#OWS Is About Justice, Not Wealth or Class
Rachel Maddow hit on something in this segment with Glenn Greenwald that dovetails with this excellent Matt Taibbi piece about the Occupy Wall Street movement. It's a message that isn't widely reported in mainstream media reports, and because it isn't reported, it plays nicely into conservative criticisms that this movement is all about class warfare. It isn't. What it is about is justice.
Taibbi writes of a conversation he had with someone at a party the night before:
Oh, Christ, I thought. He’s saying the protesters are hypocrites because they’re using banks. I sighed.
"Listen," I said, "where else are you going to put three hundred thousand dollars? A shopping bag?"
"Well," he said, "it's just, they're protests are all about... You know..."
"Dude," I said. "These people aren't protesting money. They're not protesting banking. They're protesting corruption on Wall Street."
"Whatever," he said, shrugging.
These nutty criticisms of the protests are spreading like cancer. Earlier that same day, I'd taped a TV segment on CNN with Will Cain from the National Review, and we got into an argument on the air. Cain and I agreed about a lot of the problems on Wall Street, but when it came to the protesters, we disagreed on one big thing.
Cain said he believed that the protesters are driven by envy of the rich.
"I find the one thing [the protesters] have in common revolves around the human emotions of envy and entitlement," he said. "What you have is more than what I have, and I'm not happy with my situation."
But this isn't about envy and entitlement. I can understand the misunderstanding in some ways, but it's just not about that. The people out there in Zucotti Park are there because they have to live by different rules than the 1 percent. It's really that simple. If they default on loans, they lose everything. If the 1 percent defaults, they get government bailouts. If they commit crimes, they go to jail. If the 1 percent commits crimes, they aren't even investigated.
Glenn Greenwald points all the way back to Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon as evidence that there are two justice systems in this country: One for 99 percent and another for the privileged 1 percent.
MADDOW: And that is an important -- that last transition point, that it became not just something -- not just an unpleasantness to be avoided, but it became an active political good to insulate elites from accountability for the good of the institutions that they represent, for the good of the nation's stability, that justified all of the pardons of the Reagan administration officials after Iran Contra. It's what you say - you name a chapter, "Too Big to Jail" as opposed to " too big to fail," coming after our discussion with Eric Schneiderman, New York's attorney general who does not believe in too big to jail. How did it become an active political good to excuse wrongdoing rather than just bad to be avoided?
GREENWALD: Well, keep in mind, there's a big split on this question between media and political elites on the one hand and ordinary Americans on the other. So, as you pointed out, the pardon of Richard Nixon was something that triggered revulsion among the American population. You even listen to it now and you recoil at the idea that this criminal, this clearly fragrantly criminal individual, Richard Nixon, was simply protected by virtue of a status, at the same time that hundreds of thousands of Americans were being prosecuted for trivial offenses. And so, what you see is that there's an elite class that supported that pardon and it continues to say, we cannot have investigations of the Bush torture regime. It was good that Casper Weinberger was pardoned because he's a good man who doesn't belong in prison. And so, you see this elite class whose interest it is to maintain this elite immunity constantly arguing for it, whereas if you look at polls, it's not just the pardon of Nixon that triggers revulsion. At the beginning of the Obama presidency, large numbers, large percentages of American, majorities, wanted investigations into what the Bush torture scheme, whether the eavesdropping program, whether the obstruction of justice were criminal and illegal because inculcated in the American mind is the idea that we are all equal before the law. And it's because we're not you see citizen anger and loss of faith and legitimacy of political institutions.
MADDOW: And the reason we have faith in those institutions is not just because they are institutions and they are stable, but because we want to believe they are just. Now, it's, I think, a transient point and a confrontational point, and I think you make it beautifully, Glenn. So, thank you for writing this book. I think it's a really big deal and I think it's really important.
Rep. Paul Ryan gave a speech today at the Heritage Foundation alleging that President Obama is stirring up these protests by creating class divides, as if there were no reason for people to be angry other than because they listened to what the President said.
Responding to Mr. Obama’s comment that the Republican job plan is “let’s have dirtier air, dirtier water, and less people with health insurance,” Mr. Ryan said, “Can you think of a pettier way to describe sincere disagreements between the two parties on regulation and health care?”
