The House Financial Services Committee is Corrupt.
Financial Literacy is a load of crap since it won't protect you from corruption.

The American and British religion, is greed, Christianity's got nothing to do with it.
We know politicians are duplicitous. 

The Supreme Court, of Chief Justice John Roberts, in a decision that might actually have more dire implications than "Dred Scott v Sandford," declared that because of the alchemy of its 19th Century predecessors in deciding that corporations had all the rights of people, any restrictions on how these corporate-beings spend their money on political advertising, are unconstitutional.  In short, the first amendment — free speech for persons — which went into affect in 1791, applies to corporations, which were not recognized as the equivalents of persons until 1886. In short, there are now no checks on the ability of corporations or unions or other giant aggregations of power to decide our elections.  None. They can spend all the money they want. And if they can spend all the money they want — sooner, rather than later — they will implant the legislators of their choice in every office from President to head of the Visiting Nurse Service. ...

4/14 Justices, 5-4, Reject Corporate Spending Limit
Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

4/2014 John Roberts’s rules of money in politics
He used the ubiquity of super PACs to justify looser rules on political contributions. Roberts spearheaded a 5-4 high court ruling that said caps on the total amount of money an individual can give to political campaigns, PACs and parties are unconstitutional.

#CitizensUnited was decided by SCOTUS 2010 Keith Olbermann on on "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission"

 

YOUR RELIEF VALVE - SAY SOMETHING

K Street Lobbys Write the Law
Corporate Lobbies: How Big Money Rigged the Rules in Washington "The public be damned!" ~ William H. Vanderbilt, railroad magnate, 1882

Stephanie Herman and the Venn Diagrams of influence

FYI: Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell is no genius he just took a page out of Senator Aldrich's old school playbook on how to rig the rules of the game.

WHEN DID BIG MONEY TAKE CONTROL OF WASHINGTON?

Ralph Nader and other Corporate Reformers in the 1970's wanted to protect the commons and our commonwealth scared Corporate America to death so they circled the wagons. They followed the prescription written by insider Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell.

The Powell Memo: A Call-to-Arms for Corporations

A confidential memo written to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by Attorney Lewis Powell, Jr. (born in Virginia in 1907). The memo described how business could defend and further capitalism against---wait for it--- socialist, communist, and fascist cultural trends. Among these cultural trends were the usual suspects, minorities and women.ixon later nominated Powell to the Supreme Court

Based in part on his experiences as a corporate lawyer and as a representative for the tobacco industry with the Virginia legislature, he wrote the Powell Memorandum to a friend at the US Chamber of Commerce. The memo called for corporate America to become more aggressive in molding politics and law in the US and may have sparked the formation of several influential right-wing think tanks, as well as inspiring the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to become far more politically active.

In August 1971, prior to accepting President Nixon's request to become Associate Justice of Supreme Court, Lewis Powell sent the "Confidential Memorandum" with the title, "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System."

Powell argued, "The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism came from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians." In the memorandum, Powell advocated "constant surveillance" of textbook and television content, as well as a purge of left-wing elements.
This memo foreshadowed a number of Powell's most notable court opinions, especially First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, which shifted the direction of First Amendment law by declaring that corporate financial influence of elections through independent expenditures should be protected with the same vigor as individual political speech. Much of the future Court opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission relied on the same arguments raised in Bellotti. Today, though, the Powell Memo is routinely invoked as the blueprint for virtually all of the conservative intellectual infrastructure built in the 1970s and 1980s -- a memo that changed the course of history, in the words of one analysis of the anti-environmental movement; and the attack memo that changed America, in another account.

 

Please Notice the memo is sent to Mr. Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chairman, Education Committee, U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Corporate interests Do Not want a population of well-informed, well-educated citizens capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that, that doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They want disorganized, obedient workers.

Confidential Memorandum: Attack of American Free Enterprise System
DATE: August 23, 1971
TO: Mr. Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chairman, Education Committee, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
FROM: Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell’s nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell’s legal objectivity. Anderson cautioned that Powell “might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice…in behalf of business interests.” Though Powell’s memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration’s “hands-off business” philosophy.

