Swiss citizens are demanding a crucial change in the constitution, pushing for the introduction of a guaranteed income for everyone.
RT teamed up with RUPTLY video to follow the story. RT's Peter Oliver is in Bern where supporters of the basic income idea have gathered for a rally.
Thursday 28 November 2013
Wednesday 20 November 2013
Occupy Wall Street activists buy $15m of Americans' personal debt
Rolling Jubilee spent $400,000 to purchase debt cheaply from banks before 'abolishing' it, freeing individuals from their bills
A group of Occupy Wall Street activists has bought almost $15m of Americans' personal debt over the last year as part of the Rolling Jubilee project to help people pay off their outstanding credit.
Rolling Jubilee, set up by Occupy's Strike Debt group following the street protests that swept the world in 2011, launched on 15 November 2012. The group purchases personal debt cheaply from banks before "abolishing" it, freeing individuals from their bills.
By purchasing the debt at knockdown prices the group has managed to free $14,734,569.87 of personal debt, mainly medical debt, spending only $400,000. The group is able to buy debt so cheaply due to the nature of the "secondary debt market".
If individuals consistently fail to pay bills from credit cards, loans, or medical insurance the bank or lender that issued the funds will eventually cut its losses by selling that debt to a third party.
These sales occur for a fraction of the debt’s true values – typically for five cents on the dollar – and debt-buying companies then attempt to recoup the debt from the individual debtor and thus make a profit.
The Rolling Jubilee project was mostly conceived as a "public education project", Ross said. "We're under no illusions that $15m is just a tiny drop in the secondary debt market. It doesn't make a dent in the amount of debt. "Our purpose in doing this, aside from helping some people along the way – there's certainly many, many people who are very thankful that their debts are abolished – our primary purpose was to spread information about the workings of this secondary debt market."
The group has focussed on buying medical debt, and has acquired the $14.7m in three separate purchases, most recently purchasing the value of $13.5m on medical debt owed by 2,693 people across 45 states and Puerto Rico, Rolling Jubilee said in a press release.
“No one should have to go into debt or bankruptcy because they get sick,” said Laura Hanna, an organiser with the group. Hanna said 62% of all personal bankruptcies have medical debt as a contributing factor. Due to the nature of the debt market, the group is unable to specify whose debt it purchases, taking on the amounts before it discovers individuals’ identities. When Rolling Jubilee has bought the debt they send notes to their debtors “telling them they’re off the hook”, Ross said.
Ross, whose book, Creditocracy and the case for debt refusal, outlines the problems of the debt industry and calls for a “debtors’ movement” to resist credit, said the group had received letters from people whose debt they had lifted thanking them for the service. But the real victory was in spreading knowledge of the nature of the debt industry, he said.
"Very few people know how cheaply their debts have been bought by collectors. It changes the psychology of the debtor, knowing this.
“So when you get called up by the debt collector, and you're being asked to pay the full amount of your debt, you now know that the debt collector has bought your debt very, very cheaply. As cheaply as we bought it. And that gives you moral ammunition to have a different conversation with the debt collector."
A group of Occupy Wall Street activists has bought almost $15m of Americans' personal debt over the last year as part of the Rolling Jubilee project to help people pay off their outstanding credit.
Rolling Jubilee, set up by Occupy's Strike Debt group following the street protests that swept the world in 2011, launched on 15 November 2012. The group purchases personal debt cheaply from banks before "abolishing" it, freeing individuals from their bills.
By purchasing the debt at knockdown prices the group has managed to free $14,734,569.87 of personal debt, mainly medical debt, spending only $400,000. The group is able to buy debt so cheaply due to the nature of the "secondary debt market".
If individuals consistently fail to pay bills from credit cards, loans, or medical insurance the bank or lender that issued the funds will eventually cut its losses by selling that debt to a third party.
These sales occur for a fraction of the debt’s true values – typically for five cents on the dollar – and debt-buying companies then attempt to recoup the debt from the individual debtor and thus make a profit.
The Rolling Jubilee project was mostly conceived as a "public education project", Ross said. "We're under no illusions that $15m is just a tiny drop in the secondary debt market. It doesn't make a dent in the amount of debt. "Our purpose in doing this, aside from helping some people along the way – there's certainly many, many people who are very thankful that their debts are abolished – our primary purpose was to spread information about the workings of this secondary debt market."
