30,000 American Patriots Rally Against the Koch Brothers Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker

MADISON (Reuters) – Thousands of people gathered at the Wisconsin capitol on Saturday to demand a recall of Republican Governor Scott Walker, whose controversial and successful drive to limit public unions last winter sparked the biggest protests in the state since the Vietnam War. Walker is a legislative mercenary of the Koch Brothers, who have allegedly pressed the governor to find ways to redistribute more income and wealth from the 99 percent to the 1 percent. That’s precisely what his policies have done.

Upon taking office, Walker passed tax cuts to the richest 1 percent which put the state budget in the red. Then Walker insisted public unions (working people) take reductions in pay and other compensation in order to balance the state budget, which had been balanced, more or less, before he gave his base (millionaires and billionaires) tax cuts. Ergo, his mistake was to foist an income redistribution scam on the people of Wisconsin.

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The Best Master’s (Graduate) Degrees With Which to Get a Job

By John Hively

Here are the ten best master’s degrees to have if you want to get a job, at least according to Forbes magazine. However, there are things Forbes never mentioned, most likely because they didn’t want to offend the sensibilities of their corporate advertisers or the magazine’s libertarian CEO, Steve Forbes.

Take computer science, for example. Forbes most likely doesn’t want you to know that a ton of those jobs have and are being outsourced to India and Pakistan. Computers connect the world and make it easier to outsource jobs to the lowest bidder worldwide. So the market in the USA for computer science majors is getting more and more competitive because of those free trade treaties that Forbes loves to endorse.

When a corporation ships jobs overseas, the difference between the old compensation here and the new compensation there increases profits, and ultimately goes into the bulging wallets of CEO’s and mostly rich shareholders via higher dividends and share prices. In other words, free trade is a redistribution of income scam and computer programmers are among the best educated American citizens that lose out because of those income redistribution treaties.

Anyway, here’s the list of jobs and a few of my comments.

1. (tie) Computer Science (Caveat—See nursing below)
Mid-career median pay: $109,000
Projected employment increase: 27%
Common jobs: Software developer, software architect, software engineer

1. (tie) Physician Assistant Studies (Caveat—See nursing below)
Mid-career median pay: $101,000
Projected employment increase: 39%
Common jobs: Physician assistant

3. (tie) Civil Engineering (Another job that can be and is outsourced)
Mid-career median pay: $96,400
Projected employment increase: 24%
Common jobs: Civil engineer, project manager

3. (tie) Economics (Caveat—See nursing below)
Mid-career median pay: $116,000
Projected employment increase: 19%
Common jobs: Economist, market research analyst, data analyst

3. (tie) Mathematics (Caveat—See nursing below)
Mid-career median pay: $87,100
Projected employment increase: 22%
Common jobs: Actuary, software developer, data analyst

6. Environmental Science (Caveat—See nursing below)
Mid-career median pay: $84,300
Projected employment increase: 28%
Common jobs: Environmental scientist, environmental health scientist, project manager

7. (tie) Nursing (Caveat–Nurses can’t be outsourced. However, for several years your government under the Bush administration negotiated through the World Trade Organization (WTO) to import almost every classification of employee, including doctors and nurses, at the same compensation as they earned in their home countries for a period of up to three years. That means a nurse earning $10 a day in the Philippines could’ve been imported into the USA to work as a nurse for $10 per day. The same was true of every job listed in this article along with hundreds of others. A computer programmer in Pakistan earning $5,000 a year could’ve been imported into the USA and then paid that same amount as he or she earned there. The government, in other words, was negotiating to reduce the compensation of doctors, nurses, computer programmers and thousands of others in the USA. More specifically, on behalf of the richest of Americans, your government was negotiating to redistribute your income, livelihoods and futures to the richest of Americans. This is something that never happened, mainly because South American nations broke off negotiations over agricultural subsidies. Just remember, however. Your government tried to make it so, and it will likely try again. Fight back. Join the Occupy movement)

Mid-career median pay: $85,500
Projected employment increase: 22%
Common jobs: Nursing manager, advanced registered nurse practitioner, pediatrics nurse practitioner

7. (tie) Physics (Caveat—See nursing above)
Mid-career median pay: $115,000
Projected employment increase: 16%
Common jobs: Senior systems engineer, physicist, software engineer

9. Occupational Therapy (Caveat—See nursing above)
Mid-career median pay: $78,000
Projected employment increase: 29%
Common jobs: Occupational therapist, hand therapist, rehabilitation services director

10. Political Science (I don’t know why Forbes selected this as 10th best. I know several paralegals and they’re all unemployed in their field)
Mid-career median pay: $87,100
Projected employment increase: 19%
Common jobs: Paralegal/legal assistant, government affairs director

Forbes alleges they got their pay and employment increase numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I can understand the growth of nurses and physician assistants because of the aging of the baby boomers, but given the continued weakness of the economy, it’s difficult to envision the growth of the other fields, especially when so many of them can be exported.

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Occupy Oakland Has a bold new plan: Begin the Counter Attack Against the Police State of the 1 Percent by Shutting down all west coast ports

Occupy Oakland has called for the blockade and disruption of ports on the entire West Coast on December 12th in response to the coordinated nationwide attacks on the Occupy camps that was orchestrated by President Obama.

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Republican Lobby Firm Prepares a Hit Job on Occupy Wall Street on Behalf of

A Washington lobbying firm with links to the Republican Party and the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to swift boat Occupy Wall Street and any politicians that express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by the MSNBC program “Up w/ Chris Hayes.”

The proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford. It was addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association.

CLGC’s memo proposes the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it claims Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead.

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