Labels: Dylan Ratigan, elites, Glenn Greenwald, inequality, MSNBC, super-rich, two-tiered justice system, With Liberty and Justice for Some
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posted by profmarcus at
10/28/2011
Three years ago, I left my 15-year career as a financial professional because I was disgusted and disturbed by the rampant evidence of corruption in the relationship between our banking system and our government.At the time, the Tea Party was emerging and I was confident that between their exploding wave of anger and our newly minted President’s soaring aspirations for all of us - we would align to confront and resolve the blatantly corrupt relationship between banking and our government and more broadly BUSINESS and STATE.
I was sure that the obviously aligned interests of Obama’s constituents combined with the Tea Party’s libertarian principles about money and government, rigorous bank reforms in a simple, fair and transparent way would follow. And more importantly, I believed Obama’s energy and the Tea Party's would align to separate BUSINESS and STATE in order to bar banks, or any other special interest, from corrupting policy in a way that breaches fundamental fairness in our nation and prevents adaptation in a time of rapid change.
Their combined wave of energy was magnificent: Obama, scintillating and inspiring, harnessing a digital wave AND the Tea Party, raw and rebellious, screaming in unison: “We’re not going to take this any more!”
Little to none of this happened and I was wrong. And I feel I must do something about it.
As it turns out, I'm not alone. In just five days, 80,000 of us have signed a petition to get money out of politics. To make this happen, we will need to grow this movement, and that starts with your voice.
When we hit 100,000 signers, we are going to do a special show on getting money out of politics from Washington DC, deliver our 100k signatures to Congress, and issue what we call a “High Surf Alert." Attached to the high surf alert will be a link to a 3-paragraph letter from all of us explaining that we have signed this petition with the intent to send it to others.
This way we can harness the wave to grow our effort, lest we waste it on a bought and paralyzed government. When we are bigger we can then direct our attention at them.
I want to explain to my viewers why I feel so strongly about this and I want to hear your thoughts too!
You can tell me your story in one of two ways. One, click here and leave a comment on why you want to get money out or two, film yourself talking about GetMoneyOut.com, put it on YouTube and send it to dylan@dylanratigan.com. I will use these video clips and stories on my show. I want people to see that it's not just me, that there are hundreds of thousands of us, millions of us, with one message: Get. Money. Out.
After 3 years of doing my best to marshal resources with dozens of impassioned collaborators to highlight obvious corruptions and solve problems together on TV, in person and on the Internet -- I found it doesn’t matter what I or anyone else thinks or does about a given policy idea -- because the entire media, and the two-party political apparatus that sets the debate is being funded by a relatively narrow group of major interests and any solution that threatens those funders is simply never discussed.
While our healthcare, educational, banking, military, energy, trade and tax policies all have great room for improvement, I believe that the events of the past few years make it clear that until we get money out of our political system, we cannot begin on any of it.
I recently learned that 94% of the time the candidate that raises the most money wins. Policy, race, gender, tie color, voice, age... all can be ignored in a candidate because – 94% of the time the candidate that raises the most money wins.
So this past weekend when I saw the Occupy Wall Street/Occupy America protests spontaneously erupting in 60 cities, as the New York protesters heading into their 3rd week - I decided to walk over Friday evening to Zuccoti Park to see what they were doing.
I live 5 blocks away and worked 2 blocks from the square they are in for years, this Friday was one of my first trips back to that street corner in years and I was both fearful and excited to see what was going on. I have also never been to a protest like this.
On the internet it said their message is this:
“Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are the 99% will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.”
They said they we non-violent, had a policy of no drugs or alcohol in the Park, and didn’t allow bullhorns or amplifiers of any kind – they communicate by repeating out loud a given speakers words in short sentences. The short sentence requirement for speakers (not easy for me!!) has the duel benefit of keeping speeches short -- and avoids that being “talked at” feeling that can result from electrical speech amplification.
When I arrived Friday there was a boisterous crowd in good spirits from all walks of life -- the hippies, young people and Tea Partiers I expected -- the old ladies and local lawyers I was encouraged to see as evidence for this group's broader appeal.