The group has focussed on buying medical debt, and has acquired the $14.7m in three separate purchases, most recently purchasing the value of $13.5m on medical debt owed by 2,693 people across 45 states and Puerto Rico, Rolling Jubilee said in a press release.
“No one should have to go into debt or bankruptcy because they get sick,” said Laura Hanna, an organiser with the group. Hanna said 62% of all personal bankruptcies have medical debt as a contributing factor. Due to the nature of the debt market, the group is unable to specify whose debt it purchases, taking on the amounts before it discovers individuals’ identities. When Rolling Jubilee has bought the debt they send notes to their debtors “telling them they’re off the hook”, Ross said.
Ross, whose book, Creditocracy and the case for debt refusal, outlines the problems of the debt industry and calls for a “debtors’ movement” to resist credit, said the group had received letters from people whose debt they had lifted thanking them for the service. But the real victory was in spreading knowledge of the nature of the debt industry, he said.
"Very few people know how cheaply their debts have been bought by collectors. It changes the psychology of the debtor, knowing this.
“So when you get called up by the debt collector, and you're being asked to pay the full amount of your debt, you now know that the debt collector has bought your debt very, very cheaply. As cheaply as we bought it. And that gives you moral ammunition to have a different conversation with the debt collector."
Economics students aim to tear up free-market syllabus
Undergraduates at Manchester University propose overhaul of orthodox teachings to embrace alternative theories
Few mainstream economists predicted the global financial crash of 2008 and academics have been accused of acting as cheerleaders for the often labyrinthine financial models behind the crisis.
Now a growing band of university students are plotting a quiet revolution against orthodox free-market teaching, arguing that alternative ways of thinking have been pushed to the margins. Economics undergraduates at the University of Manchester have formed the Post-Crash Economics Society, which they hope will be copied by universities across the country.
The organisers criticise university courses for doing little to explain why economists failed to warn about the global financial crisis and for having too heavy a focus on training students for City jobs.
A growing number of top economists, such as Ha-Joon Chang, who teaches economics at Cambridge University, are backing the students. Next month the society plans to publish a manifesto proposing sweeping reforms to the University of Manchester's curriculum, with the hope that other institutions will follow suit. Chang, who is a reader in the political economy of development at Cambridge, said he agreed with the society's premise.
The teaching of economics was increasingly confined to arcane mathematical models, he said. "Students are not even prepared for the commercial world. Few [students] know what is going on in China and how it influences the global economic situation. Even worse, I've met American students who have never heard of Keynes."
In the decade before the 2008 crash, many economists dismissed warnings that property and stock markets were overvalued. They argued that markets were correctly pricing shares, property and exotic derivatives in line with economic models of behaviour. It was only when the US sub-prime mortgage market unravelled that banks realised a collective failure to spot the bubble had wrecked their finances.
In his 2010 documentary Inside Job, Charles Ferguson highlighted how US academics had produced hundreds of reports in support of the types of high-risk trading and debt-fuelled consumption that triggered the crash.
Few mainstream economists predicted the global financial crash of 2008 and academics have been accused of acting as cheerleaders for the often labyrinthine financial models behind the crisis.
Now a growing band of university students are plotting a quiet revolution against orthodox free-market teaching, arguing that alternative ways of thinking have been pushed to the margins. Economics undergraduates at the University of Manchester have formed the Post-Crash Economics Society, which they hope will be copied by universities across the country.
The organisers criticise university courses for doing little to explain why economists failed to warn about the global financial crisis and for having too heavy a focus on training students for City jobs.
A growing number of top economists, such as Ha-Joon Chang, who teaches economics at Cambridge University, are backing the students. Next month the society plans to publish a manifesto proposing sweeping reforms to the University of Manchester's curriculum, with the hope that other institutions will follow suit. Chang, who is a reader in the political economy of development at Cambridge, said he agreed with the society's premise.
The teaching of economics was increasingly confined to arcane mathematical models, he said. "Students are not even prepared for the commercial world. Few [students] know what is going on in China and how it influences the global economic situation. Even worse, I've met American students who have never heard of Keynes."
