Coffee Party News

Who would be surprised at the big banks fighting to keep business as usual? I just wish citizens would fight for their interest collectively again. The banks and big business do and they seem to be winning. Way too many citizens sit back and let things "work out for the better". With $700 trillion hanging in the balance wonder whose favor it will "work out" for if lots of regular citizens don't start remembering why we really study history in school?

Excerpt:

The effort — centered on oversight of the $700 trillion marketplace of the financial instruments known as derivatives — is just one front in the battle still being waged nearly three years after Congress passed the Dodd-Frank law, which revamped financial regulations in the United States in hopes of curtailing the risky trading practices blamed for the global financial crisis in 2008.

Here is a recent update on ALEC:

New Resource Details "Think Tanks" Tanking Americans' Rights

In this new online resource, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD, the publisher of the award-winning ALECexposed.org investigation) documents the more than $80 million that right-wing billionaires and corporations are spending each year to fuel Tracie Sharp's State Policy Network (SPN) and its 59 state "think tank" members, along with the controversial Heartland Institute, a SPN ally like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), that tries to change both state and federal law.

CMD's three-month investigation uncloaks some of the major funders of these expanded advocacy and news spinning operations in the states and raises major concerns over whose agenda these groups are advancing in the states:

This is something to check out. This group is seeking to demand more than the smaller tax that was first presented. This would still be a very small sales tax on financial transactions on Wall Street activities. .This is something we need to think about certainly before cutting head start and forcing the elderly to work till they are 70 to draw full benefits for social security.

The people that need the social security program most worked for the very people that are trading the most on Wallstreet. They were used and abused their whole life to get those stock holders rich anyway and everyone knows this. These very wealthy owners normally offer low pay for long hours, little advancement for the average worker, low or no health care or retirement and then want them now to work till they die or are forced to leave early with far smaller draws on the social security system to live on for the rest of their life..Many people will work as long as they can because for most they need the income. Many that quit early at 62 do so because they really are not very healthy or could not find employment for a long time. those that have the options of retiring healthy have more safety nets then Social Security to draw from. 

This is a show worth watching on a topic that will without doubt impact our liberty, privacy and legal due process sooner and later if we go to sleep at the helm instead participating by paying close attention and weighing in regularly with our officials and industry leaders about what we will or will not accept in the name of our own safety.

I would not have thought that would be so much fun. Yet here we are Play the game and rise-up to beat corporate tax dodgers and have fun! I wish it was this easy to win on this.

Wow! You can't explain what's going on with money in our country and why we all need to stand up and be involved quickly much better than this. Aaron's Army is alive and well! Twenty minutes that's well worth your time and a talk worth sharing broadly.

This headline says it all. 

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

It appears standing against CISPA is something the liberals and true libertarians  and tea party can agree on....but this overreach unto our privacy could very well happen.

Well what can money buy you? How about a free pass to ignore court orders? This was strongly supported on both political sides by the way. Monsanto and the biotech's must have real big pockets to be the only one's in the country that get to ignore court orders....unless you are the Senate that can "vote" to allow certain "corporate personhoods" to ignore court orders. John does a great job of framing this picture for us.

This group works to look after communication interest and harness those interest for profit. They fight for limited or no regulation over the media and communication industries and to promoteprivte ownership of airwaves for those who can "afford" to buy a voice and connection.

The fight against enforcing net neutrality and for private companies to buy up and own more air wave spectrums so they can then charge citizens to use them through them. The FCC has recently offered for free a certain amount of low spectrum white space to local small scale non-profit groups that often never have a public voice.. These people would bottle air and sale it to those who could afford it to breath if they figure out a way.....This is about as close as they can get to doing that for now.

This is something to watch close. These two think everything should be privately owned and controlled and for them that seems to include any country including this one. They just install a proxy government where they and a hand full of others select (fund big and promote) the people they want us to vote between and only let us seriously see those people as options...end of story if we settle for that. How do we stop that ...easy... just wake up, pay attention, shine a light in the dark, and participate and kick our own funds into run our own in the race.

This is an interesting look at how little actual difference some feel there is between the two parties. When it gets down to it and I realize that even Former Senator Dorgon whom I often admired left office and headed within a short time to a lobby job and his wife is already a working as a lobbyist.  There seems to be much weight to the idea that money is hard to stand against and "we the people get harder to stand up for, unless we stand up more for ourselves"

Excerpt:

"We need to take our political system back from Big Money. I offer this as a promising strategy idea for making that happen,” Walker says.

As he sees it, “The people in Washington and our statehouses -- Republicans and Democrats -- are already too bought off by (or scared of) Big Money to listen to ‘We the people.’”

In responding to those progressives who see the necessity of backing the “lesser of two evils”, Walker states: “The evil has become too evil to accept.” He hopes that True Blue Democrats could return the Democratic Party to its “New Deal and Great Society principles.” All other Democrats, he says, are DINOs.

DINOs vs. a new platform

By that, Walker means that most Democratic Party leaders, including President Obama and much of the constituency, are “Democrats in Name Only”.


“DINOs stand for much the same as do Republicans: growing poverty, diminishing social safety net, vanished democracy, endless wars, and a devastated environment,” he says.

Walker wants TBD to stand against these Republican and DINO policies, to expose Obama “for what he is”, and “to insist on progressive goals: peace, a livable planet, and prospects of a decent, fulfilling life for everyone.”

This is a whole package of links to different independent documentaries. I will not even begin to say that they have all been previewed or that they all reflect the coffee party views. The few I watched were really the type of films that get you thinking about a lot of important things.

The film might tell about a certain group or situation but I found that much of what is said is sad for that real for the particular situation but the tale often has a story to be felt universally.

I am thinking for instance about the huge and growing number of single parent and broken families in the film The Canary Effect and how that is true for our whole nation at this point. Will the out come of the broken Indian families turn out to be an example of our national future?

Will the destruction and separation of the Indian from their original spiritual base be the same as America and the world at large has and is becoming secular and commercially dominated as a value and base that is quickly replacing the many diverse faiths of inner spiritual relationships? Today in the post-modern world there is through mass media and ads the spreading of the value and lure of stuff and other short sighted feel goods rather than the slower, not so glittery or profitable inner spiritual base for behavior and understanding.  These are just my thoughts after watching The Canary Effect. That film and others may rouse different questions and answers for others that view them

Shine a little light on ALEC sponered officials in your state. Alan Nunnelee has now been promoted to congressman in DC so someone else may be the chairman in his home state. Nunnelee continues his work for ALEC in Washington now.