1. Petition to Break up Bank of America Pushes Forward

    February 21, 2012 by admin

    Petition to Break up Bank of America Pushes Forward
    George Zornick, Video Presentation: Last month, we noted that Public Citizen filed an official petition with the Federal Reserve to break up Bank of America, using powers granted under the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. Those measures were supposed to end “too big to fail,” yet Bank of America has assets equal to one-seventh of America’s GDP—and there are quiet but persistent whispers about the bank’s financial health and inability to

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  2. Healthcare helps Seniors!

    February 19, 2012 by admin

    Health Care Reform Helps Deliver Preventive Care to 86 Million Americans
    Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced on Wednesday that the Affordable Care Act provided approximately 54 million Americans with at least one new free preventive service in 2011 through their private health insurance plans. She also announced that an estimated 32.5 million people with Medicare received at least one free preventive benefit in 2011, including the new Annual Wellness Visit, since the health reform law was enacted. Together, this means an estimated 86 million Americans were helped by health reform’s prevention coverage improvements. The HHS report on expanded preventive benefits in Medicare and other ways that the Affordable Care Act strengthens Medicare is available at http://www.cms.gov/newsroom.

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  3. Hello to Precinct 7.1,

    February 12, 2012 by admin

    As representative of the Alliance of Retired Americans. I attended the meeting described below, with Deputy Secretary of Labor, Seth Harris. He gave us information on improvements the Obama administration has made. Sadly, they don’t seem to make the news. So I made a few notes which I thought were worth sharing. Every dollar of unemployment income received creates two dollars in the market place. 70% of the U.S. economy depends on consumer spending. Obama’s administration has changed the rules so now employees only need a simple majority to unionize. The National Labor Relations Board finally has it’s full complement of appointees. Previous government postings in the work place indicated workers had a right not to join the union. Now postings say workers have the right to unionize. The labor dept. is now getting input from the unions in creating programs for workers. The labor dept. is addressing the problem of misclassified workers ( this is their term for work done by consultants instead of employees). He told about an egregious situation in some hotels. The maids who clean are not employees. They are independent contractors who have to rent a floor, and buy their cleaning materials from the hotel. Then they clean and are paid what’s left of their earnings ! There is more, but enjoy the following memo from Mark Case.

    norma

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  4. Today’s press release

    February 11, 2012 by admin

    Bothwell challenges Rogers on campaign finance
    Congressional candidate Cecil Bothwell will formally file for office at noon on Monday, Feb. 13. He will hold a press conference on the steps of the Buncombe County Board of Elections at that time.

    “The western counties deserve representation by an old-fashioned Democrat,” Bothwell said. “We need a representative who will vote with the President, instead of against him. We need a representative who stands up for the people of these mountains, not corporations with headquarters in Delaware or Dubai.”

    “I challenge Hayden Rogers and the eight or ten Republicans who are running against me to make the same pledge I have made to the people of this district. I will not accept corporate or corporate PAC donations, and I will do everything in my power to discourage Super PACs from participating in this contest. I only accept donations from real people who are willing to put their names on their donation envelopes, who are willing to stand up in public for the things they believe.”

    “This District deserves better. You deserve better. We can rebuild the American Dream. We can do it if we set aside our fear, set aside the idea that only some sort of Republican-lite candidates will get elected in this district. There are more of us than there are of those corporate shills and Blue Dog turncoats. We can rebuild the country and the economy that made this nation the most admired and successful country the world has ever known. And I need your help

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  5. From a rabid Republican friend of a friend

    by admin

    From a rabid Republican friend of a friend … at least he is thinking and forwarding!
    J.
    __________________________________

    Now, since Obama’s regime, all of a sudden, folks have gotten mad, and want to take America Back…BACK TO WHAT/WHERE is my question?

    After The 8 Years Of The Bush/Cheney Disaster, Now You Get Mad?

    You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

    You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate Energy policy and push us to invade Iraq.

    You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

    You didn’t get mad when we spent over 800 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.

    You didn’t get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.

    You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars in cash just disappeared in Iraq.

    You didn’t get mad when Bush embraced trade and outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American jobs out of the country.

    You didn’t get mad when they didn’t catch Bin Laden.

    You didn’t get mad when Bush rang up 10 trillion dollars in combined budget and current account deficits.

    You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

    You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans, drown.

    You didn’t get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the 1%, over a trillion dollars in tax breaks.

