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Occupy Wall Street

Jamie_B

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Jim Finklestein Pro Bowler

Jim Finklestein

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Good article.


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[b] Immunity and Impunity in Elite America: How the Legal System Was Deep-Sixed and Occupy Wall Street Swept the Land[/b]
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by [url="http://www.commondreams.org/glenn-greenwald"]Glenn Greenwald[/url][/b][/size]
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As intense protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street continue to grow, it is worth asking: Why now? The answer is not obvious. After all, severe income and wealth inequality have long plagued the United States. In fact, it could reasonably be claimed that this form of inequality is part of the design of the American founding -- indeed, an integral part of it.[/size]
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Income inequality has worsened over the past several years and is at its highest level since the Great Depression. This is not, however, a new trend. Income inequality has been growing at rapid rates for three decades. As journalist Tim Noah [url="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_great_divergence/features/2010/the_united_states_of_inequality/introducing_the_great_divergence.html"]described[/url]the process:[/size]
[indent]“During the late 1980s and the late 1990s, the United States experienced two unprecedentedly long periods of sustained economic growth -- the ‘seven fat years’ and the ‘long boom.’ Yet from 1980 to 2005, more than 80%of total increase in Americans' income went to the top 1%. Economic growth was more sluggish in the aughts, but the decade saw productivity increase by about 20%. Yet virtually none of the increase translated into wage growth at middle and lower incomes, an outcome that left many economists scratching their heads.”[/indent][size=3]
[url="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805092056/ref=nosim/?tag=commondreams-20"][img]http://www.tomdispatch.com/images/managed/greenwaldbk.gif[/img][/url]The 2008 financial crisis [url="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/us/recession-officially-over-us-incomes-kept-falling.html"]exacerbated the trend[/url], but not radically: the top 1% of earners in America have been feeding ever more greedily at the trough for decades.[/size]
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In addition, substantial wealth inequality is so embedded in American political culture that, standing alone, it would not be sufficient to trigger citizen rage of the type we are finally witnessing. The American Founders were clear that they viewed inequality in wealth, power, and prestige as not merely inevitable, but desirable and, for some, even divinely ordained. Jefferson praised “the natural aristocracy” as “the most precious gift of nature” for the “government of society.” John Adams concurred: “It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the… course of nature the foundation of the distinction.”[/size]
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Not only have the overwhelming majority of Americans long acquiesced to vast income and wealth disparities, but some of those most oppressed by these outcomes have cheered it loudly. Americans have been inculcated not only to accept, but to revere those who are the greatest beneficiaries of this inequality.[/size]
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In the 1980s, this paradox -- whereby even those most trampled upon come to cheer those responsible for their state -- became more firmly entrenched. That’s because it found a folksy, friendly face, Ronald Reagan, adept at feeding the populace a slew of Orwellian clichés that induced them to defend the interests of the wealthiest. “A rising tide,” as President Reagan put it, “lifts all boats.” The sum of his wisdom being: [i]it is in your interest when the rich get richer.[/i][/size]
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Implicit in this framework was the claim that inequality was justified and legitimate. The core propagandistic premise was that the rich were rich because they deserved to be. They innovated in industry, invented technologies, discovered cures, created jobs, took risks, and boldly found ways to improve our lives. In other words, they deserved to be enriched. Indeed, it was in our common interest to allow them to fly as high as possible because that would increase their motivation to produce more, bestowing on us ever greater life-improving gifts.[/size]
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We should not, so the thinking went, begrudge the multimillionaire living behind his 15-foot walls for his success; we should admire him. Corporate bosses deserved not our resentment but our gratitude. It was in our own interest not to demand more in taxes from the wealthiest but less, as their enhanced wealth -- their pocket change -- would trickle down in various ways to all of us. [/size]
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This is the mentality that enabled massive growth in income and wealth inequality over the past several decades without much at all in the way of citizen protest. And yet something has indeed changed. It’s not that Americans suddenly woke up one day and decided that substantial income and wealth inequality are themselves unfair or intolerable. What changed was the perception of how that wealth was gotten and so of the ensuing inequality as[i]legitimate[/i].[/size]
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Many Americans who once accepted or even cheered such inequality now see the gains of the richest as ill-gotten, as undeserved, as cheating. Most of all, the legal system that once served as the legitimizing anchor for outcome inequality, the rule of law -- that most basic of American ideals, that a common set of rules are equally applied to all -- has now become irrevocably corrupted and is seen as such.[/size]
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While the Founders accepted outcome inequality, they emphasized -- over and over -- that its legitimacy hinged on subjecting everyone to the law’s mandates on an equal basis. Jefferson wrote that the essence of America would be that “the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar.” Benjamin Franklin warned that creating a privileged legal class would produce “total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections” between rulers and those they ruled. Tom Paine repeatedly railed against “counterfeit nobles,” those whose superior status was grounded not in merit but in unearned legal privilege.[/size]
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After all, one of their principal grievances against the British King was his power to exempt his cronies from legal obligations. Almost every Founder repeatedly warned that a failure to apply the law equally to the politically powerful and the rich would ensure a warped and unjust society. In many ways, that was their definition of tyranny.[/size]
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Americans understand this implicitly. If you watch a competition among sprinters, you can accept that whoever crosses the finish line first is the superior runner. But only if all the competitors are bound by the same rules: everyone begins at the same starting line, is penalized for invading the lane of another runner, is barred from making physical contact or using performance-enhancing substances, and so on.[/size]
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If some of the runners start ahead of others and have relationships with the judges that enable them to receive dispensation for violating the rules as they wish, then viewers understand that the outcome can no longer be considered legitimate. Once the process is seen as not only unfair but utterly corrupted, once it’s obvious that a common set of rules no longer binds all the competitors, the winner will be resented, not heralded.[/size]
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That catches the mood of America in 2011. It may not explain the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it helps explain why it has spread like wildfire and why [url="http://www.zcommunications.org/167-million-people-support-occupy-wall-street-by-kevin-young"]so many Americans[/url]seem instantly to accept and support it. As was not true in recent decades, the American relationship with wealth inequality is in a state of rapid transformation.[/size]
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It is now clearly understood that, rather than apply the law equally to all, Wall Street tycoons have engaged in egregious criminality -- acts which destroyed the economic security of millions of people around the world -- without experiencing the slightest legal repercussions. Giant financial institutions were [url="http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stiglitz131/English"]caught red-handed[/url]engaging in massive, systematic fraud to foreclose on people’s homes and the reaction of the political class, led by the Obama administration, was to [url="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/business/schneiderman-is-said-to-face-pressure-to-back-bank-deal.html"]shield them[/url] from meaningful consequences. Rather than submit on an equal basis to the rules, through an oligarchical, democracy-subverting control of the political process, they now control the process of writing those rules and how they are applied.[/size]
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Today, it is glaringly obvious to a wide range of Americans that the wealth of the top 1% is the byproduct not of risk-taking entrepreneurship, but of corrupted control of our legal and political systems. Thanks to this control, they can write laws that have no purpose than to abolish the few limits that still constrain them, [url="http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2009/marapr/features/born.html"]as happened[/url] during the Wall Street deregulation orgy of the 1990s. They can retroactively immunize themselves for crimes they deliberately committed for profit, [url="http://www.salon.com/2008/07/09/fisa_vote/"]as happened[/url] when the 2008 Congress shielded the nation’s telecom giants for their role in Bush’s domestic warrantless eavesdropping program. [/size]
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It is equally obvious that they are using that power not to lift the boats of ordinary Americans but to sink them. In short, Americans are now well aware of what the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Illinois’s Dick Durbin, [url="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/29/dick-durbin-banks-frankly_n_193010.html"]blurted out[/url] in 2009 about the body in which he serves: the banks “frankly own the place.” [/size]
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If you were to assess the state of the union in 2011, you might sum it up this way: rather than being subjected to the rule of law, the nation’s most powerful oligarchs control the law and are so exempt from it; and increasing numbers of Americans understand that and are outraged. At exactly the same time that the nation’s elites enjoy legal immunity even for egregious crimes, ordinary Americans are being subjected to the [url="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4858580.stm"]world's largest[/url] and one of its [url="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/us/23prison.html"]harshest penal states[/url], under which they are unable to secure competent legal counsel and are harshly punished with lengthy prison terms for even trivial infractions. [/size]
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In lieu of the rule of law -- the equal application of rules to everyone -- what we have now is a two-tiered justice system in which the powerful are immunized while the powerless are punished with increasing mercilessness. As a guarantor of outcomes, the law has, by now, been so completely perverted that it is an incomparably potent weapon for entrenching inequality further, controlling the powerless, and ensuring corrupted outcomes.[/size]
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The tide that was supposed to lift all ships has, in fact, left startling numbers of Americans underwater. In the process, we lost any sense that a common set of rules applies to everyone, and so there is no longer a legitimizing anchor for the vast income and wealth inequalities that plague the nation.[/size]
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That is what has changed, and a growing recognition of what it means is fueling rising citizen anger and protest. The inequality under which so many suffer is not only vast, but illegitimate, rooted as it is in lawlessness and corruption. Obscuring that fact has long been the linchpin for inducing Americans to accept vast and growing inequalities. That fact is now too glaring to obscure any longer.[/size]
[size=3][center]Copyright 2011 Glenn Greenwald[/center][/size][/center][size=3]
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[url="http://www.commondreams.org/glenn-greenwald"][img]http://www.commondreams.org/sites/commondreams.org/files/imagecache/author_photo/glenn_greenwald.jpg[/img][/url][/size]
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Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "[url="http://www.amazon.com/dp/097794400X?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim"]How Would a Patriot Act?[/url]," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "[url="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307354288?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim"]A Tragic Legacy[/url]", examines the Bush legacy. His just-released book is titled [url="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805092056?tag=commondreams-20/ref=nosim"]"With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful."[/url] He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism.[/quote]

