As the Occupy Wall Street movement embarks on its "Millionaire's March" to protest New York state's 2% millionaire tax set to expire at the end of 2011 here are a few enlightening facts about the wealthiest 1% of Americans:
- top 1% owns 40% of the national wealth (25 years ago they owned 33%)
- bottom 80% owns only 7% of national wealth
- top 1% takes home 24% of national income (in 1976 they took home only 9%)
- top 1% own half of all US stocks, bonds and mutual funds
- bottom 50% only own 0.5% of US stocks, bonds and mutual funds
- top 1% only have 5% of the national personal debt
- bottom 90% have a whooping 73% of the national debt
- top 1% take home a greater portion of national income than they ever have since 1920s
Now take a wild guess who does all the hard work for the 1% and who is underpaid and overworked?
[Yahoo Finance]
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Fight corporations by mailing their unsolicited offers back to them!
Want to help Occupy Wall Street protesters in their fight against corporate greed? Here is how you can contribute today!
MAIL THEM BACK! That's right folks. Take those Credit Card offers along with all the other junk and spam mail that corporations flood our homes with and send them right back to them.
Here is what doing this will accomplish:
- make corporations pay for postage (put more of their junk into those envelopes to weight them down and increase postage costs)
- make corporations pay for processing your returned mail offers (this puts more hard working Americans to work)
- creates more work and jobs for hard working Post Office employees (paid for by the corporations)
- re-distributes some of the corporate wealth back to the taxpayers
- lets them know exactly how you feel about their unsolicited SPAM (which is actually illegal, but somehow does not apply to them)
- will one day put a stop to this unnecessary SPAM (and save our trees and the environment)
If we all do it - we can wear them down and bring about some very needed changes. Eventually they will have to stop wasting our trees and destroying our environment on useless unsolicited mail. Join the fight - it is your constitutional right as a taxpayer and an obligation as a voter.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Another day, another oil spill, when will we learn?
 |
| Oct. 5 on Astrolabe Reef, 14 miles from Tauranga Harbour on New Zealand's North Island |
Another ship crashed on October 5th this time atop the Astrolabe Reef 14 miles off the cost of Tauranga Harbour on New Zealand's North Island. Luckily this is a cargo ship and not an oil tanker but the impact on the environment and New Zealand's coast line can already be felt as local volunteers start the laborious and costly cleanup.
Here is the scoop:
- 11 of 1,368 containers on board contain hazardous substances and may very likely end up in the ocean
- it is still not clear why the ship crashed into the well-charted reef in calm weather
- so far light oiling of pristine Tauranga beaches has been observed
- the oiling of the beaches is expected to increase as more oil washes ashore in the coming days
- initial estimates suggest that 200-300 metric tons of heavy fuel oil have spilled so far
- this is New Zealand's biggest maritime environmental disaster to date
- officials believe the ship has 1,700 metric tons of oil and 200 metric tons of diesel on board
- the ship has developed a huge crack in the hull and is in the process of breaking up
- the full environmental impact is still unknown
- 200 oiled birds had been found dead
- 41 oiled birds were treated at the wildlife emergency center
- locals have witnessed dead fish washing ashore
- captain could face a fine of up to 10,000 New Zealand dollars ($7,800 US) and 12 months in prison
- the captain's name has not been disclosed for fear of personal retaliation
- the ship belongs to Greece-based Costamare Inc.
[Yahoo News]
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
This is why Occupy Wall Street protesters are unhappy...
Still confused why Occupy Wall Street protesters are unhappy and what it is that they want? No worries this informative documentary should answer all your questions...
In short, people are fed up with the corporate America and the way most corporations have been conducting business. There is nothing wrong with making money responsibly in a way that makes this world a safer and better place for everyone, but this is hardly the case today. With their single focus been that of profiteering at any cost there is very little regard left for the environment or the people. Hiding behind hordes of scummy corporate lawyers most corporations have cut corners and engaged in unlawful activities in the name of profit alone. 'The Corporation' dwells into many different aspects of the corporate world and is perhaps one of the most important documentaries of our time. This should really be a part of the standard curriculum material taught in every school.
This is the one documentary that corporations like Nike, Monsanto, Bayer and many others do not want you to see! It is also a must see for any self-respecting citizen that likes to think on his own.
By the way, in case you were wondering, Wall Street is also a corporation that has one and only one goal in mind - to turn up a profit!
