Search Results for: koch

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 19, 2021 ~ Last Tuesday, Wall Street was stewing over the Reuters report that President-Elect Joe Biden was likely to name Gary Gensler, the former Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), as the new Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The CFTC oversees the futures market. The SEC oversees the trading of stocks; the stock exchanges; the broker-dealers and investment banks that underwrite and trade stocks; and how all of these firms interact with investors. The SEC also oversees Wall Street’s dubious Dark Pools – which Wall Street On Parade has challenged as engaging in potentially illegal behavior. By Friday, January 15, Wall Street’s banks ended in a sea of red with Citigroup losing a whopping 6.93 percent on the day. All of the mega banks posted losses far exceeding the meager 0.57 percent decline in the Dow Jones … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 14, 2021 ~ If there was ever a DEFCON 1 warning to Americans that campaign finance reform must be a top priority of the incoming President Biden administration, it is the cautionary tale of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) and their recruitment efforts of the mob that descended on the Capitol of the United States on January 6. Five people are now dead from that siege, including a Capitol Police officer, and dozens injured. The U.S. Attorneys office for Washington, D.C. has also confirmed that two live pipe bombs with timers were found in front of the Republican National Committee and Democrat National Committee, both located near the Capitol. When one thinks of a group with the word “Association” in their name, it invokes the idea that this is a fraternal organization or a trade association. What doesn’t come to mind is … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 11, 2021 ~ It is perhaps the height of irony that the groups behind the event that led to the worst battle in the U.S. Capitol building since the British attempted to burn the place down in 1814 (during the War of 1812) call themselves Peaceably Gather, Moms for America, and the Rule of Law Defense Fund. Those names stand right alongside a group that acknowledges what it expects to go down: WildProtest.com. Many of the web pages for the nine groups listed as Coalition Partners for the January 5th and 6th event have quietly disappeared from the Internet. Fortunately, the Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine has allowed us to reconstruct what these groups were doing and saying in the leadup to an event that has, thus far, resulted in dozens of serious injuries and the deaths of five people, including a Capitol Police … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: December 16, 2020 ~ Among the growing list of priorities for the incoming Biden administration is a comprehensive investigation of the efforts to sabotage the U.S. Postal Service. In August, Aaron Gordon, reporting for Vice’s Motherboard, published a leaked internal document from the U.S. Postal Service showing that management was planning to eliminate hundreds of high-speed sorting machines in the midst of a pandemic. Sources inside the Postal Service that spoke with Gordon told him that they had “personally witnessed the machines, which cost millions of dollars, being destroyed or thrown in the dumpster.” Documents reviewed by Gordon also “laid out detailed plans to reroute mail to sorting facilities further away in order to centralize mail processing even if it moves the mail across further distances.” Gordon reported that a union official wrote on the document: “This will slow mail processing.” When this news swept across mainstream … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 9, 2020 ~ After successfully warding off barbarians outside the gates of the local election offices during the count of mail-in ballots, President-elect Joe Biden now has a new army of barbarians to deal with. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, using data collected by the Federal Election Commission, the industry category called “Finance, Insurance & Real Estate” donated a stunning $201,675,240 to Biden’s campaign and PACs supporting him. Add to that the category of “Lawyers and Lobbyists,” which donated $52,378,087, and you’re looking at a cool quarter of a billion dollars. The bulk of the $52 million that came from “Lawyers and Lobbyists” was donated by the lawyers and partners of the big law firms that represent the biggest Wall Street banks and securities firms. Big donors to Biden and the Democratic Party in the 2019/2020 cycle hail from such law … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 26, 2020 ~ On Friday, the print edition of the New York Times carried this headline over a column by Paul Krugman: “How Many Americans Will Ayn Rand Kill?” (The digital headline reads: “When Libertarianism Goes Bad.”) Krugman makes the following points: libertarian rhetoric is all about “freedom” and “personal responsibility.” Politicians in states filled with the Ayn Rand crowd refuse to issue mandates to wear masks, believing this comes under the Ayn Rand screed that individual choice must always triumph. Krugman correctly defines this failed logic as follows: “Many things should be matters of individual choice. The government has no business dictating your cultural tastes, your faith or what you decide to do with other consenting adults. “But refusing to wear a face covering during a pandemic, or insisting on mingling indoors with large groups, isn’t like following the church of your … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 14, 2020 ~ You could hear a lot of throat clearing from the live mic at the table where Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett sat yesterday as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) brilliantly exposed the tentacles of the corporate and fossil fuels money that was attempting to ram her onto the U.S. Supreme Court. (See the full video of the presentation by Whitehouse below.) As a former U.S. Attorney for the Justice Department and former Attorney General of Rhode Island, Whitehouse knows corruption when he sees it. The Whitehouse tutorial was a summation of a 29-page treatise by Whitehouse that appeared earlier this year in the Harvard Law School Journal on Legislation. That article provides an in-depth look at how dark money has plied its corporate agenda to steal representative government from the American people. If you are searching for answers as to how … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 2, 2020 ~ Yesterday, the Reuters news agency reported that a fake Russia-backed news site tied to the Internet Research Agency, the Russian group that meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, has been caught in the radar of the FBI. The website is called the Newsroom for American and European Based Citizens or NAEBC. According to Reuters, the operation was created in June. It reposts content from right-wing websites as well as paying U.S. freelance writers to provide original content about politically-divisive issues. Reuters reports that “A network of accounts posing as editors and journalists then promoted the articles on social media sites favored by right-wing users.” Reuters asked the social media analytics firm, Graphika, to analyze the NAEBC website. Its spokesperson said the strategy was to “energize Trump supporters, depress support for Biden, and target both sides with divisive and polarizing … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 12, 2020 ~  So far this year, the mega Wall Street bank, Citigroup, has lost 37 percent of its market value – outpacing peer banks like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. (See chart below.) Then there was the fat finger in August in the back office of Citigroup that wired $900 million by mistake to pay off the entire principal balance of a Revlon bond instead of making just the payment of interest on the bond. Citigroup is now embroiled in lawsuits with the Revlon lenders, attempting to get them to return the money. According to Institutional Investor, “a total of $526.4 million has yet to be returned” as of August 27. The lenders are refusing to return the funds to Citigroup on the basis that Revlon owed them the money anyway because Revlon had improperly changed the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 21, 2020 ~ One of the key right-wing architects of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Stephen K. (Steve) Bannon, was arrested early yesterday morning while cruising in the Long Island Sound on a 150-foot yacht owned by the fugitive Chinese billionaire, Guo Wengui, according to law enforcement officials. Bannon had served as CEO of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and as senior counselor and chief strategist to the president for the first seven months of his term. Bannon, along with three others, were charged with defrauding donors in a $25 million fundraising scheme called “We Build the Wall.” The plan was originally described as money to support President Trump’s efforts to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico but was later changed to a privately-funded project to build a wall. Some of the money did actually build a segment of wall. … Continue reading →