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PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 12:35 am
  

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Occupy Retirement Planning

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-ucci ... 39441.html




Your retirement savings are not safe. I mean, they're way more secure right now than they would have been if Cowboy King George II had succeeded in privatizing social security back during his early-2000s Reign of War on Terror, but unless you are among the 1 percent or so of Americans with substantial and globally diversified portfolios, a dignified retirement is far from guaranteed, no matter how diligent a saver you've been. For that you can thank our good friends in both parties in Washington and their generous benefactors on Wall Street.

When I say that your retirement savings are not safe, I actually mean that they are dangerous. It sounds crazy, but they are in fact probably hurting you right now. For the past several decades your retirement portfolio has been -- and continues to be -- used by Wall Street to undercut your career prospects, your earnings prospects, and I dare say your overall quality of life.

What do I mean when I say this? I mean that American retirement funds are one of the very biggest sources of investment capital in the economy, so the investment decisions made by those who oversee those funds have tremendous influence over the direction of our whole society.

And oh, boy, have those folks taken our economy in the wrong direction. They took it so far in the wrong direction that the industrial heart of it ended up in Asia. Despite a few recent rhetorical nods to the 99 percent, Obama has proven committed to the bipartisan consensus to send U.S. jobs oversees via corporatist, job-killing free-trade agreements.

Now we have a whole generation of blue-collar folks with virtually zero job prospects and a backlog of deeply indebted, highly embittered, and extremely over-educated college graduates competing for low-wage "service sector jobs."

How did this happen? It happened partially because our corporate financed political class, investment professionals, and pension fund managers all deluded themselves into the macro-mistake of believing that the best way to help Americans have a dignified retirement is to invest in the causes of the very crises currently plaguing our country.

Take unemployment. There are a lot of reasons why we face such high unemployment rates these days, but several come to mind right away. How about outsourcing? How about off-shoring? How about automation? Heck, how about the financial crisis itself?

Well, while hardworking Americans have been struggling to save for their golden years, the Wall-St.-D.C.-finance-industrial complex has been using our retirement savings to finance a golden age in corporate profitability.

Guess what those profits are largely based on? Yep, cutting worker wages, laying off workers, speculating on esoteric/exotic/synthetic financial instruments, moving operations off-shore, and replacing human employees with machines.

Currently, investing for retirement means parking a portion of your paycheck with the same old folks who are singing the same old song. Your hard-earned dough ends up paying the exorbitant salaries of high-flying executives of global companies using global stock and bond markets to finance global operations.

Global companies don't care about you. They don't care about your retirement. They don't care about your community. They don't care about America. They only care about next quarter's bottom line. When the chips are down, that is all they are capable of caring about.

So what are you going to do about it? Now that you've moved your money out of that big, bad bank, I challenge you to find a way to move your retirement savings out of the equally big investment banks and equally bad broker-dealers who oversee your retirement account. You pretty much can't do it. All the experts agree: if you want to start saving for old age, address the check to Wall St.

Local businesses need your money more than the big guys do. And who doesn't want to invest in local businesses, which provide local jobs and thereby support vibrant communities? The problem is that there just aren't a lot of options for regular folks to do so. One option is to invest in Community Development Finance Institution Funds, which will use your money to provide valuable financial services to marginalized people that traditional banks aren't interested in helping because they can't make enough money from them.

Lots of other initiatives and enterprises are being tried right now to redirect our money toward more human-scale enterprises that are rooted in communities, but there just aren't any great options yet for retirement investing.

Developing the tools, analysis and legal structures to empower investment professionals to invest in sustainable and regenerative enterprises is one of the greatest challenges facing this generation of activists, policy makers, scholars, and financial professionals. It just doesn't seem like anybody realizes that yet.

I don't claim to have the answers, but I do know that if we want to save the middle class, we'd better find some answers soon.


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 Post subject: Re: Occupy America
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 2:15 am
  

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It is a mess, ain't it? 'Lucky' for me, I don't get to retire until check-out day........


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 Post subject: Re: Occupy America
PostPosted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 3:43 pm
  

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Likewise Kevin, we never questioned our 401k plans until they lost 40% in that first round of carnage.

Then they changed plan providerers so someone else got a piece (at least 5/times/20yrs). Forced into a high risk only plan, for the first 6 mos. Stealing it coming and going. I kept asking why no one cried out about what is and has been happening.

When enron got control of our local electric power, rates doubled overnight. Again I asked why the silence, but only to my friends, family, and co-workers.

Along comes arab spring, adbusters, and occuppy, and some sense of hope that we can unite to identify and overcome the core of the problems we face.