Memorable quotes from 'The Corporation':
Noam Chomsky: "Corporations were given the rights of immortal persons. But then special kinds of persons, persons who had no moral conscience. These are a special kind of persons, which are designed by law, to be concerned only for their stockholders. And not, say, what are sometimes called their stakeholders, like the community or the work force or whatever."
Michael Moore: "I believe the mistake that a lot of people make when they think about corporations, is they think you know, corporations are like us. They think they have feelings, they have politics, they have belief systems, they really only have one thing, the bottom line - how to make as much money as they can in any given quarter. That's it."
Dr. Robert Hare: "One of the questions that comes up periodically is to what extent could a corporation be considered to be psychopathic. And if we look at a corporation as a legal person, that it may not be that difficult to actually draw the transition between psychopathy in the individual to psychopathy in the corporation. We could go through the characteristics that define this disorder, one by one, to how they might apply to corporations. They would have all the characteristics, and, in fact, in many respects, the corporation of that sort is the proto-typical of a psychopath."
[IMDb]
If this is any indication of the Corporations's true intentions here is what the Bank of America's CEO Brian Moynihan had to say in defense of the new $5 monthly fee on debit card use:
"I have an inherent duty as a CEO of a publicly owned company to get a return for my shareholders" ... "they'll understand what we're doing - understand we have a right to make a profit."
What a feeble attempt to force people into a Credit Card trap! Here is how everyone can cast their vote on this issue - switch to a different bank that does not charge these fees.
[CNN Money]
In short, people are fed up with the corporate America and the way most corporations have been conducting business. There is nothing wrong with making money responsibly in a way that makes this world a safer and better place for everyone, but this is hardly the case today. With their single focus been that of profiteering at any cost there is very little regard left for the environment or the people. Hiding behind hordes of scummy corporate lawyers most corporations have cut corners and engaged in unlawful activities in the name of profit alone. 'The Corporation' dwells into many different aspects of the corporate world and is perhaps one of the most important documentaries of our time. This should really be a part of the standard curriculum material taught in every school.
This is the one documentary that corporations like Nike, Monsanto, Bayer and many others do not want you to see! It is also a must see for any self-respecting citizen that likes to think on his own.
By the way, in case you were wondering, Wall Street is also a corporation that has one and only one goal in mind - to turn up a profit!
Memorable quotes from 'The Corporation':
Noam Chomsky: "Corporations were given the rights of immortal persons. But then special kinds of persons, persons who had no moral conscience. These are a special kind of persons, which are designed by law, to be concerned only for their stockholders. And not, say, what are sometimes called their stakeholders, like the community or the work force or whatever."
Michael Moore: "I believe the mistake that a lot of people make when they think about corporations, is they think you know, corporations are like us. They think they have feelings, they have politics, they have belief systems, they really only have one thing, the bottom line - how to make as much money as they can in any given quarter. That's it."
Dr. Robert Hare: "One of the questions that comes up periodically is to what extent could a corporation be considered to be psychopathic. And if we look at a corporation as a legal person, that it may not be that difficult to actually draw the transition between psychopathy in the individual to psychopathy in the corporation. We could go through the characteristics that define this disorder, one by one, to how they might apply to corporations. They would have all the characteristics, and, in fact, in many respects, the corporation of that sort is the proto-typical of a psychopath."
[IMDb]
If this is any indication of the Corporations's true intentions here is what the Bank of America's CEO Brian Moynihan had to say in defense of the new $5 monthly fee on debit card use:
"I have an inherent duty as a CEO of a publicly owned company to get a return for my shareholders" ... "they'll understand what we're doing - understand we have a right to make a profit."
What a feeble attempt to force people into a Credit Card trap! Here is how everyone can cast their vote on this issue - switch to a different bank that does not charge these fees.
[CNN Money]
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
1 in 6 Americans live in poverty according to Census Bureau
Points to take away from the latest Census Bureau report:
- poverty level highest since 1993
- another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in 2010
- a total of 46.2 million people are in poverty in the US (15.1% of the country)
- highest number in the 52 years that the Census Bureau has been tracking poverty
- for a family of 4 the poverty line was at $22,113 in 2010 (that's about $5k per person per year!)
