EVEN BEFORE OBMAMA HAD TAKEN OFFICE HE HAD SUCKED IN MORE BANSTER BRIBES THAN ANY PRESIDENT BEFORE HIM.
BOTTOMLESS BAILOUTS AROUND THE CORNER WAITING!
After eight years of the
Dodd-Frank bank “reform,” the American financial oligarchy exercises its
dictatorship over society and the government more firmly than ever. This
unaccountable elite will not tolerate even the most minimal limits on its
ability to plunder the economy for its own personal gain.
This was not because of
difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the contrary, Attorney
General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama
administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their CEOs because to do
so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors
are employees of financial industry giants -Goldman Sachs
($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207)
WeHo rejects Wells Fargo in 3-2 vote
https://beverlypress.com/2018/08/weho-rejects-wells-fargo-in-3-2-vote/
Responding
to the controversy surrounding Wells Fargo, including its account-opening
scandal and funding of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the West Hollywood City
Council issued a request for proposal in February to perhaps find another bank
to handle the city’s finances.
With
selection criteria approved by the council that emphasized social
responsibility, Wells Fargo applied and emerged as the frontrunner in a field
that included U.S. Bank, Union Bank and Bank of the West.
But in a
3-2 vote at its Aug. 20 meeting, the City Council decided against city staff’s
recommendation to continue with Wells Fargo.
City
Manager Paul Arevalo said the city can contract with one of the other banks
that applied, or start the process over with a new request for proposal. It would
take nine to 12 months for the city to transition to a new bank, he added. The
city’s current contract with Wells Fargo expires in March.
Opening
accounts on behalf of customers without their knowledge, financial ties to
President Trump and its financing of the Dakota Access Pipeline were among the
reasons the City Council undertook the process. More recently, Wells Fargo has
been accused by the city of Sacramento of illegal lending in minority and
low-income communities, and it was fined $1 billion for car insurance and
mortgage abuses.
“It seems
like every week there’s something else that comes out in the news,” said
Councilwoman Lauren Meister, who voted no.
Mayor Pro
Tempore John D’Amico and Councilwoman Lindsey Horvath also voted no.
Multiple
cities, including Los Angeles, joined the movement to divest from Wells Fargo
that started two years ago. Seattle, like West Hollywood, wanted to look for
other banks that better reflected the city’s values. But the city of Seattle
re-upped with Wells Fargo a few months ago after it couldn’t find any other
viable options.
With
similar concerns, Councilman John Heilman voted in favor of West Hollywood
continuing with Wells Fargo. The selection process may have revealed that Wells
Fargo is the best bank to handle the city’s financial needs, he said, and it’s
unclear if a prolonged search will attract better options.
All four
banks that applied invested in the Dakota Access Pipeline, and all lost points
in the city’s social responsibility criteria for reasons including investment
in fossil fuel and ties to private prisons.
Representatives
from Wells Fargo said they’ve been working to rebuild trust in the community.
Other Wells Fargo proponents in West Hollywood noted that the bank has a long
history supporting LGBT causes. Richard Ayoub, executive director of Project
Angel Food, which provides meals to people with HIV and other illnesses, said
Wells Fargo is the “most generous corporate partner in our history.” Alan
Acosta, director of strategic initiatives at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, said
“there’s not another financial institution in the world” that has supported the
LGBT community the way Wells Fargo has.
“The
center believes that corporations have a responsibility to lead in the arena of
civil rights, including LGBTQ civil rights, and in helping to improve community
health,” he said, speaking on behalf of the center’s CEO, Lorri L. Jean. “Few
corporations do so. Wells Fargo has been a pioneer in this regard, and this
commitment has earned our continued support and loyalty, even if they might
occasionally falter.”
Mayor
John Duran, who has defended Wells Fargo and its support of the LGBT community
throughout the process, echoed the sentiment.
“Wells
Fargo has been the only bank, for so long, that has stepped up to the level
that I wish all banks would,” he said. “And not just on LGBT.”
But other
council members said their decision should have no bearing on whether the bank
continues to support LGBT causes.
“It
shouldn’t,” D’Amico said. “If it does, then our cynicism is well placed.”
D’Amico
and Duran, members of the council’s Finance and Budget Subcommittee, will
consider the city’s next steps to secure banking services.
Brings
Democratic Socialists of America Back to Mainstream U.S. Politics
NEW
YORK — The win by Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
in the Democratic Party primary for New York’s 14th Congressional district
serves as a milestone victory for the DSA, which long sought to infiltrate
Democratic politics and push the party far leftwards.
