By Jessica Samakow for The Huffington Post

Amy Zvovushe, 31, had a new job (as a senior program manager at a marketing company in Connecticut) and a new baby on the way. But instead of colleagues sending congratulatory cards and putting stork decorations on her desk, Zvovushe says that when she announced her pregnancy at work, she was asked to resign. The company didn’t offer her maternity leave because she had only worked there for four months, and the federal Family Medical Leave Act says employees must work for a full year to be eligible.

After she got this news, Zvovushe had a later conversation with human resources. ABC News reports that she recorded this discussion without telling them, and caught several alarming statements on tape. For example, the executive said:
“You don’t receive protection under FMLA so technically if you don’t come to work… it doesn’t matter whether you’re having you’re appendix out or you’re having a baby or you’re dealing with a sick person you didn’t show up for work on Monday.”

Zvovushe’s attorney, Jack Tuckner, then contacted the company to straighten out the situation, and likely because Zvovushe had the HR rep’s harsh words recorded, they agreed to grant her leave to care for her baby.

“Because they were able to fix it, they say no harm, no foul,” her attorney said to ABC.

But Zvovushe is only one of many pregnant woman discriminated against at work. In the U.S., women are fired every day for being pregnant, Dina Bakst, a lawyer and founder/president of A Better Balance: The Work and Family Legal Center wrote in a recent Op-ed for the NY Times. She blames the gap between discrimination laws and disability laws for the injustice.

Federal and state laws ban discrimination against pregnant women in the workplace. And amendments to the Americans With Disabilities Act require employers to provide reasonable accommodations to disabled employees (including most employees with medical complications arising from pregnancies) who need them to do their jobs. But because pregnancy itself is not considered a disability, employers are not obligated to accommodate most pregnant workers in any way.

Considering three-quarters of the women who enter the work force will become pregnant, Bakst calls for action. She highlights New York State Senator Liz Krueger and Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther of Sullivan County who have introduced legislation that “would require employers to provide reasonable accommodations for pregnant women whose health care providers say they need them.”

Some states have made significant progress. According to NY Times, “as of 2010, seven states, including California, had passed laws requiring private employers to provide at least some accommodations.” And many companies — including those on Working Mother Magazine’s list of top 100 companies for mothers — work to create flexible, supportive environments for pregnant women, even if the law doesn’t require them to.

Jeannette Cox, a law professor at the University of Dayton, is also fighting for pregnant women’s rights in the workplace. She argues that pregnancy should be considered a disability. Though pregnant woman are covered under the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, some protections under the ADA don’t apply to pregnant women and Cox says it’s time for a change.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is scheduled to host a hearing about pregnancy discrimination this month, ABC news reports.

A group of moms have brought city’s attention to the manner in which Facebook confirms to the otherwise sexist norms in our society when it comes to breastfeeding rights.

Although the protests took place at Facebook office lobby at 335, Madison Avenue, Facebook officials did not feel it necessary to address the gathering, or more importantly, the issue. Emma Kwasnica, the woman who launched this global movement against Facebook believes that the employees of this powerful corporation are “running rougue” and deleting images owing to their personal sensitivity. However the reality is, by turning indifferent to her protests, Facebook has been consistently adhering to the patriarchal standards. And there lies the greater crisis.

The online moral czars have flexibilities otherwise deemed illegal. For instance, in public, a women in New York has the right to breastfeed her baby in any public or private place where she has a right to be. This includes stores, day care centers, doctors’ offices, restaurants, parks, movie theaters and many other places. No one can tell her to leave any of these places because she is breastfeeding, and no one can tell her to breastfeed in a bathroom, a basement or a private room. Likewise, at work, the employer cannot discriminate against a woman for choosing to breastfeed her baby or for pumping milk at work.

Facebook and other social media which self-regulate for the most part, need to be not just politically correct, but more importantly, socially responsible by following women’s rights laws. Or stricter regulations need to be in place for private corporations, irrespective of whether they claim to be freedom loving virtual/social media networks.

Following news reporting by Cassandra Garrison for Metro details the protest, and its impact –

An international movement landed in NYC this morning as a small group of women carried their young children inside the building that houses Facebook’s NYC office, demanding that the social networking giant leave their breastfeeding photos alone.
The “nurse-in” was planned after Vancouver mom Emma Kwasnica launched an online campaign, calling on Facebook to stop deleting images of mothers nursing their children. Kwasnica said Facebook removed her photos numerous times, despite the company’s claim that it does not delete images unless they show an exposed breast that is not being used for feeding.
The group of moms who attended the NYC “nurse-in” insist that even though the photos are acceptable by Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, they are continually removed. They met in the lobby of 335 Madison Avenue, the building where Facebook operates on two floors. The small contingent was first asked to leave but later returned to the lobby where security allowed them to stay. The moms nursed their children and chanted lines like, “Facebook, Facebook, don’t be mean — breastfeeding is not obscene.”
“People view breasts as this sexual thing,” said Wendy Ledesma, an Astoria mom who has a 17-month-old son. “We need to get over that as a society and realize that breastfeeding is normal, natural, beautiful and important.”
No one from Facebook came downstairs to address the moms, but a spokesperson blamed the deleted photos on human error. Each photo that gets flagged as offensive is reviewed by an employee who then decides whether the photo will be deleted and the user’s account frozen.

