• Healthcare and Education available for all
• Retirement / Pension plan for all
• Corporations held to account and an end to corporate personhood
• No profits form ecocide
• Food sovereignty
• Worldwide Financial Transfer Tax (FTT)
• Redistributive progressive taxation
• Full, non-representative democracy
• Replace fossil-fuels with sustainable, green energy

via: www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/11/occupy-globalmay-manifesto

Monsanto Acquires Targeted-Pest Control Technology Start-Up

Sep 28, 2011

7:00am

ST. LOUIS, Sept. 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Monsanto Company (NYSE: MON) today announced it has acquired Beeologics, which researches and develops biological tools to provide targeted control of pests and diseases.  Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

via Monsanto Acquires Targeted-Pest Control Technology Start-Up – Sep 28, 2011.

If we had good numbers on the distribution of state and local taxes, the picture would be even more pronounced. These taxes tend to be less progressive than federal taxes, in part because sales taxes are a larger part of state and local revenue. And sales taxes take a bigger percentage out of a middle-class family’s income than an affluent family’s income.

source: economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/taxing-the-rich-over-time/

If Eisenhower and Truman had the rich taxed at over 90%, and Kennedy had them in the 80% range – and still managed to get astronauts onto the moon – how much clearer could the failure of trickle-down economics be?  It’s not in the rich-person’s narrow interest or mindset to share their wealth, in fact, it seems to be quite the opposite – they hoard it, and live off of investment income.  The riches’ monies and assets remain tied to them, which generate labor-free profits to live off of, a rather skewed idea if there ever was one.  Is it really a wise idea that having a pile of hoarded cash as the goal to aspire to?  This seems to be a rather perverse ambition.

Who can argue against facts: While there have been dismal investments into education, there have been massive investments into the prison-industrial complex in the past generation, with the new Jim Crow phony war on [some] drugs, which drastically affects men of color vs. the white population of America, all the while making vast profits for the prison industry.  With judges being financially incentivized to send “offenders” threw certain programs, to for-profit prisons it’s no wonder that the judicial system in America has gone haywire.  Now we have for-profit hospitals, defense contractors, universities – the list of formerly government provided services which have morphed into for-profit industries for the capitalists goes on & on.  All the while socializing costs, and  privatizing profits (bank bailouts for billionaires, who then receive million dollar bonuses?? see – “Bank of America CEO got sixfold raise last year“).

Fire marks, sold by for-profit insurance companies were once required to have the local fire department save you or your property.

It would be interesting to ask one of those fervent “Obama’s a socialist” types just what they think of the Fire department.  Are they aware that it used to be mandatory to have a “Fire mark” in order for the fire department to save you, or your property?  Of course the fire mark was sold by a for-profit insurance company – but we, as a society, evolved out of that rather tribal notion.  We realized that it was truly better for all, if the fire department just did the job of saving citizens first and foremost, no matter what they had or didn’t have nailed to the front of their home.  We have, in effect, a “single-payer” system for the fire department and there is very little complaining about that.

The fact that such a rich and powerful nation such as the USA doesn’t provide its citizens with free healthcare, seems to be evident of a systemic problem.  We have had steadily lower and lower taxes on the rich for the past generation or more, the highest tax rate they pay, is now down to a mid 30% level, if they play by the rules. With clever accounting and offshore investments, such as what republican nominee Willard “Mitt” Romney openly acknowledges, it’s quite feasible to get your effective tax rate down to under 15%, or even less.  Record profitable corporations are able to lobby their way into federal tax rebates, effectively paying negative taxes and getting refunds from all of us – and it’s a wonder that formerly well-funded government provided services are suffering and collapsing.

Related Links

• Bank of America CEO got sixfold raise last year (SF Chronicle)
• General Electric Paid No Federal Taxes in 2010 (ABC News)
• Nearly 30 Fortune 500 companies dodge taxes since 2008: report(MarketWatch)
• U.S. judges admit to jailing children for money (reuters)
• 26 Major U.S. Companies Paid No Income Tax for 4 Years (Citizens for Tax Justice / Democracy Now!)