[url="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/25"]http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/25[/url][/size]
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Jim Finklestein Pro Bowler

Jim Finklestein

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[quote name='Jamie_B' timestamp='1319598045' post='1051428']Absolutely nails it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tnLz1oEOGI[/quote]

Fascinating take that I hadn't thought about. Higher Corporate Tax rates actually ENCOURAGE corporations to reinvest. They would rather put that money to use building their business than pay it on taxes.
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Jamie_B

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For me it doesnt get better than Matt Taiabbi's journalism.

[url="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/owss-beef-wall-street-isnt-winning-its-cheating-20111025"]http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/owss-beef-wall-street-isnt-winning-its-cheating-20111025[/url]




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[b] Wall Street Isn't Winning – It's Cheating[/b]



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I was at an event on the Upper East Side last Friday night when I got to talking with a salesman in the media business. The subject turned to Zucotti Park and Occupy Wall Street, and he was chuckling about something he'd heard on the news.[/size]
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"I hear[url="http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000051628"] [Occupy Wall Street] has a CFO[/url][url="http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000051628,"],[/url]" he said. "I think that's funny."[/size]
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"Okay, I'll bite," I said. "Why is that funny?"[/size]
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"Well, I heard they're trying to decide what bank to put their money in," he said, munching on hors d'oeuvres. "It's just kind of ironic."[/size]
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Oh, Christ, I thought. He’s saying the protesters are hypocrites because they’re using banks. I sighed.[/size]
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"Listen," I said, "where else are you going to put three hundred thousand dollars? A shopping bag?"

