Bill Moyers: Congress on the Leash

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Martin Luther King Jr. and His War on Poverty: He Lost

Martin Luther King Jr. began a war on poverty and lost his life in the process. However, when King was assassinated in 1968, the 1 percent received about 8 percent of the nation’s total yearly income and owned roughly 8 percent of the nation’s assets. Now those figures for the 1 percent are roughly 32 percent of income, and 42 percent of all wealth. Those figures continue to grow because the 1 percent own the federal government and use it like a customer would a prostitute. For more on King and his war on poverty, check out the links below.

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Matt Taibbi and Bill Moyers on Why the Government Lets the Big Banks Get Away With All Sorts of Crime

Matt Taibbi is his usual brilliant self in the video below, but his conclusions are wrong, not in fact, but as a matter of degree. Corporations and the rich control the US government, as well as most state governments. And this is especially true for Wall Street executives and banks. That’s why and how the game is rigged against the middle class.

By the way, when a rich person, such as Grover Norquist, says he wants to shrink government so small you can drown it in your bathtub, he means government for the 99 percent. He doesn’t have a problem with government growing so long as it’s profitable for a select few.

Check out the video below.

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President Obama’s Nomination of Mary Jo White: Another Corporate Capture of the Securities and Exchange Commission

Are you kidding me? President Obama nominated Wall Street defending attorney Mary Jo White to be the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Before her nomination, White was a lawyer defending Wall Street giants like JP Morgan Chase, UBS, General Electric and Microsoft. Before that, she was a federal prosecutor. Of course, transitioning from policing to protecting to policing companies is not illegal — or even all that rare — but it does raise important questions about the integrity of our government watchdogs.

The SEC is supposed to be the enforcer of the laws governing the financial markets. Note that no charges have been brought against any of the Wall Street players who committed known crimes and tanked the economy. There’s a reason for this. Our government watchdogs, like the SEC, were bought off decades ago.

“The Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a government accountability watchdog group, published a report this week on the so-called “revolving door” at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Authored by POGO Investigator Michael Smallberg, the report highlights numerous examples of how the back and forth of SEC regulators between jobs in Washington and on Wall Street blunts the agency’s effectiveness.”

According to Smallberg, “When you have so many people going back and forth from a regulatory agency to the regulated industry, it can shape the mindset of people throughout the agency and make them more sympathetic to the viewpoints of industry groups, sometimes at the expense of people with a stake in the agency’s mission, like consumers, investors or shareholders. In some cases, people who used to work at the agency have connections to people who are still there. They can take advantage of that access to obtain favors for their clients, who, in many cases tend to be large institutions that have the resources to hire these alumni.

The revolving door creates a risk of what we call “regulatory capture” — when companies are able to sway the policies of the agency in their favor. Many of these agencies are supposed to be independent regulatory agencies — independent not only from political pressure that might be applied by Congress, but also from large industry groups. The revolving door between a regulator and a regulated industry creates at least a heightened danger of regulatory capture.”

In other words, Obama nominated White because it’s almost certain that she will not to enforce laws designed to reign in the excesses of Wall Street. In fact, she may help to cover up the crimes of Wall Street by simply looking the other way. That’s what she’ll be paid to do.

Obama may play his role as a progressive on social issues, but that is to take our eyes off the economic prize. Obama’s nomination of Mary Jo White shows that he wants to continue to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent. That means he’s not a progressive. He’s a regressive, a corporate hack backed by Wall Street, General Dynamics and other big money. Obama is not for the little guy, although he tries to play the role.

Let’s hope Elizabeth Warren runs for president in 2016. Then we’ll likely have the first progressive president since, arguably, Harry Truman.

Check out Bill Moyers report below.

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Video: Bill Moyers and Nobel Prize Winning Economist Paul Krugman on How Best to Get the Economy Going

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Video: Bill Movers Interviews Senator Bernie Sanders about Media Mergers

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More media consolidation coming! More propaganda for the 99 percent

“The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is set to vote to relax a longstanding ban that prevents one company from owning radio and television stations and newspapers in the same city — a move that activists are calling a giant Christmas present to Rupert Murdoch.” Actually, it’s a present to the 1 percent in their war against the middle class. They’ll be more able to launch more vicious propaganda wars so as to influence a greater number of the 99 percent to financially slice their own throats so as to feed Wall Street and the 1 percent their flowing financial blood. The rigged game will be rigged even more. They’ll tell people how free trade treaties are wonderful for them and their country without pointing out the massive maldistribution of income and wealth that has come about because of these treaties, which happen to be unconstitutional since the constitution requires that 2/3 or the Senate vote for treaties and no free trade treaty has even come close to that number.

“Murdoch has floated the idea of buying The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times, the dominant papers in cities where he already owns TV stations. What’s worse, the FCC is operating behind closed doors, rather than inviting public comment on the issue.”

More media consolidation coming! More propaganda for the 99 percent

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Bill Moyers Video: The United States of ALEC

Democracy Now! showed “The United States of ALEC,” a special news documentary by legendary journalist Bill Moyers on how the secretive American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) “has helped corporate America propose and even draft legislation for states across the country. ALEC brings together major U.S. corporations and right-wing legislators to craft and vote on “model” bills behind closed doors. It has come under increasing scrutiny for its role in promoting “stand your ground” gun laws, voter suppression bills, union-busting policies and other controversial legislation. Although billing itself as a “nonpartisan public-private partnership,” ALEC is actually a national network of state politicians and powerful corporations principally concerned with increasing corporate profits without public scrutiny. Moyers’ special will air this weekend on Moyers & Company, but first airs on Democracy Now! today. “The United States of ALEC” is a collaboration between Okapi Productions, LLC and the Schumann Media Center.”

Check out the link below to see the entire Moyers documentary, with an introduction by Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow!

The United States of ALEC–Democracy Now!

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Video: Bill Moyers Reports on the 1 Percent/Corporate Take Over of State Governments

This week, in the video below Bill Moyers reports on the most influential corporate-funded political force most of America has never heard of — ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. A national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations, ALEC presents itself as a “nonpartisan public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge.

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Bill Moyers Says to Americans: It’s the fourth of July, read the Declaration of Independence

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