Be careful not to be co-opted or manipulated by malicious media to degrade & defame OWS protesters as the next Snooki on Jersey Shore.
Also, beware of ID theft scammers. The Craigslist posting asks for your NAME, BIRTHDATE.
H/T: The Village Voice – Is “Real World: Occupy Wall Street” Legit?
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/10/is_real_world_o.php
Filed under film movie, ID Theft, MTV, Occupy Wall Street, OccupyWallStreet, OWS
This is my 2nd response to Mayor Bloomberg’s lies that he made in his weekly radio address on Oct 7, 2011. See the bottom of this writing for the link to my 1st response to 3 lies Bloomberg made on his weekly radio address on Sept 30, 2011.
For the record, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg ranks No. 12 in the 2011 Forbes magazine 400 Richest American list. Bloomberg’s net worth is $19.5 Billion. Bloomberg belongs to the Richest 1% American who is out-of-touch and who is too busy defending his Wall St. cronies to care about the 99% little people like us.
See this link for the complete list of the 400 Richest American as published on Sept 21, 2011. http://onforb.es/p2DXz1
Bloomberg’s Lie #1: The OWS (Occupy Wall Street) protesters are trying to destroy jobs on Wall Street.
FACT: Check the real facts from Reuters news dated June 21, 2011 (link provided below). The real facts contradict with Bloomberg’s lies. In early Summer 2011, the Wall St. executives have been planning mass layoffs of the rank-and-file employees, long before the OWS movement was launched on Sept 17, 2011. So don’t twist the facts, greedy Wall St. executives mapped out the layoff plans at least several months before the OWS protest started in Sept 2011.
The major reason Wall St. executives decided to layoff the rank-and-file employees is because they want to maintain the same level of pay, bonus, stock options and other goodies all to themselves. So, the REAL JOB DESTROYERS are the greedy Wall St. executives who try everything to make sure their monetary compensation are not reduced under any circumstances – including the layoff of the rank-and-file workers, the $5 surcharge on debit cards and the multiple fees & surchages on checking accounts, and any other methods to suck money out of the 99% American. Yet, the same Wall St. executives don’t get punished for their financial crimes or for their bad job performances. They always blame other people for their own bad job performances or their own criminal wrong-doing.
(Source: Reuters News – June 21, 2011): Financial sector layoffs rise, more cuts ahead. Read this Reuters news link: http://reut.rs/kUdLLj
Highlights from the Reuters article on June 2011: Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an employment consulting firm, said on June 2011 the financial sector has outlined 21 percent more job cuts so far this year than it did in 2010. Banks, insurance firms and brokers have outlined plans to eliminate 11,413 positions through May 2011, according to publicly available information cited by Challenger, compared with 9,431 during the same period a year ago.
Remember that the Wall St. executives looted the Bailouts funded by taxpayers’ money? Every dollar that Wall St. bankers “earned” is at the expense of ordinary American losing their jobs, their health insurance and their homes via foreclosures. The ordinary American funded the Bank Bailouts. Instead of creating middle-class jobs, the Wall St. executives (aka: the FAT CATS) looted the Bailout money to provide and maintain their own luxury lifestyles. But it’s not enough for these greedy Wall St. executives, they wanted more, so they laid off workers since 2008 and they pre-emptively layoff more rank-and-file workers in 2011 for the same greedy reasons.
Wall St. executives may be supplying a sizable payroll revenue. But don’t forget that the main reason Wall St. bankers provided a stable & sizable payroll tax revenue is because Wall St. looted the Bailout money funded by taxpayers. The stable and sizable payroll tax revenue came from the Taxpayer-funded Bailout. Don’t ever forget this!
Bloomberg’s Lie #2: The OWS protesters are costing $2 million in NYPD overtime pay so far.
FACT: You NEVER hear Bloomberg ever mentioning that the CityTime contractors under his watch for the past decade have been looting taxpayers at least $700 million and counting. The NYPD overtime pay is like spare change or a small droplet in the bucket when comparing to the $700 million massive fraud happening at CityTime right under Bloomberg’s nose. Despite repeated warnings from numerous City officials, Bloomberg had repeatedly ignored the active warnings about the super-bloated, over-the-budget and fradulent activities happening at CityTime. This CityTime fraud smells so bad that an investigative reporter, Juan Gonzalez, at the NY Daily News uncovered the massive CityTime fraud in December 2010. It was only after the NY Daily News broke the CityTime scandal, that Bloomberg finally conceded that the CityTime crooks have been defrauding taxpayers’ money for nearly a decade.