The US Air Force has more drones and more sensors collecting more data than it has humans to interpret what the electronic tea leaves say. The glut of all that video and still imagery is “unsustainable,” says the Air Force’s top civilian — but it’ll be “years” before the Air Force digs its way out of it.

via Air Force Chief: It’ll Be ‘Years’ Before We Catch Up on Drone Data | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Related: Drone crashes in Seychelles, second in four months

Ustream.tv's most popular live feed ever - a Bald Eagle's nest with eggs about to hatch.

After reading a friend from Wisconsin’s facebook status update about him seeing “over 50 Bald Eagles on the edge of the ice on a lake, looking for fish” on his way to work, and now, more and more reports in the media about how the Bald Eagle has returned to various places around the country, it seems the Eagle is having its best year in decades.  This seems to be great news, but seems a tad odd, as the Eagles are back seemingly everywhere, not in just a few regions.

Here’s just a few of the recent winter & spring 2012 stories about Bald Eagles being seen, and returning to formerly occupied lands, all across America:

• San Francisco Area - Eagles reappear in San Mateo County after nearly century absence
• Illinois - Bald eagles back in the Fox Valley
• Iowa - OWLS – The Return of Iowa’s Bald Eagles
• Minnesota - DNR: Bald Eagles Return As Sign Of The Seasons
• Indiana - Bald Eagles’ Return to Indiana
• Ohio - Bald eagles return to Cuyahoga Valley National Park
• Pennsylvania - Bald eagles return to Western Pennsylvania
• Delaware - Return of the Bald Eagle

Ustream.tv’s most popular live channel of all time, ustream.tv/decoraheagles, is of a bald eagle’s nest in Decorah Iowa, where eggs are currently hatching.  As this post is being written, over 10,000 viewers are watching the nest, waiting to see the baby eagles take their first breaths.

Can this resurgence be due to environmental and protection policies? 2012 seems to be turning out to be one heck of an amazing year.

• Angel Soft toilet paper
• Mardi Gras napkins and towels
• Quilted Northern toilet paper
• Soft ‘n Gentle toilet paper
• Sparkle napkins
• Vanity fair napkins
• Zee napkins

Other paper companies and products:

• Georgia-Pa­­cific paper products and envelopes
• Brawny paper towels
• Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and cups
• All Georgia-Pa­­cific lumber and building products
• Lycra
• Stainmaste­­r Carpet

It seems to be a good idea to not patronize these titans of industry who have no problem with meddling in politics, abusing their billions in wealth, selling banned goods to Iran, getting rich of the further poisoning of the planet; the list of their indiscretions could fill pages.  Of course they are involved in the dirty trees-for-paper industry, the even dirtier and polluting petrochemical industry, hydro-fracking, and more.  They own over 50 chemical companies and have spent untold millions lobbying to have less oversight on those dangerous industries.  Nearly 90 years since the publication in Popular Mechanics of how hemp will be the next billion dollar panacea crop, which produces a higher quality paper product than that from trees, as well as a multitude of other raw material resources – we’re still chopping down trees for paper, and the Koch bros are leading this charge.  This is indefensible, perhaps due primarily to the greed of W.H. Hearst and his publishing empire – we’re still reaping the fruits of the toxic seeds he cast all those years ago.  Everytime you see a logging truck or a paper mill with all the trees & lumber stacked beside it – remember that instead of some company paying itself and wiping out and chopping down forests on lands it has bought, oftentimes with Federal Government subsidies and help, those paper companies could be paying small farmers to produce the raw material to make a safer, better quality paper product – but no, we’re still clear-cutting and using trees for paper pulp – it’s an Earth-crime.  Not only does paper from trees produce an inferior product, but the substantial byproducts of the process are far more toxic and dangerous than those from hemp-based paper.