By SUSANNA KIM for Good Morning America (ABC News)

Amy Zvovushe, a senior program manager with a marketing company in Connecticut, alleges her employer asked her to resign instead of providing leave after learning she was pregnant, a claim of discrimination that too many women in the U.S. are forced to endure, advocates say.

Zvovushe, 31, said because she had worked at the company for four months her employer said she was not protected under the federal Family Medical Leave Act, which says employees must be on the job for at least a year to be eligible for up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave a year.

Having left her previous job to join the company, Ryan Partnership, on June 1, Zvovushe said she was in disbelief she would not have a job after she had her baby.

After she told one human resources employee that she was pregnant on Sept. 23, Zvovushe said she met with two human resource executives who told her she would have to resign because she had not been with the company, which has over 50 employees, for 12 months.

Hear: Recorded Conversation That Allegedly Shows Pregnancy Discrimination

“The story shows how shockingly uninformed some supervisors are as to what constitutes pregnancy discrimination,” Joan Williams, law professor and director of the Center for Work Life Law at the University of California, Hastings, said.

Jack Tuckner Interviewed by ABC News

Seven states, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Michigan, have passed laws requiring private employers to provide at least some accommodations for pregnant women to keep their jobs. Two states, Alaska and Texas, require certain public employers to provide some accommodations. Legislators in New York introduced a bill this week to provide accommodations for pregnant workers.

Dina Bakst, a lawyer, founder and president of A Better Balance: The Work and Family Legal Center, said many pregnant workers who ask for accommodations get pushed out the door.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is scheduled to host a hearing about pregnancy discrimination this month in Washington, D.C., in which Williams is testifying.

According to a recording on Oct. 31, Zvovushe alleges one human resources executive said, “The issue is in terms of what the legal employment action is, we have a job for you, you don’t receive protection under FMLA so technically if you don’t come to work doesn’t matter whether you’re having you’re appendix out or you’re having a baby or you’re dealing with a sick person you didn’t show up for work on Monday.”

“So in effect you haven’t come back into the office, so that’s why we view it as a voluntary resignation,” the woman in the recording said. “Because you are voluntarily not coming here because you are taking the time to have a baby, it’s not protected time within the law so that’s how we treat it.”

Zvovushe said she recorded the conversation without the executives’ knowledge. When her attorney contacted the company about the allegations of discrimination, she said they granted her leave to have her baby, born in January.

“Because they were able to fix it, they say no harm, no foul,” Jack Tuckner, her attorney said. “Many women, particularly inner city women, quit, because they’ve been told these things by a human resources director and vice president. They just hope women will just ride off into the sunset.”

Tuckner said his client has filed a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the State of Connecticut Commission on Human Rights.

He called it “sexist irony” that the federal Family Medical Leave Act was enacted to protect working women, not for use by employers to discard pregnant employees when their babies come to term.

Michael Soltis, an attorney for the company, said the company declined to comment on the audio and the situation because they are a pending legal matter.

Williams said it is illegal to discriminate against pregnant women, who have to be treated the same as those with the same inability or ability to work.

D.L. Ryan Companies, Ltd., said in a statement, that it is an equal opportunity employer and over 60 percent of its workforce is female “with a strong representation in senior levels.”

“The company is proud of the opportunities and benefits it provides its employees,” the statement said. “D.L. Ryan provides its employees pregnancy leave according to state and federal law. Concerning the pending charge of pregnancy discrimination, D.L. Ryan has provided leave in accordance with state and federal law in that situation as well. The company is confident that when the Connecticut Human Rights and Opportunities Commission reviews the facts, it will conclude that the company has complied with the law and dismiss the charge.”

Cynthia Calvert, Center for Work Life Law’s senior advisor for family responsibilities discrimination, said it was not enough that the employer said it would also not give time off for recovery from an appendectomy. In order not to violate the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the employer must actually practice that policy if it treats pregnant women similarly.

“In other words, if the employer has a “no medical leave for any reason” policy but in fact does not enforce it and allows people to retain their jobs while out for a couple of weeks on medical leave, then the employer has to let women go out on equivalent maternity leaves under the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act,” Calvert said.

Connecticut’s employment discrimination statute also states women have to be given a reasonable leave of absence for “disability resulting from pregnancy,” which Calvert said she interprets as giving pregnant women a reasonable leave of absence for childbirth and recovery.

Women’s Media Center’s exclusive:

The author, professor emerita of Penn State University, describes the culture that produced the recent scandal—and suggests a path to a needed focus on the victims of such abuse.

This book and its empathetic engagement will be a treasure to anyone working with victims of sexual abuse. And if we want to truly understand the failure in the Penn State scandal, we will look closely to its victims.

