AmpedStatus has joined a new coalition to fight for economic justice. We are sick of reporting upon the crimes of Wall Street and watching our future go up in flames without any accountability or measures being taken to defend against blatant criminality. The Wall Street Elite have controlled our political process for too long! The following is our first announcement and call to action.

Democracy is devolving into fascism before our eyes, the "iron law of oligarchy" is once again asserting itself. You cannot have a concentration of vast wealth and Democracy at the same time, and we currently have the greatest concentration of wealth in history...

By David DeGraw & Max Keiser
The stock market plunge on May 6th was an act of domestic financial terrorism in America. A day that will live in infamy.

Keiser and DeGraw discuss the unreported underlying elements of the SEC's case against Goldman Sachs, Hank Paulson's background and role in causing the economic crisis, the Federal Reserve's illegal activities, the epidemic of accounting fraud on Wall Street, and expose clear examples of trillions of dollars stolen through market manipulation.

Not only did Goldman Sachs profit on betting against CDOs they designed to fail; more importantly, they insured them through AIG which led to a $182 billion taxpayer bailout.

David DeGraw recently gave a speech to World War II veterans summing up his recent reporting: "The Robber Barons of the Gilded Age have now been displaced as America's most despotic and depraved ruling class."

For those of you who want to know what the internet will end up like when the Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner interests take it over, you need to look at this shocking new case of censorship by Google News.

Mike Papantonio talks with David DeGraw about the REAL America, the one that those of us who aren't CEOs of major corporations live in. David also appeared on RT TV and called for "a mass movement to restore the rule of law."

The evidence is now overwhelming. The United States government has facilitated the theft of trillions of dollars of national wealth and 99% of the US population no longer has political representation.

Why are Jon Stewart and Dylan Ratigan the only two sources on US television who consistently report on the biggest theft of wealth in history? Consider this a devastatingly accurate introduction to the economic coup, or the Daily Show's Economic Coup for Dummies.

The Continued Stealth Takeover of the Courts. Corporate CEOs are making concerted efforts to direct political contributions in a manner designed to elect judges that will champion CEOs’ interests. Note that I stress that the person that controls the corporation, typically the CEO, is the key actor and that the CEO commonly maximizes what he believes will be his interests at the expense of the corporation and its shareholders, creditors, and employees. This harms the nation. Yves’ blog prompted responses that eventually morphed into a debate about the role of law and economics in judicial decision making and discussion of what students are being taught in law and economics. I have taught five multidisciplinary courses at the University of Missouri – Kansas City that integrate law, economics, criminology, finance, regulation, political science, and accounting. One of those courses is law and economics. My spouse, June Carbone (a professor at UMKC Law), and her co-author Naomi Cahn discuss the role of elected v. appointed judges in their recent book Red Families v Blue Families. You can see why we are interested in these debate topics." Tags: Economic Justice campaign finance Economic Death Squad

A Goldman Sachs-owned college conglomerate taps a controversial lobbying shop to battle Education Department. It's a classic move by an industry player feeling the squeeze of pending regulation: Hire a lobbying firm to create the appearance of widespread opposition via a carefully stage-managed astroturf campaign. One of the latest outfits to give this strategy a try: Education Management Corporation (EDMC), a multibillion-dollar heavyweight in the for-profit higher education industry that's the subject of multiple lawsuits and ample criticism from investors, lawmakers, and government officials who accuse the company of a range of deceptive business practices. The company, whose majority stockholder is Goldman Sachs, recently hired a GOP-linked lobbying shop known for its astroturfing prowess to fight a proposed federal rule that has the entire industry fretting about its future. Tags: Goldman Sachs Education Economic Death Squad Astroturf

Based on Federal data from the US Department of Education, the number of students identified as homeless by public school districts rose by more than 40 percent between the 2006-2007 school year and 2008-2009, to 956,914. The figure has almost assuredly passed one million in the current school year. That well over one million public school students are homeless is a damning indictment of the entire social order. The staggering growth in student homelessness took place simultaneously with the transfer of trillions of dollars in public funds to Wall Street, overseen by the administrations of former President George W. Bush and current President Barack Obama. Tags: Economic Death Squad Economic Inequality

Scientists have found that when Corexit is applied to the actual crude oil from BP's well, it releases 35 times more toxic chemicals into the water column than would be released with crude alone. And the tests conducted by the EPA which purport to show that dispersant plus crude is less toxic than oil alone used a combination of Corexit with Louisiana light crude oil. However, the oil coming out of BP's leaking well contains an unusually high concentration of methane. As CBS notes: The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits, said John Kessler, a Texas A&M University oceanographer who is studying the impact of methane from the spill. " Tags: Oil pollution

A federal court in California has issued a ruling that’s raising widespread alarm among advocates for civil liberties. Earlier this month, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said law enforcement agents can sneak onto a person’s property, plant a GPS device on their vehicle, and track their every movements. The court’s ruling means the spying is legal in California and eight other Western states. Tags: Civil Liberties surveillance