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"Well," he said, "it's just, they're protests are all about... You know..."[/size]
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"Dude," I said. "These people aren't protesting [i]money[/i]. They're not protesting [i]banking[/i]. They're protesting corruption on Wall Street."[/size]
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"Whatever," he said, shrugging.[/size]
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These nutty criticisms of the protests are spreading like cancer. Earlier that same day, I'd taped a TV segment on CNN with Will Cain from the [i]National Review, [/i]and we [url="http://yourmoney.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/22/occupy-wall-st-about-class-warfare/"]got into an argument on the air[/url]. Cain and I agreed about a lot of the problems on Wall Street, but when it came to the protesters, we disagreed on one big thing.[/size]
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Cain said he believed that the protesters are driven by envy of the rich.[/size]
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"I find the one thing [the protesters] have in common revolves around the human emotions of envy and entitlement," he said. "What you have is more than what I have, and I'm not happy with my situation."[/size]
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Cain seems like a nice enough guy, but I nearly blew my stack when I heard this. When you take into consideration all the theft and fraud and market manipulation and other evil shit Wall Street bankers have been guilty of in the last ten-fifteen years, you have to have balls like church bells to trot out a propaganda line that says the protesters are just jealous of their hard-earned money.[/size]
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Think about it: there have always been rich and poor people in America, so if this is about jealousy, why the protests now? The idea that masses of people suddenly discovered a deep-seated animus/envy toward the rich – after keeping it strategically hidden for decades – is crazy.[/size]
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Where was all that class hatred in the Reagan years, when openly dumping on the poor became fashionable? Where was it in the last two decades, when unions disappeared and CEO pay relative to median incomes started to triple and quadruple?[/size]
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The answer is, it was never there. If anything, just the opposite has been true. Americans for the most part love the rich, even the obnoxious rich. And in recent years, the harder things got, the more we've obsessed over the wealth dream. As unemployment skyrocketed, people tuned in in droves to gawk at Evrémonde-heiresses like Paris Hilton, or watch bullies like Donald Trump fire people on TV.[/size]
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Moreover, the worse the economy got, the more being a millionaire or a billionaire somehow became a qualification for high office, as people flocked to voting booths to support politicians with names like Bloomberg and Rockefeller and Corzine, names that to voters symbolized success and expertise at a time when few people seemed to have answers. At last count, there were [url="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20075586-503544.html"]245 millionaires in congress, including 66 in the Senate[/url].[/size]
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And we hate the rich? Come on. Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans [i]love [/i]winners. But that's just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QS0q3mGPGg"]winning [/url]– they're cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.[/size]
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In this country, we cheer for people who hit their own home runs – not shortcut-chasing juicers like Bonds and McGwire, Blankfein and Dimon.[/size]
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That's why it's so obnoxious when people say the protesters are just sore losers who are jealous of these smart guys in suits who beat them at the game of life. This isn't disappointment at having lost. It's anger because those other guys didn't really win. And people now want the score overturned.[/size]
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All weekend I was thinking about this “jealousy” question, and I just kept coming back to all the different ways the game is rigged. People aren't jealous and they don’t want privileges. They just want a level playing field, and they want Wall Street to give up its cheat codes, things like:[/size]
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[b]FREE MONEY[/b]. Ordinary people have to borrow their money at market rates. Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon get billions of dollars for free, from the Federal Reserve. They borrow at zero and lend the same money back to the government at two or three percent, a valuable public service otherwise known as "standing in the middle and taking a gigantic cut when the government decides to lend money to itself."[/size]
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Or the banks borrow billions at zero and lend mortgages to us at four percent, or credit cards at twenty or twenty-five percent. This is essentially an official government license to be rich, handed out at the expense of prudent ordinary citizens, who now no longer receive much interest on their CDs or other saved income. It is virtually impossible to not make money in banking when you have unlimited access to free money, especially when the government keeps buying its own cash back from you at market rates.[/size]
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Your average chimpanzee couldn't fuck up that business plan, which makes it all the more incredible that most of the too-big-to-fail banks are nonetheless still functionally insolvent, and dependent upon bailouts and phony accounting to stay above water. Where do the protesters go to sign up for their interest-free billion-dollar loans?[/size]
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[b]CREDIT AMNESTY[/b]. If you or I miss a $7 payment on a Gap card or, heaven forbid, a mortgage payment, you can forget about the great computer in the sky ever overlooking your mistake. But serial financial fuckups like Citigroup and Bank of America overextended themselves by the hundreds of billions and pumped trillions of dollars of deadly leverage into the system -- and got rewarded with things like the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program, an FDIC plan that allowed irresponsible banks to borrow against the government's credit rating.[/size]
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This is equivalent to a trust fund teenager who trashes six consecutive off-campus apartments and gets rewarded by having Daddy co-sign his next lease. The banks needed programs like TLGP because without them, the market rightly would have started charging more to lend to these idiots. Apparently, though, we can’t trust the free market when it comes to Bank of America, Goldman, Sachs, Citigroup, etc.[/size]
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In a larger sense, the TBTF banks all have the implicit guarantee of the federal government, so investors know it's relatively safe to lend to them -- which means it's now cheaper for them to borrow money than it is for, say, a responsible regional bank that didn't jack its debt-to-equity levels above 35-1 before the crash and didn't dabble in toxic mortgages. In other words, the TBTF banks got [i]better credit [/i]for being [i]less responsible[/i]. Click on[url="http://freecreditscore.com/"]freecreditscore.com[/url] to see if you got the same deal.[/size]
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[b]STUPIDITY INSURANCE. [/b]Defenders of the banks like to talk a lot about how we shouldn't feel sorry for people who've been foreclosed upon, because it's they're own fault for borrowing more than they can pay back, buying more house than they can afford, etc. And critics of OWS have assailed protesters for complaining about things like foreclosure by claiming these folks want “something for nothing.”[/size]
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This is ironic because, as one of the [i]Rolling Stone [/i]editors put it last week, “something for nothing is Wall Street’s official policy." In fact, getting bailed out for bad investment decisions has been [i]de rigeur [/i]on Wall Street not just since 2008, but for decades.[/size]
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Time after time, when big banks screw up and make irresponsible bets that blow up in their faces, they've scored bailouts. It doesn't matter whether it was the Mexican currency bailout of 1994 (when the state bailed out speculators who gambled on the peso) or the IMF/World Bank bailout of Russia in 1998 (a bailout of speculators in the "emerging markets") or the Long-Term Capital Management Bailout of the same year (in which the rescue of investors in a harebrained hedge-fund trading scheme was deemed a matter of international urgency by the Federal Reserve), Wall Street has long grown accustomed to getting bailed out for its mistakes.[/size]
