Something Has Gone Wrong With The Government

Just thought ya’ll should know…(if you don’t care about your future then IGNORE THIS…)

The U.S Senate has just passed a bill that effectively ends the Bill of Rights. It was written to make it appear that it doesn’t apply to us, but it clearly states it can apply to Americans “if we want to”. the bill now declares the United States a BATTLEGROUND, granting the military UNCHECKED POWER(meanin…g they don’t have to have a reason) to arrest, detain, interrogate, and KILL U.S citizens with impunity(meaning they won’t be charged or questioned; exempt from punishment).. now if ya’ll don’t think some shit is going on with our government, then i can’t convince you.. but if you believe what i’m sayin, i strongly suggest you spread the word to EVERYONE. i don’t know when, but i do know that there will be a time in the near future where we al have to stand up for whats right, and the future of our children..

Dominique Berry

OccupyDallas continues at Pegasus Plaza

I found this on http://occupydallas.org/

Pegasus Plaza

Despite being raided by police and having our camp destroyed, the members of OccupyDallas continue to protest corporate greed and the corrupt financial system which has poisoned our government. We’re now occupying Pegasus Plaza as well as the intersection of Main & Akard, home to a Chase bank and a Pegasus Community credit union. The picture says it all.

-Anna Delahoya

JOBS NOT WAR Petition – March 19th, 2011

The Petition

To date, the total cost of the war that has been allocated by Congress is $1.26 trillion, with $815 billion to Iraq and $445.1 billion to Afghanistan (1).  The U.S. war in Afghanistan is now the longest war in the history of the United States, and is costing U.S. taxpayers nearly $100 billion per year. 

 

The cost in terms of innocent civilian lives, numbering in the millions, is incalculable. Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are not vital to U.S. security (2). 

 

In fact, resistance to foreign occupation breeds hostility to the U.S. and undermines the capacity of the people to rebuild infrastructure and reconstruct their governments.

 

While faced with the possibility of reduced funding for education, health care, housing, home heating assistance, other social necessities, taxpayers in theUnited States will pay $172.4 billion for continuation of the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan for FY2011(3).   At the same time, greatly needed job-creating infrastructure projects such as bridges and levees, and development of clean, renewable, alternative energy sources are left underfunded.  In contrast to any threats abroad, this lack of investment in the future of our country is a grave security risk.

 

It is the working people who are paying for these unjust, endless wars in terms of blood and treasure.  These wars have made us less secure because they have damaged rather than “promote[d] the common welfare” (4) of the nation’s citizens.

 

The U.S. support to Israel is fundamental to the state’s ability to systematically obstruct the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination through flagrant violations of international law including ongoing constructions of settlements, expropriation of land, detention of political prisoners, occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands, construction of the separation wall, refusal to recognize the fundamental rights of the Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel to full equality and realizing the rights of Palestinian refugees as stipulated in UN resolution 194. The Obama administration approved $3.075 billion in military aid to Israel for FY2012 and between FY2012-2018 $18.54 billion USD (5).

 

We sign this petition to urge President Obama and our congressional representatives to immediately bring all U.S. forces and private contractors home immediately.   We support discontinuation of all military aid to the state of Israel.  In addition, we oppose any form of U.S. military or economic intervention in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia, and other countries where movements are rising in opposition to dictatorships and military rule.

Do you think  the US should do?

-Esmeralda Armijo

What do you think about abortion? Should it be allowed or not? Why?

In one of my other classes the subject of abortion popped up. Many people (if not all) think different. For those who don’t know what abortion is: Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability.An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced. The term abortion most commonly refers to the induced abortion of a human pregnancy.

What do you think about abortion? Should it be allowed or not? Why?

-Esmeralda Armijo

Occupy Wall Street pickets Obama event

More than 100 Occupy Wall Street protesters marched to a New York hotel to protest a fundraising event President Obama attended.

Demonstrators held signs charging that “Obama is a corporate puppet,” among other things, as they marched in front of a Sheraton Hotel, one of three campaign events Obama attended Wednesday, The New York Times reported.

Ben Campbell, 28, one of the march’s organizers, said he hoped to show the demonstrators were equal-opportunity critics.

“President Obama is coming to town solely to raise money from the richest of the rich,” Campbell said.

