Make this killer video go viral.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=2595815700813

MCM

City Parks Department’s “Regulations” Take Away From the Very Spirit of What People Come to Washington Square Park For – No Performances Allowed Near Fountain, Benches
October 28, 2011

At the Occupy Washington Square Park meeting last week, I caught the end of a comment from a woman stating that performers were getting ticketed more frequently at the park. I did not know the so-called “reason” behind this but it appears in this week’s Villager —“Musicians are told to keep their distance – from fountain, seats!” :

[Doris] Diether, a member of Community Board 2 and a contributor to this newspaper, said that three guitar players who perform in Washington Square told her that PEP officers told them that performers could not play while sitting on a park bench. The rule is that musicians must stand 5 feet from a bench and 50 feet from a monument or fountain.

Read more.

EXCLUSIVE: ES&S Attempts to Block PA County’s Independent Audit of Failed Touch-Screens

After no objections previously, the nation’s largest e-voting company attempts to kibosh computer scientists’ forensic examination in Venango County, PA…

Despite failing to object for months prior, the nation’s largest electronic voting system vendor, ES&S, is now attempting to stop a landmark independent examination of their e-voting systems in a Pennsylvania county dead in its tracks.

An October letter from the company, obtained by The BRAD BLOG, charges that Venango County, PA is in violation of their contract agreements with the Omaha-based e-voting Goliath, even as two volunteer Carnegie Mellon computer scientists are in the midst of a forensic audit of the county’s May 17 primary election. The county’s investigation comes on the heels of apparent failures of the ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting system during their recent primary and several other recent elections in Venango.

The 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic system has failed in a number of elections nationwide, but is still widely used across the country and slated for use once again in more than a dozen states in next year’s Presidential election.

The Venango study, which we first reported on in early October as it began, came about after worries arose during a 2008 election when the ES&S system reported that some county candidates “had zero votes”, as the county’s Republican Board of Elections chair, Craig Adams recently told us while we were guest hosting the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show…

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8874

Too bad that United Wisconsin doesn’t say a word about the voting system there…

Dear Friends, Here he goes again…Scott Walker’s buddies in the state Senate just announced a bill that would require all recall petition gatherers, who already have to certify each petition they collect, to have their own certifications notarized. They are attempting to create a huge burden on the hundreds of thousands of you who have already pledged to recall Walker. If this bill passes, you might need to find a public notary to submit the recall signatures of your friends, family and colleagues.  This bill and any other roadblocks they try to throw our way won’t stop us—we will recall Walker! Will you please give $25, $40 or whatever you can today to United Wisconsin to recall Walker—despite any tricks he tries to pull! Scott Walker’s cronies are doing everything they can to stop you from recalling him. We have seen it before and each time we fight back with even more energy, support and strength. Please make a donation of $25 or $40 to show Walker, we will overcome any obstacle he lays out and we will recall him. We are already working on plans to account for this new challenge and will be back in touch soon with more information and other ways you can help.  We know that no matter what they throw at us, recalling Walker is not about political tricks. It is about real people who have suffered the consequences of Walker’s actions this past year. Contribute to United Wisconsin today, and let’s show them you won’t be backed into a corner. Thank you for your continued support. Sincerely, United Wisconsin Board of Directors P.S. – Please click here to make a contribution today to give United Wisconsin the resources we need to fight Walker!

Paid for by United Wisconsin PAC. Michael Brown, Board Member. Not authorized by any candidate, candidate’s agent or committee.

I.

New Bill Being Considered In Congress Could Shut Down Social Media Sites Crucial To ‘Occupy’ Protests
October 27, 2011
By Stephen D. Foster Jr.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/10/27/new-bill-being-considered-in-congress-could-shut-down-social-media-sites-crucial-to-occupy-protests/

II.

New Bipartisan Bill Will Allow U.S. Gov’t To Shut Off Any Website, Anywhere, For Any Reason
By KEN LAYNE
4:52 PM OCTOBER 27, 2011

http://wonkette.com/455343/new-bipartisan-bill-will-allow-u-s-govt-to-shut-off-any-website-anywhere-for-any-reason

III.

House Introduces Controversial Anti-Piracy Act
By Brent Lang at TheWrap
Wed Oct 26, 2011 11:43am EDT

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/26/idUS105209665820111026

And, of course, the student debtors.

MCM

It’s Time for Debt Forgiveness, American-Style
William Greider | October 26, 2011

The rebellious citizens occupying Wall Street shock some people and inspire others with their denunciations of bankers, but everyone seems to know what they are talking about: it is the barbaric and suffocating behavior of the nation’s largest banks (yes, the same ones the government rescued with public money). Right now, these trillion-dollar institutions are methodically harvesting the last possible pound of flesh from millions of homeowners before kicking these failing debtors out of their homes (the story known as the “foreclosure crisis”). This is a tragedy, of course, for the people who are dispossessed. For the country, it is a generational calamity.