    You didn’t get mad with the worst 8 years of job creations in several decades.

    You didn’t get mad when over 200,000 US Citizens lost their lives because they had no health insurance.

    You didn’t get mad when lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused US Citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments, retirement, and home values.

    You finally got mad when a black man was elected President and decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, job losses by the millions, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, and the worst economic disaster since 1929 are all okay with you, but helping fellow Americans who are sick… Oh, Hell No!

    PS. This one definitely needs to be circulated just for a reminder sake!

    No virus found in this message.
    Checked by AVG – www.avg.com
    Version: 2012.0.1913 / Virus Database: 2109/4779 – Release Date: 02/01/12

    –
    Barb Alotis
    570 Fearrington Post
    Pittsboro, NC 27312

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  6. BP Made $3 Million an Hour In 2011,

    February 8, 2012 by admin

    BP Made $3 Million an Hour In 2011, While Spill Victims Continued to Suffer
    Rebecca Leber, News Report: “BP’s 2010 Gulf of Mexico spill is still affecting the lives of many Americans, particularly the tens of thousands that have not settled lawsuits with the company. Yet the company has bounced back from the billions it lost in the wake of the spill. BP announced today that its 2011 profit totaled $26 billion, a 114 percent jump from the year before, when the company’s ‘failure of supervision and accountability’ caused the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

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  7. Cor­po­ra­tions are ob­vi­ously not peo­ple!

    by admin

    Published: Monday 6 February 2012
    “Cor­po­ra­tions are peo­ple, my friend.” -Mitt Rom­ney at the Iowa State Fair

    Cor­po­ra­tions are ob­vi­ously not peo­ple. But Rom­ney is ac­cu­rate in the sense that cor­po­ra­tions have hi­jacked most of the rights of peo­ple while evad­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. An im­por­tant part of the so­cial jus­tice agenda is de­moc­ra­tiz­ing cor­po­ra­tions. This means we must rad­i­cally change the laws so peo­ple can be in charge of cor­po­ra­tions. We must strip them of cor­po­rate per­son­hood and cut them down to size so democ­racy can work. Peo­ple are tak­ing ac­tion so democ­racy can reg­u­late the size, scope and ac­tions of cor­po­ra­tions.

    One of the most basic roles of so­ci­ety is to pro­tect the peo­ple from harm. The mas­sive size of many in­ter­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions makes de­mo­c­ra­tic con­trol over them nearly im­pos­si­ble.

    Cor­po­rate crime is wide­spread. The New York Times, ProP­ub­lica and oth­ers have re­vealed Wall Street gi­ants like JP­Mor­gan, Cit­i­group, Bank of Amer­ica and Gold­man Sachs have been charged with fraud many times only to get off by pay­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions. Pro­fes­sors at Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia have doc­u­mented hun­dreds of cor­po­ra­tions which have been found guilty or pled guilty in fed­eral courts.

    Cor­po­rate abuse is even more wide­spread. For ex­am­ple, Cor­po­rate Ac­count­abil­ity In­ter­na­tional named six to its Cor­po­rate Hall of Shame, in­clud­ing: Koch In­dus­tries for spend­ing over $50 mil­lion to fund cli­mate change de­nial; Mon­santo for mass pro­duc­ing can­cer caus­ing chem­i­cals; Chevron for dump­ing more than 18 bil­lion gal­lons of toxic waste into the Ecuado­rian Ama­zon; Exxon Mobil for being the worst pol­luter; Black­wa­ter (now Xe) for killing un­armed Iraqi civil­ians and hir­ing para­mil­i­taries; and Hal­libur­ton, the na­tion’s lead­ing war prof­i­teer.

    Mak­ing cor­po­ra­tions re­spon­si­ble to democ­racy of the peo­ple is chal­leng­ing con­sid­er­ing Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest cor­po­ra­tion, does more busi­ness it­self an­nu­ally than all but two dozen of the two hun­dred plus coun­tries in the world. With­out dra­matic changes, how can we ex­pect peo­ple in small or even big coun­tries to force cor­po­ra­tions like Wal-Mart, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, BP, Toy­ota or Chevron to live by the same rules all the peo­ple have to?

    Help us speak truth to power. Do­nate what you can af­ford to sup­port Na­tionofChange.

    Jus­tice de­mands we make sure cor­po­ra­tions do not harm peo­ple. Democ­racy must re­quire that they op­er­ate for the com­mon good.

