The Keystone Pipeline: How much does it cost to buy the US senate, the US House of Representatives, and the man in the White House?

Protestors against the Keystone XL pipeline dressed as referees throw red penalty flags during a rally on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 24, 2012. The utterly corrupt US government, which includes the massively corrupt Koch Brothers wing of the US Supreme Court of Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito, were bought off years and years ago.

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Bernie Sanders Writes Law to Break Them Up: 10 Largest Banks Bigger Now Than Before Taxpayer Bailout

From the website of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont:

April 9, 2013

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday planned to introduce legislation to break up banks that have grown so big that the Justice Department fears the financial system would be at risk if criminal charges were filed. Rep. Brad Sherman proposed a companion bill in the House.

The 10 largest banks in the United States are bigger now than before a taxpayer bailout following the 2008 financial crisis when the Federal Reserve propped up financial institutions with $16 trillion in near zero-interest loans and Congress approved a $700 billion rescue for banks that some considered “too big to fail.” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. now says the Justice Department may not pursue criminal cases against big banks because filing charges could “have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.”

“We have a situation now where Wall Street banks are not only too big to fail, they are too big to jail,” Sanders said. “That is unacceptable and that has got to change because America is based on a system of law and justice.”

“Never again should a financial institution be able to demand a federal bailout,” Sherman said. “They claim; ‘if we go down, the economy is going down with us,’ but by breaking up these institutions long before they face a crisis, we ensure a healthy financial system where medium sized institutions can compete in the free market.”

The Sanders and Sherman legislation would give the Treasury Department 90 days to identify commercial banks, investment banks, hedge funds and insurance companies whose “failure would have a catastrophic effect on the stability of either the financial system or the United States economy without substantial government assistance.”

The list would have to include institutions deemed “systemically important banks” by the Financial Stability Board, the G-20 body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system. The board in a press release last Nov. 4 identified eight U.S. banks required to maintain extra capital buffers: Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, State Street and Wells Fargo. Treasury would be required to break up those and any other institutions identified by the secretary as too big to fail.

The six largest U.S. financial institutions today have assets of nearly $9.6 trillion, a figure equal to about two-thirds of the nation’s gross domestic product. These six financial institutions issue more than two-thirds of all credit cards, over half of all mortgages, control 95 percent of all derivatives held in financial institutions and hold more than 40 percent of all bank deposits in the United States.

“In my view,” Sanders concluded, “no single financial institution should have holdings so extensive that its failure could send the world economy into crisis. At the very least, no institution, no CEO in America should be above the law. If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.”

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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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