In a way we are our own worst enemy, who will save us from what we want?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-va ... ostpopular

There Is Only One Issue In America

I was obsessed with politics in the '80s. I've recovered and I'm feeling much better now thank you.

By the time I realized, as interesting as it was, I'd better stop this stuff and try to earn a living, I had discovered many of our social problems and quality of life issues could be traced to the same political source: our corrupt-by-definition electoral system. The solution to the problem was as easy to discover as the cause: The elimination of all private finance in the electoral process.

I was working doing most of my research in the area of our foreign policy since WWll, whatever fell under the umbrella of international liberation politics, but I examined and analyzed a fair amount of local issues as well.

I wanted to know how things work? Where's the power? Who's pulling the strings?

The economy of the world came down to the unholy trinity of guns, drugs and gasoline -- military industry, drugs (legal and illegal), and energy -- and now I would add agribusiness as the fourth controlling commodity, and always with the enabling bankers never too far out of sight making their profits far too often from wars and slave labor.

While that readily explained the suffering of the Third World, it didn't immediately answer why in America it was possible for so many people to be unhappy with our government's decisions, both foreign and domestic, when we're supposedly living in a democracy.

A quick analysis of our electoral process revealed the obvious answer. The simple fact is we do not live in a democracy. Certainly not the kind our Founding Fathers intended. We live in a corporate dictatorship represented by, and beholden to, no single human being you can reason with or hold responsible for anything.

The corporation has but one obligation, which is to increase profits for it's shareholders by any legal means necessary by the next fiscal quarter.

They have no moral, patriotic, social, environmental, generational or even sustainable responsibility. They have only a short-term economic mandate and their only responsibility to society is to stay within the law to accomplish it.

This doesn't mean corporations shouldn't exist or even that their directors are evil by their very DNA. It has been a legally acceptable basic flaw in the form of our capitalist system that allows corporations to operate without a moral compass or obligation to society -- but that's a discussion for another day.

The law is rarely a problem because the corporations' legal obligations are pretty much designed first and foremost for their maximum profit by the legislation created by the legislators belonging to our two national political parties, both of which are wholly bought, sold and controlled by Wall Street. The banks and the corporations. In other words the game is rigged. Feel like a sucker? We all do because we all are.

The manipulation, aided by a very willing media also owned by the corporations, has made things easier beginning with what has become the amazing Orwellian staple of every newscast, selling the public on the lie that the Dow has somehow become America's scoreboard!

We're all hypnotized, rooting for them like they're our home team at a football game, cheering for THEIR scoreboard mindlessly forgetting WE'RE THE AWAY TEAM!!

You think your congressman is working all day to get you a job? He may want to. He or she is probably not a bad person. They probably want to do the right thing. But they can't. Long-time Capitol Hill staff and campaign strategists tell me the average legislator spends one-third of their time (or more) every day raising money or on activities related to raising money.

Yes, they are "elected" which creates the mass delusion of democracy to keep the masses from rioting, but congressional races are costing millions of dollars and some Senate seats are going for tens of millions each, and they're predicting well over one billion dollars for the next presidency.

That's some democracy we've created there, isn't it?

Of the people?

By the people?

For the people?

What people?

Democracy in America is a sick joke and the masses aren't laughing anymore.

Yes, we can demonstrate. We can march. We can write and sign petitions to our Representatives. We can occupy.

And we should because it's healthy to vent, and we don't feel so all alone. But the truth is, other than the value of venting, we're wasting our time. It is naïve to expect political results from any of these activities.

Our representative can give us lip service. A lot of sympathy. Empathy even. But we don't pay their media bills, gabeesh?

We need to eliminate all private finance from the electoral process.

And let's not be distracted by "reforms." Let's spare ourselves the unnecessary discussions about transparent disclosure, or the conflict of interest of foreign countries buying favorable treatment, or protection after protection being gutted by dangerously diluted regulations, or trying to impose this limit or that limit, etc., etc., etc.

Campaign finance doesn't need reform. It needs elimination.

To accomplish this we must overturn Buckley v. Valeo, one of the two or three worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court.

The ruling makes the extraordinary decision that money is protected by the First Amendment.

Presumably Chief Justice Gordon Gekko presiding!

These smartest guys in the room actually decided that spending money is the equivalent of free speech. You might wonder why no one in that smart room stood up and said wait a minute, if money is speech, isn't lack of money lack of speech?

You know, as in the rich get to talk, and the poor don't? How are the non-moneyed classes represented by this decision?

I guess nobody stood up then, but it's time to stand up now.