I was able to talk to different groups over a few hours and it was clear that we were in agreement. Our government is bought, and we need to do something about it. In fact, you don’t have to go to Zuccoti Park or any other protest to know that!
Unrelated to any of these protests, we have started this petition to get money out. We have done so because we all agree, that until we do so, we will be prevented from engaging in the debate we all desperately need on virtually every issue to end this corruption.
I wanted them to know that I agree with them and that I support their principle, to learn from them and share with them my own efforts.
I asked on Friday if I could return the next day, Saturday, to address their General Assembly in their unusual speak and repeat fashion in Zuccoti Park. They told me if I came back the next day and signed up at 6:30 I could secure 5 minutes, I did so and a few hours later was granted time to speak.
Here is what I told them:“My name is Dylan. I live five blocks from here. I think you people are crazy. I love the way you communicate. The world has noticed your voice. You have been here for three weeks, and you should be very proud of what you have accomplished. For fifteen years I worked as a financial services professional. Have you guys said that yet? I can't believe I'm here talking to you. I'm here because I agree with you. I made the decision three years ago to leave the financial services industry. I did that because it was clear that the financial services industry was purchasing both political parties. I believe that the fundamental problem with our collective desire to demand the debate America deserves is that both of our political parties are funded by well-heeled individuals, because they are bought. So I have been asking myself what the hell I'm going to do about this. I have decided that I am going to devote all of my resources, whatever those resources may be, with the knowledge that the decision to devote resources is much more important than what your resources are. I believe that you and every other group of people who know for a fact that the government is bought and are making the decisions to make 2012 the year our voice will be heard. I ask myself -- what do I do with my voice? I look at myself like an angry villager. I am irate. I know that if I cannot harness my personal rage for positive change I will harm myself and not help anybody else. My question to myself has been how do I harness fire in myself? You can either burn yourself in the town square or you can deliver a single a message to your government. My message is that the government is bought. If we do not separate business and state, and harness this energy to make that the central mission of this years' election we cannot begin to do the work we have to do. Thank you for giving me some of your time and congratulations on your success.”I agree with their principle, I don’t know what will become of their movement, but I know I want to help them because I agree with them. I also agree with Ron Paul, Lawrence Lessig’s #rootstrikers and millions of other disgusted and disenfranchised American’s who know that their government is bought and are mad as hell about it.
In fact I think the singular message of ending our corrupt government function and the money that changes hands to facilitate it is the one goal almost everyone shares. Not surprisingly our efforts at aligning in a world of divisive issues makes us an underdog. Last week Politico described our effort like this:“MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan is bent on banning money from political campaigns through a constitutional amendment, which is about as likely as the Cubs winning the World Series the night lightning twice strikes a massive earthbound asteroid.”
But I believe if we approach the disparate communities with humility and shared principle, and a narrow focus, from Occupy Wall Street to factions of the Tea Party and beyond -- to offer support, debate and learning, we have in 2012 our best chance yet to end the blatantly corrupt relationship between BUSINESS and STATE.
The battle for me now is how best to harness all the fire that I feel for actionable positive change.
Since I devoted myself to this issue of about how blatantly corrupt our government has become -- I feel I have tried three methods to resolve it:
1. Scream! -- It felt good to express myself, but I found it to be an intense energy that alienated people with no positive harness to direct it.
2. Fight! -- This also felt good, but rarely led to any resolution or positive action.
Or
3. Help! -- Convert that rage into action everyday FOR something that is based on broad principles with a narrow goal. (You can start by adding your voice!)
I believe our decision to form this petition and use our voice to demand a real debate about an Amendment to get Money Out of politics in 2012 gives all of us something to be FOR -- and a tool that can do it. We may agree on nothing else, but can we all agree to do this.