In the decade before the 2008 crash, many economists dismissed warnings that property and stock markets were overvalued. They argued that markets were correctly pricing shares, property and exotic derivatives in line with economic models of behaviour. It was only when the US sub-prime mortgage market unravelled that banks realised a collective failure to spot the bubble had wrecked their finances.
In his 2010 documentary Inside Job, Charles Ferguson highlighted how US academics had produced hundreds of reports in support of the types of high-risk trading and debt-fuelled consumption that triggered the crash.
Friday 15 November 2013
Food Companies Spend $10 Million to Keep Junk Food Covered by SNAP
With one in seven Americans receiving federal food assistance, the food stamp market is big business.
In his long, impressive story, with its flashy “Snow Fall”–like design, Saslow looks at the problem inherent in modern poverty: Hunger no longer means being skinny for lack of food. Rather, it means subsisting on junk—and suffering from obesity and other diet-related diseases as a result of the new diet of austerity.
The narrative of Blanca and her family, is heart-wrenching. Mother, for example, shares her cholesterol medication with son Antonio, just nine years old. But it's one of the wonkier paragraphs in the story that caught our eye. It comes just after Terry Canales, a Texas state representative, presents a bill that would block SNAP recipients from buying energy drinks with their benefits.
In other words, some of the leading economic lights of the tech industry are equivalent in size to the food stamp market in post–Great Recession America. And the lobbying dollars of Big Food guarantee that those taxpayer-funded SNAP dollars are funneled in their direction.
In his long, impressive story, with its flashy “Snow Fall”–like design, Saslow looks at the problem inherent in modern poverty: Hunger no longer means being skinny for lack of food. Rather, it means subsisting on junk—and suffering from obesity and other diet-related diseases as a result of the new diet of austerity.
The narrative of Blanca and her family, is heart-wrenching. Mother, for example, shares her cholesterol medication with son Antonio, just nine years old. But it's one of the wonkier paragraphs in the story that caught our eye. It comes just after Terry Canales, a Texas state representative, presents a bill that would block SNAP recipients from buying energy drinks with their benefits.
Then he yielded the microphone and waited for rebuttals. The first critic was one he had anticipated, a lobbyist for the Texas Beverage Association, which desperately wanted all of its drinks available for sale to the fastest-growing market in America: the food-stamp market, which has quadrupled from $20 billion to $80 billion in the past 12 years. Companies such as Coca-Cola, Kraft and Mars have spent more than $10 million in the past several years lobbying Congress to keep their products available to those using food stamps. “No clear standards exist for defining foods as good or bad,” the lobbyist said.For equivalency's sake, the LED lighting market is worth $80 billion, and the mobile software, smart grid, and global cybersecurity markets are all tracking to hit that number in the coming years.
In other words, some of the leading economic lights of the tech industry are equivalent in size to the food stamp market in post–Great Recession America. And the lobbying dollars of Big Food guarantee that those taxpayer-funded SNAP dollars are funneled in their direction.
It's business that really rules us now
Lobbying is the least of it: corporate interests have captured the entire democratic process. No wonder so many have given up on politics
It's the reason for the collapse of democratic choice. It's the source of our growing disillusionment with politics. It's the great unmentionable. Corporate power. The media will scarcely whisper its name. It is howlingly absent from parliamentary debates. Until we name it and confront it, politics is a waste of time.
The political role of business corporations is generally interpreted as that of lobbyists, seeking to influence government policy. In reality they belong on the inside. They are part of the nexus of power that creates policy. They face no significant resistance, from either government or opposition, as their interests have now been woven into the fabric of all three main political parties in Britain.
On Monday, for instance, the Guardian revealed that the government's subsidy system for gas-burning power stations is being designed by an executive from the Dublin-based company ESB International, who has been seconded into the Department of Energy. What does ESB do? Oh, it builds gas-burning power stations.
On the same day we learned that a government minister, Nick Boles, has privately assured the gambling company Ladbrokes that it needn't worry about attempts by local authorities to stop the spread of betting shops. His new law will prevent councils from taking action.
Last week we discovered that G4S's contract to run immigration removal centres will be expanded, even though all further business with the state was supposed to be frozen while allegations of fraud were investigated.
Now opposition MPs stare mutely as their powers are given away to a system of offshore arbitration panels run by corporate lawyers.