The protesters marched from Bryant Park to the hotel, forcing shoppers and theater-goers to retreat, the Times said. The demonstrators were escorted by police vehicles as they contributed to traffic jams across the Times Square area before reaching a barricaded area in front of the hotel.

Inside the hotel, Obama told those attending the fundraiser he was proud of the changes accomplished since his election in 2008, including reforms in healthcare and financial services. He also acknowledged the aggravation Americans are feeling because of the economic situation.

“I know that folks are frustrated with Washington,” Obama said. “But the only way to end the game-playing and the point-scoring that passes for politics this day is to send a message in this election that we are not backing down, we are not giving up; that we are going to keep pushing, and we continue to fight, and we still hope, and we are still going after change that we believe in.”

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/12/01/Occupy-Wall-Street-pickets-Obama-event/UPI-12611322743499/#ixzz1fIfghI8g

America’s Most Polluting Cars

http://autos.yahoo.com/news/america-s-dirtiest-vehicles.html

 

-Francisco Gonzalez

Texas Unemployment

According to the BLS current population survey (CPS), the unemployment rate for Texas fell 0.1 percentage points in October 2011 to 8.4%. The state unemployment rate was 0.6 percentage points lower than the national rate for the month. The unemployment rate in Texas peaked in August 2011 at 8.5% and is now 0.1 percentage points lower. You can also see Texas unemployment compared to other states.

 

Unemployment Rate	October 2011	Month/Month	Year/Year
National	9.0%	-0.1	-0.7
Texas	8.4%	-0.1	+0.2

 

Unemployment Rate: Texas, National

 

Pepper spray UC Davis

Go to breitbarttv.com and watch the video clip of the police professionally, calmly, and politely telling the occupiers that if they dont get off the sidewalk so people can pass that they will be pepper sprayed.

Goals for the future

Where Does Occupy Wall Street Go From Here? …a proposal from Michael Moore
Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011
Friends,
This past weekend I participated in a four-hour meeting of Occupy Wall Street activists whose job it is to come up with the vision and goals of the movement. It was attended by 40+ people and the discussion was both inspiring and invigorating. Here is what we ended up proposing as the movement’s “vision statement” to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street:
We Envision: [1] a truly free, democratic, and just society; [2] where we, the people, come together and solve our problems by consensus; [3] where people are encouraged to take personal and collective responsibility and participate in decision making; [4] where we learn to live in harmony and embrace principles of toleration and respect for diversity and the differing views of others; [5] where we secure the civil and human rights of all from violation by tyrannical forces and unjust governments; [6] where political and economic institutions work to benefit all, not just the privileged few; [7] where we provide full and free education to everyone, not merely to get jobs but to grow and flourish as human beings; [8] where we value human needs over monetary gain, to ensure decent standards of living without which effective democracy is impossible; [9] where we work together to protect the global environment to ensure that future generations will have safe and clean air, water and food supplies, and will be able to enjoy the beauty and bounty of nature that past generations have enjoyed.
The next step will be to develop a specific list of goals and demands. As one of the millions of people who are participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement, I would like to respectfully offer my suggestions of what we can all get behind now to wrestle the control of our country out of the hands of the 1% and place it squarely with the 99% majority.
Here is what I will propose to the General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street:

10 Things We Want
A Proposal for Occupy Wall Street
Submitted by Michael Moore
1. Eradicate the Bush tax cuts for the rich and institute new taxes on the wealthiest Americans and on corporations, including a tax on all trading on Wall Street (where they currently pay 0%).
2. Assess a penalty tax on any corporation that moves American jobs to other countries when that company is already making profits in America. Our jobs are the most important national treasure and they cannot be removed from the country simply because someone wants to make more money.
3. Require that all Americans pay the same Social Security tax on all of their earnings (normally, the middle class pays about 6% of their income to Social Security; someone making $1 million a year pays about 0.6% (or 90% less than the average person). This law would simply make the rich pay what everyone else pays.
4. Reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, placing serious regulations on how business is conducted by Wall Street and the banks.
5. Investigate the Crash of 2008, and bring to justice those who committed any crimes.
6. Reorder our nation’s spending priorities (including the ending of all foreign wars and their cost of over $2 billion a week). This will re-open libraries, reinstate band and art and civics classes in our schools, fix our roads and bridges and infrastructure, wire the entire country for 21st century internet, and support scientific research that improves our lives.
7. Join the rest of the free world and create a single-payer, free and universal health care system that covers all Americans all of the time.
8. Immediately reduce carbon emissions that are destroying the planet and discover ways to live without the oil that will be depleted and gone by the end of this century.
9. Require corporations with more than 10,000 employees to restructure their board of directors so that 50% of its members are elected by the company’s workers. We can never have a real democracy as long as most people have no say in what happens at the place they spend most of their time: their job. (For any U.S. businesspeople freaking out at this idea because you think workers can’t run a successful company: Germany has a law like this and it has helped to make Germany the world’s leading manufacturing exporter.)
10. We, the people, must pass three constitutional amendments that will go a long way toward fixing the core problems we now have. These include:

