Occupy RoanokeVA

A.L.E.C.
American Legislative Exchange Council is a special interest group that works to promote the corporatizing of the United States, even the public commons such as schools, parks, toll roads and community water systems.

Afghanistan War
Fatalities have now topped 20,000 and another 50,000 have been wounded or injured. Unmanned drone bombers operate around the clock with daily civilian casualties.

Assassinations
United State covert intelligence operatives routinely assassinate foreign citizens that are deemed threats to our national interests. In addition, assassinations of United States citizens are now permitted for the first time in history. And it is happening without due process of the law. These are egregious violations of the Constitution.

Bail Out
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, commonly referred to as the “Bail Out.” Originally set-up to purchase approximately 700 billion dollars in toxic (worthless) assets, critics of the plan say that the actual cost is closer to 2 trillion dollars. Additional complaints point out that such a bail out was not capitalism, but corporate welfare and cronyism, and that the banks had actually stolen the money they were now in debt for. In addition, as soon as Congress approved the bail-out money, over 32 billion dollars was paid in bonuses to over 5,000 bank executives and their trading partners.

Central Intelligence Agency
The CIA has a 54 billion dollar clandestine operations budget that is literally not even allowed to be reviewed by most Congressmen. It is estimated we have covert intelligence operations in over 100 countries, including covert military operations in at least a dozen countries.

Clean Energy
These sources are the smart choice for a sustainable future. They are non-polluting and renewable, versus oil, gas, and coal and nuclear fuels, which are carcinogenic or potentially lethal. Fossil fuels are also billion of years old, yet are being exhausted in a single day by comparison. Research major clean energy source here: Solar power, Wind power, Water power.

Collective Bargaining
Employees of large corporations have the right to organize a union to negotiate for a fair share of the profits. The decline of union wage jobs in the United States and our shrinking middle class is exactly parallel.

Colonialism
Multi-national corporations are signing long term leases with African military dictators for land and mineral rights. U.S. corporations already have holdings the size of Texas and the trend is skyrocketing. Hundreds of thousands of subsistence farmers have been displaced and are now starving, while the industrial mega farms plant rubber trees and bio-fuel crops. Though leases were signed with dictators and not representative governments, they will be enforced by our military if broken.

Co-ops
This is a business model in which the company is owned and controlled by members, which usually includes the employees and sometimes outside investors. Profit or loss is distributed among the membership, proportionate to their share of ownership, which is much more evenly spread than typical corporations. Small co-ops are one of the best ideas to help local economies, since all the profits generally stay in the community.

Constitutional Rights
Citizens should familiarize themselves with our Constitution, the Bill or Rights (first ten amendments) and the many subsequent amendments that once protected us. The courts have been eroding our rights and the Patriot Act was particularly egregious, as it suspended the Right of Habeas Corpus (article 1, section 9 ) and directly violates amendments 4, 5, 6, and 8. This is the first time in history our rights were removed in wholesale fashion. And they have not been restored.

Corporate Personhood
The Supreme Court recently extended the rights of individuals to corporations in the landmark Citizens United V. Federal Election Commission decision. This allows corporations to donate unlimited money to political candidates, and they can do so anonymously.

Corporatocracy
This is the merging of democracy and corporate business into essentially one entity. The business of the state is business, whereas, it should be that the business of the state is the citizens.

Covert Wars
According to government leaks, the United States government has had covert operations to overthrow the government of almost every Muslim and many African countries since 9/11. No leadership in those countries will be tolerated unless they are United States allies.

Duopoly
A political system in which two seemingly different groups are basically the same, despite a difference in rhetoric.

Drone Wars
The United State is running unmanned bombing missions in 5 countries (at present). Pre-dawn hours are the most common time for raids, since opposition fighters are likely to be stationary or sleeping. Given the family group nature of that time of day, civilian casualties are astronomical. Our military is forbidden to keep count, or even estimate the number of dead civilians.

Due Process
Once arrested, the government can freeze your accounts and impound your possessions, without formal charges. This leaves one immediately destitute as one tries to prove one’s innocence. Recent events even allow the President and high ranking officials to order assassination of anyone they believe is a
“security” threat. This includes our own citizens and happens without guaranteed constitutional rights like legal representation, hearings and trial. This development is the greatest erosion of our constitutional rights in the history of the country.

Education
Public education is a right of every citizen. The trend towards privatization (which literally turns schools into businesses) in poor communities is especially troubling. Services to students get shaved a little each year in the name of profit and the results mean that schools are devolving into day care centers instead of teaching, much less mentoring.