Truth to Power,
Dylan Ratigan
http://www.getmoneyout.com/
Labels: 2012 election, banksters, campaign fund-raising, Dylan Ratigan, elites, MSNBC, Occupy Wall Street, super-rich, Tea Party
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
10/03/2011
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Labels: 2012 election, class warfare, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Scarbough, Massachusetts, MSNBC, US Senate
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
9/22/2011
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Labels: 2012 election, 2012 primaries, banksters, Barack Obama, Cornel West, income gap, MSNBC, oligarchy, Republicans, Wall Street
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
9/21/2011
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yep, that's what it's all about...Wisconsin State Representative Mark Pocan, the former co-chair of the legislature's powerful Joint Finance Committee, says he is starting to feel as if he lives in a “third world junta.”
The crowd inside the State Capitol after
protesters stormed the building on Wednesday
night.
(MIKE DEVRIES — The Capital Times )
Wisconsin State Senator Bob Jauch, a senior Democrat, says that what he is witnessing feels like “a coup.”
Marty Beil, the head of the AFSCME Council 24, the state’s largest public employee union, said Wisconsin had been turned into “a banana republic.”
And thousands of Wisconsinites, men and women, adults and their children, public employees and private-sector workers, have poured into the state Capitol in Madison, shouting: “Shame! Shame! Shame!”
There were 7,000 people outside the Capitol at some points during night, and thousands inside.
At the close of one of the most remarkable days in American political history, a state once regarded as among the most enlightened and progressive in the nation finds itself ruled by rogue Republican operatives whose disregard for rules – and the popular will – is so extreme that the longest serving legislator in the nation, Wisconsin State Senator Fred Risser, a Madison Democrat, says: “They have not just bent the law. They have broken it.”
Risser is right. After weeks of intense debate inside and outside the Capitol, and at a point when most Wisconsinites thought a compromise was in the offering, Republican legislative leaders suddenly announced that they would pass the most draconian components of Governor Scott Walker’s budget repair bill – including a move to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights.
Labels: banksters, elites, Michael Moore, MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, super-rich, union-busting
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
3/10/2011
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In one day, Biden went from giddily declaring that "I don't think there's any damage" to gravely warning that "it has done damage." I have no idea whether Biden was told that his Thursday no-damage admission would severely harm the Government's efforts to prosecute Assange, but what is clear is that he was perfectly willing to march into Meet the Press the following day and say things that he knew were false in order to depict the WikiLeaks diplomatic cable disclosures as harming U.S. national security.
It's really not an overstatement to say that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange are the new Iraqi WMDs because the government and establishment media are jointly manufacturing and disseminating an endless stream of fear-mongering falsehoods designed to depict them as scary villains threatening the security of The American People and who must therefore be stopped at any cost.
Labels: Bradley Manning, denial of service, fear-mongering, Glenn Greenwald, hypocrisy, Joe Biden, Julian Assange, MSNBC, National Security State, talking points, Wikileaks, WMD
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
12/18/2010
Labels: bailout, bank fraud, banksters, Dylan Ratigan, MSNBC, RealEconTV
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
12/03/2010
Discussion centered around President Obama's address on the Iraq war and the ensuing criticism from neocons who complained Obama should've thanked and praised President George W. Bush for the 'success' of the surge in Iraq.
"These people have a Ph.D in lying and a master's degree in manipulating intelligence," Scahill says of the neocons, "And it is, it's really sobering to see this kind of brash historical revisionism happening in real time. The idea that these people want to post some kind of false flag of victory on the corpses of all who have died in Iraq because of their decisions. These people destabilized Iraq, they destabilized the Middle East, with their neo-con vision of redrawing maps, and they didn't even succeed in their own stated mission. This is a special kind of pathological sickness that these individuals are plagued with."
Scahill then begins to bust the 'surge' myth, "Pardon me for introducing a little bit of fact onto cable news over these 24 hours, but the reality is there was no success of the surge. The fact is that Bush's policy in Iraq caused massive destabilization, led to a civil war that killed upwards of a million Iraqis; there were ethnic cleansing campaigns. When the surge troops went in there, Baghdad was a walled-off city, the Sunnis had been pushed out and sided with the United States, Muqtada al Sadr responded to the announced timetable for withdrawal that the neocons so opposed by saying he considered it a truce with America and pulled his forces off the street... So, the entire surge myth permeates to this day, and its actually one big lie."