LEARN HOW LOBBYISTS BUY POLITICIANS

Media outlets just act in their owners' best interest (which is to eliminate competition and preserve status quo), that's all.
​There is no conspiracy theory here. Just one (quite stunning) fact/statistic:

"In 1983, 90% of US media was controlled by fifty companies; 2016 today, 90% is controlled by just six companies" 

 

Money, money, money, money, money, money, money:
 

Clintons have received about $25 million for 104 speeches since early 2014 to corporate, trade-association or educational institutions. Bush is helping to stockpile money in his super PAC in a way no previous candidate has ever done — and in ways none of his prospective rivals are doing. He is creating a new model, one that may be within the letter of the law but that nonetheless mocks a long-ago-shredded system of campaign finance. His one effort at restraint, if it can be called that, was to ask super-PAC donors at one point to limit contributions to $1 million.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/money-money-money-money-money-money-money/2015/05/19/6d69633e-fe3e-11e4-833c-a2de05b6b2a4_story.html

Hillary: "Name one time I changed due to Wall Street money."
Elizabeth Warren: “Okay, allow me.
Hillary: "Name one time I changed due to Wall Street money."
Elizabeth Warren: 

WE ARE GOOD WITH CURRENCY MANIPULATION

 

1/5/15 JPMorgan settles currency manipulation lawsuit in U.S.
JPMorgan Chase & Co has become the first bank to settle a U.S. antitrust lawsuit in which investors accused 12 major banks of rigging prices in the $5 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market.

 

 

2015
SAME AS
IT EVER WASThe Men Who Crashed The World IN 2008
The crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing more than 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the edge of insolvency. Wall Street turned back the clock to 1929.

In the first episode of Meltdown, we hear about four men who brought down the global economy: a billionaire mortgage-seller who fooled millions; a high-rolling banker with a fatal weakness; a ferocious Wall Street predator; and the power behind the throne.

But how did it all go so wrong?

Lack of government regulation; easy lending in the US housing market meant anyone could qualify for a home loan with no government regulations in place.

Also, London was competing with New York as the banking capital of the world. Gordon Brown, the British finance minister at the time, introduced 'light touch regulation' - giving bankers a free hand in the marketplace.

All this, and with key players making the wrong financial decisions, saw the world's biggest financial collapse.

2015 

Mike Krauss is a founding director of the Public Banking Institute and chair of the Pennsylvania Project.

The crash of 2016: Wall Street gets ready

Holder and Obama Never Miss an Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity Versus the Banksters

 

2014 STILL NO LAW IN PLACE TO PROTECT THE TAXPAYER FROM BANKS

AND WHEN THE JURY HEAR'S A CASE AND PUNISHES THE BANK IT GETS VOIDED BY THE COURT !!!!!

2016 Bank of America $1.27 billion U.S. mortgage penalty is voided
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0YE20S
A U.S. appeals court on Monday threw out a jury's finding that Bank of America Corp was liable for mortgage fraud leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, voiding a $1.27 billion penalty and dealing the U.S. Department of Justice a major setback.

12/11/14 Jamie Dimon himself called to urge support for the derivatives rule in the spending bill

THE POWER BROKERS
Business Roundtable Headquarters in Washington

There is no difference between a Repulican or a Democrate - They both allow the Banksters Rule over America.

The White House would support the bill with that provision intact, given that it would erase a key provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, one of Obama’s signature achievements. 

BUY A LOBBYIST -
BUY A POLITICIAN

 

Citigroup and J.P. Morgan -- are among Washington’s most influential corporate players.

Each firm, for example, spent over $5 million a year lobbying in recent years, both of them ranking in the top 90 firms for lobbying expenditures, according to data prepared by the Center for Responsive Politics.  In addition J.P. Morgan contributed over $5 million to federal candidates and parties in 2012, compared with  $2.6 million in the last election cycle for Citigroup. And both firms have strong connections on Capitol Hill and the White House. Citi, for example, includes among its stable of lobbyists former House Speaker Bob Livingston (R-La.) and former Senators John Breaux (D-La.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.).

The acrimony that erupted Thursday between President Obama and members of his own party largely pivoted on a single item in a 1,600-page piece of legislation to keep the government funded: Should banks be allowed to make risky investments using taxpayer-backed money? 

"This was the epicenter of the crisis. This is what brought AIG down, what brought Lehman Brothers down." 