Mr. Ryan, speaking at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said Mr. Obama is engaged in the cheap point-scoring he’d pledged to transcend.
“Instead of working together where we agree, the president has opted for divisive rhetoric and the broken politics of the past,” Mr. Ryan said. “He is going from town to town impugning the motives of Republicans, setting up straw men and scapegoats, and engaging in intellectually lazy arguments as he tries to build support for punitive tax hikes on job creators.”
WorkingAmerica.org's response echoes Taibbi and Greenwald:
Where has Ryan been when it comes to reining in the big banks and the dodgy practices that caused the financial crisis? Where has he been when here’s a chance to put people to work on infrastructure projects? Where has he been when it’s time to help keep people in their homes or make it easier to pay for college? Where has he been when it comes to protecting working people from abuses by insurance companies, banks or their bosses? The same place he’s always stood: on the other side.
Give politicians like Ryan a tiny bit of sympathy: they’re trying to defend the same policies aimed at the top 1% that they always have at the very moment that a broad movement is emerging asking for politics and the economy to work for the other 99% as well.
It is and will continue to be about justice and fairness. All but 1 percent of us are tired of seeing these bankaneers dismantle everything in this country but their own profits. Will the media pick up on that theme? It seems doubtful.
Maddow, Greenwald and Taibbi. Three beacons of truth in the fog of media propaganda.
I switched from local cable to AT&T Uverse. The signal is atrocious and I get pauses and pixelated screens every day. The single reason that I do not call them yesterday to cancel my service is because now I can get Current TV.
"Someday somebody related to some of these sufferers, these victims, these collaterally damaged souls, may try to kill you. And I have to tell you, I think you’ll have it coming." - Christopher Cooper
Their internet service is pretty shitty, too.
Same Comcast that didn't carry MSNBC until a few years ago. Oh, how bout those 50 docs to see before you die? Got that memorized;)
"I've never pictured Hell as a place of fire, sulfur and demons with pitchforks, I've always imagined it as a place of excess and broken dreams and hopes."
No matter what the administration manages to pass, student loan reform (costs and interest rates are the same), credit card reform (interest rates remain the same), wall street reform (so far has accomplished nothing), health insurance (yes you can have it if you can afford it) - None of these things matter without Justice.
No matter how much we want to look at the pretty things in the window (see above) our system is rotting. No matter how many pretty things are accomplished (I forgot LLA - but remember Walmart didn't have to comply with it) this administration remains a failure in the Justice department.
And Justice matters.
Huh? What part of justice is not about the disparity of wealth and class? You make absolutely no sense. Stop letting Libertarians feed you hollow slogans.
for some reason people in this country love to pretend we're a classless society, when we have always been anything but. And it is amusing the lengths some are willing to go to perpetuate the denial.
Both Maddow and Greenwald made it clear, in the clip, that the class in power operates under a different set of rules, and thus the reason why people are losing faith in the system.
Injustice derives in a significant part, in its majority perhaps, from class and wealth issues.
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
It's part the Horatio Alger myth and what appears to be a desire of some OWS supporters to not alienate people by adopting the framing of the elite, Libertarians, and Ron Paul supporters on the non-existence of class and the irrelevance of growing income disparity. It's a pretty stupid move. The protests weren't called Occupy Wall Street for nothing.
Dude," I said. "These people aren't protesting money. They're not protesting banking. They're protesting corruption on Wall Street."
"Whatever," he said, shrugging. "
In short, J6P can't be bothered to think OR be educated. Too hard. Make head hurt. So they'll continue to vote against their best interests and let the 1% not only screw him, but use him to attack his fellow 99%ers.
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." -- Robert E. Howard
but I think it might be to begrudge some poor homeless guy a meal. If we want the top 1 to help out the bottom 99, the least the top 99 could do is help out the bottom 1.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/...
Resist We Much!
Those tasty gourmet pies have softened the resistance. Obesity is also a class issue.
"3 protesters barely on our property chained to a...drum...not causing any problems so I told the guys to just monitor them and let them freeze."
