It's Monday, June 4, 2012. How was your weekend?

Behind the Recall: The Rise and Fall of Scott Walker: Made in the style of a "Behind the Music" episode, this video is a shocking account of Scott Walker's tarnished legacy. It traces his rise to Tea Party stardom, and his bitter fall from grace with average Wisconsinites.

More on Scott Walker from Daily Kos, The Underreported Story of Scott Walker and Foreclosure Fraud: Do you know someone whose life has been affected by foreclosure? Chances are, in 2012, you do. That's why it's so important that you know the story of what Scott Walker did with the funds meant for victims of foreclosure fraud.

Working America members drove over 55,000 letters and calls to help secure these funds to help homeowners. Instead of using them for their intended purpose, Walker used a loophole to transfer millions into his state budget, bypassing struggling homeowners and fraud victims completely.

Get the full report here.

Woman Who Couldn’t Be Intimidated by Citigroup Wins $31 Million: "By 2006, the bank was buying mortgages from outside lenders with doctored tax forms, phony appraisals and missing signatures, she says. It was Hunt’s job to identify these defects, and she did, in regular reports to her bosses.

Executives buried her findings, Hunt says, before, during and after the financial crisis, and even into 2012." Full report here.

OCCUPY LA: Banners went up on Day 4 of the Siege on the CCA last night!! We had around 100 activists peacefully assemble right at the doorstep of the ONE-PERCENT’S LOBBY.

Occupy Skid Row, LA CAN, Occupy the Hood, and Occupy Los Angeles held it down with lots of guests to the action. We had several NEWCOMERS who attended the GA, took the streets, and occupied for the first time! There were also several occupiers from around the state (SF, Ventura, Riverside, Long Beach, Venice) and country (Oregon, New York, Arizona).

A Fracking Foreclosure: "Help us keep the River in Riverdale": Day of Action for Riverdale, Monday, June 4: International Day of Solidarity with the Riverdale Community on Monday, June 4 Riverdale residents and supporters are calling for an international day of solidarity action in support of the Riverdale community this Monday, June 4. As relocation resister Deb Eck has put it, you are invited...

Thank a Union: 36 Ways Unions Have Improved Your Life: "Let's get one thing straight...

Employers and Corporations did not feel generous and decide to give you two days off every week to have a social/personal life. (We now call them weekends). Corporations did not just feel like being nice one day and give their employees paid vacations. CEOs didn't get together in a board room and say "Let's give our employees more rights at work" or "Maybe there should be laws to limit our power over an employee". Read full post here.

"Minneapolis police were braced for a violent confrontation with Occupy Minnesota activists intent on reclaiming a home the police had seized. Instead, the police were peacefully serenaded while a pastor from across the street led the crowd in prayer."

This has been a fascinating case to watch. Local police seem determined to boot out the occupiers and the owner of the home, but Occupy Minnesota is just as determined to win this fight against the banks.

"Twenty-three have been arrested during five eviction attempts in the last week as part of an ongoing defense of the Cruz family’s home that has garnered national attention. Monday June 4, Occupy DC has organized a demonstration in front of the Freddie Mac office in Washington, DC." More here.

"As hundreds of protesters arrested during months of Occupy Wall Street demonstrations get their day in court, their arresting officers aren't even bothering to show up. When they have, as in the first two cases to go to trial, the NYPD testimony was disproved with photographic and video evidence, resulting in both protesters getting acquitted."

Hunger/AIDS Medication Striker to Trinity Church: "Forgive Us Our Trespasses" : "Jack Boyle's hands are nothing but trouble. Not only is his right thumb bent completely out of shape, injured during his forcible eviction from Zuccotti Park in November, but his fingertips are increasingly numb, as his peripheral neuropathy kicks in more, and more. It's been twelve days since he took his medication and eight days since he's eaten, and he is starting to feel it. He used to take Truvada once daily and Lexiva and Norvir twice daily. He says the "a" at the end of Truvada and Lexiva like "er," the way many of his fellow fifty-something native New Yorkers would. But he won't take any of those pills ever again, unless Trinity Church forgives him and his friends their trespasses." Continue reading here.

Occupy Police - Corruption, Political Agenda & Money – OCPO’s 40 Page Report on The Worlds First Attempt At Mass Police Privatization.

Think Progress: Second Romney-Backed Solar Company Files For Bankruptcy.

Anonymous: We Are Anonymous - We Are Everywhere - We Are Legion - We Never Forget - We Never Forgive - Expect Us.

Just in case any of the 11.5 million struggling homeowners out there are waiting to hear what Mitt Romney's plans are to turn around the housing market, and help those with underwater mortgages, his policy director Lanhee Chen wants you to know up front that there will be no targeted relief for you people.

Via:

Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, doesn’t intend to offer targeted relief for the 11.5 million American homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, Chen said, suggesting that such actions are temporary fixes insufficient to stabilize the housing market.

“Governor Romney has indicated that there are some steps we ought to take to ensure that we’re growing our economy,” Chen said. “But on the housing market specifically, I do think we have to resist the temptation for short-term approaches.”

So as much as Governor One Percent would like to help 11.5 million Americans, he just can't allow himself to be tempted, because what's really important? The banks!

Romney, a former private-equity executive who founded the Boston-based firm Bain Capital LLC, wants to replace the Dodd- Frank financial regulation law enacted in 2010 with more limited and “reasonable” rules, including governing derivatives and “some kind of consumer protections,” Chen said.