That provision isn't just any provision. It's one that goes to the heart of the Dodd Frank reform because it would let big banks undertake risky activities with funds guaranteed by the federal government and, hence taxpayers. The amendment went "back to the same old Republican formula: privatize the gain, nationalize the risk.  You succeed, it's in your pocket.  You fail, the taxpayer pays the bill. 

The omnibus appropriations bill would do that by undoing the Dodd Frank provision that ordered banks to move their riskiest activities -- such as default swaps, trading commodities, and trading derivatives -- to new entities so that deposits guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. would not be in danger.

The language in the bill appeared to come directly from the pens of lobbyists at the nation’s biggest banks, aides said. The provision was so important to the profits at those companies that J.P.Morgan's chief executive Jamie Dimon himself telephoned individual lawmakers to urge them to vote for it, according to a person familiar with the effort. The nation's biggest banks -- led by Citigroup, J.P. Morgan and Bank of America -- have been lobbying for the change in Dodd Frank, which had given them a period of years to comply. Trade associations representing banks, the Financial Services Roundtable and the American Bankers Association, emphasized that regional banks are supportive of the change as well.

The White House, in pleading with Democrats to support the bill, explained that it got something in return: It said that it averted other amendments that would have undercut Dodd-Frank, protected the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from Republican attacks, and won double digit increases in funds for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. "The president is pleased," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

GET HER DONE

 

 

WHERE WAS THE PRESS?

There is no conspiracy theory here.

Just one (quite stunning) fact/statistic: Media outlets just act in their owners' best interest (which is to eliminate competition and preserve status quo), that's all. 

"In 1983, 90% of US media was controlled by fifty companies; today, 90% is controlled by just six companies"

As New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote, one big factor that was missing: major press coverage. Sullivan wrote that the bill had been "mostly ignored by much of the mainstream media, including The Times, in recent days, as a retiring senator held up the legislation and it nearly went down the drain."
Vice News was covering the bill, along with Politico's Josh Gerstein and yours truly from my perch at the Washington Free Beacon. The Washington Examiner editorialized in favor of the bill's passage, as did many regional newspapers. You could get breaking coverage from ace blogger Andrew Howard, who also made it his mission to ask major media why they weren't covering the bill. But the biggest news outlet to cover FOIA reform was an ocean away at The Guardian. The New York Times and Washington Post were both MIA.

 

12/11/14 Wall Street: Banking Lobbyists Block Transparency Bill, Advocates Say

Wall Street’s lobbyists are going to their allies on Capitol Hill and are asking them to delay it. But Wall Street just wants to kill the bill.” 

William D. Cohan, a former banker and author of "Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World," said in 2010 that dealing with the FOIA office at the SEC was “Kafka-esque.” A 2009 report by the SEC’s Inspector General found that the SEC had a “presumption of non-disclosure,” in contradiction to the goal of a “presumption of openness” offered by the FOIA Improvement Act. Meanwhile, ProPublica’s September investigation into the New York Fed revealed that the public rarely has access to the internal workings of deeply important regulatory agencies.

Johnson’s language “is another example of how far public officials will got to protect Wall Street's interests," Cohan told the International Business Times. "We need more transparency, not less. We need to understand the lengths Wall Street goes to get benefits that other Americans don't get. Senator Johnson thwarts our ability to do that.” 

Johnson has received over $4 million from the finance, insurance and real estate industry during his career, according to OpenSecrets.

The financial industry is working to fortify federal open-records exemptions for Wall Street which also exist in states and cities across the country. Exemptions already exist in various state statutes, allowing local officials to block the release of information about financial firms, including those that manage billions of dollars of public pension money. But Johnson’s language may also exempt federal regulatory agencies from the bill’s requirement that those agencies act with a “presumption of openness.” Those groups also fear the financial industry is aiming to prevent government regulators from erring on the side of transparency when faced with open-records requests for information about the financial industry.As states across the country continue to block the release of information about billions of dollars worth of public pension investments in Wall Street firms, transparency advocates had hoped a bill reforming the federal Freedom of Information Act would shed more light on the government’s dealings with the financial industry. But those hopes are in jeopardy as a last-minute move by Washington lawmakers is likely to maintain a culture of secrecy at the nation’s financial regulators.