Since Blair, parliament operates much as Congress in the United States does: the lefthand glove puppet argues with the righthand glove puppet, but neither side will turn around to face the corporate capital that controls almost all our politics.
This is why the assertion that parliamentary democracy has been reduced to a self-important farce has resonated so widely over the past fortnight.
So I don't blame people for giving up on politics. I haven't given up yet, but I find it ever harder to explain why.
When a state-corporate nexus of power has bypassed democracy and made a mockery of the voting process, when an unreformed political funding system ensures that parties can be bought and sold, when politicians of the three main parties stand and watch as public services are divvied up by a grubby cabal of privateers, what is left of this system that inspires us to participate?
It's the reason for the collapse of democratic choice. It's the source of our growing disillusionment with politics. It's the great unmentionable. Corporate power. The media will scarcely whisper its name. It is howlingly absent from parliamentary debates. Until we name it and confront it, politics is a waste of time.
The political role of business corporations is generally interpreted as that of lobbyists, seeking to influence government policy. In reality they belong on the inside. They are part of the nexus of power that creates policy. They face no significant resistance, from either government or opposition, as their interests have now been woven into the fabric of all three main political parties in Britain.
On Monday, for instance, the Guardian revealed that the government's subsidy system for gas-burning power stations is being designed by an executive from the Dublin-based company ESB International, who has been seconded into the Department of Energy. What does ESB do? Oh, it builds gas-burning power stations.
On the same day we learned that a government minister, Nick Boles, has privately assured the gambling company Ladbrokes that it needn't worry about attempts by local authorities to stop the spread of betting shops. His new law will prevent councils from taking action.
Last week we discovered that G4S's contract to run immigration removal centres will be expanded, even though all further business with the state was supposed to be frozen while allegations of fraud were investigated.
Now opposition MPs stare mutely as their powers are given away to a system of offshore arbitration panels run by corporate lawyers.
Since Blair, parliament operates much as Congress in the United States does: the lefthand glove puppet argues with the righthand glove puppet, but neither side will turn around to face the corporate capital that controls almost all our politics.
This is why the assertion that parliamentary democracy has been reduced to a self-important farce has resonated so widely over the past fortnight.
So I don't blame people for giving up on politics. I haven't given up yet, but I find it ever harder to explain why.
When a state-corporate nexus of power has bypassed democracy and made a mockery of the voting process, when an unreformed political funding system ensures that parties can be bought and sold, when politicians of the three main parties stand and watch as public services are divvied up by a grubby cabal of privateers, what is left of this system that inspires us to participate?
The Stealthy Killer That Is Capitalism
The process is gradual, insidious, lethal. It starts with financial stress in various forms, and then, according to growing evidence, leads to health problems and shorter lives.
Financial stress is brought upon us by the profit motive of capitalism, which offers little incentive to feed hungry children, to treat the sick, to secure us in retirement, to provide job opportunities for middle-class Americans. Some of the steps in the process are becoming more and more familiar to us.
2. Watching 24,000,000 Children Go Hungry to Avoid Inconveniencing 20 Rich Individuals
It's an unthinkable trade-off, but it's happening. Although the 2013 SNAP (food stamp) budget of $78 billion is less than the 2012 investment earnings of 20 wealthy Americans, SNAP is being cut while not a penny extra is taken from the multi-billionaires.
The children, who make up nearly half of the 48 million recipients, will now get $1.40 for a meal instead of $1.50.
Financial stress is brought upon us by the profit motive of capitalism, which offers little incentive to feed hungry children, to treat the sick, to secure us in retirement, to provide job opportunities for middle-class Americans. Some of the steps in the process are becoming more and more familiar to us.
2. Watching 24,000,000 Children Go Hungry to Avoid Inconveniencing 20 Rich Individuals
It's an unthinkable trade-off, but it's happening. Although the 2013 SNAP (food stamp) budget of $78 billion is less than the 2012 investment earnings of 20 wealthy Americans, SNAP is being cut while not a penny extra is taken from the multi-billionaires.
The children, who make up nearly half of the 48 million recipients, will now get $1.40 for a meal instead of $1.50.
What crisis? Billionaires’ fortunes doubled since 2009
To better grasp the vast wealth of the ultra-high net-worth individuals (UHNW), their combined fortunes are now greater than the GDP of any country aside from the United States and China, and could fund the entire US budget deficit until 2024, according to the report.