Shocking document revealing Fed attack on Occupy Portland 11/6/11
Bowls of soup would have a smarter choice than all those free pizzas (giving it the appearance of a big college party)
That's not a fair comparison. There are many times more pizza delivery places than delis, and pizza is good hot or cold. Let's not start nit-picking a young movement.
Maybe C&L could start a soup bowl drive?
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
gives the appearance of racism and bigotry against Italian Americans, if anything.
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
because Amato is an Italian man and the fact that only pizza gets donated is becoming suspect.
Amato is actually the suspect one.
(just kidding Amato)
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
It's hard to carry a protest sign and march and not spill soup all over yourself.
Not so with pizza. It's just a matter of what's practical.
. . . write and discuss how the Obama Administration - especially the Department of Justice - have given the wealthy and powerful a free pass on serious and widespread criminal activity . . .
ok, I get it so far . . .
. . . but then it somehow morphs into a conservative congressman being wrong for criticizing Obama.
Huh?
Corruption favors the wealthy.
Seriously, all the right has proposed are mentally defecient candidates. Frankly, it would be far more honest to just run on "the other side is just completely insane."
Maybe it's in Taibbi's book. We're talking about 35 years of this stuff. It's well ingrained into the government and the non-elected shadow government. Solve the 'republican problem' and we might be in a position to work on the 'too big to jail' problem.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
I'd venture to say that President Obama *is* stirring up these protests, but it's because he hasn't done what the folks that voted for him expected him to do. They're just reminding him we're still here.
What I find fascinating is that a novice like Ryan gets so much media face time but Al Franken (remember him?) are invisible. What's sadder than having no politicians going down to the OWS camps and saying hello is that, for somebody like Franken, there would be an immense upside to stepping and trying to assume some sort of leadership role, or at least as an ambassador for the movement.
I just can't accept the pathological reluctance of mainstream politicians to acknowledge the protests. It seems like a great way to put yourself on the national stage, much like Ryan did with his nutty plan, which leaves me the unpleasant feeling that none of the national playas really do support what OWS wants.
the intelligentsia benefits from the rules of this rigged game, they have incentive to preserve the status quo, in order to continue in their role as the quislings of capital.
Yes and no. While the OWS movement has actually benefited by republicans speaking out against it, the Democrats may not help the movement by getting integrally involved.
While the Democrats should be vocally calling out the republicans, because they surely have all the material they need to cut the republicans down to size, and Al Franken is MIA, i think Democrats heading into the OWS movement has its disadvantages, and they should be focusing their efforts on defeating republican talking points. Democrats should be swatting republican nonsense ideas like flies.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
you can run from the truth, you can hide, but let us hope that there is validity in the old saw, "the truth will out". because the truth is that,
"The history of all hitherto existing society† is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master‡ and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes."
if the OWS people are protesting about people "not playing by the rules", then they really don't know what they are doing. this moment in american history is about the rules we "play" by, only it is not a game; it is about american family's going begging while american corps. hire foreign workers for pennies on the dollar, it is about the completely legal practice of commodity speculation that makes profits for no work, while prices on everyday goods skyrockets for those who do work.
the ruling class always make rules that benefit capital, complain all you want, these people did not break any laws, they played by the rules, the rules they paid congress to enact. enforce the law all you want, the class system will still be in effect, our country will still lag behind in the production of value-added goods, and we will eventually go truly bankrupt.
nope, herein is the problem, the intelligentsia benefits from the rules of this rigged game, they have incentive to preserve the status quo, in order to continue in their role as the quislings of capital.
"The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones."
Consider the restoration of equal justice under law a strategy in a greater battle. A battle we can only win by playing by the rules, while we make them, for a change.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
for "justice." And, sort of like that dream that one day you'll find your "soulmate", I held on to it for a long time, probably too long. Of course, numerous personal incarcerations later, while watching the "too big to jail" continue to skirt prosecution, justice is now just one more of those things, like a soulmate or owning a house, that is simply illusory for me.
I think that "justice" is a fine concept for OWS to rail for. Just don't be surprised if what is sold to you is really Just_Ice®, marketed by some international conglomerate.