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The 2008 crash, of course, birthed a whole generation of new bailout schemes. Banks placed billions in bets with AIG and should have lost their shirts when the firm went under -- AIG went under, after all, in large part [i]because [/i]of all the huge mortgage bets the banks laid with the firm -- but instead got the state to pony up $180 billion or so to rescue the banks from their own bad decisions.[/size]
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This sort of thing seems to happen every time the banks do something dumb with their money. Just recently, the French and Belgian authorities cooked up a massive bailout of the French bank Dexia, whose biggest trading partners included, surprise, surprise, Goldman, Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Here's how the [url="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/business/dexias-collapse-in-europe-points-to-global-risks.html?_r=1&hp"][i]New York Times [/i]explained the bailout[/url]:[/size]
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To limit damage from Dexia’s collapse, the bailout fashioned by the French and Belgian governments may make these banks and other creditors whole — that is, paid in full for potentially tens of billions of euros they are owed. This would enable Dexia’s creditors and trading partners to avoid losses they might otherwise suffer...[/size]
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When was the last time the government stepped into help you "avoid losses you might otherwise suffer?" But that's the reality we live in. When Joe Homeowner bought too much house, essentially betting that home prices would go up, and losing his bet when they dropped, he was an irresponsible putz who shouldn’t whine about being put on the street.[/size]
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But when banks bet billions on a firm like AIG that was heavily invested in mortgages, they were making the same bet that Joe Homeowner made, leaving themselves hugely exposed to a sudden drop in home prices. But instead of being asked to[url="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-20/berkshire-s-munger-says-cash-strapped-should-suck-it-in-not-get-bailout.html"] "suck it in and cope" [/url]when that bet failed, the banks instead went straight to Washington for a bailout -- and got it.[/size]
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[b]UNGRADUATED TAXES[/b]. I've already gone off on this more than once, but it bears repeating. Bankers on Wall Street pay lower tax rates than most car mechanics. When Warren Buffet [url="http://www.forbes.com/sites/berniekent/2011/10/17/musings-on-warren-buffetts-tax-disclosure/"]released his tax information[/url], we learned that with taxable income of $39 million, he paid $6.9 million in taxes last year, a tax rate of about 17.4%.[/size]
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Most of Buffet’s income, it seems, was taxed as either "carried interest" (i.e. hedge-fund income) or long-term capital gains, both of which carry 15% tax rates, half of what many of the Zucotti park protesters will pay. [/size]
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As for the banks, as companies, we've all heard the stories. Goldman, Sachs in 2008 – this was the same year the bank reported $2.9 billion in profits, and paid out over $10 billion in compensation -- [url="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a6bQVsZS2_18"]paid just $14 million in taxes, a 1% tax rate[/url].[/size]
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Bank of America last year paid[url="http://www.thestreet.com/story/11059978/bank-of-america-pays-no-taxes-gets-1b-refund-report.html"] not a single dollar in taxes -- in fact, it received a "tax credit" of $1 billion[/url]. There are a slew of troubled companies that will not be paying taxes for years, including Citigroup and CIT.[/size]
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When GM bought the finance company AmeriCredit, it was able to marry its long-term losses to AmeriCredit's revenue stream, creating a tax windfall worth as much as $5 billion. So [url="http://www.thestreet.com/story/10826862/gm-may-reap-tax-windfall-on-americredit.html"]even though AmeriCredit is expected to post earnings of $8-$12 billion in the next decade or so, it likely won't pay any taxes during that time[/url], because its revenue will be offset by GM's losses.[/size]
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Thank God our government decided to pledge $50 billion of your tax dollars to a rescue of General Motors! You just paid for one of the world's biggest tax breaks.[/size]
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And last but not least, there is:[/size]
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[b]GET OUT OF JAIL FREE[/b]. One thing we can still be proud of is that America hasn't yet managed to achieve the highest incarceration rate in history -- that honor still goes to the Soviets in the Stalin/Gulag era. But we do still have about 2.3 million people in jail in America.[/size]
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Virtually all 2.3 million of those prisoners come from "the 99%." Here is the number of bankers who have gone to jail for crimes related to the financial crisis: 0.[/size]
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Millions of people have been foreclosed upon in the last three years. In most all of those foreclosures, a regional law enforcement office -- typically a sheriff's office -- was awarded fees by the court as part of the foreclosure settlement, settlements which of course were often rubber-stamped by a judge despite mountains of [url="http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/05/rule-of-law-criminality-demands-prosecution/"]perjurious robosigned evidence[/url].[/size]
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That means that every single time a bank kicked someone out of his home, a local police department got a cut. Local sheriff's offices also get cuts of almost all credit card judgments, and other bank settlements. If you're wondering how it is that so many regional police departments have the money for fancy new vehicles and SWAT teams and other accoutrements, this is one of your answers.[/size]
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What this amounts to is the banks having, as allies, a massive armed police force who are always on call, ready to help them evict homeowners and safeguard the repossession of property. But just see what happens when you [url="http://www.mattweidnerlaw.com/Civil-Case.wav"]try to call the police to prevent an improper foreclosure[/url]. Then, suddenly, the police will not get involved. It will be a "civil matter" and they won't intervene.[/size]
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The point being: if you miss a few home payments, you have a very high likelihood of colliding with a police officer in the near future. But if you [url="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-16/goldman-sachs-settlement-victory-ushers-in-change-may-cost-wall-street.html"]defraud a pair of European banks out of a billion dollars[/url] -- that's a [i]billion[/i], with a b -- you will never be arrested, never see a policeman, never see the inside of a jail cell.[/size]
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Your settlement will be worked out not with armed police, but with regulators in suits who used to work for your company or one like it. And you'll have, defending you, a former head of that regulator's agency. In the end, a fine will be paid to the government, but it won't come out of your pocket personally; it will be paid by your company's shareholders. And there will be no admission of criminal wrongdoing.[/size]
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The Abacus case, in which Goldman helped a hedge fund guy named John Paulson beat a pair of European banks for a billion dollars, tells you everything you need to know about the difference between our two criminal justice systems. The settlement was $550 million -- just over half of the damage.[/size]
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Can anyone imagine a common thief being caught by police and sentenced to pay back [i]half[/i]of what he took? Just one low-ranking individual in that case was charged (case pending), and no individual had to reach into his pocket to help cover the fine. The settlement Goldman paid to to the government was about 1/24th of what Goldman received [i]from [/i]the government just in the AIG bailout. And that was the toughest "punishment" the government dished out to a bank in the wake of 2008.[/size]
[size=4]
The point being: we have a massive police force in America that outside of lower Manhattan prosecutes crime and imprisons citizens with record-setting, factory-level efficiency, eclipsing the incarceration rates of most of history's more notorious police states and communist countries.[/size]
[size=4]
But the bankers on Wall Street don't live in that heavily-policed country. There are maybe 1000 SEC agents policing that sector of the economy, plus a handful of FBI agents. There are nearly that many police officers stationed around the polite crowd at Zucotti park. [/size]
[size=4]
These inequities are what drive the OWS protests. People don't want handouts. It's not a class uprising and they don't want civil war -- they want just the opposite. They want everyone to live in the same country, and live by the same rules. It's amazing that some people think that that's asking a lot.[/size]
[/quote]
[size=4]