Democrats in Congress are poised to play a leading role this month in thwarting their party's effort to raise income tax rates on the wealthy. Tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 expire at the end of this year. President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders have been eager to extend the breaks for individuals who earn less than $200,000 annually and joint filers who make less than $250,000. Those who earn more would pay higher, pre-2001 rates starting next year. However, a small but growing number of moderate Democrats are balking at boosting taxes on the rich. Many face electorates that recoil at the mention of any tax increase. Some represent areas that are loaded with wealthier taxpayers. Further, some incumbent senators who don't face voters this fall are reluctant to increase taxes on anyone while the economy remains sluggish. " Tags: Economic Death Squad Obama Illusion congress

The cap that ended BP's three-month oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico was set to come off Thursday as a prelude to raising a massive, failed piece of equipment and preparing for a final seal on the broken seafloor well. Engineers and the government were not expecting crude to break out again when the cap is lifted, but the government wasn't offering any guarantees and oil collection vessels were set to be on standby on the surface just in case. The cap is an elongated metal cylinder that was placed on top of the failed blowout preventer to finally stop the flow of oil and gas July 15. With the cap gone, the old blowout preventer can be removed and a new one put in place before engineers try to seal the well for good deep underground." Tags: Oil pollution

As Labor Day approaches, many Americans are breathing a sigh of relief for the extra day off. Plenty of people are feeling like their hard work isn’t exactly paying off the way it used to. Even as productivity has continued to climb, wages have been either stagnant or declining. Household income for the average working family has continued to fall, but men, latinos and those without a college education have experienced an especially sharp deceleration of wage growth since the recession, according to a new briefing paper by the Economic Policy Institute. The Washington, D.C.-based think tank says that from 2002 to 2007, productivity rose 11 percent but the hourly wage for high school and college educated workers fell. In fact, the average median household income (adjusted for inflation) actually earned $2,000 less during that period, going from $60,804 to $58,718. For the first time, family income levels sunk below what they had been at the beginning of the economic cycle." Tags: Economic Justice Economic Death Squad Economic Inequality

This has not been a kind year for campaign finance reformers. Setting aside the now-famous Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling from the Supreme Court, which allowed corporations and unions to spend freely on campaign advertisements, there has been a flurry of challenges to other campaign finance laws in the courts. Although several of these challenges were filed before the Supreme Court ruled on Citizens United, that decision encouraged opponents of campaign finance reform to push their challenges even further, according to experts on campaign finance cases. These ongoing lawsuits have challenged three broad sections of campaign finance law: corporate spending restrictions, public financing of candidates and disclosure laws. Supporters of reform have seen some success against challenges to restrictions on soft money contributions. But public funding for candidates has been stymied in several cases, even in the middle of campaign season. " Tags: campaign finance Economic Death Squad Supreme Court

The number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. has dropped for the first time in two decades — decreasing by 8 percent since 2007, a new study finds. The reasons range from the sour economy to Mexican violence and increased U.S. enforcement that has made it harder to sneak across the border. Much of the decline comes from a sharp drop-off in illegal immigrants from the Caribbean, Central America and South America attempting to cross the southern border of the U.S., according to the Pew Hispanic Center, which based its report on an analysis of 2009 census data." Tags: Immigration

Federal regulators are seeking public input on what rules should apply to wireless Internet access and specialized services that aren't part of the Internet but are delivered over wired broadband connections. The move by the FCC marks the next step in the agency's long-running effort to adopt so-called "network neutrality" regulations to prevent broadband providers from discriminating against traffic flowing over their lines. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, as well as many big Internet companies, say these rules are needed to prevent phone and cable companies from abusing their control over high-speed Internet access to become online gatekeepers. Tags: Net Neutrality FCC

The Rwanda crisis threatens to reveal the United States’ role as enabler in the deaths of as many as six million people while Washington’s allies occupied and looted the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo. At stake is not only the reputation of Ugandan President Paul Kagame, an alumnus of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, but the larger American strategy for militarization of Africa and exploitation of her riches. The 545-page report details crimes committed in Congo by the Rwandan military and its allies between March, 1993, and June, 2003, and reinforces long-standing charges that Kagame’s forces were also aggressors and mass murderers during the Rwandan mass killings of 1994. When Kagame’s Tutsi rebels – previously based in Uganda – gained control of Rwanda after 100 days of fighting and ethnic cleansing, they pursued more than a million Hutu refugees into neighboring Congo. There, they hunted down and killed untold thousands of old men, women and children in 600 documented incidents that are, at the least, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The report’s authors clearly believe the Tutsis engaged in outright genocide – the purposeful eradication of a people – since Kagame’s men made no distinction between Rwandan Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutus; they killed them all. Congolese Tutsis and kinsmen from Burundi joined Kagame’s Rwandan Tutsis in the mass murder – confirming the racial or ethnic nature of the slaughter. Tags: Africa war crimes