Election  Reform
Some of issues include campaign finance reform, electronic vote counting fraud, lobbyists, PACs, Super PACs, Corporate Personhood, unlimited and anonymously campaign contribution, re-districting and gerry-mandering frauds, term limits and an absolute refusal to consider lottery elections. Our representatives first order of business is to take care of themselves. SEPARATE BUSINESS AND STATE!

Environmental Issues
Please click on any link for detailed articles and information: Deep Sea Oil Drilling, Fracking, Pollution, Pesticides, Endangered Species… (Links are under construction.)

Factory Farming
Modern industrial farms routinely raise animals in conditions inferior to the worst prisons in history, many animals living entire lifetimes spattered head to toe with a muddy mix of excrement and urine. Seeds of fruit and vegetables are typically genetically engineered and the crops are coated with carcinogenic pesticides, with the run-off leaching into aquifers. One billion tons (2 trillion pounds) of pesticides are used each year in the United States alone.

Fascism
A political ideology in which a country believes itself the greatest of all nations and dissenting opinions are marginalized by the system itself. In addition, fascist government operates as if the business of state is business. “Fascism should be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power” – Benito Mussolini.

Federal Reserve
Though perceived as a governmental agency, it is not. The Federal Reserve calls itself an independent entity within the government, having both public purposes and private aspects.” It does not have Congressional oversight. Its Board of Governors is appointed by the President of the United States. Each of its seven members serves for 14 years with just one member replaced every two years. In 2011 a Congressional audit, the first ever, discovered that in less than three years the Fed had lent (printed money) in the amount of $16.1 TRILLION dollars to Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, as well as banks in Europe. END THE FEDERAL RESERVE. Banking must be regulated!

Foreign Incorporation
Many companies that operate primarily, or even entirely in the United States, incorporate offshore and masquerade as foreign companies in order to pay less taxes here.

Fossil Fuels
Hundreds of millions years to be created, but being consumed in a couple of centuries. In fact, peak oil (easy extraction) is already past. The toxins released when burned are not only pollutants, but carcinogens and add exponentially to global warming. The following are just a few of the current discussions on this topic. Fracking: (Sometimes creates water so polluted it ignites and burns. It’s carcinogenic, too). Mountain Top Removal: (Grinds coal laced mountains into gravel. Tailings cause cancer.) Nuclear Energy: (Chernobyl and Fukushima were disasters. And nuclear waste is lethal.) Tar Sands: (Worst air polluter and global warmer in history.)

Freedom of the Press
All major media outlets are controlled by wealthy stockholders, who in turn set the boards of directors, who influence the content with news, opinions and insights that increase their privileged positions.

Free Trade
Virtually all of the agreements are with countries that have no wage, safety, or pollution laws, which allow them to compete against us with a great advantage. This has cost us perhaps ten million of jobs over the years.

Glass-Steagall Act
This legislation was repealed in 1999. It allowed banks to speculate and helped lead to the financial meltdown. Banking is fighting the re-enactment of similar laws.

Genetic Engineering
Genetically modified animals and plants are in 80% of today’s food. Labeling is not required in the United States, though it is in other countries. Even animal genes are being spliced into plants. This has increased the trend towards a few super strains of each variety of food staple, whereas there were once hundreds of varieties, especially with grains. This raises the potential for a single pest infestation or plant disease to wipe out an entire crop across any continent in a single year.

Global Warming
No longer in dispute among independent scientists, the United States refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol that addressed global warming. Glacier National Park has 5 glaciers, but it had 24. And the polar ice caps are half as thick as they once were.

Guantanamo Bay
After 10 years, it’s clear the United States has sentenced some of its own citizens to life imprisonment without trials, hearings, or visitation rights. Guantanamo Bay is infamous in Middle Eastern conversation.

Habeas Corpus
Present the person. This is a writ (legal document) that prevents unlawful restraint. An arrested person can demand the court issue a writ of  habeas corpus, which then forces the authorities holding you to either charge you, or set you free. This is the only civil liberty in the original text of the Constitution itself. (Article 1, Section 9), though it is also implied in the 5th Amendment. This right was suspended by the Patriot Act. Hundreds of American citizens, here and overseas, have been in jail over a decade without being charged.