In fact, I am now introducing a new pledge to be signed by our legislators. Of both parties. Indies too. Everybody's welcome.

THE PLEDGE FOR A DEMOCRATIC AMERICA

(We'll need someone more educated than me to draw it up, or we can copy Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge, but it would go something like this.)

I, The Undersigned, pledge to overturn Buckley v. Valeo and eliminate all private finance from the electoral process, thusly restoring America to it's democratic principles. I may take corporate, PAC, SuperPAC, or Chinese money to get elected or reelected (martyrdom accomplishes nothing), but upon my election I will make campaign finance elimination one of my immediate top priorities.

Now somebody should be starting a new Third Party whose platform is dedicated to this one idea. Twenty-five years ago that's what I'd be doing right now.

But the need for a Third Party aside, this idea applies for everyone. Just as much for the Tea Party on the right as the 99 Percenters on the left (the corporate oligarchy actually has no Party affiliation, it just looks Republican).

Both groups should adopt this issue. The Occupiers need not agree on anything else, because frankly nothing else matters, and a bit more focus on the root of our problems for the Tea Party certainly wouldn't hurt them either.

Let's see who's serious about representing the "people."

And you know what?

We might be pleasantly surprised at how many congressmen and senators sign this thing who would rather be doing something more dignified with their lives than spending half their time begging for money.


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 Post subject: Re: Occupy America
PostPosted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 11:09 pm
  

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Joined: Jan 09, 2003
Posts: 2490
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DRR wrote:
Likewise Kevin, we never questioned our 401k plans until they lost 40% in that first round of carnage.

Then they changed plan providerers so someone else got a piece (at least 5/times/20yrs). Forced into a high risk only plan, for the first 6 mos. Stealing it coming and going. I kept asking why no one cried out about what is and has been happening.

When enron got control of our local electric power, rates doubled overnight. Again I asked why the silence, but only to my friends, family, and co-workers.

Along comes arab spring, adbusters, and occuppy, and some sense of hope that we can unite to identify and overcome the core of the problems we face.

In a way we are our own worst enemy, who will save us from what we want?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-va ... ostpopular

There Is Only One Issue In America

I was obsessed with politics in the '80s. I've recovered and I'm feeling much better now thank you.

By the time I realized, as interesting as it was, I'd better stop this stuff and try to earn a living, I had discovered many of our social problems and quality of life issues could be traced to the same political source: our corrupt-by-definition electoral system. The solution to the problem was as easy to discover as the cause: The elimination of all private finance in the electoral process.

I was working doing most of my research in the area of our foreign policy since WWll, whatever fell under the umbrella of international liberation politics, but I examined and analyzed a fair amount of local issues as well.

I wanted to know how things work? Where's the power? Who's pulling the strings?

The economy of the world came down to the unholy trinity of guns, drugs and gasoline -- military industry, drugs (legal and illegal), and energy -- and now I would add agribusiness as the fourth controlling commodity, and always with the enabling bankers never too far out of sight making their profits far too often from wars and slave labor.

While that readily explained the suffering of the Third World, it didn't immediately answer why in America it was possible for so many people to be unhappy with our government's decisions, both foreign and domestic, when we're supposedly living in a democracy.

A quick analysis of our electoral process revealed the obvious answer. The simple fact is we do not live in a democracy. Certainly not the kind our Founding Fathers intended. We live in a corporate dictatorship represented by, and beholden to, no single human being you can reason with or hold responsible for anything.

The corporation has but one obligation, which is to increase profits for it's shareholders by any legal means necessary by the next fiscal quarter.

They have no moral, patriotic, social, environmental, generational or even sustainable responsibility. They have only a short-term economic mandate and their only responsibility to society is to stay within the law to accomplish it.

This doesn't mean corporations shouldn't exist or even that their directors are evil by their very DNA. It has been a legally acceptable basic flaw in the form of our capitalist system that allows corporations to operate without a moral compass or obligation to society -- but that's a discussion for another day.

The law is rarely a problem because the corporations' legal obligations are pretty much designed first and foremost for their maximum profit by the legislation created by the legislators belonging to our two national political parties, both of which are wholly bought, sold and controlled by Wall Street. The banks and the corporations. In other words the game is rigged. Feel like a sucker? We all do because we all are.

The manipulation, aided by a very willing media also owned by the corporations, has made things easier beginning with what has become the amazing Orwellian staple of every newscast, selling the public on the lie that the Dow has somehow become America's scoreboard!