[/size]
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Jim Finklestein Pro Bowler

Jim Finklestein

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"When I give to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist." -Bishop Helder Camara

I found this quote in an interesting article on the Occupy London movement.

Read more: [url="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/10/26/international/i080024D26.DTL#ixzz1bzWK85tX"]http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/10/26/international/i080024D26.DTL#ixzz1bzWK85tX[/url]
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Jim Finklestein Pro Bowler

Jim Finklestein

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Jesus, at least TRY to show impartiality!

[quote]
[b] Washington Post Offers Shabby Explanation For Photo Decision[/b]

[img]http://i.huffpost.com/gen/387261/thumbs/r-KITTY-large570.jpg[/img]
[color=#000000][size=3]
As you've probably already heard, [url="http://www.theawl.com/2011/10/the-oakland-police-departments-war-on-citizens"]the Oakland Police Department went to war last night with the citizens[/url] participating in the Occupy Oakland demonstration, turning Frank Ogawa Plaza and its immediate environs into a [url="http://boingboing.net/2011/10/25/occupy-oakland-protestors-face-off-with-riot-police-after-chaotic-day-of-evictions-arrests.html"]terrifying zone[/url] of tear gas and [url="http://nedhepburn.tumblr.com/post/11956597474/photo-of-a-young-man-at-occupy-oakland-after-being"]rubber bullets[/url]. By the way, as [url="http://www.thefastertimes.com/news/2011/10/26/oakland-police-department-and-protesters-face-off-at-occupy-oakland/"]Erik Oster of the[i]Faster Times[/i] reports[/url], the Oakland PD "initially denied the use of rubber bullets, only recently admitting to the use of 'non-lethal rounds' (now that there is evidence of it all over the Internet)."[/size][/color]
[color=#000000][size=3]
Which brings me to my next point! On Tuesday night, as this conflict raged on the streets of Oakland, Calif., the Internet was very quickly swamped with images of the melee, especially on the Tumblr platform, which the Occupy activists have made good use of since these demonstrations began. Yet somehow, faced with all of the images that were available to them, [url="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/washington-post-occupy-oakland_n_1033561.html"]the [i]Washington Post[/i]made an odd decision to use this AP image[/url] to go along with their page A3 brief on what everyone knew last night to be a violent confrontation:[/size][/color]
[img]http://i.huffpost.com/gen/387268/OAKLAND-CAT.jpg[/img][color=#000000][size=3]

Because if there's one thing the members of the Oakland Police Department have demonstrated a strong affection for in the past 24 hours, it's kittens. (Coming in second: tear gas, obviously.)[/size][/color]
[color=#000000][size=3]
The choice [url="http://wonkette.com/455265/washington-post-illustrates-oakland-police-brutality-with-cop-petting-kitten"]struck[/url] [url="http://youngmanhattanite.tumblr.com/post/11956454825/raptoravatar-abloodymess-oldtobegin"]many[/url] [url="http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2011/10/26/oakland-police-love-kittens-teargas/"]observers[/url] as odd -- if by "odd" we mean "indicative of journalistic malpractice." And, indeed, beyond the wide variety of images that circulated on Tumblr Tuesday night, the AP itself had several photographs available that more accurately depicted the night's mayhem:[/size][/color]
[img]http://i.huffpost.com/gen/387269/OAKLAND-MAYHEM.jpg[/img][color=#000000][size=3]