Health Care Reform
For profit health care is a failure. Universal Health Care exists in every industrialized democracy, except the United States. Our profit based system costs about double per person, but our life spans are several years shorter. Furthermore, it violates the first principle of being a nation (we are a family). Health care is not a privilege for family members, but a right, just the same as education. As it stands now, 50 million Americans have no health care and a serious illness means bankruptcy for  2 million citizens each year.

Imperialism
The United States has 700-1200 military bases located in every corner of the globe. For 70 consecutive years our military has been entangled in overt wars or covert military operation in more than half the countries in the world. At present we have 6 overt wars, plus numerous covert operations involving Arab, African and South American nations.

Income Inequality
Some people are now earning 200,000 times more money per year than honest, hard-working citizens. No member in the family of humanity is worth 100,000 times more than their neighbor.

Independent News

Mainstream media is owned by giant corporations. The major stockholders are billionaires who set the boards of directors, who in turn choose the management that selects your news (and how it’s presented). You must get your news from independent sources! Here are just a few to start exploring:
democracynow.org
therealnews.com
theguardian.co.uk
commondreams.org
alternet.org
tomdispatch.com
aljazeera.com
truthdig.com

Internet Rights
Censorship legislation has been introduced in the United States that will curb the public’s access to the internet, even though freedom of the press is guaranteed in the 1st Amendment.

Iraq War
The estimated number of Iraqi fatalities ranges from 400,000 to 1,100,000 that have died directly from the war or related injuries. (M.I.T. estimates the number at 655,000.) Another 2,000,000 have been wounded and 3,000,000 are living in exile or refugee camps. A small nation of only 30 million people, every citizen has dead friends or family members. Most Iraqis believe we are the terrorists. Though we announced we are leaving, up to 50,000 mercenaries are remaining there. Cost for the war, so far, is in excess of 3 trillion dollars.

Job Creation
From Henry Ford to the Wright Brothers, Microsoft to Facebook, it is small business that launches the new industries that create genuinely new jobs and their eventual export wealth. When industries mature they only vie for market share. If Ford adds 10,000 jobs, then GM or Toyota lost 10,000. The wealthy do not promote ideas that actually create new jobs, small business does.

Lobbyists
Professional influence peddlers, lobbyists are hired guns contracted by large corporations to promote favorable legislation and policies for their businesses. Many corporate lobbyists are ex-government officials who know the ins and outs of the system, while others often write the proposed new legislation. There are at least 20 professional lobbyists for every member of Congress.

Local Initiatives
Avoid the giant mega-stores who send our wealth to low wage countries. Shop at farmer’s markets or independent stores for your groceries (and be healthier, too). Don’t keep banking with the criminals that finished destroying our economy. Move your finances to small local banks or credit unions. Buy your clothes from local independents, the Mom and Pop stores in every community that actually serve their customers. Try to buy American made products. In short, keep your money local.     

Lottery Elections
Persons wishing to run for local elected office register for a lottery and then a few names are drawn as the candidates. For higher offices, current lower-level elected officials can register for that election lottery and a few selected people become the candidates. No corporate donations or private money is allowed in the elections. Candidates participate in public forums to discuss their views. No official may serve more than one term in the same office.

Media Reform
Mainstream media has become the public relations arm of the plutocracy. The wealthy major stockholders of these media conglomerates set the board of directors for each company, which in turn sets the management that decides the information you receive. To be informed, the citizenry must have independent news sources that are not controlled by the rich and powerful.
TheGuardian.co.uk
CommonDreams.org
DemocracyNow.org
TomDispatch.com
Alternet.org
Truthdig.com
TheRealNews.com

Mercenaries
Soldiers employed by private companies. Once they are hired by a government they follow whatever orders they are given. There are about a half-dozen professional soldier suppliers now, with over a hundred peripheral weapons, supplies and equipment businesses. Thousands of mercenaries have been contracted by the United States to remain in Iraq indefinitely as private soldiers.  

Military Bases
The United States currently maintains approximately 700-1200 military bases or tactical installations in 140-165 countries.

Military Spending
The United States military budget for 2010 was approximately 700 billion dollars, more than all other nations of the world combined.

Minimum Wage
This wage is below the poverty line and qualifies for food stamps in every state.

Nuclear Energy
The Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters are lessons to be learned. In addition, turning mountains into sand for handfuls of fuel is short sited, especially when the residue of spent fuel is lethal for thousands of years.

Oligarchy
Government by the few, for the few.