We're all hypnotized, rooting for them like they're our home team at a football game, cheering for THEIR scoreboard mindlessly forgetting WE'RE THE AWAY TEAM!!

You think your congressman is working all day to get you a job? He may want to. He or she is probably not a bad person. They probably want to do the right thing. But they can't. Long-time Capitol Hill staff and campaign strategists tell me the average legislator spends one-third of their time (or more) every day raising money or on activities related to raising money.

Yes, they are "elected" which creates the mass delusion of democracy to keep the masses from rioting, but congressional races are costing millions of dollars and some Senate seats are going for tens of millions each, and they're predicting well over one billion dollars for the next presidency.

That's some democracy we've created there, isn't it?

Of the people?

By the people?

For the people?

What people?

Democracy in America is a sick joke and the masses aren't laughing anymore.

Yes, we can demonstrate. We can march. We can write and sign petitions to our Representatives. We can occupy.

And we should because it's healthy to vent, and we don't feel so all alone. But the truth is, other than the value of venting, we're wasting our time. It is naïve to expect political results from any of these activities.

Our representative can give us lip service. A lot of sympathy. Empathy even. But we don't pay their media bills, gabeesh?

We need to eliminate all private finance from the electoral process.

And let's not be distracted by "reforms." Let's spare ourselves the unnecessary discussions about transparent disclosure, or the conflict of interest of foreign countries buying favorable treatment, or protection after protection being gutted by dangerously diluted regulations, or trying to impose this limit or that limit, etc., etc., etc.

Campaign finance doesn't need reform. It needs elimination.

To accomplish this we must overturn Buckley v. Valeo, one of the two or three worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court.

The ruling makes the extraordinary decision that money is protected by the First Amendment.

Presumably Chief Justice Gordon Gekko presiding!

These smartest guys in the room actually decided that spending money is the equivalent of free speech. You might wonder why no one in that smart room stood up and said wait a minute, if money is speech, isn't lack of money lack of speech?

You know, as in the rich get to talk, and the poor don't? How are the non-moneyed classes represented by this decision?

I guess nobody stood up then, but it's time to stand up now.

In fact, I am now introducing a new pledge to be signed by our legislators. Of both parties. Indies too. Everybody's welcome.

THE PLEDGE FOR A DEMOCRATIC AMERICA

(We'll need someone more educated than me to draw it up, or we can copy Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge, but it would go something like this.)

I, The Undersigned, pledge to overturn Buckley v. Valeo and eliminate all private finance from the electoral process, thusly restoring America to it's democratic principles. I may take corporate, PAC, SuperPAC, or Chinese money to get elected or reelected (martyrdom accomplishes nothing), but upon my election I will make campaign finance elimination one of my immediate top priorities.

Now somebody should be starting a new Third Party whose platform is dedicated to this one idea. Twenty-five years ago that's what I'd be doing right now.

But the need for a Third Party aside, this idea applies for everyone. Just as much for the Tea Party on the right as the 99 Percenters on the left (the corporate oligarchy actually has no Party affiliation, it just looks Republican).

Both groups should adopt this issue. The Occupiers need not agree on anything else, because frankly nothing else matters, and a bit more focus on the root of our problems for the Tea Party certainly wouldn't hurt them either.

Let's see who's serious about representing the "people."

And you know what?

We might be pleasantly surprised at how many congressmen and senators sign this thing who would rather be doing something more dignified with their lives than spending half their time begging for money.


I dunno. Just seems like a bunch of dumbasses up there now to me. What about the Justice party? Is that what you are talking about? I just recently heard about it. Even if someone outside of the oligarchy got elected, they would still have to deal with all the dumbasses. If I were president I would veto anything that had more than one thing in it. That one thing should written up in less than ten pages in easily understandable language.


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 Post subject: Re: Occupy America
PostPosted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 11:43 pm
  

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Joined: Jul 06, 2008
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Goofus wrote:
I dunno. Just seems like a bunch of dumbasses up there now to me. What about the Justice party? Is that what you are talking about? I just recently heard about it. Even if someone outside of the oligarchy got elected, they would still have to deal with all the dumbasses. If I were president I would veto anything that had more than one thing in it. That one thing should written up in less than ten pages in easily understandable language.


That's the most reasonable plan I've heard all day!


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 Post subject: Re: Occupy America
PostPosted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 11:45 pm
  

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DRR Wrote:
Campaign finance doesn't need reform. It needs elimination.


You've got that absolutely right!