Sorkin has a rather curious piece that purports to explain why the banking industry is up in arms about Obama. For anyone at the TBTF firms, it’s patent rubbish. The firms got overt and back door bailouts so they could shore up their equity capital, and what do they do? Pay a big chunk of government-provided largesse out to themselves in record 2009 bonuses. It’s one of the most blatant acts of looting on record, and the industry deserves every bit of scorn the authorities can muster dumped on its head. Tags: Obama Illusion Media Bias Economic Death Squad

We are at a stage where Treasury bonds are as weakened as a termite-riddled house. Treasuries are well on their way to a complete collapse. Why? Because of the way they have been mishandled and mistreated by the Federal Reserve, and US Treasury. Whether by incompetence or by design, Treasury bonds have become the New & Improved Toxic Asset. The question is no longer if they will collapse—it’s when. Let me explain why. First of all, what exactly were Toxic Assets—does anybody remember? I do: They were bonds made out of bundles of dodgy real estate deals. They didn’t seem dodgy at the time. What’s that old expression, “safe as houses”? At the time they were made, those bonds seemed safe as houses. Now we call them “Toxic Assets”—because now, we know better. But back then—before they collapsed—they were called “Mortgage Backed Securites”, or “Commercial Mortgage Backed Securites”, or else “Collateralized Debt Obligations”. Tags: Economic Predictions Economic Death Squad

Meet Honeywell CEO David Cote [Business Roundtable member] - the most dangerous man in America. David Cote is so dangerous that he's willing to risk nuclear fallout in order to demand that uranium workers agree to cutting their retiree health care and pension plans. Honeywell runs the only conversion facility in the world that can distill pure uranium in Metropolis, Illinois. On June 28th, Honeywell locked out its union workers during contract negotiations because the union, United Steelworkers (USW) Local 7-669, refused to accept the company proposal to eliminate retiree health care and pension plans for new hires and increase workers' out of pocket health care to $8,500 a year. Good health care coverage for retirees is especially important to uranium workers who suffer rates of cancer ten times higher than the general public due to their daily interaction with radioactive material; thus the workers refused to give in to demands to cut their retiree health care coverage entirely." Tags: Deficit Business Roundtable Obama Illusion

On September 14, 1982, Ronald Reagan's (secret) National Security Decision Directive/NSDD 55 established a National Program Office (NPO), tasked with ensuring the federal government's survive in case of a national emergency, specifically a nuclear attack. Reporting to Vice President Bush, NPO developed and coordinated secret plans with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), CIA, and Departments of State and Defense to maintain large underground bunkers, high-tech software, and procedures to let government function under emergency conditions - originally in case of nuclear attack, now terrorist ones or any "emergency," including natural disasters. In 1988, Reagan's Executive Order 12656 authorized a COG response, including full-scale militarization in case of a "national security emergency," defined as: "Any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States." The policy remained largely in place under GHW Bush's April 1990 National Security Directive (NSD) 37, June 1992 NSD 69 (both titled Enduring Constitutional Government), and Bill Clinton's October 1998 Presidential Decision Directive/National Security Council (PDD/NSC) 67, titled Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations, stating. Tags: CIA Cheney 9_11 NSA

Democracy Now: In his Oval Office address, President Obama said the US had closed or transferred hundreds of bases to the Iraqis. But many US bases remain in Iraq as well as the massive US embassy in Baghdad–the size of eighty football fields. We play a report on US bases in Iraq by independent journalist Jacquie Soohen of Big Noise Films. Tags: Iraq Obama Illusion

Obama is considering a range of new measures to boost economic growth. On the list of possible actions: additional tax cuts for small businesses beyond those included in a $30 billion small-business lending bill before the Senate. It's not clear what those tax breaks would target or how much they might cost in lost revenue to the government. Also in the mix: a possible payroll tax cut for businesses and individuals, as well as other business tax breaks, according to people familiar with the discussions. Currently, income taxes are scheduled to rise with the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts at the end of this year. Efforts to boost growth have taken on urgency as the economy has shown signs of flagging and is among voters' chief concerns ahead of November's midterm elections. Tags: Economic Death Squad

The US will today send another Predator drone on patrol flights along its border with Mexico, allowing authorities for the first time to monitor the entire frontier with the unmanned aircraft. National Guardsmen will also arrive at the border this week as part of the Obama administration's plan to strengthen security and combat smuggling. With immigration a critical issue in midterm elections in November, the President, Barack Obama, last month signed into law a $US600 million ($674 million) bill aimed at reinforcing border security, including programs aimed at countering the smuggling of drugs and migrants." Tags: Drones surveillance mexico Immigration drug war

The nation’s biggest job-cutting companies paid their top executives an average of $12 million last year. The 50 U.S. chief executives who laid off the most employees between November 2008 and April 2010 eliminated a total of 531,363 jobs, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, a research group that works for social justice and against wealth concentration. In “CEO Pay and the Great Recession,” the institute said the $598 million in combined pay for the 50 executives would have paid one month’s worth of average-sized unemployment benefits for each of the laid-off workers. The top 50 layoff firms reported a 44 percent average profit increase for 2009, the report said." Tags: Economic Death Squad Unemployment Economic Inequality