For people not from NYC, the Bloomberg Administration hired a third party contractor called CityTime via a no-bid contract. The CityTime contractors were supposed to modernize the payroll systems in the City government. Instead the CityTime contractors wasted nearly 10 years without finishing the payroll system project, yet they have been busy looting taxpayers at least $700 million. The CityTime crooks made the payroll system so “convoluted” that despite the Federal prosecutors indicting the CityTime crooks, the CityTime contractors are still expected to finish up the “convoluted” payroll system.
If Bloomberg is so concerned about the $2 million NYPD overtime pay, why did Bloomberg repeatedly ignored warnings from various City officials that the CityTime contractors are fraudulent crooks who are burning taxpayers’ money ($700 Million) like there is no tomorrow? Despite the Great Recession of 2008, Bloomberg’s personal fortune actually increased in the past few years and the past decade. According to Forbes magazine, Bloomberg’s wealth was $11.5 Billion in 2008, $16 Billion in 2009, $18.1 Billion in 2010 and $19.5 Billion in 2011. Bloomberg moved from 142nd to 17th in the Forbes list of the world’s Billionaire in only 2 years (from 2007 to 2009). His ranking has moved up further to #12 in 2011. It makes me wonder if Bloomberg had received Kickback (a certain % of commission and profit-sharing) from the CityTime crooks by allowing CityTime unlimited looting on taxpayers’ money (at least $700 million fraud and counting). The actual fraud figures in the CityTime scandal may be higher than $700 million as investigators are still looking into the blatantly wasteful and fraudulent Black Hole that is called CityTime. And how many other “CityTime fraud of the world” are associated with Bloomberg?
(Source: NY Daily News – June 20, 2011) Prosecutors unveil new indictments in CityTime scandal; project was ‘corrupt to its core’: Bharara. Link to the NY Daily News article: http://nydn.us/lW7fSd
(Source: NY Daily News – January 21, 2011) CityTime’s 700M scandal gets worse: Accounting firm says only contractor has knowledge to run it. Link to the NY Daily News article: http://bit.ly/pN5tST
When Bloomberg decides to deploy excessive amount of police to monitor the peaceful protesters on Wall St., Bloomberg is once again mis-managing his resources to screw the City. There are multiple sex attackers and rapists on the loose in Brooklyn. How about deploying more police in Brooklyn to capture the multiple rapists/sex attackers still at large for nearly 1 year that are posing serious threats to women in Brooklyn? In case Bloomberg has “selective amnesia” problems. Rape and sexual assaults are felonies. But the “alleged” disorderly conducts by the OWS protesters are, at best, misdemeanor charges. By the way, the OWS protesters are looking into class-action lawsuits suing the NYPD for misconduct. The Communist Chinese are laughing at America’s broken democracy system, and about the hypocrisy of the NYPD and Mayor Bloomberg. The Chinese see the NYPD brutality against peaceful protesters and Mayor Bloomberg suppressing human rights as nothing more than what their own Communist comrades are doing to their Chinese citizens daily. Not to mention the larger national problems that led to American protesting in nearly a thousand cities across the country.
See this link for my 1st response to Bloomberg’s lies made on Friday Sept 30, 2011 about his Wall St. Cronies – (Lie #1) Wall St. people only make $50,000 per year – I have facts to prove his lie #1, (Lie #2) Don’t assault Wall St. Banks, otherwise they will be discouraged to lend money – I have facts to prove his lie #2, (Lie #3) That OWS blame the wrong people. Wall St. not to be blamed – I have facts to prove his lie #3. Follow this link to Bloomberg’s lies on Sept 30, 2011: http://wp.me/p1VchV-e
Filed under Bank, Occupy Wall Street, OccupyWallStreet, OWS
NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg makes his weekly radio address every Fridays at WOR radio station (except on certain occasions, Bloomberg avoided the press by cancelling his radio appearance – for example, about his hiding the true reasons his deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith’s sudden resignation – it was due to arrest & jail detention for domestic violence). I have noticed that Bloomberg habitually lies on the radio show, he thinks the average New Yorkers are stupid and ignorant.
The List of Reasons Wall Street Executives are the Culprits of the Great Recession of 2008. And Why Our Billionaire NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is SO WRONG.
For the record, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg ranks #12 in the Forbes 400 Richest American list, his net worth is $19.5 billion.