Best of luck guys; I hope I'm wrong.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
but frankly I just don't see that in the US justice system. A high profile prosecution is every prosecutor's dream. The idea that the 1% is immune is more myth than real. Tell it to the Enron crowd. Or Paul Allen. Or Conrad Black. Or Martha Stewart. Or any of the other titans of industry and commerce who have or are doing time. I believe there is an element of envy involved here but it is an envy based on the fact that so many Wall St firms did incredibly stupid things, illegal or not, but did not pay the price.Money insulates one from stupidity even better than it does from crime. That I can understand but unfortunately stupidity is not a crime. Such crimes as have been committed are subject to the same ponderous judicial process as anything else and the individuals involved have greater defensive resources. What would you have, a general round up of suspected criminals based on their wealth and not evidence of wrongdoing?
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Those are individual crimes, often committed by one 1%er against other 1%ers. Elite on elite crime.
not systemic crimes against the 99%.
When Eric Holder said there were prosecutions ongoing against wall street crime, he was referring to insider trading by a few individuals, not a prosecution of the systemic crime and corruption.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
on provable violations of existing laws and not the gut feeling that somebody got away with something. And you are right that most of these incredible machinations were actually supposedly sophisticated investors and brokers screwing each other. It was and remains a fascinating process to see forensically exposed but you still have to prove the crimes.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
The problem is that "wrongdoing" is based on the illegalities. And what's illegal for the very rich and the corporations is mostly defined by the laws that say what IS legal; which are increasingly written by those very same people, and passed into law by subservient politicians that are part of a government that is a subsidiary of businesss.
You seem to put forward the idea that the laws are the same for the rich and the poor; they are not.
Ryan and his ilk are full of contempt and that is why they act the way they do. They feel that there are inferior people in this country and clearly they deserve very little.
for the drummers whose instruments were unjustly stolen or vanalized. As drummer parents, Karoli and I understand that. But the consensus process is what it is so I will stifle my feelings on this matter.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/drummers-at-ows...
When the General Assembly tells me what kind of "justice" they seek I will listen. I will not take media elitists, like Rachel "Six Figures" Maddow, Taibbi, or Greenwald's word for it. They have no more right to speak for the occupants of Liberty Square than you or I.
"3 protesters barely on our property chained to a...drum...not causing any problems so I told the guys to just monitor them and let them freeze."
Shocking document revealing Fed attack on Occupy Portland 11/6/11
I expect both of you are tempted, at least occasionally, to contemplate a donation in kind to the OWS drummers.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Just as there is no "I" in consensus process, there is no symbol in donated cymbals.
"3 protesters barely on our property chained to a...drum...not causing any problems so I told the guys to just monitor them and let them freeze."
Shocking document revealing Fed attack on Occupy Portland 11/6/11
...how come I don't see any signs that say
DO YOR JOB ERIC HOLDER !!
or...
NO MORE BAILOUTS OBAMA ....? hmmm?
If the protesters want any respect, (they have to admit) that Obama and his attorney general suck...
and move the whole protest onto the Whitehouse front lawn.
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
are more of a tea bagger thing.... perhaps?
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
AND a OWS supporter? ...Is that even possible without having two personalities?
(splain to me lucy)
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
not your cup of tea I take...
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
I can smell a twenty percenter a mile away.
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
I'm going to need a chart.
who regard the brain as a vestigial organ.
I don't care much for most of Obama's policies, and I definitively don't agree with the astroturfing efforts of a couple of sociopathic billionaires. Perhaps you should visit the doctor. Your sense of smell is obviously not working, and that could be a symptom of a more serious condition.
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
you will vote for the lesser of two evils and you know it.
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
that feeling emanating from your guy may not be "logic" but an ulcer?
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
who is number one on your list?
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.
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
Oh, wait, not everyone is laughing:(
"I've never pictured Hell as a place of fire, sulfur and demons with pitchforks, I've always imagined it as a place of excess and broken dreams and hopes."
about pointing out the damage that 'Limited liability' and lobby power have caused.
A pulling back of the propaganda curtain of capitalism, the American Dream, and 'greatest nation' bullshit.
I think it originally started with MM's 'Roger and Me', and it has just taken a long time to seed.
make your own signs and get in with the movement. There is no "I" in Consensus Process.
"3 protesters barely on our property chained to a...drum...not causing any problems so I told the guys to just monitor them and let them freeze."