"Let's remember... that it was the Bush administration's policy in Iraq that created an al Qaeda presence in that country. It was their policies that destabilized that country and caused the deaths of so many Americans and so many Iraqi civilians. Stephen Hadley probably sees Osama bin Laden at his corner store or hiding in his bathroom somewhere, so... These people have ZERO credibility, and have no business in public life anymore." In conclusion the award-winning investigative journalist declares, "They shouldn't be able to leave their houses without being confronted with the death and destruction that their lives caused."
Labels: George Bush, Iraq, Iraq casualties, Iraq ethnic cleansing, Jeremy Scahill, Keith Olbermann, MSNBC, neocons
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
9/02/2010
Labels: Ground Zero, Islam, Keith Olbermann, mosque, MSNBC, Muslims, New York City, Special Comment
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
8/19/2010
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Dylan Ratigan | ||||
| ||||
Labels: banksters, Dylan Ratigan, elites, MSNBC, Stephen Colbert, super-rich
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
8/11/2010
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Democratic strategist Chris Lehane ... : "Politics in D.C. have become Seinfeldesque. Fights about nothing."
If you read and write about politics full-time and are thus forced to subject yourself to the political media -- as I am -- what's most striking aren't the outrages and corruptions, but the overwhelming, suffocating, numbing stream of stupidity and triviality that floods the brain. One has to battle the temptation to just turn away and ignore it all. Every day, day after day, is consumed by some totally irrelevant though distracting melodrama: what Sarah Palin wrote on her Facebook page, some "outrageous" snippet of a comment made by John Boehner or Harry Reid, some "crazy," attention-attracting statement from some fringe idiot-figure or TV blowhard that is exploited for superficial partisan gain or distraction value (hey, look over there: I think Michelle Bachmann just said something outrageous!!!!).
Labels: Glenn Greenwald, Keith Olbermann, MSNBC, news, Obama administration, Shirley Sherrod, Special Comment, spin, Tom Vilsack
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
7/22/2010
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Labels: Dylan Ratigan, Glenn Greenwald, MSNBC
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
7/14/2010
The evident conclusion is that the core driver of modern capitalist society is fraud at its very core, and nothing short of a massive revolutionary overhaul of the political system, which is the number one defender of the status quo courtesy of very lucrative bribes and kickbacks originating from the same rotten Wall Street that day after day is uncovered to be nothing but a sham filled with toxic assets, used to collateralize an ever growing wall of liquidity (think you Bernanke).
This report comes just short of suggesting this is by no means an accident but instead one of the greatest crimes ever perpetrated by a group of people, and enabled by the US government.
There is no doubt civil cases will be brought. We had a failure of CEO, the CFO, the accountants, and indeed the regulators, the Fed and the Treasury, that were inside these banks, and the question has to be asked: where were they.
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This story isn't going away. Someone has to go to jail. It's clear that Geithner acted as the "chief facilitator" of industrial scale securities flim-flam which led directly to the Great Crash of '08. He needs to be held accountable for his actions.
Labels: bank fraud, Ben Bernanke, crony capitalism, Dylan Ratigan, Eliot Spitzer, Federal Reserve System, financial meltdown, Lehman Bros, MSNBC, recession, Tim Geithner
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
3/15/2010
Speaking on Hardball, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) denounced Cheney's attacks on President Barack Obama, who posited that Obama was "dithering" in failing to endorse a troop surge.
"I have trouble listening to what he says sometimes, because of the blood that drips from his teeth while he's talking," Grayson quipped. "But my response is this: He's just angry because the president doesn't shoot old men in the face. But by the way, when he was done speaking, did he just then turn into a bat and fly away?"
Matthews, somewhat aghast, replied: "Oh God -- we gotta keep a level here. Let me ask you this: Don't you have any Republican friends?"
Grayson laughed.
Labels: Alan Grayson, Chris Matthews, Dick Cheney, MSNBC, Satan
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
10/24/2009
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Labels: health care, Keith Olbermann, MSNBC, Special Comment
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
10/07/2009
Lawmakers’ defunding of community activist group ACORN “means there is no spine in Congress when it comes to standing up against the real crooks and criminals in this society,” military-affairs reporter Jeremy Scahill says.