And, as the [i]Washington City Paper[/i]'s [url="http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2011/10/26/oakland-police-love-kittens-teargas/"]Shani Hilton points out[/url], [url="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/occupy-oakland-clash-tweets-videos-and-photos-from-the-scene/2011/10/26/gIQA9NAiIM_blog.html"]the [i]Washington Post[/i]'s online coverage didn't opt to sugarcoat what had happened[/url].[/size][/color]
[color=#000000][size=3]
Well, after taking heat from the public over its choice of photos, the [i]Washington Post[/i]'s editors bravely decided to pass the buck and get photo editor Carol McKay "to explain the thinking behind the image she chose." [url="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ask-the-post/post/occupy-oakland-whats-with-the-kitten-photo/2011/10/26/gIQA6kksJM_blog.html?tid=sm_twitter_washingtonpost"]Her explanation reads as follows[/url]:[/size][/color]
[indent]When I was looking at the Tuesday wire service photographs from the Oakland City Hall grounds, the violent protest images were not in the mix because that confrontation had not yet occurred. The late-night, violent protest was in response to the Tuesday eviction by the Oakland police.[color=#000000][size=3]
Even though the story, written later in the evening, included information about the arrests and tear gas, no news images had moved by our production deadline, probably because Oakland is on Pacific time--a three-hour difference.[/size][/color]
[color=#000000][size=3]
The photograph was chosen because it was a visual "moment" in time showing a police officer doing something interesting--not just walking through tents and trash. The wire service images that moved overnight and this morning offer a much different look at last night's protest.[/size][/color]
[/indent][color=#000000][size=3]
[/size][/color]
[color=#000000][size=3]
As noted above, the inability to find "violent protest images" was more related to a dearth of willpower to actually obtain one and not, as McKay explains, a scarcity of material. But even if we lay that aside, if the story "included information about the arrests and tear gas," how is it possible to conclude that an image of a cop petting a kitten is appropriate? Faced with that story, what would lead a photo editor to surmise that the cat photo was the ideal example of a "police officer doing something interesting"? It would seem evident on its face that the police were doing a lot of things that were far more interesting Tuesday night.[/size][/color]
[color=#000000][size=3]
Better no image at all, I'd say. Nevertheless, I suppose it is nice that the [i]Washington Post[/i] at least recognized that this was a matter that required a public explanation. I was just looking for something more like: "We're sorry for doing such an embarrassingly terrible job in our news coverage, and we'll try to do better in the future."[/size][/color]

[/quote]

[url="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/washington-post-photo-decision_n_1033915.html"]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/washington-post-photo-decision_n_1033915.html[/url]

Perhaps I should have posted this in best political cartoon thread? lol
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Elflocko Hall Of Fame

|Elflocko|

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[quote name='Jim Finklestein' timestamp='1319724815' post='1051782']
I agree. I think Matt Taiabbi should be required reading for all of the mainstream media. He seems to "get" the movement more than any of his fellow journalists.
[/quote]
He might be the only legitimate journalist left...
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Jamie_B Hall Of Fame

Jamie_B

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[url="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/26/scott-olsen-occupy-oakland-review?newsfeed=true"]http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/26/scott-olsen-occupy-oakland-review?newsfeed=true[/url]

[quote][b]Scott Olsen injuries prompt review as Occupy Oakland protests continue[/b]


[img]http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/10/26/1319666540355/Occupy-Oakland-Scott-Olse-007.jpg[/img]

Oakland's police review body looks into clashes between officers and protesters after Iraq war veteran suffered fractured skull


[size=3]Occupy Oakland protesters carry Scott Olsen away after he was hit in the head on Tuesday night. Photograph: Kimihiro Hoshino/AFP/Getty Images[/size]


[size=3]Oakland's independent police review body will examine the clashes between riot officers and protesters that left an Iraq war veteran in a critical condition as Occupy protestors prepare to rally at the same spot for a third night of protests.[/size]

[size=3]Police battled protesters following an Occupy Oakland march to demonstrate against the closing of two occupations in the city in the early hours of Tuesday morning. More than 100 people have been arrested in Oakland since police cleared a camp in Frank Ogawa plaza.[/size]

[size=3]Scott Olsen, 24, suffered a fractured skull and brain swelling after he was allegedly hit in the head by a police projectile during the clashes on Tuesday. A spokesperson for Highland hospital in east Oakland confirmed he was critically ill after being admitted on Tuesday night.[/size]

[size=3]A source at the Oakland citizen's police review board said it had not yet received a formal complaint, but would be "looking into" the circumstances surrounding Olsen's injuries. The board will decide whether to launch an official investigation over the next couple of days.[/size]

[size=3]Jay Finneburgh, an activist photographer who was at the protest, published pictures of Olsen lying bloodied on the ground, while video footage appeared to show police throwing a 'flash bang' explosive close to fellow protesters trying to provide aid.[/size]

[size=3]"[Olsen] stood behind me," Finneburgh told the Guardian. "I looked to my left and he hit the ground, and he hit it hard.[/size]

[size=3]"A woman went to look down at him, and he was bleeding from the head. She started screaming," he said.[/size]

[size=3][url="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/oct/26/occupy-oakland-protests-live#block-5"]Video footage posted to YouTube shows Olsen[/url] lying motionless in front of a police line after apparently having been hit. A group of up to 10 protesters gather around him, but a police officer can be seen throwing a device close to the group which then explodes with a bright flash and loud bang, scattering the protesters. The video then cuts to footage of protesters carrying Olsen away as he bleeds from the head.[/size]

[size=3]Olsen was taken to Highland hospital by protesters. Adele Carpenter, who knows Olsen through his involvement with anti-war groups, said she arrived at the hospital at 11pm on Tuesday night.[/size]

[size=3]Carpenter said she was told by a doctor at the hospital that Olsen had a skull fracture and was in a "serious but stable" condition. She said he had been sedated and was unconscious.[/size]

[size=3]"I'm just absolutely devastated that someone who did two tours of Iraq and came home safely is now lying in a US hospital because of the domestic police force," Carpenter told the Guardian.[/size]

