Planned Parenthood’s President Overpaid?
6. Blockchain emerges as transaction technology for global banking.
   • Blockchain simplified: ‘Forget currency, bitcoin’s tech is the revolution’
   • New kids on the blockchain
   • Citi, HSBC Partner With R3CEV As Blockchain Project grows
   • Thirteen more top banks join R3 blockchain consortium
7. Bernie Sanders Raises $26 Million, Exceeding Obama’s 2008 Pace
8. India slashes rates by 50 basis points
9. Financial Markets:
   • Dow needs to jump to avoid worst year since financial crisis
   • Capital flight darkens economic prospects for emerging markets (removed from pay-wall)
   • Four reasons the market won’t crash