Carols—and Coals—for Verizon
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This is a cross-post from the Metropolitan Washington (D.C.) Central Labor Council Council.
Holiday carolers serenaded Verizon board member Rodney Slater yesterday with new words to an old favorite:
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, Verizon gave to me: Profits over people, less respect for workers, more corporate greed, less health insurance, dividends for stockholders, cutting our pensions, billions in profits, OUT-SOURCING JOBS, unfairly fired workers, dishonest bargaining, a cut in starting pay and a few million for the CEO!
Activists from the Communications Workers of America (CWA), other unions, Jobs with Justice and the Occupy movement sang carols about corporate greed outside Slater’s downtown Washington, D.C., office. Slater, the U.S. secretary of transportation under President Bill Clinton, made $219,000 last year as a Verizon board director and helped stuff the stockings of the company’s top five executives with a cool $258 million over the past four years, earning Slater and his Verizon board colleagues a lump of coal from the protesters.
In August, Verizon workers went on strike, as bargaining broke down over give-backs in health care and pensions demanded by the company. Two weeks later, employees were back at work on the promise of good-faith bargaining—yet they still have no contract. Since then, a new report found Verizon has paid no federal taxes since 2007 and in fact, paid a -2.9 percent tax rate from 2008-2010.
Forget the BMW. We Want a Tiny Fraction of a Cent
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Wall Street and Big Banks around the world are fighting efforts to impose a Robin Hood tax on their financial speculations. CEOs are portraying the tax—which would be around 0.5 percent on financial transactions—as if they would be robbed blind. This new video, starring no less than actor Ben Kingsley, puts the issue in perspective—and rips the mask off the boogeyman Big Banks have created.
(Congress last month introduced the Wall Street Trading and Speculators Tax that would assess a financial speculation tax of .03 percent. The European Commission is proposing .10 percent on trading in stocks and bonds.)
Consumers Say Bye-Bye to Big Banks
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When Big Banks nickel and dime you with fees on just about everything from checking accounts to ATMs to debit cards, they turn those nickels and dimes into billions of profits.
On Saturday, consumers struck back with “Bank Transfer Day,” when they switched from behemoth banks like Bank of America (BofA), Chase and Citi to non-profit credit unions. But Saturday was just one day in what has been a steady stream of movement over the past month away from corporate banks.
It’s too early to tell how many made the switch on Saturday, but since Sept. 29, when BofA announced it would charge consumers a monthly fee for debit card purchases—that it dropped a few days ago, following public outrage—more than 650,000 people opened new accounts with credit unions, according to the Credit Union National Association. The group says its members attributed most of the upsurge to consumers fed up with bank fees and to the publicity Bank Transfer Day received.
Bank Transfer Day was the idea of 27-year-old Los Angeles art gallery owner Kristen Christian who, a month ago, started a Facebook page (now with nearly 60,000 likes) to promote the protest against Big Bank greed. She wrote:
Contact Your Senator for the 99%
Working familes in Washington, D.C., and Cannes, France (where leaders of the G-20 are meeting), rallied yesterday for passage of a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street. You can join the action by telling Wall Street it’s time to pay its fair share.
The Robin Hood (financial speculation) tax is a tiny pinch that would be felt primarily by high-volume, high-speed traders who deal in stocks, bonds, foreign currency bets, derivatives and other Wall Street financial products. Yesterday, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) introduced just such legislation, the “Wall Street Trading and Speculators Tax Act.”
Click here to call your senators in support of a financial speculation tax. If you complete at least one call, we’ll send you a free “I am the 99%” bumper sticker.
Trumka: Proposed Super Committee Cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid Unacceptable
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka today reaffirmed that the AFL-CIO opposes any cuts to Social Security or Medicare benefits or to the federal contribution to Medicaid and he criticized Senate Democrats on the “Super Committee” for proposing—according to news reports—hundreds of billions of cuts.
He says that while Republicans proposed even bigger and more harmful cuts to these essential middle class benefits,
these Super Committee Democrats have put all their concessions on the table up front in the vain hope that the Republicans might reciprocate. But it doesn’t work that way. In this political climate, concessions beget more concessions—not a workable compromise.