[size=3]Olsen, originally from Wisconsin, had only moved to Oakland in July, and met Carpenter through his membership of Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War.[/size]

[size=3]Keith Shannon, who shares an apartment with Olsen and served with him in Iraq, said a neurosurgeon was due to assess him on Tuesday to determine whether he required surgery.[/size]

[size=3]"It's really hard," Shannon said. "I really wish I had gone out with him instead of staying home last night."[/size]

[size=3]Shannon, who is also 24, said he had seen the video footage showing Olsen lying on the floor as a police officer throws an explosive device near him.[/size]

[size=3]"It's terrible to go over to Iraq twice and come back injured, and then get injured by the police that are supposed to be protecting us," he said.[/size]

[size=3]He said Olsen had served two tours of Iraq, in 2006 and 2007. Olsen was in 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines with Shannon before leaving the military in 2010.[/size]

[size=3]Olsen moved to the San Francisco area in July and works for Opswat, a software company, living with Shannon in Daly City, just south of San Francisco.[/size]

[size=3]Shannon said Olsen was hit in the head by a tear gas canister or smoke canister shot by a police officer. He said Olsen had a curved gash on his forehead.[/size]

[size=3]Veterans for Peace said Olsen was "struck by a police projectile fired into a crowd in downtown Oakland".[/size]

[size=3]"Police in the majority of cities are acting with restraint and humanity towards the encampments, but Veterans For Peace will not be deterred by police who choose to use brutal tactics," [url="http://www.veteransforpeace.org/news_detail.php?idx=123"]the organisation said in a statement[/url].[/size]

[size=3]Oakland police confirmed at a press conference that they used tear gas and baton rounds, but said they did not use flash bang grenades. Police could not be reached for comment, but Finneburgh, who said he had been "present in many protests" where flash bang grenades had been used, said they had been deployed.[/size]

[size=3]Finneburgh said he had returned to where Olsen had originally lain injured later in the evening, and close to a pool of blood had found a beanbag round, apparently fired by police. The controversial projectile, a small fabric pillow filled with around 40 grammes of lead shot, is one of the most commonly used projectiles in US policing, [url="http://www.policeone.com/columnists/steve-ijames/articles/118328/"]though it was withdrawn for 18 years after a fatal incident in 1971[/url].[/size][/quote]
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Ben Hall Of Fame

Ben

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[url="http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/governmentrequests/"]http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/governmentrequests/[/url]

[quote]
[b] [url="http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/governmentrequests/US/?p=2011-06"]United States[/url][/b]
[list]
[*]We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove. Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorized in this Report as defamation requests.
[*]The number of content removal requests we received increased by 70% compared to the previous reporting period.
[*]The number of user data requests we received increased by 29% compared to the previous reporting period.
[/list]
[/quote]
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BengalRep85-9 Super Bowl Champ

BengalRep85-9

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[quote name='Ben' timestamp='1319736099' post='1051828']
[url="http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/governmentrequests/"]http://www.google.co...rnmentrequests/[/url]
[/quote]
Forget that. If you want to beat on and shoot at unarmed, peaceful demonstrators you can deal with the backlash and expect your pathetic acts to be plastered all over the web for the whole world to see.

But by all means continue to do it. It only serves to solidify the people. One day they will fight back and it wont be with signs or cameras, it will be with guns and ammo.
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Jamie_B Hall Of Fame

Jamie_B

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[quote name='BengalRep85-9' timestamp='1319756647' post='1051918']
Forget that. If you want to beat on and shoot at unarmed, peaceful demonstrators you can deal with the backlash and expect your pathetic acts to be plastered all over the web for the whole world to see.

But by all means continue to do it. It only serves to solidify the people. One day they will fight back and it wont be with signs or cameras, it will be with guns and ammo.
[/quote]


What it will do is put more people on the streets protesting.
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BengalBacker Hall Of Fame

BengalBacker

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What constitutes victory for this movement?

What might be the benefits, and consequences of victory?

Would a domino like collapse of corporations, and Wall Street be a victory?

I'm pretty sure we're all fucked regardless of what the Occupy movement, or the Tea Party movement do. In case anyone hasn't noticed, the whole shithouse seems to be going up in flames, and I don't see much possibility of putting the fire out, no matter which side of whatever fence you sit on. I think our lives are likely to change drastically in the next few years, hell maybe the next few days.

That being said, I live my everyday life as my everyday life, hoping that shit will somehow work out so that my 3 year old granddaughter will have a chance at what we all think of as a normal life. I put the world's problems in the background to deal with the day to day. I've been of the opinion for 25 to 30 years that this was inevitable anyway. I could be wrong, I hope I'm wrong. Please convince me I am wrong.

I'd like to hear everyone's top three things they think should, and can be done to preserve, and/or enhance our children and grandchildren's way of life. For me, that's what matters most. That either makes me selfish or human, your call. Very broad question intentionally.
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Tigers Johnson Hall Of Fame

|Tigers Johnson|

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[quote name='BengalBacker' timestamp='1319794946' post='1052028']
What constitutes victory for this movement?

What might be the benefits, and consequences of victory?

Would a domino like collapse of corporations, and Wall Street be a victory?

I'm pretty sure we're all fucked regardless of what the Occupy movement, or the Tea Party movement do. In case anyone hasn't noticed, the whole shithouse seems to be going up in flames, and I don't see much possibility of putting the fire out, no matter which side of whatever fence you sit on. I think our lives are likely to change drastically in the next few years, hell maybe the next few days.

That being said, I live my everyday life as my everyday life, hoping that shit will somehow work out so that my 3 year old granddaughter will have a chance at what we all think of as a normal life. I put the world's problems in the background to deal with the day to day. I've been of the opinion for 25 to 30 years that this was inevitable anyway. I could be wrong, I hope I'm wrong. Please convince me I am wrong.