“The mistake here is to say that somehow because we repealed Dodd-Frank and we get rid of the really burdensome set of regulations that Dodd-Frank put in place, that somehow we’re going back to a dog-eat-dog kind of situation where there’s absolutely no regulation,” Chen said.

Still, he said the so-called Volcker rule to ban proprietary trading by banks “has a lot of problems,” and would be “one of the problematic elements that, quite frankly, Governor Romney would seek to replace.”

Emphasis mine.

Oh, and don't even bother to ask about what Romney has in store for taxes, because he's not going to tell you anything more than he intends to lower taxes by an average of $231,971 for the top 1 percent of taxpayers. Are you going to lose any of your current deductions, or face an increase in your taxes? He's just too busy and important to be troubled with filling you in on the trivial little details.

If you're considering voting for Mitt Romney for POTUS, you'll just have to trust that he will always look out for what's best for the top one percent of the population.

Too bad about your homes.

[Tip o' the hat to Nicole.]

My name is Olivia. I can’t hold a sign because I’m so little.

I was born with club feet. One was so bad, it was nearly upside-down. My feet have been stretched into place and casted into position every week since I was 3 weeks old. It really hurts. I’m 3 and a half months old now, so I’ve done that a lot. It costs about $500 each time. (You can see one of my casts peeking out under my dress.)

On March 21, 2012 I had my first surgery, because the stretching wasn’t working. That cost nearly $9,000, but if my feet don’t get fixed, I’ll never be able to walk.

Medicaid is paying to fix my feet. My Daddy is a disabled veteran, but his insurance won’t cover my feet. My Mom is trying to raise my 3 brothers and I while she wracks up student loans getting her college degree, because minimum wage isn’t enough to keep a roof over our heads.

WIC is paying for my formula, because Mom’s milk never came in. She feels kinda bad about that, but sometimes these things just happen.

I hear that some people want to get rid of Medicaid, the Pell Grant, and WIC, so that the 1% can have even more tax breaks. Well, I want to be able to walk. I need to eat. And my Mom would like to be able to provide for me better someday. I don’t understand why people want to take that away from me. What did I do wrong?

[Via]

via Occupy Los Angeles

We are occupying!!!

Join LA CAN, Occupy the Hood, Occupy Skid Row and Occupy Los Angeles at Wilshire/Hope (626 Wilshire Blvd.) at 8:30pm tonight to fight gentrification and the corrupt practices of the lobby group Central City Association. BRING TENT.

We are peacefully gathering to protest the Economic Development Meeting and the downtown 2020 plan to build new high rises, the AEG Stadium and further criminalize and push out the homeless. The CCA is the localized manifestation and microcosm of everything wrong with policy, the 1% and obsession with wealth and prestige. In this hyper-localized resistance, everyone must fight the bully in their respective backyards, as a community.

We have power in numbers and will be OCCUPYING the CCA, who monitors the public spaces of downtown with private security for the one percent. Red shirt, green shirt, purple shirt, police all working together to criminalize the homeless, communities of color and more recently, to patrol protesters in the area.

Facebook event | Twitter: @OccupyLA

Continue reading »

"I am a 27 year old veteran of the Iraq War. I enlisted to protect the American people, but ended up making profits for politically-connected contractors. I returned to a country whose economy had been devastated by bankers with the same connections and the same lack of ethics. It might be cliche by now, but this is the second time I’ve fought for my country and the first time I’ve known my enemy. I am the 99%."

[Via "We are the 99 percent"]

Killing too many civilians? Just change the definition. It's that easy. [more at LeeCamp.net]

"Fit To Print" examines the ongoing crisis within the U.S. newspaper industry and its impact on local investigative reporting. The film includes interviews from reporters, staff members and media experts within several major U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Through interviews with former executives at the leading newspaper companies, the filmmakers illustrate a change in business practices, beginning in the 1960s. Newspapers became less a public service than a business enterprise designed to please stockholders. Unfortunately, newspaper companies historically neglected investment in new technologies and expanded classified advertising online despite direct proposals from major internet search engine companies and advertising entrepreneurs As a result, staffs were cut, and the watchdog role of reporters has come with a cost.

"Independent journalism is absolutely essential for a functioning democracy," a laid-off journalist warns us. Indeed.

[Via]

Good morning and TGIF!

Though under house arrest and about to be extradited to Sweden, Julian Assange is still producing his show for RT, "The World Tomorrow," the most recent episode of which he dedicated to the Occupy Movement. Shot in the old Deutsche Bank building in London, which is controlled by friends of Occupy, Julian enlists guests Marisa Holmes, Alexa O'Brien and David Graeber from Occupy Wall Street, and Aaron Peters and Naomi Colvin from Occupy London, to parse the future of Occupy.

The Occupy movement has united hundreds of thousands across the world in protest against economic and social injustice. In this episode, key Occupy activists talk global finance, politics, and direct action.

The roots of the movement lie in the growing outrage many felt in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. However, according to Alexa O'Brien from Occupy New York and US Day of Rage, they are also responding to a "Global Political Crisis, because our institutions no longer function." Aaron Peters from Occupy London agrees that political failure is a "global phenomenon", with power shifting to unaccountable non-democratic institutions. However, the last word goes to David Graeber from Occupy New York, who jokes "there's nothing that terrifies the American government so much as the threat of democracy breaking out in America."