In largely forgotten history, the
DSA played a central role in helping found the Congressional Progressive Caucus
(CPC), which advanced radical DSA ideology within the Democratic party. The CPC
was established in 1991 by six members of the House of Representatives,
including Bernie Sanders, Ron Dellums and Maxine Waters.
With Ocasio-Cortez’s clinch of
the nomination, the DSA now moves into the open within the mainstream of the
Democratic party. She beat veteran Congressman Joe Crowley in an upset victory
that sent shockwaves across the U.S. political landscape.
“Tonight’s
victory shows that we are in the middle of a political revolution,” said Christian
Bowe, a member of the DSA’s National Political Committee. “By running on an
unabashedly Democratic Socialist platform focused on healthcare for all,
housing as a human right, abolishing ICE, justice for Puerto Rico and a federal
jobs guarantee, Ocasio-Cortez was able to defeat a powerful establishment
Democrat who has been in Congress since 1999.”
The
World Socialist Website outlined the role
Ocasio-Cortez played in keeping the socialist revolution within the Democratic
party:
Ocasio-Cortez’s victory reflects
a significant leftward shift of workers and youth who are hostile to the
Democratic party establishment and seeking a way to oppose inequality and the
attack on immigrant workers by the Trump administration. Her own role, and that
of the DSA, is to keep this opposition within the confines of the Democratic
party and prevent it from taking an independent form.
The
DSA was central in promoting her campaign, helping to canvass, organize phone
banks and even reportedly producing one of
her campaign videos.
As
a member of the DSA, the platform for
Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign reads like a socialist wish list:
- Medicare
For All
- Housing
As a Human Right
- A
Federal Jobs Guarantee
- Gun
Control / Assault Weapons Ban
- Mobilizing Against Climate Change
- Clean
Campaign Finance
- Curb
Wall Street Gambling: Restore Glass Steagall
- The
expansion of Medicare into a universal healthcare system.
- Infiltrating
Congress
Infiltrating the Democratic party
The DSA is the largest socialist
organization in the U.S. and is known for its far-left ideology.
The
anti-capitalist views of the organization are evident in its charter, which calls for wealth
distribution:
We are socialists because we
reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated
labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality
and violence in defense of the status quo.
We are socialists because we
share a vision of a humane international social order based both on democratic
planning and market mechanisms to achieve equitable distribution of resources,
meaningful work, a healthy environment, sustainable growth, gender and racial
equality, and non-oppressive relationships.
The
DSA originally emerged in
1982 out of two socialist-leaning groups: the Democratic Socialist Organizing
Committee (DSOC) and the New American Movement (NAM). The DSA traces
its origins to
the radical, anti-war Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), from which Bill
Ayers’ Weather Underground domestic terrorist organization notoriously
splintered. The DSA has its roots in the ideology of American democratic
socialist activist and writer Michael Harrington.
In 1991, the DSA took more of a
national role when it lobbied in a visible way for a universal health care
system in the U.S. It was also around that time that the DSA helped to found
the Congressional Progressive Caucus with Sanders and Waters.
Ocasio-Cortez
served as an organizer for Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and she is
listed as an endorsed candidate
of the Brand New Congress political action committee, which was founded by
former staff members from Sanders campaign. “True resistance means standing for
the things you believe in,” reads the group’s website, which brandishes
Ocasio-Cortez’s photo on its main page.
Ocasio-Cortez
is also endorsed by Sanders’ Our
Revolution group.
The DSA’s website documents some
of its ties to the CPC. It states that the organization “turned much of its
attention in the late 1990s to working closely with the Congressional
Progressive Caucus and local global justice groups to oppose the Multilateral
Agreement on Investment (MAI).”
While the DSA worked with the
Caucus on the issue of opposing the draft agreement negotiated between members
of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the DSA’s
ties to the Caucus run much deeper. In fact, the DSA played a leading role in
founding the CPC.
The DSA’s role in openly helping
to found the CPC has been documented but largely forgotten.
Chicago
DSA’s New Ground publication identified the
Progressive Caucus in Congress as a group which the DSA “helped to organize.”
The
ties were so close that until November 2002 the CPC’s website was openly hosted
by the DSA’s own website. However, after numerous news media outlets pointed to
the connection, the online list of CPC members was relocated to
Sanders’ own website before getting its own website.