Shocking document revealing Fed attack on Occupy Portland 11/6/11
"Where has Ryan been when it comes to reining in the big banks and the dodgy practices that caused the financial crisis?"
Oh, he was there. You just couldn't see him under the banker's desk. ;)
Paul Ryan voted yes on the TARP bailout with no oversite.
(just like Obama) ...the hypocracy is deafening.
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
Demand Equal Justice Under Law now! For all, including the 1%.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
but what I see is ..
It's all about getting our voices heard.
The Right To Assemble, To Speak Freely, To Petition Our Government For Grievances ..
And have the Government DO SOMETHING about Our Grievances.
Now .. if that's *justice* (and in a way it certainly is) .. then .. Yes, it's all about justice.
But .. it's a whole lot more than just the Ruling Class getting away with murder (figuratively and literally) ..
A coupla thousand perp walks, prosecutions, imprisonments and asset forfeitures would be nice, but that certainly would not be enough to put millions back in their homes, millions back to work, millions getting the health care and education they need .. etc etc etc ..
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
our government and institutions which could (concievably) lead to more legitmate investment and job growth.
I don't see how we'll ever achieve those other things without justice because the 1%ers will always game the system without it. Think Rick Scott and his ilk.
:)
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
And the very classlessness of our society makes the conflict more volatile, not less.
By Frank Rich
http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/class-war-20...
One of the misunderstandings about the Occupy movement is that they are anti-capitalist. In fact, they are just anti-crony capitalism.
For example, they are supporting one successful Texas business owner who got shafted by the system .
As explained on one Occupy member's page http://tiny.cc/c8m6j, a business owner was involved in a civil dispute and paid millions of dollars to lawyers, and when he objected to additional fees after settling the case, they had a “friendly” judge seize all of his possessions, without any notice or hearing, and essentially ordered him under “house arrest” as an involuntary servant to the lawyers. The business owner has been under this "servant" order for 10 months and is prohibited from owning any possessions, prohibited from working, etc..
...not wealth or class.
(fixed that for ya Karoli)
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
...Sauron when arguing why it was a good idea to send the Ring to the fire:
"The only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts."
The only measure Conservatives and Republicans know is GREED, and thus do they judge everyone else.
They can't fathom people acting for justice.
But that isn't going to solve the real problem. The fact is we and our children had our futures sold out from under us for a quick profit. Thanks to some short sighted politicians and a few greedy corporations, a large segment of the population have lost their livelyhoods, their savings, their homes and any hope they might have been able to pass on to their children. People have a right to be angry, they should have gotten angry a lot earlier. There are so many different villians responsible for our current dilema, I don't see any simple way out of this. Most of the jobs, the jobs are gone and they're not coming back, this was all done with the consent of our elected leaders. The same ones that told Wall Street it was O.K. to gamble with the middle class' money. We've been witnessing one big heist, planned out in broad daylight and most of just sat back and watched it happen. Huge changes need to be made, just to save the people that haven't been completely ruined yet, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
thread about Paul Ryan - I think it works here, too:
"I was just thinking about what Paul Ryan said today at the Heritage Foundation ....that Obama is stoking 'class war' by Fear, Envy and Resentment of the rich folk.
A) I hate the use of the terms "class War" and how what we need to do is "fight" all the time to restore our
rights and financial well being. It always seems to me that we are just succumbing to the modern psychology of everything as 'warfare'. Warfare is what we want to stop! But, the elites and the political class continually use this vocabulary and imagery so we, as citizens, end up fighting each other - instead of the injustice.
B) Which is the second point....I do not envy or feel resentful of anyone who has become wealthy through ingenuity, innovation, and plain old hard work. I have aspired to do better myself, and make progress in my career and financial position. That is what we call the American Dream .....to use the freedoms and rights we have in this land to improve the lot of our families and communities; that's why the immigrants keep coming!!
What I do resent, even hate, is that the corpora-fascists and banksters with the help of the politicians have circumvented the system and totally ignored the Rule of Law. They have lied, cheated, rigged the legal and financial systems, and totally perverted the basic principles of America.....not just that they have more money."
