Category: #OccupyWallStreet

Correct me if I’m wrong

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

TD Bank - Bay Ridge

But isn’t this why we have a 4th Amendment? And didn’t we fight a revolution to stop crap like this?

ARNOLDS PARK, Iowa — For almost 40 years, Carole Hinders has dished out Mexican specialties at her modest cash-only restaurant. For just as long, she deposited the earnings at a small bank branch a block away — until last year, when two tax agents knocked on her door and informed her that they had seized her checking account, almost $33,000.

The Internal Revenue Service agents did not accuse Ms. Hinders of money laundering or cheating on her taxes — in fact, she has not been charged with any crime. Instead, the money was seized solely because she had deposited less than $10,000 at a time, which they viewed as an attempt to avoid triggering a required government report.

“How can this happen?” Ms. Hinders said in a recent interview. “Who takes your money before they prove that you’ve done anything wrong with it?”

The federal government does.

Using a law designed to catch drug traffickers, racketeers and terrorists by tracking their cash, the government has gone after run-of-the-mill business owners and wage earners without so much as an allegation that they have committed serious crimes. The government can take the money without ever filing a criminal complaint, and the owners are left to prove they are innocent. Many give up.

“They’re going after people who are really not criminals,” said David Smith, a former federal prosecutor who is now a forfeiture expert and lawyer in Virginia. “They’re middle-class citizens who have never had any trouble with the law.”

On Thursday, in response to questions from The New York Times, the I.R.S. announced that it would curtail the practice, focusing instead on cases where the money is believed to have been acquired illegally or seizure is deemed justified by “exceptional circumstances.”

Richard Weber, the chief of Criminal Investigation at the I.R.S., said in a written statement, “This policy update will ensure that C.I. continues to focus our limited investigative resources on identifying and investigating violations within our jurisdiction that closely align with C.I.’s mission and key priorities.” He added that making deposits under $10,000 to evade reporting requirements, called structuring, is still a crime whether the money is from legal or illegal sources. The new policy will not apply to past seizures.

Dear Prudence

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Halloween with Peninsula Hotel

I have some neighbors like this. There are a couple of churches who bus kids into our neighborhood BECAUSE THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD ISN’T SAFE. They can’t even play outside, let alone trick or treat. So I love Prudie’s response:

Dear Prudence,
I live in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country, but on one of the more “modest” streets—mostly doctors and lawyers and family business owners. (A few blocks away are billionaires, families with famous last names, media moguls, etc.) I have noticed that on Halloween, what seems like 75 percent of the trick-or-treaters are clearly not from this neighborhood. Kids arrive in overflowing cars from less fortunate areas. I feel this is inappropriate. Halloween isn’t a social service or a charity in which I have to buy candy for less fortunate children. Obviously this makes me feel like a terrible person, because what’s the big deal about making less fortunate kids happy on a holiday? But it just bugs me, because we already pay more than enough taxes toward actual social services. Should Halloween be a neighborhood activity, or is it legitimately a free-for-all in which people hunt down the best candy grounds for their kids?

—Halloween for the 99 Percent

Dear 99,
In the urban neighborhood where I used to live, families who were not from the immediate area would come in fairly large groups to trick-or-treat on our streets, which were safe, well-lit, and full of people overstocked with candy. It was delightful to see the little mermaids, spider-men, ghosts, and the occasional axe murderer excitedly run up and down our front steps, having the time of their lives. So we’d spend an extra $20 to make sure we had enough candy for kids who weren’t as fortunate as ours. There you are, 99, on the impoverished side of Greenwich or Beverly Hills, with the other struggling lawyers, doctors, and business owners. Your whine makes me kind of wish that people from the actual poor side of town come this year not with scary costumes but with real pitchforks. Stop being callous and miserly and go to Costco, you cheapskate, and get enough candy to fill the bags of the kids who come one day a year to marvel at how the 1 percent live.

—Prudie

It does not mean what I think you think it means

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Jobless America

What is the big fucking deal? People are poor now, more people than ever. Yes, they have jobs — shitty jobs. Most likely, more than one job, which might make it look better than it is. People are killing themselves, running just to stay afloat. Do they want medals? Fuck these cheerleaders, the people in this administration and their Wall St. advisers. They should live our lives for just one day:

If you’ve watched Wall Street lately, you know global tumult has rattled investors. But if anyone’s looking for encouraging economic news, look no further than the new figures from the Labor Department on initial unemployment claims.
The number of people who applied for U.S. jobless benefits fell 23,000 to 264,000 in the week that ended Oct. 11, hitting the lowest level since April 2000, showing that employers are laying off few workers, according to government data released Thursday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected initial claims for regular state unemployment-insurance benefits to bump up to 289,000 in the latest weekly data from 287,000 in the prior week.
The four-week average of new claims, a smoother barometer of labor-market trends, fell by 4,250 to 283,500, also reaching the lowest level since 2000, the U.S. Labor Department reported.
That’s not a typo – jobless claims have improved to a level unseen in 14 years,

Coercion much?