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 Post subject: Re: Occupy America
PostPosted: Wed Dec 14, 2011 7:03 am
  

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Joined: Oct 12, 2005
Posts: 1776
Location: Axachusetts of New New England
I first heard of the Mondragon Cooprative of the Basque in Spain, back in 1994. My Mom had been telling m the Family History of the Cheveries who are Basque. The French had kicked the Cheverie's out of France. We ended up on Prince Edward Island. The English tried to kick us out of there. My Ancesters went andn hid in the woods for 15 yars and had lots of kids. I told my Mom, ''I want to know what they are doing now?'' 2 weeks latter she showed me an Article in the Catholic Digest, about Mondragon's Worker Ownership.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Worker ... 3-668.html

As an IBEW Journey Man ""Wirenut'' (as we called ourselves.) who had worked in a good part of this Country, with all of my benefits being sent back to my Home Local, 103 of Boston, saw right away how Unions could maken it work here. Been planting seeds about it to all kinds of Unions, Churches, and other gathering places, from my address book picked up through the years.

Jackson Browne's Step by Step of song from ''From warf rats to lord of the docks'' about Harry Bridges.
http://youtu.be/Ay5POkIV7vI
As an IBEW Wirenut in the 80s to 94, I wonder why its only been a year that I've ever known Harry Bridges had lived.


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 Post subject: Re: Occupy America
PostPosted: Wed Dec 14, 2011 2:00 pm
  

BlunderVirgin

Joined: Dec 14, 2011
Posts: 1
hello everyone, my name is A. i'm a new member. until recently i was involved with the occupy movement but i chose to distance myself from it somewhat after i became suspicious it was funded by george soros. george soros has a long history of financing global governments, and where i support the wholesame dismantling of the current american model i don't find global fascism an appropiate replacement. i first got this information from infowars.com and this is an example of what i found when researching the issue. 9269-big-soros-money-linked-to-occupy-wall-street


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 Post subject: Re: Occupy America
PostPosted: Wed Dec 14, 2011 6:37 pm
  

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Joined: Sep 15, 1999
Posts: 8253
man this movement is something else,,,on one side i hear, obama gives them an obligatory yet insincere nod? on another, he along with soros is in cahoots with them?...

mr natural, what does it all mean???


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 Post subject: Re: Occupy America
PostPosted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 4:57 am
  

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Joined: Oct 12, 2005
Posts: 1776
Location: Axachusetts of New New England
It wouldn't matter to me if it was the devil himself who started OWS. Its the movement I've felt broiling inside of the people for years now.


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 Post subject: Re: Occupy America
PostPosted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 4:36 pm
  

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Joined: Nov 16, 2011
Posts: 27
Location: someplace in missouri
infowarrior is my brother A. THAT A.


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 Post subject: Re: Occupy America
PostPosted: Thu Dec 15, 2011 7:38 pm
  

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Joined: Oct 12, 2005
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This kind of men are my friends.

http://youtu.be/xq3BYw4xjxE

Until they do the bidding of the many not the few.


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 Post subject: Re: Occupy America
PostPosted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 9:03 am
  

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Young Mr A, please post proof of your concerns.


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 Post subject: Re: Occupy America
PostPosted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 8:33 am
  

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Since so many people in America are dealing with insecurity about their homes, the shift to doing foreclosure prevention and anti-eviction actions allows new groups of people with a clear sense of their own connection to the struggle to engage with the Occupy movement. Social movements at their best are about helping people take their individual troubles and link them to a public problem and shifting the focus from trying to personally cope to taking collective action.

http://www.alternet.org/activism/154029 ... ss_stories

"Our organization was formed in 1973," Meacham said. "We launched our anti-foreclosure, anti-eviction effort about five years ago. It was really focused on fighting displacement more than fighting foreclosure. We discovered that other people were intervening on behalf of homeowners either at the moment they got their loan - advising them on how to be successful first-time homebuyers - or they were intervening at the moment people faced foreclosure. We opened up a third area: We started to intervene after foreclosure, to fight eviction.

"We discovered that for people who are underwater, foreclosure itself isn't such a big deal. They don't really have much equity in the house, so they're not losing that. What they are really losing is their ability to physically stay in their home. They can fight that independent of fighting foreclosure. I think that's especially true in Massachusetts, but it can be true almost anywhere."


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 Post subject: Re: Occupy America
PostPosted: Sun Mar 18, 2012 1:56 pm
  

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Joined: Mar 15, 2012
Posts: 408
I was hoping to see them Occupy the Superbowl. If all the money spent on sports for just one year was spent on the homeless, there would be no homeless. All these violent team sports are nothing more than a modern version of the Colloseum arenas or stonings. Why are we so bloodthirsty as a so-called civilization?


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