HOW  WALL STREET
GOT THEIR WAY

 

 

“Who does Congress work for?” Warren (D-Mass.) said during a floor speech this week.
“Does it work for the millionaires, the billionaires, the giant companies with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers? Or does it work for all of us.”

 

An important ally of Wall Street was Alan Greenspan holdover and Federal Reserve general counsel Scott Alvarez

"But last month the Fed’s top lawyer delivered a particularly blunt critique that proved golden to the industry."

The Federal Reserve's Scott Alvarez was key to gutting the Dodd-Frank derivatives provision. He was publicly opposed. Banking officials also said that recent comments by a key Federal Reserve official helped them boost their case with lawmakers. Fed officials, including former Chairman Ben Bernanke, have never been shy about expressing their concerns with the pushout provision, arguing it is difficult to implement and won’t necessarily make the financial system safer on its own. “You can tell that was written at 2:30 in the morning and so that needs to be I think revisited just to make sense of it,” Federal Reserve General Counsel Scott Alvarez said at an American Bar Association conference in Washington. All that was left was for the provision to survive the horse trading between House and Senate appropriators during final budget talks. During these negotiations with House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), his Senate counterpart, agreed to keep the provision in exchange for more funding for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to aides.

 

ON THE POLITICAL MONEY TRAIL

From the early hours of the morning until late in the evening, politicians are breaking bread and sipping cocktails with donors. Sunlight’s Party Time lets you know who’s fundraising and where.

End Corruption

Having been to Washington several times to walk the halls of Congress and testify before it -- my own experience is that they care most about what large contributors, lobbyists, and their political parties say, and only after that what constituents say.  This problem is exacerbated by the system of committees in Congress, in which a particular legislator has inordinate power over actions involving specific subjects. If the Chairman of a committee which handles, say, telecommunications is not from my district, my chances of even speaking with his staff about issues which might affect me greatly is close to nil. However, lobbyists from large corporations (especially those with nationwide footprints that cover every district) and trade associations, as well as large donors, will get his ear. These entities may even get their employees onto the staff of the relevant Congressional committee, as has happened in several cases of late.  No contact mechanism can, alas, change this fundamental, structural dysfunction in the current system.  --Brett Glass

 

 

Dec 10, 2008 Joseph Stiglitz on Capitalist Fools: How We Crashed the Economy​ 

Joseph Stiglitz won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2001. He was  Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors from 1995 to  1997 for Bill Clinton. He is also the former Senior Vice President  and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He opposed financial industry deregulation under Clinton, fought with Larry Summers, who is now Obama's chief economic advisor, over regulating derivatives (Stiglitz  wanted to, but Summers won and that wrong decision contributed to the  mess we are in.) Stiglitz, while favoring trade, has questioned some  of the faith-based beliefs of the free trade fundamentalists.  Stiglitz has an excellent article in Vanity Fair on how we got to the  worst economic times since the 1930s. He points to five key mistakes—  under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II—and one national delusion.  The truth is most of the individual mistakes boil down to just one: a  belief that markets are self-adjusting and that the role of government  should be minimal.

 

5/13/13 Banks’ Lobbyists Help in Drafting Financial Bills

Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives just passed a law written and paid for by lobbyists for Wall Street banks. They sold us all out.

Billionaire Koch brothers takeover of America's democracy.

11/5/2013 Congress Sells Out To Wall Street, Again -- Originally posted at Represent.us blog

The U.S. House just passed a bill called H.R. 992 — the Swaps Regulatory Improvement Act — that was literally written by mega-bank lobbyists. It repeals the laws passed in 2010 to prevent another meltdown like the one that crashed our economy in 2008. The repeal was cosponsored by a former Goldman Sachs executive and passed with bipartisan support from some of the House’s largest recipients of Wall Street cash. It’s so appalling… so unbelievable… so blatantly corrupt… that you've got to see it to believe it:

In 2010, Congress passed the “Dodd-Frank” law to clamp down on risky “derivatives trading” that led to the financial collapse of 2008. Dodd-Frank was weakened by banking lobbyists from the start and has been under attack by those lobbyists ever since. Now a new law written by Citigroup lobbyists (we couldn’t make this stuff up if we tried) exempts derivatives trading from regulation, and was passed this week by the House of Representatives with broad bipartisan support. It sounds bad… but don’t worry, it gets much, much worse:

• The New York Times reports that 70 of the 85 lines in the new House bill were literally written by Citigroup lobbyists (Citigroup was one of the mega-banks that brought our economy to its knees in 2008 and received billions in taxpayer money.)