Bloomberg lies without blinking his eyes:
Lie #1: Billionaire NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg claims Wall St. workers only earn $50,000 per year. Check out news article below. You don’t need payroll experts to tell you that most of the multi-million dollar luxury apartments in Manhattan are bought by wealthy Wall St. bankers.
(Source: NY State Comptroller’s office) According to the NY State Comptroller’s 2011 press release, the average salary in the securities industry in 2010 grew by 16.1 percent to $361,330 which is 5.5 times higher than the average salary in the private sector of $66,120. The disparity between average salaries in the securities industry and the rest of the private sector narrowed in 2008 and 2009, but widened in 2010.
Link to the full NY State Comptroller’s 2011 press release HERE.
(Source: Reuters) According to NY State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, the average 2010 Wall St. cash BONUS (not the salary portion) was $128,530. What this “average bonus” means: the mailroom clerk at Wall St. firms may get $50 bonus, while the top level executives at the same Wall St. firms get MILLION Dollar bonus. The average counts the lowest, the middle and the highest – This is why Big Banks like Bank of America is charging $5 per Debit Card usage – they want to grab the extra money from little people to maintain their luxury lifestyles to make up for the drop in their 6-figure & 7-figure bonus money
Link to the full Reuters article dated Feb 23, 2011 HERE.
Highlights from the Reuters article dated Feb 23, 2011:
(Reuters) – Wall Street paid out $20.8 billion in cash bonuses in 2010, the fifth-highest amount on record, though the average payout fell 9 percent from a year earlier as financial reform drove banks to offer higher base salaries and defer more compensation.
2011 Average Pay of the S&P 500 CEO – NOTE: NONE OF THEM EARN $50,000 per year
Link to the news about the average pay of S&P 500 CEO
HERE.
Highlights from Average CEO Pay news article:
According to the Federal Reserve, U.S. corporations held a record $1.93 trillion in cash on their balance sheets in 2010. But they are not investing to expand their companies, grow the real economy or create good middle-class jobs. Corporate CEOs are literally hoarding their company’s cash—except when it comes to their own paychecks.
In 2010, Standard & Poor’s 500 Index company CEOs received, on average, $11.4 million in total compensation— a 23 percent increase in one year. Based on 299 companies’ most recent pay data for 2010, their combined total CEO pay of $3.4 billion could support 102,325 median workers’ jobs.
Lie #2: The Billionaire NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg claims the #OccupyWallStreet protesters should NOT be assaulting Big Banks, otherwise, they will be discouraged from lend money. HELLO! The Big Banks have NOT been lending money since the 2008 Stock Market Crash and the Great Recession.
Link to the CNN Money article dated April 21, 2011 about MegaBanks flush with money but refusing to loan to people HERE.
Highlights from MegaBanks refusing to lend money out to people:
If the megabanks are so big on lending, why do their loan books keep shrinking?
The biggest U.S. banks tell us they have spent the past quarter writing loans, renewing credit lines and generally being upstanding economic citizens. Bank of America (BAC) says it provided consumers and businesses with $144 billion in credit in the first quarter, Wells Fargo (WFC) ponied up $151 billion and JPMorgan Chase (JPM), swinging for the PR fences, claims to have lent out an improbable-looking $450 billion. Yet loan balances actually shrank from a year ago at all three banks in the first quarter, just as they did at their old pal Citi (C). This at a time when the too-big-to-fail four are being drenched with new deposits.
Lie #3: The Billionaire NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg claims Wall St. executives are not to be blamed for the Great Recession of 2008 and the resulting stock market crash.
HELLO! Here are a list of financial crimes committed by Wall St. executives that led America into the Great Recession of 2008 and the stock market crash.
1) Subprime mortgage lending by Financial Institutions (including Big Banks & Wall St. firms) solely to earn big commissions and bonus. Subprime Mortgage was one of the BIG reason for so many ordinary American to lose their homes via foreclosure & evictions. As layoffs increased from 2008 to the present time, more people become delinquent on mortgages due to loss of jobs. HELLO! Remember several hundreds of smaller banks failed & shut down by the FDIC since 2008 to the present time?
2) Wall St. executives came up with the idea to pool all the subprime mortgages and then sub-divided them into securities to be re-sold in secondary stock markets. They created acronyms called CMO, CDO that are pools of home mortgages traded in stock markets. When the market crashed in 2008 partly due to subprime mortgages, so did the derivatives of subprime mortgages (aka: the CMO, the CDO’s that are bought by Big Pension Funds via Hedge fund managers).