Scahill, a writer for The Nation who this summer broke the story that Erik Prince, CEO of Blackwater, had been implicated in at least one murder, told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that ACORN got “pennies” compared to military contractors who have been convicted of crimes but continue to receive hundreds of millions of dollars from US taxpayers.
Scahill suggested that it’s relatively easy to go after a grassroots community group like ACORN, while pursuing much worse allegations against defense contractors requires actual courage.
“This is political, this isn’t really about upholding the law,” Scahill said on the Rachel Maddow Show. “On the one hand, you have an organization that registered 1.3 million people to vote, 400,000 members, works with the poor and working class people of this nation, and they don’t have lobbying power in the form of massive campaign contributions.
Labels: ACORN, Blackwater, Erik Prince, Jeremy Scahill, military contractors, MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, Raw Story, The Nation
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
9/26/2009
"Just because he's a United States Senator, doesn't make his mouth a prayerbook"
~Bertha Lewis, CEO of ACORN
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Courtesy of MSNBC's Ed Schultz Show.
Labels: ACORN, Bertha Lewis, Ed Schultz, MSNBC, Richard Shelby
Submit To Propellerposted by Anonymous at
9/17/2009
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"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man," Carter said. "I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way, and I've seen the rest of the country that share the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African Americans."
Carter continued, "And that racism inclination still exists. And I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It's an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply."
US President Barack Obama does not believe current criticism of his policies is based on the colour of his skin, the White House has said.
It was responding to comments by former President Jimmy Carter that much of the vitriol against Mr Obama's health and spending plans was "based on racism".
[...]
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Mr Obama "does not believe that the criticism comes based on the colour of his skin".
"We understand that people have disagreements with some of the decisions that we've made and some of the extraordinary actions that had to be undertaken by this administration," Mr Gibbs said.
Labels: Barack Obama, bipartisanship, Jimmy Carter, MSNBC, racism, Robert Gibbs
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
9/16/2009
The Federal Reserve — the quasi-autonomous body that controls the US’s money supply — is a “Ponzi scheme” that created “bubble after bubble” in the US economy and needs to be held accountable for its actions, says Eliot Spitzer, the former governor and attorney-general of New York.
In a wide-ranging discussion of the bank bailouts on MSNBC’s Morning Meeting, host Dylan Ratigan described the process by which the Federal Reserve exchanged $13.9 trillion of bad bank debt for cash that it gave to the struggling banks.
Spitzer — who built a reputation as “the Sheriff of Wall Street” for his zealous prosecutions of corporate crime as New York’s attorney-general and then resigned as the state’s governor over revelations he had paid for prostitutes — seemed to agree with Ratigan that the bank bailout amounts to “America’s greatest theft and cover-up ever.”
Advocating in favor of a House bill to audit the Federal Reserve, Spitzer said: “The Federal Reserve has benefited for decades from the notion that it is quasi-autonomous, it’s supposed to be independent. Let me tell you a dirty secret: The Fed has done an absolutely disastrous job since [former Fed Chairman] Paul Volcker left.
“The reality is the Fed has blown it. Time and time again, they blew it. Bubble after bubble, they failed to understand what they were doing to the economy.
“The most poignant example for me is the AIG bailout, where they gave tens of billions of dollars that went right through — conduit payments — to the investment banks that are now solvent. We [taxpayers] didn’t get stock in those banks, they didn’t ask what was going on — this begs and cries out for hard, tough examination.
“You look at the governing structure of the New York [Federal Reserve], it was run by the very banks that got the money. This is a Ponzi scheme, an inside job. It is outrageous, it is time for Congress to say enough of this. And to give them more power now is crazy.
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Labels: A.I.G., accountability, bailout, banksters, Eliot Spitzer, elites, Federal Reserve System, MSNBC, Ponzi scheme, super-rich
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
7/25/2009
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Labels: Chip Pickering, Fundamentalist Christianity, hypocrisy, marital infidelity, morality, MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, The Family, The Fellowship
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
7/17/2009
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