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Monday, 14 May 2012 | |  Jim Hightower, Op-Ed: Think you might qualify? You do... if you have a minimum of $500,000 to open one of these mass-affluent accounts. Otherwise, you fall into a category called "lower-margin" customers — so go get in the ATM line, Bucko. This half-million-dollar-and-up bunch are not the 1-percenters. Instead they are the 10-percenters, and they've suddenly become hotly coveted by JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and other big chain banks. | | |  Laura Kacere, Op-Ed: "Mother's Day began in America in 1870 when Julia Ward Howe wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation. Written in response to the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, her proclamation called on women to use their position as mothers to influence society in fighting for an end to all wars. She called for women to stand up against the unjust violence of war through their roles as wife and mother, to protest the futility of their sons killing other mothers' sons." | | |  Steve Horn, News Analysis: With punchy coverage on political and social topics of great importance, be it the ongoing collapse of American news networks, domestic drone use, the U.S. covert war in Somalia, poverty and economic inequality, Occupy Wall Street, among many other topics, some would even go so far to claim that it is better than the American mainstream news press. Recently, RT launched a show hosted by Wikileaks' Founder Julian Assange, adding credibility, in the judgment of some observers, to RT's slogan "question more." | | |  Harmony Goldberg and Joshua Kahn Russell, Op-Ed: Many have been slogging away in the trenches for years, pushing against the political winds and doing the slow work of organizing to build popular power within communities hit hardest by the economic and ecological crises. It was hard work, and it moved slowly. Last fall, Occupy exploded on the scene and challenged many of our assumptions about what was possible. By offering both an inspiring political tactic ("occupy") and a unifying frame ("We are the 99%"), the Occupy movement was able to tap into the mass anger about the crisis that had been brewing for years. | | |  Rebecca Leber, News Report: Shockingly, Factcheck.org and the Washington Post have taken up Koch's argument. Factcheck.org wrote that despite Koch's $100 billion revenue, the corporation's diverse holdings mean "it is hardly in the league of the truly 'big oil'companies." The Washington Post Fact checker took the same angle. While it's true the most profitable U.S. corporations — ExxonMobil and Chevron — are larger than Koch, using this standard to claim the company isn't Big Oil is incorrect. | | |  Tom Engelhardt, Op-Ed: "In the service of this war, in the midst of a perpetual state of war and of wartime, every act committed by these leaders is, it turns out, absolutely, totally, and completely legal. We have their say-so for that, and they have the documents to prove it, largely because the best and most elevated legal minds among them have produced that documentation in secret. (Of course, they dare not show it to the rest of us, lest lives be endangered.)" | | |  Justin Elliott, News Report: The ethics committee has not offered comment in response to calls and emails. As we reported Thursday, Owens mandatory pre-travel filings with the ethics committee did not mention the role of Park Strategies lobbyists organizing the trip. House rules state: "Member and staff participation in officially-connected travel that is in any way planned, organized, requested, or arranged by a lobbyist is prohibited." | | |  Video Report: In addition to outside marches, there were also critics of BoA inside the annual meeting, with dissidents introducing shareholders' resolutions challenging the bank's overseas tax havens and its support of environmentally destructive mining practices. As Zach Carter of the Huffington Post reported, Bank of America CEO and public enemy number one Brian Moynihan defended the company's operation of subsidiaries in nations identified as international tax havens by saying, "We're a global business," suggesting that Bank of America needs its sub-companies in other nations because that's where the business is. "I don't think there's a whole lot of Bank of America operations in the Cayman Islands," one disgruntled shareholder responded. | | |  Stephen Pitt, Illustration: Stephen Pitt is NationofChange's art director. Stephen is a southern California artist whose work focuses on matters political, social, and economic. In 2004 Stephen began drawing and painting political imagery to communicate his sincere displeasure with disturbing changes set in motion by ideologues acting in bad faith. With a background in figurative drawing and respect for color, Stephen traded the 6B pencil for a digital stylus and went to work. Published by the San Francisco Chronicle and Z Magazine, Stephen's work has since been seen on Truthout and Firedoglake. | | |  Nomi Prins, Op-Ed: Financial history has a sense of irony. JPM Chase was the post-Glass-Steagall repeal marriage, 66 years in the making, of Morgan Bank and Chase. Today, it is the largest bank in America, possessing greater control of the nation's cash than any other bank. It also has the largest derivatives exposure ($70 trillion) including nearly $6 trillion worth of credit derivatives. It is the size of a bank holding company's deposits that dictates the extent of the risk it takes, risk 'models' not withstanding: the more deposits, the more risk, the more potential loss. | | |  Wendell Potter, News Analysis: The Congressional Budget Office projects that the average annual growth in Medicare spending will be 5.8 percent between 2012 and 2020. It would have been one percentage point higher than that, according to the CBO, if not for the cost-constraining provisions of the Affordable Care Act, most notably the one that will gradually eliminate the bonuses the government pays private insurers to participate in the Medicare Advantage program. | | |  Paul Buchheit , Op-Ed: Privatization simply hasn't worked for health care, mortgage banking, higher education, or prison management. There is little incentive for profit-motivated firms to invest in disadvantaged or underemployed Americans. That's why taxes are necessary -- to provide for the common good, and to return some of the gains from 60 years of productivity to the great majority of Americans who contributed to our growth. | | |  Marta Molina, News Report: Many of the 300 participants were indigenous peasant women, wearing traditional dress. These women marched through the streets of Antigua with posters demanding better work conditions and shouting out worker and campesina slogans: "Only united can women defend their rights!" and "The working woman of Santa María de Jesús is here!" The Union of Education Workers of Guatemala (STEG), the Council to Protect the City of Antigua, the Municipal Market Workers, and the recently organized Photographers' Union all participated. | | |  David Sirota, Op-Ed: The result is that America has become the true "Lord of War," as the arms dealer motto goes. We are the leading arms supplier to the developing world and we are responsible for the majority of all weapons sales across the globe. Yes, we are so committed to selling instruments of death to the rest of the planet that military industries have almost tripled their share of the U.S. economy in just a decade. | | | FROM AROUND THE WEB |
Facebook Biggest week for Mark Zuckerburg who turns 28. |
Greek Financial Crisis Alexis Tsipras against a pro-bailout government and Syriza will not support it. |
Politics Eight protesters arrested at President Obama's campaign reelection headquarters. | | | | |  | | NationofChange is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please let us know. If you do not wish to receive future updates from NationofChange, click here to unsubscribe. | | | NationofChange and the NationofChange logo are registered trademarks of NationofChange
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