3) Wall St. executives also engage in reckless Naked Short-Selling (essentially, naked short-selling means – you are shorting securities without first making sure that there are willing borrowers to lend you the securities to short-sell. In other words, you are short-selling without a “safety cushion”, you are just betting that Lady Luck is on your side at all times). The Wall St. executives know they ALWAYS get bail-out by the Gov’t because they bankroll these politicians’ election campaigns.
4) Wall St. executives also sell CDS (Credit Default Swap) without any capital cushion. In Sept 2008, Lehman Brothers found itself unable to pay the claims on CDS. Quite a lot of Public Pension funds invested in hedge funds. And Hedge Funds were one of the major buyer of CDS protection. In 2008, many hedge funds found themselves stuck because their downside (real credit default) were not protected at all. The Public Pension Funds (such as teachers, police, Gov’t workers pension funds) lost a lot of money because their Pension funds invested in hedge funds that in turn bought the CDS without any capital cushion.
An analogy to what reckless Wall St. executives did: a car owner buys auto insurance from an insurance company. The car owner is under the assumption that his downside (car accident, damages) are protected in case of car accident. But in reality, the insurance company who took the insurance premium from him does not have any capital cushion to pay out any insurance claims. When the combination of Wall St. firms and hedge fund firms failing & crashing in 2008, the buyer of the CDS protection were stuck (similar to a car owner stuck because the auto insurance company actually does not have any money to cover the insurance claims).
Auto insurance companies are highly regulated to make sure they have enough capital cushion. But Wall St. firms are not highly regulated to make sure they have enough capital cushion in cash of credit default.
The only reason Wall St. executives can get away with murder is because they are major campaign donors to all the politicians in Washington DC (both Democrats & the GOP). Wall St. executives refuse to get regulated by Financial reforms.
Filed under Occupy Wall Street, OccupyWallStreet, OWS
UPDATE March 11, 2013: See the link to this news article: Civilian Power Rises on Police Review Board. See below for the news coverage.
In response to NYPD brutality against OWS (Occupy Wall Street) protesters as captured on video or personally witnessed by self, you can file complaints with the NYC Civilian Complaints Review Board (CCRB) against police misconduct. 4 ways to file your complaints against NYPD police misconduct:
March 10, 2013, 10:10 p.m. ET
Civilian Power Rises on Police Review Board
An agreement under which civilian attorneys will prosecute internal charges against New York City police officers accused of some types of misconduct takes effect Tuesday, marking a shift in the handling of the most common accusations of abuse.
Those charges, stemming from issues brought before the Civilian Complaint Review Board, are now prosecuted by New York Police Department lawyers.
The agreement has been hailed as holding the police force more accountable and strengthening the public’s faith in the complaint-review board. That agency, while independent of the NYPD, historically has been viewed as toothless as it struggled with a lack of resources.
Criticism also has greeted the change, agreed to in March 2012 by the City Council, mayor’s office and the NYPD. In a statement, Patrolman’s Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch characterized the program as “nonsensical.”
With new responsibilities in the offing, the complaint-review board has set up a $1.6 million Administrative Prosecution Unit. It will have a staff of 20, including 12 prosecutors. Linda Sachs, a board spokeswoman, said those lawyers include nine who have worked as assistant district attorneys and one who worked in the city’s Law Department.
The new complaint-review process rules will be published Tuesday in the official City Record, paving the way for board work to begin within 30 days.
Despite the bigger role the review board’s attorneys now will play, the NYPD commissioner retains authority to accept or reject the disposition of the administrative trials and what final punishment—if any—would be imposed.
The new rules, however, have added a layer of transparency to the commissioner’s role.
The commissioner can prevent a prosecution in instances where “there are parallel or related criminal investigations” or if an officer hasn’t been the subject of a previous complaint before the review board or doesn’t have a disciplinary record, according to the agreement.
But in such cases, the commissioner now would be required to submit his reasoning in writing to the review board—and the board would be given an opportunity to make a rebuttal. A letter to the review board also would be required if the commissioner intended to impose discipline on a guilty officer that is less severe than that recommended by the board or the trial commissioner.
The review board handles complaints from the public of excessive force, abuse of authority, discourtesy and offensive language. Such allegations can range from an officer pointing a gun at a person to using offensive language during a stop.
“This is something that Commissioner [Raymond] Kelly has been supportive of in cooperation with the CCRB,” NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said of the new arrangement.
Daniel Chu, the review board chairman, said through a spokeswoman that the agency has “assembled a great team of attorneys and we’re eager to…take on our newest responsibility.”