The combined fortune of the world's billionaires now stands at $6.5 trillion, up from $3.1 trillion in 2009, according to the Billionaire Census.
On an interesting side note, the bulk of the wealth of the world’s richest derives from the recently rescued financial and banking sector (17 percent), with manufacturing making up just 8 percent.
The United States leads the billionaire class with 515, for a combined wealth of over $2 trillion dollars. China comes in a distant second place with 157; followed by Germany at 148; the United Kingdom at 135; and Russia with 108.
“The vast expansion in the incomes of the super-rich comes even as social services are being slashed in the US, Europe and throughout the world,” the World Socialist Website railed. “Earlier this month, food stamp benefits were reduced for the first time in US history, and extended unemployment benefits are scheduled to expire entirely at the end of the year.”
The combined net worth of the 515 billionaires in the United States would be able to fund the food stamp and extended unemployment benefit program for 100 years, it added.
The combined fortune of the world's billionaires now stands at $6.5 trillion, up from $3.1 trillion in 2009, according to the Billionaire Census.
On an interesting side note, the bulk of the wealth of the world’s richest derives from the recently rescued financial and banking sector (17 percent), with manufacturing making up just 8 percent.
The United States leads the billionaire class with 515, for a combined wealth of over $2 trillion dollars. China comes in a distant second place with 157; followed by Germany at 148; the United Kingdom at 135; and Russia with 108.
“The vast expansion in the incomes of the super-rich comes even as social services are being slashed in the US, Europe and throughout the world,” the World Socialist Website railed. “Earlier this month, food stamp benefits were reduced for the first time in US history, and extended unemployment benefits are scheduled to expire entirely at the end of the year.”
The combined net worth of the 515 billionaires in the United States would be able to fund the food stamp and extended unemployment benefit program for 100 years, it added.
In the U.S. 49.7 Million Are Now Poor, and 80% of the Total Population Is Near Poverty
If you live in the United States, there is a good chance that you are now living in poverty or near poverty. Nearly 50 million Americans, (49.7 Million), are living below the poverty line, with 80% of the entire U.S. population living near poverty or below it.
“The primary reason that poverty remains so high,” Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan economist said, “is that the benefits of a growing economy are no longer being shared by all workers as they were in the quarter-century following the end of World War II.”
“Given current economic conditions,” he continued, “poverty will not be substantially reduced unless government does more to help the working poor.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. government seems to think that the answer is cutting more of those services which are helping to keep 80% of the population just barely above the poverty line, cutting Food Stamps since the beginning of the month.
Democrats and Republicans are negotiating about just how much more of these programs should be cut, but neither party is arguing that they should not be touched.
“The primary reason that poverty remains so high,” Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan economist said, “is that the benefits of a growing economy are no longer being shared by all workers as they were in the quarter-century following the end of World War II.”
“Given current economic conditions,” he continued, “poverty will not be substantially reduced unless government does more to help the working poor.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. government seems to think that the answer is cutting more of those services which are helping to keep 80% of the population just barely above the poverty line, cutting Food Stamps since the beginning of the month.
Democrats and Republicans are negotiating about just how much more of these programs should be cut, but neither party is arguing that they should not be touched.
Thursday 14 November 2013
Roseanne Barr: “MK Ultra Rules In Hollywood”
Not long ago, Roseanne made some shocking statements, alluding that Hollywood and the entertainment industry is dominated by MK Ultra.
MK Ultra was the name for a previously classified research program through the CIA’s scientific intelligence division.
It was the CIA’s program of research in behavioral modification and perception manipulation of human beings Hollywood is the one that keeps all of this power structure.
They perpetuate the culture of racism, sexism, classism, genderism and keep it all in place. They continue to feed it, and they make a lot of money doing it. They do it at the behest of their masters, who run everything.
I speak on behalf of Hollywood. I go to parties, Oscar parties and things like that and big stars pull me aside, take my arm and whisper: “I just want to thank you for the things you say.” And it blows my mind, but that’s the culture, it’s a culture of fear. It’s a big culture of mind control, MK Ultra rules in Hollywood
The CIA also had a project called Mockingbird, in which the CIA infiltrated mass media outlets in order to sway public opinion. After leaving The Washington Post in 1977, Carl Bernstein spent six months looking at the relationship of the CIA and the press during the Cold War years. His 25,000 word cover story that was published in Rolling Stone in the late 70′s can be read here!