This prank phone call clearly demonstrates just how much power these guys wield, listen to how Wisconsin “Governor” Scott Walker grovels, panders and acts like David Koch is his boss (which he very well may be).  ”Once you crush these bastards, I’ll fly ya out to Cali and show ya a good time.”  It’s likely Walker was very excited at that proposition.

J.P. Morgan Chase’s Ugly Family Secrets Revealed, by Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

In a story that should be getting lots of attention, American Banker has released an excellent and disturbing exposé of J.P. Morgan Chase‘s credit card services division, relying on multiple current and former Chase employees. — Matt Taibbi.

In an age when elitists rent out entire Aspen hotels for Bat Mitvahs, and then land cushy Goldman Sachs executive jobs soon after, we all need to step back and take a critical look at the incestuous usury and investment businesses and see them for what they’ve morphed into – nepotistic, true vulture capitalists who are never satiated, and who will never have enough, no matter the true costs.  One may argue these types cannot even comprehend what the concept of “enough” is – it’s only more more more.  Never before has capital exploited in such an shameless, over-reaching and omnipresent manner.  The same week where Mitt Romney proclaims that, “Yeah, I made a lot of money and I’m not going to apologize for that,” which followed his statements about his good friends who own Nascar and Football teams – this is the guy who killed Kay-Bee Toys (and lots of other businesses), laying off thousands, in the pursuit of profit.  Tiabbi says of Jeffrey Verschleiser, a former Bear Stearns executive who was instrumental in the failing of that firm, who threw the raging Bat Mitvah,

“So this guy, who made the news both for his professional unscrupulousness and for his personal assholedom, is the guy that Goldman picks to head its global mortgage operation.”

Of course he is, those are the exact qualities Goldman desires.  We can see from this hire and the exposé from the exit comments by the fleeing Goldman executive Greg Smith, that Goldman is devolving at a fairly rapid rate.  One can hope they’re circling the drain, which may help explain their increasingly delusional unethical and lunatic behavior a bit, but that’s not likely.  These guys still hold nearly all the cards.   Fleeing, former Goldman executive has this to say about Goldman’s priorities:

 I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them.

Nature always wins, eventually

The appetite of these fascist (usually) men seems insatiable.  They will consume ever more and more, externalizing costs along the way, socializing risk (bailouts for billionaires?!?), privatizing profits, and recommending that we turn true former social conventions into corporate-run, for-profit businesses: healthcare, penal system, space flight, education, national defense, and on and on.  This type of action leads us back to the days of fire marks, where the fire department won’t save you or your property, unless you have their specific fire mark (which is sold by an insurance company, of course – see: wikipedia article on fire marks) nailed to the front of your home.  We’ve evolved from that paradigm – realizing we’re all in this together, and we need  to be able to lean on one another to get threw times of trial – no one really disputes this.  It’s rare to hear anyone argue for a return to fire marks.  Regressing back to the ways of the past, just so the few on the top of the pyramid can rake in extra profits, and remain “safe” – seems to no longer be a viable option. People are waking up to the reality they find themselves in, where a tiny fraction of the populace is illegitimately pulling the strings and reaping the rewards.

A generation has passed where the wealthy have seen their tax rates get progressively lower and lower; in the 1950′s the rich paid over 80% in income taxes on income over $200k (a LOT back then), and that’s when we financed the missions to the moon, and had a rising standard of living, for all.  Even as recently as in the 1980′s the rich were paying 70% on income over $215k – a vast difference to the some mid ~30%, which they pay now, and that’s only if they play by the rules – hire some creative accountants, get an offshore tax-haven, and there are lots of cases where they pay 0%, or even get refunds.  Regression of this sort will likely crash us, it creates a truly non-sustainable world which eventually will meet its match: Nature.  This planet has limits, no man is an island, and those with the resources need to share – these are facts which need to be absorbed by the collective, and included into policy.   The sooner society realizes these concepts and incorporates the lessons learned, the better chance of survival.  We simply cannot consume, hoard, and exploit our way into prosperity and equality.

See: http://htwins.net/scale2/scale2.swf?bordercolor=white