"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of Stupidity" - Frank Leahy
...totally sick and tired of hearing that the AMERICAN DREAM is to beome RICH? Try this as it is more likely true of more people (not REPUGS)...how about becoming secure, paying you bills because you have a job or jobs that allows for that, owning a home or affording rent for one...putting your children through college if that is their desire...it's disgusting that these simple wants/needs have been polluted into a DREAM FOR TONS OF MONEY!!!
is right, of course. I think that's all the vast majority of people have ever wanted - and why they are so pissed off today.
that's the only thing that's going to bring our country out of this mess. But don't expect Congress to do anything about that. The Repupublicans are perfectly fine with the high unemployment- it makes desperate people settle for less and it makes the President look bad, so it's win-win for them. Nothing is going to improve in the next year, and after that, well, I don't have too much hope there either.
This is the message OWS needs to get out there, not a list of demands but a summary of grievances.
Solutions can be derived from figuring out the common source(s) of those grievances later. The important thing now is ensuring OWS retains its popular appeal to the disenfranchised from all walks of life.
Americans are not out in the street because Obama has made boogymen out of rich people.
Americans are out in the streets because Obama and (you) bailed out the banks and Eric Holder just sits on his ass as torturers and banksters still walk the earth.
(can you say strawman?)
Dear mr. Ryan, If you want to constructively criticize Obama you need to apologize for a bailout with no oversite that you voted for and tell Eric Holder to get off his ass.
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
The revolution has begun.
Thank you Rachael and Glenn and Karoli!
This is just awesome that the truth about our injustice and inequality is being told.
this is about entitlement. I paid into SS and medicare all my life (so far) and want to keep paying into it so that when i get old, i can retire whenever I feel like it and those programs will provide basic necessities. I am entitled to those because I paid into them and that's part of our social contract. It should be written as a constitutional amendment that those programs are a guaranteed right of every citizen. And right now, I am paying for someone else to have those basic needs met. This is about wealthy people taking every last penny from everyone, not even leaving a bread crumb.
Over a year ago, Wells Fargo was ordered to pay $203 million for their " bone-crushing multiplication of additional overdraft penalties" caused by their decision to order the drafts against their customers' bank accounts in descending order by dollar amount.
Have they paid this yet? Of course not, even though "Internal bank memos and e-mails leave no doubt that, overdraft revenue being a big profit center, the bank's dominant, indeed sole, motive was to maximize the number of overdrafts," and to "squeeze as much as possible" from customers with overdrafts, in particular from the 4 percent of customers who paid what he called "a whopping 40 percent of its total overdraft and returned-item revenue."
Do the right thing, Wells Fargo. Own up to the obvious plan to gouge your customers and start providing an actual service to them instead of seeing them as the solution to paying the top 1% their big bonuses.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/11/well...
But absolutely despise Maddow, she is snide and a hypocrite. Self-aggrandizing as she introduces her guest.......ego-trippin' as always......
Funny glenn's been writing about these and many other topics for years now and maddow?
... that Greenwald has never mentioned yet is the fact that between the pardoning of Nixon to this very day, these same politicians openly and in total bipartisan lockstep went after mobsters and organized crime in order to make life easier for these very business criminals that are now too big to jail.
Gee, anyone remember why?!?
Maybe it's because when the first Great Depression hit and the upper 1% deployed the militias and the Nation Guard on those who refused to knuckle under, move forward, and cease to re-litigating the past, the mobsters and gangsters stepped in, placed their support behind the 99% who got worked over, and were instrumental in creation those very workers' unions that held both business criminals and a rogue tyrannical government in check?!?
I've said it once and I'll say it again: the attacks by police towards the Occupy movement simply would not be happening today if mobsters and organized crime still existed today ... and they know it. They also know that they are paradoxically gonna fulfilling a neo-rebirth of mobster/organized crime and the worker's unions they championed because its rapidly becoming self-evident that neither plantation master ReThugs and their shielding, rewarding, and enabling house wigger Democrats won't do a damned thing to protect the 99% from the rape, pillage, and plunder of the upper 1% because every fuckin' millionaire Dimbulbacrat and billionaire ReThuglican are card-carrying members of the upper 1% ...
,,, and got that way by wiping out their competition.
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