• The same report also revealed “two crucial paragraphs…were copied nearly word for word.” You can even view the original documents and see how Citigroup’s lobbyists redrafted the House Bill, striking out ideas they didn’t like and replacing them with ones they did.

• The bills are sponsored by Randy Hultgren (R – IL), and co-sponsored by Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) and others. Himes is a former Goldman Sachs executive, and chief fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. • Maplight reports that the financial industry is the top source of campaign funding for 6 of the bills’ 8 cosponsors.

• Maplight’s data shows that members of the House received $22,425,740 million from interest groups that support the bill — that’s 5.8 times more than it received from interest groups opposed.

• “House aides, when asked why Democrats would vote for this proposal even though the Obama administration opposes it, offered a political explanation. Republicans have enough votes to pass it themselves, so vulnerable House Democrats might as well join them, and collect industry money for their campaigns.” — New York Times Yep, it’s actually that bad. For the full story, check out this revealing piece by Represent.Us Communications Director Mansur Gidfar.

You can also find out if your Rep. voted for H.R.992 here.

We elect Representatives to the House to represent us, the people — but both parties now refuse to do the job we elected them to do. And they won’t until we force them to. The American Anti-Corruption Act would stop this corruption, and Represent.Us is the movement behind the Act. Together, we can make blatant corruption illegal with simple reforms. It’s common sense that elected officials should be barred from collecting money from the industries they regulate. Help us build enough momentum to take America back.

 

 

 

ALERT: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS CURSE WORDS--DO NOT PLAY IF YOU THINK THIS WILL BE OFFENSIVE.

How Big Money Rigged the Rules in Washington

Park Avenue: Money Power and the American Dream.

 

Michael Gross wrote "740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building".

Home to more billionaires than any other city in the United States. Truly the Masters of the Universe live there.
Jackie Kennedy's home built by her Grandfather James T. Lee with a consortium of people who were considered responsible for the market crash of 1929 and the depression that followed. Her maternal great-grandfather emigrated from Cork, Ireland, and later became the Superintendent of the New York City Public Schools.

Jacob Hacker Professor of Political Science; Director, Institution for Social and Policy Studies
203-432-5554 jacob.hacker - yale.edu
Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Richer Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
America's money-addicted and change-resistant political system is at the heart of the enormous and rapidly growing income inequality that they say is undermining America's economic and political stability. It is aided and abetted by politicians who favor the very rich or allow policies that once favored the rest of us to erode. Business pays K Street lobbyists to write the bill exactly according to what the business requires then pays off the congressman and senator to get the "bill" passed.

 

TRUST DEFICIT

 

 

At last count, there were 245 millionaires in congress, including 66 in the Senate.

ContactingtheCongress.org
202-224-3121

 

4/10/2013 The Federal Reserve got caught this time! Proves 154 people including Congress participates in Insider trading because not one of them reported this happened!!

They received the minutes shortly after 2 p.m. on Tuesday, but not one person reported the early breach to the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve discovered the mistake on its own early Wednesday and then decided to release the minutes to the broader public at 9 a.m.
The Federal Reserve usually releases minutes from its meetings at 2pm. It was forced to put them out five hours early Wednesday 10th 2013 after learning that 154 people got them a day early, and those people included employees at some of the world's largest banks.This is a key document that can move markets from time to time. Wall Street players often dig deep into the minutes for hints about when the central bank may pull back on its bond-buying policy or raise interest rates.
The 154 individuals who received the minutes on Tuesday included Congressional employees, but also employees at some of the world's largest banks, such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS and HSBC. Most of the people at these banks appear to work in legislative affairs (a.k.a. lobbying). Employees of trade organizations like the American Bankers Association, the National Association of Realtors, and the National Credit Union Administration were also on the distribution list.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/10/news/economy/fed-minutes-early/

ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council.

2012 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.
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-united-states-of-alec/ voting behind closed doors to change the law before the public knows anything about it. In state houses around the country, hundreds of pieces of boilerplate ALEC legislation are proposed or enacted that would, among other things, dilute collective bargaining rights, make it harder for some Americans to vote, and limit corporate liability for harm caused to consumers — each accomplished without the public ever knowing who’s behind it.

