Category: Power to the People

Elderly protesters maced

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Gives “To protect and serve” a whole new slant, huh?

WASHINGTON — Police maced several elderly protesters Tuesday at JPMorgan Chase’s annual shareholder meeting in Columbus, Ohio, according to activists present at the event.

Hundreds of people from dozens of community organizing groups swarmed the Tuesday meeting to demand the company overhaul its widely criticized foreclosure policies. JPMorgan Chase has improperly broken into the homes of its borrowers in order to pursue foreclosures and has been accused of robo-signing thousands of key foreclosure documents. Federal regulators slapped the company with a consent order over foreclosure problems earlier this year, and the federal government is currently contemplating filing charges that the company defrauded taxpayers with its foreclosure policies on government-backed loans.

In telephone interviews with HuffPost, multiple protesters complained of an overly aggressive police presence.

George Goehl, Executive Director of National People’s Action, which helped organize the protest, said he and several elderly protesters were maced as police attempted to move protesters back from the building.
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Taking hostages

~ susie

Wonkbook:

John Boehner has started listing debt limit demands, report Paul Kane and Lori Montgomery: “House Speaker John A. Boehner defined the GOP’s terms for raising the legal limit on government borrowing Monday, demanding that President Obama reduce spending by more than $2 trillion in exchange for an increase big enough to cover the nation’s bills through the end of next year. Delivering a sermon on fiscal austerity to a Wall Street crowd clamoring for compromise on the debt limit, Boehner (Ohio) firmly rejected any effort to raise taxes. He also called on Democrats to engage in ‘honest conversations about how best to preserve Medicare,’ signaling that House Republicans remain committed to restructuring at least some portions of the program.”

Hah hah

~ susie

Poor Koch brothers! They’re not used to people saying no to them:

WICHITA | A federal judge on Monday sided with environmental pranksters behind a media hoax targeting Koch Industries Inc., upholding First Amendment protections for anonymous political speech on the Internet.

U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball in Utah tossed out a lawsuit filed by Koch Industries stemming from a bogus website and fake news release issued in December that falsely announced that the Wichita-based company was changing its financial commitments on climate change to fund more environmentally friendly groups. Koch’s lawsuit had sought monetary damages as well as the identities of the pranksters.

Kimball also issued an order prohibiting Koch — one of the nation’s largest privately held companies — from using any identifying information it may have already obtained from an earlier subpoena on the company that had unwittingly hosted the fake website for a few hours before it was taken down.

“Before authorizing subpoenas seeking to strip speakers of their First Amendment right to anonymity, courts require plaintiffs to make a preliminary showing that their complaint has merit,” the judge wrote.

My new hero

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Via Young Philly Politics:

This video is just 88 seconds and it’s great. At Corbett’s Marcellus Shale Advisory hearing last week, they set out two sign-up sheets for public comment. Only, they told the industry about one and the protesters about the other.

Guess which one they went to first?

In this video, a woman from Pittsburgh calmly and clearly confronts a Corbett Administration spokesperson about the trick. She comes off as smart, gutsy and reasonable. He comes off like someone who just got caught stealing an extra piece of cake at Church Camp.