PACs and Super PACs
A Political Action Committee is a group that works to promote a candidate or political issue. They typically employ lobbyists to lead them when the purpose is advancing a political issue. There are member contribution limits, but new Super PACs have provided a way around this.

Palestinian Rights
The region of Palestine was almost entirely Palestinian until the modern age. The Jews began immigrating back to the region in very small numbers in the late 1800′s, which then increased after World War I. But the emigrations from Europe during and after World War II were massive. The area had been under Ottoman control until World War I, but became a British protectorate when that war ended. In 1946, after World War II, the British ceded control of the region to the Palestinians and Jews. This was done with a U.N. mandate that declared the two peoples should share the region and create two new independent nation states of Israel and Palestine. When Britain left, Israel immediately declared itself an independent nation and war broke out between the two principals. At present Israel possesses 78% of the land.

Patriot Act
Absurdly named, this act violates Constitutional Amendments 4, 5, 6, and 8. Additionally, it removed the right of Habeas Corpus, which has allowed our government to imprison citizens without charges being filed. After 10 years of  Guantanamo, the United States has essentially sentenced over 100 of its own citizens to life imprisonment without trials or hearings, or even being charged. The illegal use of torture has never been addressed either. This is the first time in history our rights were removed in wholesale fashion. And they have not been restored.

Pesticides
Agri-business now uses two trillion pounds of pesticides annually. The potential long term health risks are downplayed while they take billions in government subsidies. This funding makes it even harder for organic farmers to reverse the negative trend. It is also creating insects nearly impervious to anything but the most lethal and carcinogenic treatments. Also interesting is that superweeds are becoming commonplace.

Plutocracy
Government by the wealthy and powerful, for the wealthy and powerful.

Pollution
Most of our free trade partners have little or no pollution laws. Ignoring safeguards lowers their production costs, which in turn hinders our country’s ability to compete economically. Meanwhile, the overseas epidemic of pollution slowly poisons us all.

PrisonState
The United States has more people in prison than China and India combined (though they have 8 times as many people).

Privacy
Among the many violations of our rights under the Patriot act, the government allows clandestine investigation of any citizen, including storing every email sent or received, all phone calls, and every website visited. Legislation is pending to have web searches recorded as well. Most adult citizens have been screened to some degree, and to date, almost 200,000 citizens have been extensively analyzed and monitored for terrorism. In 10 years this has resulted in exactly 1 conviction. Data is archived for a lifetime and can be retrieved and used as evidence at any later date. Also, any government agency can enter your home (without a warrant) by claiming you might be destroying evidence, a totally subjective criterion.

Privatization
This is selling of community assets to private corporations for a cash infusion.  But the long term results of transferring common wealth things like water and electric is to put the public at risk for private profit. Parks and recreation facilities are also being transferred, and with that comes the possibility of conversion to other uses and the loss of public access to outdoor spaces. With schools it makes them profit centers which ultimately requires loss of services. Lastly, with prisons it reduces rehabilitation programs and pressures judges for greater rates of incarceration, since they close if not profitable. The trend in privatizing the public commons is a disaster.

Rendering
The United States routinely transfers terrorism suspects and war prisoners to Middle Eastern allies who have little or no torture regulations. Those detainees are then ferociously interrogated on our behalf, often with U.S. intelligence operatives as witness to transcribe testimonies.

Renewable Energy
Caution. This category also includes major pollution contributors, such as bio-diesel and ethanol. Clean energy is the better description of what we need.

Right To Work State
Shamefully named to hide corporate greed, a union company in states with right-to-work laws cannot insist employees join the union, even if 99% of the employees are members. Therefore, companies can avoid strike shutdowns by hiring people who decline to join the union, which negates the power to force collective bargaining. The average wage for comparable jobs in right-to-work states is substantially less. (The reason unions don’t want non-members is because by law they get all the benefits without sharing any dues.)

Robin Hood Tax (see Transaction Tax)

Separation of Church and State
This is a fundamental tenet of the United States Constitution. No religion in history, once powerful enough to control government, has failed to persecute or execute dissenting opinions.

September 11, 2001
The United States has sealed thousands of evidence and testimony files and declared that having an official investigation is against national interests, even though there are thousands of unanswered questions. And no one has ever presented a plausible explanation as to how World Trade Center 7 was imploded a few hours after the twin towers (World Trade Center 1 and 2) collapsed. Many citizens call it the most suppressed story in United States history.