    In order to cut cor­po­ra­tions down to size, the peo­ple must strip cor­po­ra­tions of the spe­cial ar­ti­fi­cial legal pro­tec­tions they have cre­ated for them­selves.

    The story of how cor­po­ra­tions took the full rights of legal per­sons in one of the great per­verse tragedies in legal his­tory. Cor­po­ra­tions have worked the courts mer­ci­lessly since 1819 to take a wide va­ri­ety of con­sti­tu­tional rights that were de­signed to cover only peo­ple. For ex­am­ple, the Four­teenth Amend­ment was passed in 1868 to make sure all cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­larly freed slaves and peo­ple of color, had full rights. There was no men­tion of pro­tect­ing cor­po­ra­tions. But cor­po­ra­tions jumped on this op­por­tu­nity re­sult­ing in a ques­tion­able Supreme Court de­ci­sion that granted them legal per­son­hood. At roughly the same time, the Supreme Court ap­proved “sep­a­rate but equal” racial seg­re­ga­tion. Thus in thirty years, African Amer­i­cans lost their legal per­son­hood, while cor­po­ra­tions ac­quired theirs.

    Cor­po­ra­tions now claim: 1st amend­ment free speech rights to ad­ver­tise and in­flu­ence elec­tions: 4th amend­ment search and seizure rights to re­sist sub­poe­nas and chal­lenges to their crim­i­nal ac­tions; 5th amend­ment rights to due process; 14th amend­ment rights to due process where cor­po­ra­tions took the rights of for­mer slaves and used them for cor­po­rate pro­tec­tion; plus rights under the Com­merce and Con­tracts clauses of the con­sti­tu­tion.

    The most re­cent cor­po­rate ju­di­cial takeover of con­sti­tu­tional rights is the 2010 Supreme Court de­ci­sion in Cit­i­zens United ver­sus the Fed­eral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion. The court ruled that cor­po­ra­tions are pro­tected by the First Amend­ment so they can use their money to in­flu­ence elec­tions.

    Be­cause of the bad Supreme Court de­ci­sions, it takes a con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment by the peo­ple to change the laws back. An amend­ment re­quires two-thirds of both houses of Con­gress to agree then three-quar­ters of the states must vote to rat­ify. This will take real work. But de­spite the grow­ing size and un­re­stricted power of cor­po­ra­tions, peo­ple are fight­ing back.

    Dozens of groups are work­ing to re­verse Cit­i­zens United and re­store lim­its on cor­po­rate elec­tion ad­vo­cacy. In Jan­u­ary 2011, groups de­liv­ered pe­ti­tions signed by over 750,000 peo­ple call­ing on Con­gress to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion and re­verse the de­ci­sion. More than 350 local events were held in late Jan­u­ary 2012 to chal­lenge the Cit­i­zens United de­ci­sion.

    Groups chal­leng­ing this in­jus­tice in­clude Code Pink, Com­mon Cause, Free Speech for Peo­ple, Moveon.​org, Move to Amend, Na­tional Lawyers Guild, POCLAD, Pub­lic Cit­i­zen, Peo­ple for Amer­i­can Way, The Cen­ter for Media and Democ­racy, and Women’s League for Peace and Free­dom.

    Many groups are ask­ing for a broad con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment that makes it clear that cor­po­ra­tions are not peo­ple and should not be given any con­sti­tu­tional rights. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Ted Deutsch of Florida, Jim Mc­Gov­ern of Mass­a­chu­setts and Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders of Ver­mont have spon­sored bills in Con­gress to start the process for a con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment to make it clear that cor­po­ra­tions are not peo­ple, are not en­ti­tled to the rights of peo­ple, and can­not con­tribute to po­lit­i­cal cam­paigns.

    There are also many en­er­getic ac­tions at the state level. Peo­ple for the Amer­i­can Way list or­ga­ni­za­tional ef­forts in nearly all 50 states to end cor­po­rate in­flu­ence in elec­tions or amend the con­sti­tu­tion.

    Mas­sive cor­po­ra­tions now rule the earth. But they are re­cent ar­rivals which can and should be dis­patched. It is time for peo­ple to again take con­trol. The legal fic­tion of cor­po­rate per­son­hood and the con­sti­tu­tional rights taken by cor­po­ra­tions must cease. Join the ef­forts to cut them down to size and re­store the right of the peo­ple to gov­ern.