K STREET downturn in reportable lobbying revenues was offset by regulatory work as the action moved to the agencies.
Patton Boggs maintained its position as the top-grossing lobbying firm, bringing in $48.4 million in lobbying revenue in 2011. That was up from $45.2 million in 2010. The uptick stems more from the firm’s June merger with Breaux Lott Leadership Group than from overall business growth. Several lobbyists pointed to last week’s massive online mobilization that tanked two fast-moving anti-online piracy bills as the perfect example of how the influence game is changing. While clients are still willing to pay for access lobbying, there is more of a focus on nonreportable strategy through social media and other grass-roots initiatives.

Reuters reports that the tech industry has outspent the entertainment industries. Silicon Valley blindsides Hollywood on piracy: The technology industry has ramped up its political activities dramatically in recent years, and in fact, has spent more than the entertainment industry -- $1.2 billion between 1998 and 2011, compared with $906.4 million spent by entertainment companies. The entertainment industries, however, seem better at knowing where to buy friends. Through the end of September, Hollywood had outspent the tech industry 2-to-1 in donations to key supporters of measures it was backing. More than $950,000 from the TV, music and movie industries has gone to original sponsors of the House and Senate bills in the 2012 election cycle, compared with about $400,000 from computer and Internet companies, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Spending money is not enough, you have to cultivate your friends. You'd think that the tech industry would understand that it's not the number of friends that counts, but the number of friends that can be counted upon. 

Transparency

 

ALERT: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS CURSE WORDS--DO NOT PLAY IF YOU THINK THIS WILL BE OFFENSIVE.

Billionaire Koch brothers takeover of America's democracy.

Koch is Lord of the Derivatives

Not just Wall Street but Koch brothers continue to trade Derivatives that brought this country down.

The over-the-counter derivatives market has escaped the commission's reach since the first interest rate swap was traded in 1981. The transactions fell outside a law requiring that all futures be traded on regulated exchanges. What has not been reported is that a big part of Koch Industries' expansion over the past few decades has occurred in the dark realms of unregulated derivative trading. The Kochs weren't just playing the market for themselves, but provided financial and risk management services to other companies. Now their clients include airlines, utilities, oil companies, pension funds, hedge funds and endowments. But Koch Industries is not just a regular financial/risk management services provider. Because the company is a major producer and/or distributor of many of the commodities that it bets on, it not only has insider knowledge but physical control of market conditions. That gives it a whole lot of power to game and manipulate markets from both the speculative and physical ends—something that even the most powerful investment houses can't do on their own. Best part is: only insiders know how much or how little manipulation exists because the derivatives are exempted from regulation.

Bringing Jobs Back To America

 

U.S. Bridges, Roads Being Built by Chinese Firms OUTRAGEOUS!
SUBSIDIZING JOBS IN CHINA! Cities hire Chinese instead of American workers for building projects. US law can't protect a billion dollars from going to China! California Officials say they can't find American Welders. States go around "Buy American" laws.

INSIDER TRADING

 

 

Congress: Trading stock on inside information? What do you mean honest graft? Congressman get a pass on insider trading? cbs There is an Indiana University Law professor who claims that (contrary to popular belief and 60 Minutes) members of Congress are not exempt from insider trading laws.

Financial Documents Suggest GOP Rep. Bachus Profited from 'Insider Trading' on TARP Bailout by Wynton Hall
U.S. Representative Spencer Bachus (R-AL) had access to highly sensitive financial information during the 2008 bailout debates that may have helped him earn tens of thousands of dollars by trading stock options, even as most Americans' portfolios took a beating.
On Sunday, Rep. Bachus's trading behavior came under fire in a 60 Minutes report based on Throw Them All Out, the book by investigative journalist and Breitbart editor that has triggered a political earthquake in Washington. Schweizer, who is also a Breitbart editor, devotes a significant portion of the book to exposing possible congressional insider trading.

