By Pam Martens: May 21, 2013  Yesterday, DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy released a stunning report showing how counter terrorism units and the Department of Homeland Security gathered intelligence on the Occupy Wall Street movement for the benefit of the very corporations targeted by the protesters.  Titled, Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, In Partnership with Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street, the year-long investigation is based on the collection of thousands of pages of records obtained from counter terrorism and law enforcement agencies. One of the revelations of the report is that Koch Industries, as well as billionaire Charles Koch and his son, Chase Koch, hired off-duty Wichita, Kansas police officers that served as their own private security force at the company and their personal residences in mid February 2012.  According to the report: “These dates coincide with Occupy Wichita’s  ‘Occupy … Continue reading →

 By Pam Martens: May 20, 2013 The Justice Department is investigating the investigators of the Tea Party at the IRS while leaving a 29-year criminal conspiracy against the American people by the Tea Party cabal untouched. That’s not surprising, given that the U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, and the former head of his criminal division, Lanny Breuer, came from the law firm Covington and Burling which played a seminal role in the conspiracy. On February 8 of this year, the peer-reviewed health professionals’ journal, Tobacco Control, published an exhaustive study of the roots of the Tea Party dating back to the 1980s.  Researched and written by Amanda Fallin, Rachel Grana and Stanton A. Glantz, the study was funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and titled ‘To Quarterback Behind the Scenes, Third Party Efforts’: The Tobacco Industry and the Tea Party. The authors explain how Citizens for a Sound … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 17, 2013 To rational folks, the real scandal at the IRS is that corporate front groups – who want to bust unions, pollute the water and air with impunity, and kill Social Security in order to eliminate the corporate match of the Social Security tax – are allowed to register with the IRS as social welfare organizations, receive tax-exempt status, and then funnel tens of millions of dollars into political attack ads in order to elect candidates sympathetic to their corporate deregulatory agenda. These so-called social welfare organizations are allowed to do all this while drawing a black curtain around the names of their corporate donors. On April 9, 2013, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a petition with the IRS that mapped out the real scandal taking place at the IRS – the scandal that right wing media don’t … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 16, 2013  The President Obama of 2013 who is feigning outrage over the IRS adding extra scrutiny to nonprofit applications being filed with the words Tea Party in their title is not the same man who singled out Americans for Prosperity in a speech in 2010. Americans for Prosperity was founded and funded by billionaires Charles and David Koch, who have funneled money into politics through front groups for over four decades to advance their corporate deregulatory agenda that powers their profits and personal wealth. The Kochs are majority owners of Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the world. (According to Forbes, the brothers’ wealth has almost doubled in just three years to $34 billion each – while 46 million Americans without lobbyists and clever tax attorneys live below the poverty level, including one in five children.)  Americans for Prosperity is a front for creating Tea … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 15, 2013  We now know that the U.S. Department of Justice spied for two months on over 100 Associated Press reporters, secretly obtaining their work, home and cell phone records showing the phone numbers of their sources. The records covered phone calls made in April and May 2012 in AP bureaus in New York City, Washington, D.C., Hartford, Connecticut and the House of Representatives. No advance notification was given to the Associated Press.  Yesterday, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press issued a stern critique of the Justice Department action, writing:  “The scope of this action calls into question the very integrity of Department of Justice policies toward the press and its ability to balance, on its own, its police powers against the First Amendment rights of the news media and the public’s interest in reporting on all manner of government conduct.”  Gary Pruitt, President … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 14, 2013  For years now, journalists have been doing the heavy lifting in investigations of Charles and David Koch using their billionaire status to fund faux grassroots groups to push their far right agenda on the country —  an agenda that effectively boils down to deregulation of corporations to the detriment of the working class, the environment and wealth equality in America. It’s about time the IRS investigated.  According to the 2013 Forbes List, Charles and David Koch are each worth $34 billion. Their wealth derives from Koch Industries, a private global conglomerate with a presence in over 60 countries. The company’s business interests include oil, refining, pipelines, paper products, chemicals, fertilizer and trading. Because the company is not publicly traded, despite the Koch brothers’ stated devotion to free markets, we have no idea what goes on in the sprawling Koch enterprises because they are not … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 13, 2013  Did you just find out your 401(k) is leaking 8 percent in a hodgepodge of Wall Street management fees, transactions costs, sales commissions, and marketing schemes. Maybe you did the math and realized your account value, without your new additions, is still where it was in 2007. Or did you just check BrightScope and find out that your 401(k) is so abysmal that you’ll need 18 additional years of work to make up for the $215,500 in lost retirement savings. Or maybe you tuned in to the April 23 Frontline documentary on PBS to learn that it is quite possible for Wall Street to gobble up two-thirds of your retirement savings in your 401(k) while keeping you in the dark for the next 50 years. If so, there’s no reason to seethe in silence. The U.S. Department of Labor wants to hear from you … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 10, 2013  President Obama adds to the rising stench of his nominations to the U.S. Treasury and Securities and Exchange Commission with the nomination of the billionaire Hilton Hotel heiress, Penny Pritzker, to be the next U.S. Commerce Secretary.  With the confirmed nominations of Mary Jo White as Chair of the SEC, Jack Lew as Treasury Secretary and now the nomination of Pritzker to lead Commerce, the President is sending the chilling message to the Nation’s young people that it’s legal if you can get away with it; and if you get away with enough and get rich enough, the President of the United States admires that and you can join the power elite. Building a career through honesty and hard work is for suckers.  Jack Lew, the President’s pick for Treasury, was paid millions as Chief Operating Officer for the very division of Citigroup that collapsed … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 9, 2013 That shady offshore tax haven known as Ugland House in the Cayman Islands strikes again. After consuming a chunk of Jack Lew’s Senate confirmation hearing, with Senators grilling Lew on why he owned an investment housed in this offshore tax dodge while working for the Obama administration, the Cayman Islands’ address has surfaced once again in the foreclosure settlement scandal. On April 30 of this year, just 18 days after the first wave of checks from the Federal government’s settlement of the so-called Independent Foreclosure Review began arriving in the mail – and bouncing – Citigroup Venture Capital International (CVCI), Lew’s former Ugland House investment, bought a large stake in the company that was mailing the checks, SourceHOV, parent of Rust Consulting. As reported by Naked Capitalism, the ownership stake was made despite Citigroup being one of the banks in the foreclosure settlement. After correcting the humiliating problem … Continue reading →

 By Pam Martens: May 7, 2013 Yesterday, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said his office would bring suit against Bank of America and Wells Fargo for “flagrant” violations of last year’s National Mortgage Settlement – a deal signed onto by 49 state attorneys general which promised to reform the shady mortgage servicing practices of five of the largest mortgage lenders in the U.S. The question that arises is why the Monitor of the National Mortgage Settlement had not already brought a lawsuit in Federal Court to stop the violations. During his press conference yesterday announcing the lawsuit, Schneiderman said his office has logged 210 complaints against Wells Fargo for violations of the settlement and 129 involving Bank of America. Those figures, however, are dwarfed by the findings of Joseph A. Smith, Jr., the man put in charge of monitoring the settlement and bringing enforcement actions to the Federal … Continue reading →