The
radicalism of the DSA’s website was openly brandished. In 1998, it featured
“The Internationale,” the worldwide anthem of communism and socialism,
WND.com reported.
The website also featured the
song titled “Red Revolution,” which was supposed to be sung to the tune of “Red
Robin.”
The lyrics, WND noted, include:
“When the Red Revolution brings its solution along, along, there’ll be no more
lootin’ when we start shootin’ that Wall Street throng.”
Also: “Are you sleeping? Are you
sleeping? Bourgeoisie, Bourgeoisie. And when the revolution comes, We’ll kill
you all with knives and guns, Bourgeoisie, Bourgeoisie.”
The CPC being hosted on the DSA’s
website is noted in the Congressional record.
This
reporter previously documented:
The
issue of the CPC being hosted on the DSA website rose again in June 2000 in
connection with a heated dispute on
the House floor among Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif.; Rep. Peter
DeFazio, D-Ore.; and David R. Obey, D-Wis., over the “merits of the F-22
fighter plane.”
When Cunningham stood to defend
himself, he included in his argument the fact that the relationship between the
CPC and DSA was an open secret.
The
CPC was still hosted by the DSA website in April 2002. On April 23, 2002,
author and political philosopher Balint Vazsonyi noted the connection in the Washington Times when
he asked: “‘What?’ I hear you say. ‘Socialists in the Congress of the United
States?’”
Dozens, dear reader, dozens. And
they make no secret of it. Although of late it has been refurbished and the
address altered, they have their own Web site. They call themselves members of
the Progressive Caucus, until recently an arm of the Democratic Socialists of
America, itself an arm of the Socialist International. The Progressive Caucus
may be a separate entity now, but the details of its program, as advertised on
the website, are indistinguishable from that of the Socialist International.
To their credit, they make no
secret of it. Only the rest of us prefer not to believe it.
In
an earlier article in November 2002,
Vazsonyi further highlighted the presence of the CPC on the DSA website.
DSA aided Sanders political rise
This
reporter previously documented the
DSA’s role in helping to organize support for Sanders’ national political
career:
On
Oct. 24, 1988, The Nation magazine,
identifying Sanders as “the socialist Mayor of Burlington, Vermont,” reported he had been
endorsed for Congress by both the Democratic Socialists of America and the
progressive founders of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream.
The DSA endorsed Sanders for
every one of his subsequent elections and has openly helped to raise funds for
him over the years.
In 2006, for example, the DSA boasted in its literature about
the socialist group’s “involvement in Bernie Sanders’ pivotal independent 2006
Senate campaign in Vermont.”
Indeed, the DSA held “Elect
Sanders” house parties in Atlanta; Boston; Detroit; Portland, Maine; Boulder,
Colorado; Indianapolis; Columbus, Ohio; Ithaca, New York; Springfield,
Massachusetts; Washington, D.C.; and New York City.
“DSAers
wanting to hold Sanders house parties should contact me at
fllewellyn@dsausa.org,” wrote one senior DSA activist in the socialist group’s
July 2006 newsletter.
That same year, Sanders spoke at a Detroit fundraiser for
DSA’s Political Action Committee. The fundraiser was connected by telephone
link to a simultaneous DSA fundraising event in Atlanta.
DSA literature notes that in
January 2006, DSA Detroit Chair David Green “took Bernie Sanders to tour Stan
Ovshinsky’s United Solar Ovonics plant in Auburn Hills northwest of Detroit.”
“The
plant makes successful, cost-efficient solar panels and is pioneering the
hydrogen fuel cell,” added the DSA.
Sanders
helped recruit new members to the DSA. In one example, he was the featured speaker at
numerous DSA “house parties” in the fall of 2006 that were aimed not only at
garnering support for his senatorial bid but also used by the DSA to recruit
new members to its ranks.
As
this reporter previously documented:
One New York City event was held
Sept. 19, 2006, at the home of DSA activists Gene and Laurel Eisner on
Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
“The questions and comments
actually had to be cut off to let Bernie get to the plane,” reported the DSA.
DSA reported the Sanders events
helped to recruit new members to the socialist organization.
“Sanders support work provides a
natural vehicle in any locality for DSA to reach out to — and potentially
recruit — unaffiliated socialists and independent radicals.”
With the victory of
Ocasio-Cortez, the DSA has arrived on the political stage as an open,
unapologetically socialist player in the Democratic party.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior
investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the
popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.”
Follow him on Twitter
@AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
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