Sen. Feinstein Loaded up on Biotech Stock Just Before Company Received $24 Million Gov't Grant

Capitol Cronyism: Obama-Backer Warren Buffett Helped Shape Bailout Rules, Then Made Massive Profits from Them
In the wake of the $700 billion TARP bailout, Warren Buffett apparently shaped a plan to clean up toxic assets that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner later adopted--resulting in massive profits for Buffett. That's the latest bombshell revelation from investigative journalist and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer's sensational new...

 

@TWEETCONGRESS:
CLICK to Enter your zip code or a representative's name to see if your local representative is on Twitter.

 

RESEARCH TOOLS

 

The Sunlight Foundation uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable

The Day in Transparency 4/6/2011
Koch Industries, America's second-largest private corporation, spends millions on lobbying in Washington, often to advocate against government regulation. The money Koch Industries has spent on lobbying has increased from $857,000 in 2004 to $20 million in 2008. (Center for Public Integrity)

 

Which companies have contributed to your favorite think tank? 

 

THE SECRETS OF HOW LOBBYIESTS BUY POLITICIANS.

YOU CAN LEARN THEIR TECHNIQUES

 

YOU CAN FIND THE MONEY
Let's play Hide and Seek

The Loophole:
Push the money through a Foundation or Trust.

 

 

 

 

​ OperationLeakS Anonymous
http://uleak.it/ is a Url Shortening Service. By #Anonymous IP's are never recorded Leak your image and it's free to use.

Honest services fraud - Lobbying alone was a $2.6 billion industry in 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. All that spending just sucks the oxygen out of the room for people trying to do true entrepreneurship.

START WITH THE K STREET INJECTION

PUT THE NEEDLE DIRECTLY INTO THE VAIN

COUNCIL ON FOUNDATION

THE ORIGINAL PIPELINE TO WRITING THE LAW THE WAY YOU WANT IT
SPLIT UP INTO THE FOLLOWING DEPARTMENTS

• Family Foundations,
• Community Foundations
• Corporate Grant Makers,
• Independent Foundations,
• Global Philanthropy
• WHO IS CONNECTED ON THE OFFICIAL BOARD?

​​

DON'T FORGET THIS OTHER AVENUE FOR LOBBYISTS 

REGIONAL ASSOCIATIONS OF GRANT MAKERS

CUSTOM DESIGNED SECRETS
GUARANTEED TO HELP PUSH YOUR THINK TANK "POLITICKCY"
BLOOD SUCKING LAWS DEFEATED OR
WRITTEN THE WAY YOU WANT THEM TO.

Hollywood Total Corrupt Chief Lobbyist Loophole: if you merely "speak to policy," you're in good shape. Leahy also dismissed any concerns that the Senate's "revolving door" rules, which prevent recently retired senators from directly lobbying their former colleagues for two years, would hobble Dodd in his role.

Executive order applies to FCC commissioners:

Clerk of the House of Representatives lobbying

• Regional Capital Campaign Reports
  Find regional snapshots of capital and endowment fundraising across the United States.
• Regional Economic Outlook Reports
  View reports that assess the outlook for grant making and discuss factors that affect the direction of giving growth in a particular region.
• Regional Giving Studies
  Regional giving studies are a necessary tool used to identify patterns of organized giving in a community or region.

 

 

TEA PARTY PAC MONEY SPENT BY NAME
Tea Party Activists Press Forward Despite Meager Finances
TEA PARTY VICTORY PAC

Conservatives On Wisconsin Supreme Court Let Corporate Lobbyists Write Judicial Ethics Rules
Wisconsin elects its Supreme Court justices, but the court's four conservative justices –including Gov. Scott Walker's embattled ally Justice David Prosser — all voted to reject an ethics rule that would have prevented them from hearing cases involving their major campaign donors. Instead, the conservative justices enacted a rule written by powerful corporate lobbyists.

Using the Internet to research charities

Guidestar allows you to search for charities recognized by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

 

General Electric  lobbying for, winning and taking advantage of tax breaks.

A review of company filings and Congressional records shows that G.E. has spent tens of millions of dollars to push for changes in tax law.