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

In-Greed-We-Trust

I read things like this and I think, “Yeah, there’s going to be a revolution.” We don’t know when, and we don’t know what will light the fuse, but it’ll happen. Because they’re just too fucking greedy to let it go on:

On the morning of Jan. 29, construction workers were building a seawater pipe at Oliktok Point, part of a sprawling network of oil fields owned by ConocoPhillips on Alaska’s arctic North Slope, when they received an ominous notice. Workers at the icy camp would be required to attend a “safety stand-down” meeting, which is typically announced only after a job-site accident involving serious injury. One such meeting was called earlier this year, according to a contracted worker at the site, when a mechanic’s fingers were mangled by an industrial fan. Working in one of the world’s coldest and most isolated regions in the dead of winter—the nearest town of Deadhorse is roughly 40 miles away—comes with a host of potential hazards, and it was unclear to the crews what had happened and who might have been hurt.

When nearly 200 construction workers assembled inside a large heated tent just outside the camp, they learned the meeting’s true purpose. An unfamiliar manager, identified as John Schuelke from ConocoPhillips’ Anchorage office, took to the stage and told them that there hadn’t been an accident. Instead, the company had gathered the group, mostly construction contractors, to tell them how they should vote in Alaska’s upcoming August primaries. The oil and gas industry, Schuelke said, was fighting Democrat-supported Ballot Measure 1, which sought to repeal a massive tax cut for oil companies that Alaska’s Republican-controlled state Legislature had recently passed. Schuelke told the crowd to vote against the repeal, according to the contracted worker, who was present. Schuelke claimed that many of the area’s jobs relied on the tax break. The implication was clear: Vote against repeal or your industry and your livelihood will suffer.

“I’d never seen so many confused faces and so many frowns,” the contractor said. “It was definitely an abuse of our safety culture.” (A ConocoPhillips spokeswoman said the primary purpose of the meeting was to reinforce safety measures.)
Continue reading “Coercion much?” →

Waiting for Alice

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Alice Walton at Walmart Shareholders' Meeting 2012

She occasionally gives a million or two to pet causes, the way you or I might give a dollar to a panhandler. How nice:

Alice Walton, an heir to the Walmart fortune, is worth $35 billion. Today, a lot of poor people stood outside her house and yelled at her.

Those poor people were Walmart employees from across America, and dozens of their shouting union supporters. The house was 515 Park Avenue, a towering three-tiered apartment building at 60th St. in midtown Manhattan. Walton purchased the 30th and 31st floors of the building earlier this summer for $25 million. It’s a bit misleading to call it her house—her primary home is a ranch in Texas, where she breeds horses. This duplex is just a place she pops into from time to time, to avoid the hassle of luxury hotels.

Although Alice Walton has gotten $100 million richer this year, she does not have a job, per se. She is sometimes referred to as a “billionaire philanthropist.” That’s a bit misleading, too. Despite being the single richest family in the world, the Waltons have famously never been too big on philanthropy, except to the extent that it can be used to minimize their taxes. Alice Walton’s main personal work of philanthropy is Crystal Bridges, the billion-dollar art museumin Bentonville, Arkansas, where Walmart’s headquarters are located. Whether you consider this a work of charity or a work of corporate and family image-buffing depends on your perspective, I guess.

 […] All of the workers who’d come to be arrested were designated by the green cloths tied around their arms, and by the fact that many of them had emergency phone numbers written down their forearms in bold black marker. As the police looked on patiently, an organizer instructed them on exactly how the arrests would proceed. “They’ll be using zip ties today,” she told them, in the manner of a waiter explaining the day’s special. About two dozen of them walked out into the intersection of Park Avenue and 60th street, sat down in a semicircle, and locked arms. The group was far outnumbered by police, most of whom were standing around with nothing to do. One officer took up a bullhorn and read a script informing them that they would be arrested if they didn’t leave. Then the officers went down the line, one by one, helping the protesters to their feet, and taking their IDs, which they had ready, and pulling zip ties on their wrists, and leading them to waiting paddy wagons. It was all very polite. Several elderly women were participating in the sit-in, and the cops helped them each up graciously. The small core of demonstrators was surrounded by a layer of police, then a layer of organizers and legal observers, then a layer of reporters and cameramen, then fellow protesters and bystanders, like an Everlasting Gobstopper of civil disobedience. “Have fun in The Tombs! You’re cut pal, they’ll like you!” yelled one onlooker, who was sporting a “Colorado Volleyball” backpack. An internet commenter in the flesh. He gestured to the nearest cop—”You know I’m with you guys. I hate these fucking hippies.” The cop did not respond.

After everyone from the intersection has been loaded up, the organizers move everyone back onto the curb in front of the building. Some words of encouragement are spoken by the organizers, and the milling reporters grab their last interviews, the police begin waving traffic down the street again, and the whole thing winds down with a few last chants.

