You and your community win! If you've ever thought banking had little to do with you, think again with Ellen Brown, one of our heroes!
She's the author of the very readable Web of Debt about the way banking creates money, and also The Public Bank Solution, about banks most of us haven't heard about, but which have successfully created financing for the public good. What a notion. You can get her books at Amazon or her website.
Banking runs everything, including government, and the way you live your life. Ellen founded the Public Banking Institute to advocate for public measures to increase funding. The US has only one public bank, in red state North Dakota. Of all our states, North Dakota was the only one to come out of the 2008 crash without bankruptcy looming. Now Ralph Nader is even talking about public banking, and quoting Ellen Brown. What if the people of your state owned a bank?
heck out his article why we need to take on banking as a public issue on Huffington Posthere: www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-savings-and-stability-of-public-banking_us_58ed5d96e4b0ea028d568de5
Some Are More Equal Than Others
Today is Equal Pay Day. Women have to work until today, April 4, to earn what the median US male did last year.
But The United State of Women points out other dates that show what equality would mean to different sisters. Asian-American women were equal by March 7, more equal than most of us. But African-American women will have to wait until July 31! Native American women aren't equal until September 25, and OMG, Latina women don't catch up until November 2!
The US of W says: "Add those [dates] to your calendar and make your voice heard about why this gap is unacceptable for all women."
Indeed! While you're at it, complain about the US median male wage going down. Ratios only show the relationship between two numbers--and when it comes to wages? The median men's wage dropped from 1973-2014 ($53,294 to $50,383) while women's went up ($30,182 to $39,621), in general because of her education. Education loans, anyone?
What Vermont Farmworkers and Planned Parenthood Have in Common
Terry Allen, formidable journalist, photographer and Vermont citizen, tells The Guardian her personal story of an undocumented farmworker neighbor, who needed medical services. She is part of a volunteer group that helps undocumented immigrants. Carlos, one of 1000-2000 undocumented farmworkers, keeps Vermont's dwindling dairy farms productive.
He lacks a car. He lives a sequestered life, routinely working over 60 hours a week. He and others like him live out of sight of most of us, but Allen brings Carlos to life. If you think immigration issues have nothing to do with you, read Allen's piece.
Carlos suggested saving time by going to a “doc in a box” at a strip mall, so I drove him to one.
I asked the receptionist about the cost: “$100 for the visit.” As Carlos started taking bills from his wallet, I motioned him to stop. “And for the lab tests?”
he young woman rummaged behind the counter. “Five hundred dollars, so $600 total,” she said with all the animation of one of Carlos’s cows.
“You’re kidding,” I nearly shouted. “For standard lab tests?”
“No way,” I told Carlos, who was probably deeply embarrassed by me. It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford it, but I knew how he sweated for that much money, and how the medical system jacked up prices for the uninsured.
-- Terry Allen in The Guardian, see link below.
As for the commonality with Planned Parenthood? Both Carlos and PP live under a cloud of threat. The threat comes from those on a moral high horse, fed by hypocritical haymaking. Allen points out a favorite lie from the billionaires and lovers of billionaires surrounding Trump. "Illegals" pay their fair share of taxes--and unlike wealthy Americans, they don't complain about it either.
While on the campaign trail, Donald Trump called CNN’s Erin Burnett “naive” for suggesting “illegal immigrants” pay taxes. But nationally, they contribute an estimated $11.64bn a year in just state and local taxes, with at least 50% of undocumented immigrant households filing tax returns, according to the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
ermont’s undocumented people pay almost $4m a year in state and local taxes and, at 7.9% of income, contribute slightly more than the effective rate for the top 1% of Americans.
READ MORE HERE: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/25/undocumented-immigrants-vermont-dairy-industry
The Budget from Small Hands, Smaller Heart
OMG. Trump's budget. We so agree with what conservative writer David Brooks has to say about it. David! This is a feminist riff! Beautiful!
"Donald Trump doesn't care about domestic policy. He mostly cares about testosterone.
He wants to cut any part of government that may seem soft and nurturing, like poverty programs. He wants to cut any program that might seem emotional and airy-fairy, like the National Endowment for the Arts. He wants to cut any program that might seem smart and nerdy, like the National Institutes of Health.
But he wants to increase funding for every program that seems manly, hard, muscular and ripped, like the military and armed antiterrorism programs.
ndeed, the Trump budget looks less like a political philosophy and more like a sexual fantasy. It lavishes attention on every aspect of hard power and slashes away at anything that isn’t."
Read Brook's whole op-ed piece in The NYTimes, commenting on Bannon, Prince of Darkness, too.
www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/opinion/let-bannon-be-bannon.html
Men with Guns Top Trump Budget
Trump’s 2018 US budget proposal increases defense by half, and shovels big money for homeland security, and veterans—paid for by budget cuts to health, education, diplomacy, environmental safety, and housing for the poorest. The arts, public broadcasting, women’s reproductive services, community development, and domestic violence programs were zero funded.
What a vision for the future: deport peaceable illegals and break up families, block Islamic workers and their families, and make sure 24 million of the poorest Americans can't get healthcare. Keep women pregnant, and afraid, stuck in violent marriages. This is making America great?
We need good policemen, and pay them well, but crime has been going down--and police send their kids to school, too. Nancy Pelosi calls big education cuts: a stupid economy! We agree. Dems are coming up with an alternative budget. In the UK and Australia, women have organized a women's budget, to analyze their national budget. Why not do that here in the US?
Read more about Pelosi and Dems take here at the Hill: Trump Budget a Slap in the Face:
thehill.com/homenews/house/324308-pelosi-trump-budget-a-slap-in-the-face
Find out about the Women's Budget Group in the UK:
wbg.org.uk/category/resources/
Congress Befriends the Banks. AGAIN.
Be very afraid. Dodd Frank regs are rolled back, Wall Street's bull is charging like it did in the 90s, and now a bill passed by the Republican House last year has less opposition in the Senate, which last year stopped it. This new bill was opposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), according to Huffpo (which agrees with her that this is serious) and Investor Weekly (which gushes its passage will be wonderful). www.investmentnews.com/article/20170309/FREE/170309907/senate-panel-approves-bill-to-promote-etf-research
Warren pointed out the obvious. Loosening requirements on ETF research, allowing broker salesmen to write their own puff pieces and call it research, was a conflict of interest. Bank of America has been lobbying hard for this one.
But conflicts of interest, especially big ones, are being normalized in Washington’s swamp, which seems freshly stocked with crocs, not drained. ETFs are Exchange Traded Funds, which purchase combinations of assets and sell ownership stock to investors. Their growth began to mushroom after 2008, and are now valued at $2.1 trillion. They charge big fees and, like mortgage securities, are complicated and hard to understand. Bank of America has been lobbying to exempt brokers who write research from any legal liability, reports HuffPo. This new bill delivers that. Without legal liability, selling is so much easier.
Warren offered an amendment in committee to make them liable, but then withdrew it. Maybe somebody broke it to her that this exemption from liability already applies to stock research. Hold Wall Street accountable? On this, Warren seems to be one of a handful trying to keep crocodiles at bay.
Read more here: www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/congress-bank-of-america_us_58c07932e4b0ed718269a50c