a) A constitutional amendment that fixes our broken electoral system by 1) completely removing campaign contributions from the political process; 2) requiring all elections to be publicly financed; 3) moving election day to the weekend to increase voter turnout; 4) making all Americans registered voters at the moment of their birth; 5) banning computerized voting and requiring that all elections take place on paper ballots.
b) A constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people and do not have the constitutional rights of citizens. This amendment should also state that the interests of the general public and society must always come before the interests of corporations.
c) A constitutional amendment that will act as a “second bill of rights” as proposed by President Frankin D. Roosevelt: that every American has a human right to employment, to health care, to a free and full education, to breathe clean air, drink clean water and eat safe food, and to be cared for with dignity and respect in their old age.

Occupy Wall Street enjoys the support of millions. It is a movement that cannot be stopped. Become part of it by sharing your thoughts with me or online (at OccupyWallSt.org). Get involved in (or start!) your own local Occupy movement. Make some noise. You don’t have to pitch a tent in lower Manhattan to be an Occupier. You are one just by saying you are. This movement has no singular leader or spokesperson; every participant is a leader in their neighborhood, their school, their place of work. Each of you is a spokesperson to those whom you encounter. There are no dues to pay, no permission to seek in order to create an action.
We are but ten weeks old, yet we have already changed the national conversation. This is our moment, the one we’ve been hoping for, waiting for. If it’s going to happen it has to happen now. Don’t sit this one out. This is the real deal. This is it.

New York Wall Street

..NEW YORK (Reuters) – With just a few protesters huddled against the cold winds at Zuccotti Park on Friday, city officials are hoping protests which have taken place here for the past two months have run their course.

“There are problems in the country,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show. “You can make yourself heard, which I think has been done. Now it’s time to get back and build the economy and create the good paying jobs that people need.”

Having been evicted in the early hours of Tuesday morning by New York police and no longer allowed to camp at the park, just a handful of occupiers huddled together against brisk autumn winds in a largely empty space.

Most demonstrators may have just had protest hangovers, after a series of marches on Thursday that slowed traffic in the financial district and led to some scuffles with police and more than 200 arrests.

Organizers insist they are sticking around.

“A lot of us went to bed last night thinking we had the best day of the movement,” said protest spokesman Ed Needham. “We all thought, we still believe, this is still the unfolding of a new chapter.”

With no organized network of housing for scores of protesters who traveled to New York from other cities, the movement is confronting fundamental questions of where to gather and where to sleep.

“It’s hard to say where it’s going right now,” said John Carhart, 28, of New Jersey.

He said organizers were hoping to find an indoor space before the end of the year, “so people will have a place to put their belongings and a place to sleep that’s not outside.”

A few local churches are housing some of those left homeless by the evictions from Zuccotti Park. The protesters are allowed to return and congregate in the park, but they cannot sleep or lie down, and few have returned.

Caiti Lattimer said she and others like her who live in New York are hosting those from out of town. But she acknowledged that the coming Thanksgiving holiday may thin the ranks.

“People are going home for Thanksgiving,” she said. “But there are still people who … will remain.”

Organizers declined to elaborate on the movement’s next move, saying discussions and plans are ongoing.

But protesters at meetings late Thursday night said conversations about the group’s future ranged from plans to occupy homes foreclosed by banks to boycotting major chain stores during the upcoming holidays.

Joel Garcia