- in 2010 the middle class median household income declined by 2.3% (to $49,400) as compared to 2009
- middle class income is now 7% less then it was in 1999 (when it was $53,252)
- we are well below where incomes were in the late 1990s
- median annual income for a full-time male worker in 2010 ($47,715) was less then it was in 1973 ($49,065) when adjusted for inflation
- young household members were affected the most
- for ages 15-24 the median income dropped 9%
- 45.3% of people ages 25-34 are living in poverty
- increasing numbers of Americans are doubling up in households with their friends and relatives; this is especially true for ages 25-34
- those without college degrees have been hit particularly hard
[This information is current as of September 2011]
Conclusions:
- rapidly growing and expanding lower class
- just as rapidly shrinking middle class
- the rich get richer (aka Congress)
- we are not out of the woods yet
- you can forget about economic recovery as its not happening any time soon
- young less educated adult males are not able to support their children or form families because they are jobless
- crime has been on the rise across the nation
- let's face it - no one has any idea how to fix the economy or this country's deficit - and even if they did there are plenty of people at the top that would not let this happen
Anybody else have any illusions about an economic recovery???
[read the full report at The New York Times]
- poverty level highest since 1993
- another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in 2010
- a total of 46.2 million people are in poverty in the US (15.1% of the country)
- highest number in the 52 years that the Census Bureau has been tracking poverty
- for a family of 4 the poverty line was at $22,113 in 2010 (that's about $5k per person per year!)
- in 2010 the middle class median household income declined by 2.3% (to $49,400) as compared to 2009
- middle class income is now 7% less then it was in 1999 (when it was $53,252)
- we are well below where incomes were in the late 1990s
- median annual income for a full-time male worker in 2010 ($47,715) was less then it was in 1973 ($49,065) when adjusted for inflation
- young household members were affected the most
- for ages 15-24 the median income dropped 9%
- 45.3% of people ages 25-34 are living in poverty
- increasing numbers of Americans are doubling up in households with their friends and relatives; this is especially true for ages 25-34
- those without college degrees have been hit particularly hard
[This information is current as of September 2011]
Conclusions:
- rapidly growing and expanding lower class
- just as rapidly shrinking middle class
- the rich get richer (aka Congress)
- we are not out of the woods yet
- you can forget about economic recovery as its not happening any time soon
- young less educated adult males are not able to support their children or form families because they are jobless
- crime has been on the rise across the nation
- let's face it - no one has any idea how to fix the economy or this country's deficit - and even if they did there are plenty of people at the top that would not let this happen
Anybody else have any illusions about an economic recovery???
[read the full report at The New York Times]
Friday, September 9, 2011
Perhaps Global Warming is not just a myth!
Huge chunk of the Petermann Glacier broke off of Greenland in 2010 and have mostly melted away while stunning scientists by the shear size of the event. The chunk of ice that melted was 4 times the size of Manhattan. Apparently nothing of this scale has ever happened in Greenland as far back as the recorded history. Scientists are worried that another chunk 2 times the size of Manhattan is going to be next. Scientists estimate that Greenland's ice sheet is melting at a staggering rate of 400 billion tons per year. And in the 10 year span between 2000 and 2010 nearly 600 square miles of ice have melted.
So when should we start worrying? Who knows, but sooner might be better then later or before it is too late. With this much fresh water getting dumped into the oceans who knows when we might hit the critical desalinization point or what it will do to the ocean currents and consequently our weather. Check out the movie The Day After Tomorrow to find out what happens next.
[Yahoo News]
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Developers, designers, and managers in a secret corporate war
This is funny because it is so very true...
Those of us that work in a corporate environment in one of these roles know too well about this ongoing covert war.
Those of us that work in a corporate environment in one of these roles know too well about this ongoing covert war.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Your world just got hacked!
Computer security firm McAfee released a report in which it claims that hackers have spent the last 5+ years hacking into over 70 government, nonprofit and corporate entities and stealing obscene amounts of sensitive data. United Nations and International Olympic Committee are just the two organizations that came under attack. Most of the victims are located in the United States with a few others in Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and elsewhere in the world. The report did not dwell into any details but suggested that these attacks could be coming from a single nation.
[Yahoo]
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Million dollar fender bender in Monte Carlo and lots of stereotypes
 |
| Monte Carlo - Place du Casino - site of exotic car pileup |
An exotic car pileup in Monte Carlo caused by non-other but three blonde women while driving topless(the car not the women) in a jelly-bean blue Bentley Azure. Blonde? Women? Car pileup? No fu***** way!
The victims:
Bentley Azure ($363,000)
Mercedes-Benz S-Class ($91,000)
Ferrari F430 ($186,000)
Aston Martin Rapide ($228,000)
Porsche 911 ($77,000)
Total price tag: $945,000
 |
| Crowds love it when reach people do really stupid things |
[Yahoo]
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