Single Payer

Another term for Universal Health Care, it is simply Medicare for all, instead of just the elderly, and is funded the same way, with payroll taxes. Under the plan, everyone would have health coverage, yet the cost per citizen would go down in the long run. This is because most expenses are incurred by the elderly who are already covered, preventative medicine eliminates numerous emergency visits, and Medicare regulates the amount health corporations can charge for various services. (Those prices are much less than “for profit” health care.) As it stands now, 50 million Americans have no health care and a serious illness means bankruptcy for 2 million citizens each year.

Student Loan Reform
Many students have education loans in the tens of thousands of dollars and have been unable to find work in their fields for years. Many are working for unskilled wages, if employed at all. Most of the loans are above market interest rates, too.

Subsidies
Tax payer money is routinely given by government to many industries. This includes billions to the oil and gas industries, plus billions more to pharmaceutical and agriculture companies. This is welfare.

Tax Cuts
Extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans was extended under President Obama after the crash, who then simultaneously cut benefits to the poor.

Tax Reform
All kinds of loopholes exist, including untaxed retained earnings, off shore banking and foreign incorporation scams, absurdly low capital gains taxes, and a complete refusal to implement scaled income tax, wherein the more money one makes, the higher percentage of tax is paid. Billionaires prosper with the help of all of us, directly or indirectly.

Think Tanks & Policy Centers
Many of these organizations have been created by wealthy individuals or groups to develop ways to achieve their political and economic objectives. The United States military and intelligence organizations also have numerous clandestine organizations like this, which work primarily to influence public opinion, both here and abroad.

Tort Reform
Deceitfully named, this idea is being pushed by the lobbyists of big corporations. They want to severely limit settlements that injured people (or decedent’s families) can collect when those companies are found criminally liable. In some cases it could turn out that even a wrongful death conviction would have to settle for what amounts to minimum wage. 

Transaction Tax
Trillions of trades are made every day, completely computer driven. This has resulted in a nearly infinite number of shares that were purchased and literally resold mere milliseconds later. Theoretically, the same shares of stock could be change hands thousands of times in one day.

Unions
The right to unionize and force companies to offer a more equitable sharing of the profits is fundamental in free societies. The decline in union membership and its customary living wages perfectly matches the decline of our standard of living.

Voting Fraud
Two main issues are electronic voting machine hacking that risks complete election theft, and  redistricting abuses which can control election outcomes.

Universal Health Care
Another term for Single Payer, it is simply Medicare for all, instead of just the elderly, and is funded the same way, with payroll taxes. Under the plan,  everyone would have health coverage, yet the cost per citizen would go down in the long run. This is because most expenses are incurred by the elderly who are already covered, preventative medicine eliminates numerous emergency visits, and Medicare regulates the amount health corporations can charge for various services. (Those prices are much less than “for profit” health care.) As it stands now, 50 million Americans have no health care and a serious illness means bankruptcy for 2 million citizens each year.

War Machine
The United States has essentially been at war, with someone, since World War II. In addition to recent or current overt war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and Uganda, we have covert military operations in approximately 20 other countries. New legislation is pending wherein the President will be able to bypass Congress altogether and single-handedly authorize military action against any country merely suspected of working with the terrorists. We are currently at war in more countries than Hitler was, and justifying it with similar self-righteous reasoning.

WikiLeaks
Independent news site, famous for whistle blowing on criminal activity, they have now released more classified intelligence documents than the rest of the world press combined. The site’s founder, Julian Assange, is currently under massive legal attack on two continents and banks have illegally closed most of his company’s fundraising accounts. This came about after Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army private with a crisis of conscience, leaked classified documents, some about military crimes relating to Iraqi civilian causalities, interrogations and assassinations. His famous video of blood lusting soldiers imagining crimes in order to execute civilians went viral. (He has been in jail nearly two years without a trial, seven months of which he was kept virtually naked and in sensory deprivation.) 

Wikipedia
The online encyclopedia has been largely captured by intelligence agencies and think tanks, some of whom control the content of thousands of articles. They have editorial oversight on these entries and can censor, even prevent any changes to them. In addition, content regarding major companies, government agencies and high-ranking officials are now controlled by those entities themselves. Citizens are cautioned not to rely on this site as an expert authority.

World Trade Center 7
This third skyscraper was imploded just a few hours after World Trade Center buildings 1 and 2 collapsed. The government has rigorously suppressed all WTC evidence and investigations, despite irrefutable video evidence and testimonies of a crime.

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