Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Welcome to the website of the Occupy Alternative Banking working group. Explore the site to learn more about us, but for a consistent stream of interesting news and analysis on what is happening in the (broken) financial system and whatever else happens to interest us, keep an eye trained here: our popular “News and Noteworthy this Week” page.

From the week of April 26 to May 2, 2015

1. Baltimore
   1. Voices of the unheard voices from the Baltimore streets
   2. Why do they burn down their own neighborhood?
   3. Calling out the media and politicians for condemning black youth with
      1. their language
      2. and actions
   4. Don’t let the 1% determine police reform for the 99%
2. The buying of a President
   1. Campaign
   2. Personally
   3. Foundation
3. Obama Administration Trade Officials Received Hefty Bonuses from Big Banks
4. Pimco recruits ex-Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke
5. Sharing with whom
   1. Sharing and Caring
   2. Shaking up the sharing economy
6. Watchdog: Another Fannie, Freddie bailout could happen.

From the week of April 19 to April 25, 2015

1. Criminalizing Poverty
2. Bill to “Fast Track” the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other “trade” deals has been introduced
   1. Why you should oppose it
   2. Call your senators and congresspeople
      1. If in NYS: Sen. Gillibrand (212) 688-6262
      2. Sen. Schumer : 212 486-4430,
      3. House switchboard (202) 224-3121
3. The next economic system(s)
   1. The Next System.org
   2. What is a Worker Cooperative?
   3. Slow Money NYC
   4. Democracy at Work Institute
   5. Green Worker Cooperatives (local effort)
4. 1,500,000 missing black men — not missing. They are dead or incarcerated.
5. Will the Fed fix its regulatory capture problem? perhaps
6. San Francisco Police Officers to Be Dismissed Over Racist Texts
7. Can’t overemphasize this: Call your senators to tell them to oppose Fast Track, now!
   (Manny, why aren’t you in the picture
8. Anti-Test ‘Opt-Out’ Movement Makes A Wave In New York State
9. Trying to strangle the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau
   1. This Is How Republicans Plan To Destroy Liz Warren’s Greatest Achievement
   2. Cutting the CFPB Budget
   3. After all, we don’t want a government agency that helps people.
10. Payoff: How Congress Ensures Private Prison Profit with an Immigrant Detention Quota
11. A Response to Alec Baldwin’s Complaints That a Living Wage Rally Snarled Traffic. Natasha has commented that the problem with the Left is that it is not funny. This is.
12. White parents in North Carolina are using charter schools to secede from the education system
13. Secret Koch memo outlines plans for 2016
14. Atlanta school scandal and privatization of public schools
15. Driving While Black in the Bronx

From the week of April 12 to April 18, 2015

1. Citizens United: The Elephant in the Room in Rahm Emanuel’s Mayoral Reelection
2. Who Makes Cents: A History of Capitalism Podcast. What an amazing new resource. To get started, check out this earlier episode with Cornell’s Louis Hyman on the history of credit (the same guy teaching the MOOC with Edward Baptist on the History of American Capitalism).
3. Why Teacher Morale Has Plummeted? Pretty cool when Newsweek is starting to talk the talk.
4. Even “The Economist” has noticed that Investor-State Dispute Settlement panels are a tool of big multinational corporations. So, why is Obama so gung ho about TPP? Perhaps Citizens United is the elephant in the room, here too.
5. Risky Moves in the Game of Life Insurance. “Captive reinsurance” is following on the pioneering efforts of Enron (special purpose vehicles) and Citi and other banks (special investment vehicles) — which are still widely used. They’ve worked so well in the past, no reason for regulators or the public to worry.
6. Working, but Needing Public Assistance Anyway
7. FIGHT FOR $15 AN HOUR AND A UNION.
8. The Federal Reserve and Shared Prosperity:
   Why Working Families Need a Fed that Works for Them
   1. Podcast
   2. Report
9. Voters Pushed Mayor Rahm to the Left. Will He Stay There? More recap of the Chicago mayoral election. A great new book “Only One Thing Can Save Us” by Chicago Teachers Union lawyer Tom Geoghegan argues we need to be causing crises in the Democratic party. Is he being proven right?
10. Designing the Urban Commons. A great idea is getting implemented in London. A design competition to re-imagine under-used public spaces as new urban commons.
11. The simple way Utah solved chronic homelessness and saved millions

From the week of April 5 to April 11, 2015

1. Cornell West on the real, radical Martin Luther King, Jr
2. Cornel West speaking on need for protests against mass incarceration and police brutality and murder
3. Student Debt Strike Just Might Work
4. Upset By Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Banks Debate Halting Some Campaign Donations. The only news in this story is that the banks were explicit about it and a reporter heard. This is just the way our corporatized government operates day-in, day-out.
5. DEA sued over secret bulk collection of Americans’ phone records
6. U.S. secretly tracked billions of calls for decades
7. Questioning a housing plan NY City officials have started to question a little-known program that gives developers credits for building affordable housing units
8. Walter Scott’s Killing Is a Direct Result of the Current State of Policing in America Today
9. From the Fair Housing Act to Ferguson: Where You Live Impacts How You’re Policed
10. Participatory Government: Real Money, Real Projects, Real Power? NYC invites residents to decide how to allocate the city’s spending — 0.03% of it.
11. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Government Surveillance. There are very few government checks on what America’s sweeping surveillance programs are capable of doing. John Oliver sits down with Edward Snowden to discuss the NSA, the balance between privacy and security (and yes, dick-pics).
12. Fight 215 Ending phone record surveillance is the first step to reining in surveillance abuses by the NSA. Please join us in making this the year we stand for privacy and liberty, not secrecy and fear.
13. Did your taxes? Who (supposedly) Pays Federal Income Taxes? Want to know who pays how much globally? This is where your taxes went ( 2014, 2013 )… options for tax resistance if you don’t like where your taxes are spent.
14. Cooper Union Offers to Let President Go as Part of Attorney General Deal

From the week of March 29 to April 4, 2015

1. Analysis of leaked “chapter” of TPP.
   1. TPP is corporate corruption we can, and must, prevent
   2. It’s even worse than the critics feared.
2. Obama could unmask big political donors. Will he?
3. Exposing Hedge Fund Politics in NY (and elsewhere)
4. Latest regulatory comment by Occupy the SEC: Asset Managers and Systemic Risk
5. Department of Justice finds, quelle surprise, that HSBC is falling short in effort to clean up their act.
   1. HSBC is under a deferred prosecution agreement with DoJ
   2. So, this means DoJ should move ahead with prosecution.
   3. Much more likely, this will be an April Fools joke, on us, as has been the case in the past
6. Under Rahm Emanuel, Chicago Considers Privatizing Half its Public Housing This ties-back to the affordable housing discussion, which talked about HUD’s “RAD” program, pursuant to which public housing is sold to private developers (along with considerable subsidies) in exchange for temporary commitments that they maintain it as public housing. Chicago is apparently where RAD is going to be rolled-out in force.
7. Stanford offers free tuition for families making less than $125,000
8. Check out this newly released map (from Metrics Maps) of the states with more prisoners than college students. I get it that it would include Alabama and pretty much the whole south; but whatever happened to California.
9. McDonald’s pay rise was a PR stunt, not a solution for workers
10. New York City Consumer Agency Investigating Four For-Profit Colleges
11. The Horror of Amazon’s New Dash Button
12. Occupy Wall Street, the Tour