The most lucrative of these measures allows G.E. to operate a vast leasing and lending business abroad with profits that face little foreign taxes and no American taxes as long as the money remains overseas.
Martin A. Sullivan, a tax economist for the trade publication Tax Analysts, said that booking such a large percentage of its profits in low-tax countries has “allowed G.E. to bring its U.S. effective tax rate to rock-bottom levels.” “Cracking down on offshore profit-shifting by financial companies like G.E. was one of the important achievements of President Reagan's 1986 Tax Reform Act,” said Robert S. McIntyre, director of the liberal group Citizens for Tax Justice, who played a key role in those changes. “The fact that Congress was snookered into undermining that reform at the behest of companies like G.E. is an insult not just to Reagan, but to all the ordinary American taxpayers who have to foot the bill for G.E.'s rampant tax sheltering.” Transforming the most creative strategies of the tax team into law is another extensive operation. G.E. spends heavily on lobbying: more than $200 million over the last decade, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Records filed with election officials show a significant portion of that money was devoted to tax legislation. G.E. has even turned setbacks into successes with Congressional help. One provision allowed companies to defer taxes on overseas profits from leasing planes to airlines. It was so generous — and so tailored to G.E. and a handful of other companies — that staff members on the House Ways and Means Committee publicly complained that G.E. would reap “an overwhelming percentage” of the estimated $100 million in annual tax savings. According to its 2007 regulatory filing, the company saved more than $1 billion in American taxes because of that law in the three years after it was enacted. While G.E.'s declining tax rates have bolstered profits and helped the company continue paying dividends to shareholders during the economic downturn, some tax experts question what taxpayers are getting in return. Since 2002, the company has eliminated a fifth of its work force in the United States while increasing overseas employment. In that time, G.E.'s accumulated offshore profits have risen to $92 billion from $15 billion. The company spent $4.1 million on outside lobbyists last year, including four boutique firms that specialize in tax policy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&hp

Incorporate in Delaware:
The filing fees are low: it costs $50 to file ($175 for bigger companies), and $250 to re-up annually. But that's only incidental. The big advantage to incorporating in Delaware is the protection. If you sue a corporation you have to do it in the state where it's incorporated, and Delaware courts have a long and consistent history of judicial rulings that protect shareholder assets from creditors.

WHEN DID BIG MONEY TAKE CONTROL OF WASHINGTON?

 

 

 

Ralph Nader and other Corporate Reformers in the 1970's wanted to protect the commons and our commonwealth scared Corporate America to death so they circled the wagons. They followed the prescription written by insider Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell.

The Powell Memo: A Call-to-Arms for Corporations

A confidential memo written to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by Attorney Lewis Powell, Jr. (born in Virginia in 1907). The memo described how business could defend and further capitalism against---wait for it--- socialist, communist, and fascist cultural trends. Among these cultural trends were the usual suspects, minorities and women.ixon later nominated Powell to the Supreme Court

Based in part on his experiences as a corporate lawyer and as a representative for the tobacco industry with the Virginia legislature, he wrote the Powell Memorandum to a friend at the US Chamber of Commerce. The memo called for corporate America to become more aggressive in molding politics and law in the US and may have sparked the formation of several influential right-wing think tanks, as well as inspiring the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to become far more politically active.

In August 1971, prior to accepting President Nixon's request to become Associate Justice of Supreme Court, Lewis Powell sent the "Confidential Memorandum" with the title, "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System." Powell argued, "The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism came from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians." In the memorandum, Powell advocated "constant surveillance" of textbook and television content, as well as a purge of left-wing elements.
This memo foreshadowed a number of Powell's most notable court opinions, especially First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, which shifted the direction of First Amendment law by declaring that corporate financial influence of elections through independent expenditures should be protected with the same vigor as individual political speech. Much of the future Court opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission relied on the same arguments raised in Bellotti. Today, though, the Powell Memo is routinely invoked as the blueprint for virtually all of the conservative intellectual infrastructure built in the 1970s and 1980s -- a memo that changed the course of history, in the words of one analysis of the anti-environmental movement; and the attack memo that changed America, in another account.

 

Please Notice the memo is sent to Mr. Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chairman, Education Committee, U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Corporate interests Do Not want a population of well-informed, well-educated citizens capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that, that doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They want disorganized, obedient workers.

Confidential Memorandum: Attack of American Free Enterprise System
DATE: August 23, 1971
TO: Mr. Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chairman, Education Committee, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
FROM: Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell’s nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell’s legal objectivity. Anderson cautioned that Powell “might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice…in behalf of business interests.” Though Powell’s memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration’s “hands-off business” philosophy.