“We believe that we will win! We believe that we will win!” Thirty floors above, Alice Walton’s $25 million apartment sits empty. Walton is, by most accounts, a nice woman. It would be nice if she would listen to all of these nice people, who have made her rich, but who are themselves poor. But I don’t believe she will. No matter how nice she may appear to be to those who admire her pretty horses and beautiful art museum, she is, in fact, a villain.

H/T R.K.

14 people made more than the food stamp budget for 50 million people

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Because they’re job creators and it’s God’s will, of course:

For the second year in a row, America’s richest 14 individuals made more from their annual investments than the $80 billion provided for people in need of food. Nearly half of the food-deprived are children. Perversely, the food stamp program was CUT because of a lack of federal funding.

In a testament to the inability — or unwillingness — of Congress to do anything about the incessant upward re-distribution of America’s wealth, the richest 14 Americans increased their wealth from $507 billion to $589 billion in ONE YEAR from their investment earnings. As stated by Forbes, “All together the 400 wealthiest Americans are worth a staggering $2.29 trillion, up $270 billion from a year ago.”

The Richest 14 Made Enough Money to Hire Two Million Pre-School Teachers or Emergency Medical Technicians

Billions of dollars of wealth, derived from years of American productivity, have been transferred to a few financially savvy and well-connected individuals who have spent a generation shaping trading rules and tax laws to their own advantage. It’s so inexplicably one-sided that the 2013 investment earnings of the richest 1% of Americans ($1.8 trillion) was more than the entire budget for Social Security ($860 billion), Medicare ($524 billion), and Medicaid ($304 billion).

Why Does So Little of Our National Wealth Go to Feed People or Provide Jobs?

The fruits of American productivity go to the richest Americans, who can afford to hold onto their fortunes, defer taxes indefinitely, and then pay a smaller capital gains rate when they eventually decide to cash in. Worse yet, they can stash their winnings overseas, tax-free. It is estimated that $7.6 trillion of personal wealth is hidden in tax havens. That means, stunningly, that $1 of every $12 of worldwide wealth is hidden in a haven.

Via Patrick Rooney.

Elizabeth Warren interview

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

elizabeth warren
With Thomas Frank:

That’s right. Regulatory capture, this is an old problem. I was writing about it, obviously, in the Bush days. But President Obama had a golden opportunity when he came in to change the system and I just don’t feel like it has changed, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau aside. I mean, are the regulators now referring things to the Justice Department? Are the wheels turning again?

There has not been nearly enough change. Not nearly enough. The consumer agency — this is why I argued for it — the consumer agency is structural change. So basically, the premise behind it was that there were plenty of federal laws out there, but no agency would step up and enforce them. And the responsibilities of these laws were scattered among seven different agencies and not one of those agencies saw its principal job as looking out for American families. So the OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] was all about bank profitability, the Fed was all about monetary policy. Everybody had something that they were about, but consumer protection was everybody’s job and therefore nobody’s job. You know, it was down seventh, or tenth or hundredth on the list and they never got to it, even as the big financial institutions were selling mortgages that should have been described as grenades with the pins pulled out. Really! My whole thing about toasters—remember, that was based on fact. At the time I wrotethat piece on it, that was before the crash, one in five mortgages that were being marketed by the biggest financial institutions were exploding and costing people their homes. No one would permit toasters to be sold when one in five exploded and burned down somebody’s house. But they were selling mortgages like that and every regulator knew about it.

And those people who had it blow up in their faces, those are the ones we’re prosecuting.

Oh God. So exactly right. Well, to the extent we do [prosecute] anyone. But that’s exactly right. And so the idea behind the consumer agency was to say: structural change. We need an agency that has one and only one goal, and that is to look out for American families. To level the playing field, to make sure that people are not getting tricked and trapped on these financial instruments. And so it was a big shift, and it’s a shift worth thinking about. We took away — Dodd-Frank took away — all this responsibility that had nominally been spread among the other agencies, concentrated it in one agency, and now holds that agency accountable. So you give the agency the tools and then hold them accountable. The reason I think that story is so important is because it is structural. It’s not just a question of, “Gee, get good people and somehow things will work better.” There are structural changes we have to make. . . . The idea, the question that haunted me at the agency was: How do we make sure the agency is true to its mission, not just today with the people that we hire in the first plume of excitement, but 30 years from now, 40 years from now, 50 years from now…

Missouri planning for riots

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

G-20 Protest Sept 24, 2009

What do they mean, “if”? Ha ha, just kidding! I meant, “when” they refuse to indict Darren Wilson:

(Reuters) – Missouri authorities are drawing up contingency plans and seeking intelligence from U.S. police departments on out-of-state agitators, fearing that fresh riots could erupt if a grand jury does not indict a white officer for killing a black teen.

The plans are being thrashed out in meetings being held two to three times a week, according to people who have attended them. The FBI said it was also involved in the discussions.

Details of the meetings and intelligence sharing by Missouri police agencies and their counterparts in other parts of the country have not been reported before.

The grand jury is expected to decide next month whether to bring criminal charges against police officer Darren Wilson, who shot dead Michael Brown, 18, on Aug. 9 in Ferguson, Missouri.