I'd like to hear everyone's top three things they think should, and can be done to preserve, and/or enhance our children and grandchildren's way of life. For me, that's what matters most. That either makes me selfish or human, your call. Very broad question intentionally.
[/quote]

1. Money out of politics
2. Balance the budget
3. Balance the trade deficit

Put as simply as I can...
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Numbers Hall Of Fame

|Numbers|

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Out of curiousity, how much does it cost to actually hold an event in Oakland as the OWS has done ? Do they have permits and a liability policy to protect the people there ? Do they pay for police monitoring and supervision and overtime ? If I was to hold an event there for whatever purpose I wanted, I would be held to alot higher standard and refuse to believe that these people actually understand they undermined my support by thinking they too are above the law. Wrongs have been committed by BOTH sides. Granted the protesters do not have guns (for the most part) but they have been commiting rape and other crimes in addition to the ones being committed against them.

In regards to Scott Olsen, shame on you Oakland PD and shame on you Mayor Jean Quan. Blame Carson Palmer...

Google search "occupy wall street"AND"rape" to understand just how many rapes are allegedly being committed by the peaceful protesters.
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Jamie_B Hall Of Fame

Jamie_B

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:lol: Blame Carson Palmer.


My 3 things.
1. Break up the big banks, in fact reinstate Glass-Stegal, all investment banking is done by investment banks and community banks are community banks.
2. End the Fed in favor of a 4th National Bank
3. I'd love to see a return of Unions to collectively bargain for higher wages, doing that would get money back into the economy without having to do it with government spending

Sorry I have to add a 4th - publicly financed elections. Politicians answer to the people who pay for their elections these days sadly, thus if it's the taxpayers paying for it rather than corporations, who do you think they will work for?
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Jamie_B Hall Of Fame

Jamie_B

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Matt Tabbi has some good demands...


[url="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/my-advice-to-the-occupy-wall-street-protesters-20111012"]http://www.rollingst...esters-20111012[/url]





[quote]
[b] [color=#000000]My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters[/color][/b]

[b] Hit bankers where it hurts[/b]

[left]I've been down to "Occupy Wall Street" twice now, and I love it. The protests building at Liberty Square and spreading over Lower Manhattan are a great thing, the logical answer to the Tea Party and a long-overdue middle finger to the financial elite. The protesters picked the right target and, through their refusal to disband after just one day, the right tactic, showing the public at large that the movement against Wall Street has stamina, resolve and growing popular appeal.[/left][left][color=#000000][font=georgia][size=3]But... there's a [i]but[/i]. And for me this is a deeply personal thing, because this issue of how to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my life for years now, and it's hard for me not to see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and more dangerous. I'm guessing, for instance, that the banks were secretly thrilled in the early going of the protests, sure they'd won round one of the messaging war.[/size][/font][/color][/left][left][color=#000000][font=georgia][size=3]Why? Because after a decade of unparalleled thievery and corruption, with tens of millions entering the ranks of the hungry thanks to artificially inflated commodity prices, and millions more displaced from their homes by corruption in the mortgage markets, the headline from the first week of protests against the financial-services sector was an old cop macing a quartet of college girls.[/size][/font][/color][/left][left][color=#000000][font=georgia][size=3]That, to me, speaks volumes about the primary challenge of opposing the 50-headed hydra of Wall Street corruption, which is that it's extremely difficult to explain the crimes of the modern financial elite in a simple visual. The essence of this particular sort of oligarchic power is its complexity and day-to-day invisibility: Its worst crimes, from bribery and insider trading and market manipulation, to backroom dominance of government and the usurping of the regulatory structure from within, simply can't be seen by the public or put on TV. There just isn't going to be an iconic "Running Girl" photo with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup or Bank of America – just 62 million Americans with zero or negative net worth, scratching their heads and wondering where the hell all their money went and why their votes seem to count less and less each and every year.[/size][/font][/color][/left][left][color=#000000][font=georgia][size=3]No matter what, I'll be supporting Occupy Wall Street. And I think the movement's basic strategy – to build numbers and stay in the fight, rather than tying itself to any particular set of principles – makes a lot of sense early on. But the time is rapidly approaching when the movement is going to have to offer concrete solutions to the problems posed by Wall Street. To do that, it will need a short but powerful list of demands. There are thousands one could make, but I'd suggest focusing on five:[/size][/font][/color][/left][left][color=#000000][font=georgia][size=3][b]1. Break up the monopolies.[/b] The so-called "Too Big to Fail" financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term "Systemically Dangerous Institutions" – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.[/size][/font][/color][/left][left][color=#000000][font=georgia][size=3][b]2. Pay for your own bailouts.[/b] A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it's supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.[/size][/font][/color]

[/left][left][color=#000000][font=georgia][size=3][b]3. No public money for private lobbying.[/b] A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can't do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress.[/size][/font][/color]

[/left][left][color=#000000][font=georgia][size=3][b]4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers.[/b] For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year.[/size][/font][/color]

[/left][left][color=#000000][font=georgia][size=3][b]5. Change the way bankers get paid.[/b] We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company's long-term health – no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world.[/size][/font][/color]

[/left][left][color=#000000][font=georgia][size=3]To quote the immortal political philosopher Matt Damon from [i]Rounders[/i], "The key to No Limit poker is to put a man to a decision for all his chips." The only reason the Lloyd Blankfeins and Jamie Dimons of the world survive is that they're never forced, by the media or anyone else, to put all their cards on the table. If Occupy Wall Street can do that – if it can speak to the millions of people the banks have driven into foreclosure and joblessness – it has a chance to build a massive grassroots movement. All it has to do is light a match in the right place, and the overwhelming public support for real reform – not later, but [i]right now[/i] – will be there in an instant.[/size][/font][/color]
[/quote]





[/left]
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