“We are in the reverse New Deal,” Christopher Whalen, a savvy banking expert at Institutional Risk Analytics, told me. He meant that events are dismantling the ingenious engine that helped generate America’s broad middle class. Homeownership was the main driver in accomplishing that great social change. For three generations, people of modest means could buy a house knowing it would secure their place in the middle class and allow them to accumulate significant savings. If the family held the standard thirty-year, fixed-rate mortgage, they were painlessly saving for the future every time they made a payment, acquiring greater equity in the home as they did so. With moderate inflation, the house would steadily increase in value even as their monthly mortgage payments stayed the same. So the cost of housing actually declined for the family, as a percentage of its income. Meanwhile, the accumulating equity became a nest egg for retirement or something to pass on to the kids.

That virtuous process, originated by New Deal reforms, is in peril and has already shut down for tens of millions, especially working-class families whose incomes are no longer rising. As described by the brokerage investment firm Amherst Securities, the housing picture is ugly. Among the 55 million families with mortgages, one in five is underwater—they owe more on their mortgage than their house is worth—or already delinquent. That’s 10.4 million families who are sliding toward failure and foreclosure. Virtually all of them will become renters, since no bank is likely to give them a new mortgage.

Read more.

Tell MSNBC: Fire Pat Buchanan

For years, Pat Buchanan has passed off white supremacist ideology as legitimate mainstream political commentary. And MSNBC continues to pay him and give him a platform on national TV to do it.

Buchanan just went on a white supremacist radio show to promote his new book — which argues that increasing racial diversity is a threat to this country and will mean the “End of White America.”

Please join us in demanding that MSNBC fire Pat Buchanan now.
—–

Below is the message we’ll send to MSNBC President Phil Griffin and NBC News President Steve Capus on your behalf. You can add a personal message using the box on the right.

I’m writing to demand that you fire Pat Buchanan immediately. Buchanan has a long and consistent history of peddling white supremacist ideology as legitimate political commentary, on your network and elsewhere. He recently went on a white supremacist radio show to promote his new book — which argues that increasing racial diversity is a threat to this country and will mean the “End of White America.”

Read more.

New report shows state budget cuts devastating public schools
Posted: 10/13/2011 10:40:43 AM

New austerity budgets, passed by state legislatures, are having a huge negative effect on direct services to children, youth, and families, according to a new report by Campaign for America’s Future.

The report, “Starving America’s Public Schools: How Budget Cuts and Policy Mandates are Hurting our Nation’s Students,” compiles data from local news reports across the country. The report focuses on five key states that have flaunted budget cuts to K-12 public education: Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

The five states have reduced or eliminated crucial services, such as pre-kindergarten, full-day kindergarten, technical education and foreign language courses, art, music and physical education. Several of the states also have increased class sizes. In each state, the report documents dwindling public school funds being transferred to private entities, such as private schools and voucher programs.

From the NEA:

“We know what our students need to learn and succeed – including early childhood education, smaller class sizes and a well-rounded curriculum,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. “Americans must demand that our elected leaders use our tax dollars to help build a solid future for all our children and our nation by providing adequate funding for our public schools and helping all our students get the education they deserve.”

Read more.

The bankers’ blockade of WikiLeaks must end
Whether you support WikiLeaks or not, the blockade by Visa, Mastercard, Paypal and others is a sinister attack on free speech
James Ball
guardian.co.uk, Monday 24 October 2011 11.30 EDT

In December 2010 three of the world’s biggest payment providers, Visa, Mastercard and Paypal, cut off funding to WikiLeaks. Ten months later, Julian Assange has announced the whistleblowing site will suspend operations until the blockade is lifted – and warned WikiLeaks does not have the money to continue into 2012 at current levels of funding.

On the surface, it appears as if the bankers’ blockade – encouraged by several US senators, including Joe Lieberman – may have come close to accomplishing its goal. WikiLeaks is, for now, silenced – though not before publishing the full cache of 251,000 diplomatic cables, and the files of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.

The real picture is murkier. As Reuters journalist Mark Hosenball noted at the WikiLeaks press conference, it’s not clear exactly which operations WikiLeaks has to suspend: WikiLeaks has not released a single file since the publication of the Guantánamo Bay material – obtained independently by the Guardian and New York Times – in April. The site’s primary submissions system has been offline since Daniel Domscheit-Berg and others walked away from WikiLeaks in the summer of 2010. Assange says a replacement will be online by the end of November.

Read more.

I.

The Walker Regime Pushes for Controversial Mining Law
By Rebecca Kemble, October 26, 2011
http://www.progressive.org/wisconsin_republicans_push_mining.html

II.

Bad River tribe opposes mine (AUDIO)
September 21, 2011 By Bob Hague
http://www.wrn.com/2011/09/bad-river-opposes-mine-audio/

III.

Bad River Tribe’s 10 principles for mining legislation
Posted on September 21, 2011 by samweis
http://blog.cleanwisconsin.org/index.php/2011/09/21/bad-river-tribes-10-principles-for-mining-legislation/