Mr. Lynch’s statement, however, said, “By inserting newly hired CCRB personnel into the process, we have ensured that a situation that didn’t need fixing will be supplanted by a new bureaucracy further draining resources from areas where they are most needed.”
The new Administrative Prosecution Unit will be led by Laura Edidin, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, said Ms. Sachs. Her deputy will be Jonathan Darche, a former assistant district attorney in Queens.
The unit’s work stems from a 2011 pilot version of the initiative that handled three cases before its funding was cut. Ms. Edidin was the first civilian lawyer to handle a trial in the pilot.
In addition to increasing public confidence in the process, review-board officials believe having civilian attorneys encourages alleged victims of police misconduct and witnesses to be more cooperative and responsive than with lawyers attached to the agency they are accusing. This was evident during the trials the board prosecuted in the pilot program, the officials said.
The new unit’s work will focus on the most severe allegations among the cases substantiated by review-board probes. A case is considered substantiated when “there is credible evidence to believe that the subject officer committed the act charged,” the agency said.
Leveling charges and recommending an administrative trial is the toughest action the complaint board can take.
In 2012, the complaint-review board substantiated 189 complaints against 265 officers, Ms. Sachs said. Of those, charges were recommended for 181 officers. The dispositions of those cases weren’t available because a majority remained in the process of prosecution, plea negotiations or review. The rest were recommended for lesser discipline, except for one where there was no recommendation.
A total of 21 officers were prosecuted at disciplinary trials in 2012, some of which were carried over from charges leveled in previous years, Ms. Sachs said.
The change comes at a time when police tactics, such as stop-and-frisk, have faced increased scrutiny and legal challenges. In the first four months of the current fiscal year, from July 1 to Oct. 31, 2012, complaints filed to the board rose 17% compared with the same period in 2011, according to the mayor’s office.
Citizens Union, a government-transparency advocacy group, issued a report in 2012 that said between 2002 and 2010, the complaint board recommended that 2,078 officers be charged for substantiated misconduct—but fewer than 8% were charged.
Write to Tamer El-Ghobashy at tamer.el-ghobashy@wsj.com
Filed under NYPD, Occupy Wall Street, OccupyWallStreet, OWS
(phone numbers, e-mail and postal addresses listed at the bottom of this post)
The Brookfield Office Properties, Inc owns Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, the park is currently the home base of the #OccupyWallStreet protesters. Brookfield created this park SOLELY to get zoning incentives from NYC to build taller buildings.
As of Oct 11, 2011, the management at Brookfield is demanding to power-clean the park. They anticipate “power-cleaning” the park at 7am on Friday, Oct 14. Protesters see this as a dirty tricks to evict them out of the park.
Contact the Brookfield management NOT to evict the peaceful protesters. American should not condone the financial crimes committed by Wall Street. It was Wall Street that caused the Great Recession of 2008. It was Wall Street’s financial crimes that led to so many Americans’ to lose their homes through foreclosures and to lose their jobs through no fault of their own. Without jobs, they lost their health insurance also.
Meanwhile, the Wall St. Journal reported on Sept 16, 2011 that corporations in America are sitting on $2 TRILLION cash but they refuse to hire people. The Wall St. Fat Cats have been collecting high base salaries, big bonus, big deferred compensation from 2008 to current time.
If Brookfield evicts the #OccupyWallStreet protesters, they are simply aiding & abetting the real criminals – the Wall Street criminals who caused the Great Recession 2008 to happen.
Contact the Brookfield Office Properties, Inc below
Their website is: http://www.brookfieldofficeproperties.com/
Richard B. Clark, CEO, Brookfield Office Properties Tel: 1-212-417-7063
E-mail: Ric.Clark@brookfield.com
Melissa Coley, Vice President, Investor Relations & Communications
Brookfield Office Properties
Tel: 1-212-417-7215
Email: melissa.coley@brookfield.com
Bryan Davis
Chief Financial Officer
Phone: 212-417-7166
E-mail: bryan.davis@brookfield.com
United States: Three World Financial Center
200 Vesey Street, 11th Floor
New York, New York 10281
Tel: 212-417-7000
Fax: 212-417-7214
Canada: Brookfield Place
181 Bay Street, Suite 330
Toronto, Ontario M5J 2T3
Tel: 416-369-2300
Fax: 416-369-2301
Australia: Level 22, 135 King Street
Sydney NSW 2000
Tel: +61 2 9322 2000
Fax: +61 2 9322 2001
Filed under Occupy Wall Street, OccupyWallStreet, OWS
ny121asil @ASilva_NY 