MK Ultra was the name for a previously classified research program through the CIA’s scientific intelligence division.
It was the CIA’s program of research in behavioral modification and perception manipulation of human beings Hollywood is the one that keeps all of this power structure.
They perpetuate the culture of racism, sexism, classism, genderism and keep it all in place. They continue to feed it, and they make a lot of money doing it. They do it at the behest of their masters, who run everything.
I speak on behalf of Hollywood. I go to parties, Oscar parties and things like that and big stars pull me aside, take my arm and whisper: “I just want to thank you for the things you say.” And it blows my mind, but that’s the culture, it’s a culture of fear. It’s a big culture of mind control, MK Ultra rules in Hollywood
The CIA also had a project called Mockingbird, in which the CIA infiltrated mass media outlets in order to sway public opinion. After leaving The Washington Post in 1977, Carl Bernstein spent six months looking at the relationship of the CIA and the press during the Cold War years. His 25,000 word cover story that was published in Rolling Stone in the late 70′s can be read here!
Guantánamo 12 years on: how the media is missing the point
More than half of prisoners remain inside despite being cleared for release – and other little-known facts about notorious prison
The Washington Post article also repeated and, unfortunately, perpetuated two fallacies about Guantánamo. First, it repeated the myth that the president is "[b]locked by Congress from releasing or transferring many of the remaining 164 detainees" from Guantánamo.
That is not so. Congress had passed legislation effectively blocking the president from transferring detainees to their home or other countries, but it then amended the law two years ago to allow the president to waive those restrictions.
As Carl Levin, the Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, pointed out, that amendment "provides a clear route for the transfer of detainees to third countries." The president has simply not used it.
The article also repeated another myth - that there are some "four dozen men [at Guantánamo] deemed too dangerous to release but who are ineligible for trial because evidence against them is inadmissible."
That line has been repeated time and again by the press, and never examined.
It is simply not true. The government's basis for detaining each of the men at Guantánamo is now publicly available on WikiLeaks. Members of the press can examine the evidence themselves. They should.
There are clearly some bad guys down there - generally acknowledged now as fewer than 20. These men can all be tried.
The only thing preventing their conviction is the Military Commission System itself, which is totally untested and ineffective. They would all have been convicted long ago in our federal courts. An examination of the government's basis for detaining the other men at Guantánamo shows that the reason they can't be tried is not because the evidence against them is inadmissible, but simply because it is so flimsy and speculative that it would be laughed out of any federal court in the country.
But how can there be a presumption of innocence at Guantánamo, when even innocent men who have long been cleared remain imprisoned?
The Washington Post article also repeated and, unfortunately, perpetuated two fallacies about Guantánamo. First, it repeated the myth that the president is "[b]locked by Congress from releasing or transferring many of the remaining 164 detainees" from Guantánamo.
That is not so. Congress had passed legislation effectively blocking the president from transferring detainees to their home or other countries, but it then amended the law two years ago to allow the president to waive those restrictions.
As Carl Levin, the Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, pointed out, that amendment "provides a clear route for the transfer of detainees to third countries." The president has simply not used it.
The article also repeated another myth - that there are some "four dozen men [at Guantánamo] deemed too dangerous to release but who are ineligible for trial because evidence against them is inadmissible."
That line has been repeated time and again by the press, and never examined.
It is simply not true. The government's basis for detaining each of the men at Guantánamo is now publicly available on WikiLeaks. Members of the press can examine the evidence themselves. They should.
There are clearly some bad guys down there - generally acknowledged now as fewer than 20. These men can all be tried.
The only thing preventing their conviction is the Military Commission System itself, which is totally untested and ineffective. They would all have been convicted long ago in our federal courts. An examination of the government's basis for detaining the other men at Guantánamo shows that the reason they can't be tried is not because the evidence against them is inadmissible, but simply because it is so flimsy and speculative that it would be laughed out of any federal court in the country.
But how can there be a presumption of innocence at Guantánamo, when even innocent men who have long been cleared remain imprisoned?
Saturday 9 November 2013
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