To join in the fight to opposes cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid text DEBT to 235246.
Wall St. Run Wild—Here’s How It Happened
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Here’s a great video that shows in part how the nation got to the point where inequality is so rampant, CEO greed so unrepentent and Wall Street so not held accountable that people across the nation have taken to the streets—and are staying there.
As Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren says here:
We go with this idea of “Let’s get rid of regulation” and what happens? Late 1980s, savings and loan crisis—should have been a warning. Late 1990s, remember long-term capital management, hedge funds? Should have been a warning. Early 2000s, Enron—should have been a warning. But we let it go and where did we end up? In the biggest crisis since the Great Depression.
H/T to MoveOn.org for featuring this clip from Lance Baxter’s YouTube channel.
Danger: Income Inequality Threatens National Stability
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Income inequality has become so severe in this nation that people in Really Important Positions (except for most Republicans in Congress) are starting to take note—and issue warnings.
Saying “income inequality is just getting worse and worse and worse,” James Chanos, president and founder of the New York-based investment firm Kynikos Associates, told Bloomberg this week that the widening gap between rich and poor is reshaping the U.S. economy, leaving it more vulnerable to recurring financial crises and less likely to generate enduring expansions. As Bloomberg paraphrased his comments:
Left unchecked, the decades-long trend toward increasing inequality may condemn Wall Street to a generation of unimpressive returns and even shake social stability….
Separately, Nouriel Roubini, chairman of Roubini Global Economics and economics professor at New York University, published an article yesterday describing “The Instability of Inequality.” In it, Roubini argues that “globalization, unfettered financial capitalism, and Read the rest of this entry »
Tell Wall St.: Time to Pay Back the 99 Percent
This from BanksterUSA.org .
When reckless trading on Wall Street crashed the global economy, American taxpayers bailed out the Big Banks to the tune of $4.7 trillion. That is trillion with a “T”.
Today, Wall Street is booming. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo executives are earning just as much as they did before the financial crisis. In 2010, the CEOs of these three banks made $52 million dollars combined.
Yet on Main Street family incomes are tanking, job creation has stalled, and 42 million people are living in poverty, more than at any other time in the last 50 years.
We have done our part, now it’s time for Wall Street to do more – through a tiny sales tax on each Wall Street trade called a financial speculation tax. (Click here to sign a petition telling Wall Street it’s time to start Paying US Back!) Read the rest of this entry »
Union Members Join Biggest (Yet) Occupy Wall Street Action
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In the biggest demonstration since the Occupy Wall Street protest began Sept. 17, New York City union members, college students and other activists joined the protesters yesterday evening for a march and rally that was several thousand strong, according to news reports.
They marched from the Occupy Wall Street’s encampment at Zuccotti Park to City Hall. Addressing the crowd from the steps of City Hall, Communications Workers of America (CWA) Vice President Christopher Shelton said:
“Every one of us is here because of corporate greed. It’s time not to occupy Wall Street, but to take back Wall Street.” CWA is among dozens of unions backing the weeks-long protest. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said by video message that the union movement opens its “heart and arms” to those at the Wall Street protests.
George White, a retired union member from Brooklyn, told The New York Times:
Here’s How to Make Wall Street Pay for Wrecking the Economy
Three years into the nation’s brutal recession, America’s workers continue to suffer from massive joblessness, skyrocketing foreclosures and weak buying power. But Wall Street—with corporations sitting on $2 trillion in cash—hasn’t paid for its role in causing the near-collapse of the U.S. economy.
The European Union (EU) this week moved to change that, with the EU formally adopting plans for a financial speculation tax that would raise 57 billion euros a year. The tax could generate billions in revenue to help our ailing economy, stimulate job growth and discourage the reckless, high-volume/short-term profit, computer-driven Wall Street gambling that led to our current economic crisis.
While the EU proposal still needs unanimous approval from EU states, there has been no legislative movement to do the same in this country. As economist Dean Baker notes, “the intensity with which the country’s leading deficit hawks continue to ignore financial speculation taxes (FST) is getting ever more entertaining.”