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  8. Health Care Reform Law Saves 3.6 Million Americans $2.1 Billion

    February 4, 2012 by admin

    Health Care Reform Law Saves 3.6 Million Americans $2.1 Billion
    Nearly 3.6 million people with Medicare saved $2.1 billion on their prescription drug costs in 2011 due to the Affordable Care Act, according to data issued on Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In addition, the savings for people with Medicare will increase over time. According to the HHS report (http://1.usa.gov/yFFyex), the average person with Medicare will save nearly $4,200 by 2021 because of the new law. The Affordable Care Act provides a 50 percent discount on brand-name prescription drugs and this year, a 14% discount on generics. In 2011, the 3.6 million Americans who hit the doughnut hole saved an average of $604 on the cost of their prescription drugs. “The data proves that the Affordable Care Act helps seniors,” said Barbara J. Easterling, President of the Alliance. “It decreases prescription drug costs, provides free preventive care, and slows the growth of Medicare premiums for physicians’ services.”

    According to USA Today (http://usat.ly/wdjNyF), statistics also show that premiums for Medicare Advantage private insurance plans have dropped an average of 7%, and enrollment has grown by 10%, thanks to the 2010 health care overhaul. “This trend counters opposing predictions of dire consequences to enacting health reform, which included a drop in enrollment and a rise in premiums,” said Ruben Burks, Secretary-Treasurer of the Alliance.

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  9. Don’t be misled by Billy Graham

    February 2, 2012 by admin

    ©2012 by Fred Flaxman
    As a non-Christian subscriber to the Asheville (North Carolina) Citizen-Times, I think it is unfair and blatantly discriminatory for our community’s only daily newspaper to run Billy Graham’s conservative Christian column every day without giving equal space to proponents of other religious and nonreligious ethical points of view.

    The headline on his column in today’s paper was: “Don’t be misled by nonbelievers.” But it is Billy Graham who misleads his readers when he argues that: “If God didn’t put us here, then we are here by accident, and therefore our lives don’t have any real purpose or meaning.” I think being put here by accident gives us more purpose and meaning: the unique and one-time opportunity to use our lives for the betterment of others.

    The rest of his column continues with equally uninformed, ridiculous assertions such as: “If [God] didn’t put us here, we can live any way we want to, no matter how selfish or hurtful we are,” as if nonbelievers have no morals or ethics.

    Remember that there is no mention of God in the Golden Rule, nor do you need to believe in anything supernatural to follow it. Just treat others as you want to be treated yourself. You may not go to Heaven as a result, but at least you’ll help improve the situation down here on earth.
    ———————————-
    Fred Flaxman is the author of Sixty Slices of Life … on Wry: The Private Life of a Public Broadcaster. Information and ordering at www.sixtyslices.com.

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  10. 10th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representative

    January 31, 2012 by admin

    * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
    Why I’m running.
    Dear friend
    Last Thursday I formally announced that I am running to represent the people of the 10th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. I am running to be a voice in Congress for those who have no voice.

    Some have questioned my sanity for entering this race, and I tell them that after teaching 8th grade for over 20 years, I think I can take on the adolescent behavior in Congress.

    In fact, I was first motivated to run for public office while teaching 8th grade social studies. I wanted them to understand that elected officials are supposed to be every day people like you and me who feel that they can help other people in some way. So I ran for Buncombe County Commissioner and won the privilege of serving my community for 12 years.

    So many people today have given up on our elected officials, believing they don’t really care about ordinary folks. Make no mistake about it: Congress is not working for all of us. Many Senators and Representatives don’t seem to listen to their constituents or really care about their concerns. I am running to be a voice in Congress for those who have no voice.

    My goal is to make the system work for everybody. That’s why I ran for office then and it’s why I am running today. Below are the four values that I hold and the ways I will put people first when I’m in Congress:

    Education: Quality education is the birthright of every child and must be a top priority at all levels of government.

    Economy: We need an economy that works for everyone—those on Main Street as well as those on Wall Street.

    Environment: We must ensure that we have clean air to breathe and untainted water to drink for ourselves and our grandchildren and their grandchildren.

    Equality: I believe that every human being should be treated equally under the laws of the land.

    If the right people are elected to Congress, the system can work. With the support of the citizens of the 10th Congressional District, I intend to be the people’s voice in Washington, and I make this pledge to you: I will remember who I am, where I came from and who got me there. My job, once elected, will be to continue to put people first.

    With appreciation,

    Patsy Keever

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