I was once summoned to my dean’s office to justify comments I made in a radio interview upon publication of my book Prostitution of Sexuality (1995). I had said that one in ten women in the United States is raped, and that figure—which has since doubled—was an undercount because only 10 percent of rapes are reported. The interview angered a Penn State alumni, who demanded that the university president take action against me. In all seriousness, the president forwarded the complaint to my dean, who expected me to explain myself. My answer didn’t satisfy apparently so I was called in once again. This time I told the administration that the call was likely coming from a sexual predator, and I walked out of the dean’s office.
Penn State caters to an alumni whose donations are a major source of income, and whose presence is a major segment of the crowd that fills the 100,000-plus capacity football stadium every home game. In such an atmosphere, coach Joe Paterno, as the lead draw for alumni contributions, was beyond question. So, for a time, was Rene Portland, the Penn State women’s basketball coach whose explicit “No Lesbians” team policy and attendant sexual harassment wreaked havoc on many young women’s lives and college careers. When Penn State, under pressure from feminist and lesbian/gay rights groups, mandated sexual harassment training for all coaches in the 1990s, Paterno and Portland, with the arrogance of the untouchable, showed up for only the last 15 minutes of the program.

More:

Stereotypical views of women are alive and very much shaping the agenda: The male list mostly celebrates achievement. In contrast, Sweetie, the panda, is in the company of two women who alleged rape and sexual assault; one woman released after being arrested on suspicion of murder; two nominated because they became wives and a US marine who had a date with Justin Timberlake.

From Guardian -

The inclusion of Sweetie the panda on the BBC’s female Faces of the Year 2011 list has ricocheted around the world, trending on Twitter and given birth to #realwomenoftheyearlist. Globally, so far, nominations have been dominated by “my mum”, “my mom” and “mi madre”. Girls know who loves them best.

The male list mostly celebrates achievement. In contrast, Sweetie is in the company of two women who alleged rape and sexual assault; one woman released after being arrested on suspicion of murder; two nominated because they became wives and a US marine who had a date with Justin Timberlake.

For fear that Sweetie’s inclusion might have done us all a good turn by lifting the bamboo curtain to reveal – surprise! surprise! – that in some institutions in the land stereotypical views of women are alive and very much shaping the agenda, the girls were swiftly instructed not to lose their sense of humour: a familiar ruse. The remark that really hit the international funny bone on Twitter, for instance, was by “campaigner”. He or she tweeted: “#I’m rather torn on pandagate. These things are never just black and white.” Well, maybe we can settle for a very dark shade of charcoal grey then?

One “lighthearted list” is only a drop in the bucket. However, the bucket easily overflows, as the drops relentlessly rain down, intent on establishing the essentialist view that “men are from Mars and women are from Venus”. Boys will be boys and girls will be… well, neurotic, self-hating, domineering, scheming, frivolous, insecure, vain and given excessive privileges over men, who are sinking into crisis. And that’s just what (some) women say.

At Women’s Rights NY, we have awarded our Annual “Women of the Year” recognition to the following four exemplary feminists –

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the 24th and current President of Liberia won a decisive victory in the reelection of 2011. She has the distinction of being the first and currently the only elected female head of state in Africa.

She received the African Gender Award in 2011, and was the co-recipient of Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for her “non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

Ellen Sirleaf has in the past represented Organization of African Unity (OAU), the Pan-African anticolonial agency that supported, trained and provided weapons and military bases to colonized nations fighting for independence. It was thanks to OAU that South Africa during Apartheid was expelled from World Health Organization.

When Sirleaf was elected in 2005, she had promised to rule just one term, but she decided to contest again last year and continues to rule Liberia as its most illustrious of presidents. As the president, she has had enormous success in fronts of national debt relief. She has criticized international military interventions in Libya, and has led historical investigations into national civil conflicts in Liberia with an intent to identify the people associated with former warring factions.

However, not everything is rosy with Sirleaf’s growth and progress. She has been viewed as pro-western in many instances. Her opponents claim that the Nobel Prize was awarded to her a couple of months before the election so as to ensure her re-election. Her first foreign visit was meant to restore friendship with Côte d’Ivoire, a traditionally pro-capitalist member of the former OAU. Under pressure, she also agreed to withdraw her stance regarding Libya and joined the chorus in calling for Gaddafi’s head.

Notwithstanding controversies, being an African woman leader, she has been acknowledged by Newsweek magazine as one of the top ten best leaders of the world. Time magazine paid her tribute as one of the top ten female leaders.

Lidia Gueiler Tejada

Lidia Gueiler Tejada

Lidia Gueiler Tejada died on May 9, 2011. She was Bolivia’s first female president and only the second female president in the entire western hemisphere (if at all Argentina’s Isabel Pero’s widow-card is accounted for).

Unlike any other female political leader in the Americas, Lidia Gueiler was fiercely revolutionary in her politics. She joined the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) in 1948, the most important political party in the 20th Century Bolivia.

Lidia Gueiler’s contributions to feminist causes in Latin America are unparalleled. Three years after she joined the Revolutionary Left Movement, she became the most formidable social rights activist in Latin America when she led 26 women on an eight-day hunger strike to win the release of their sons and husbands, who were being held as communist political prisoners.

After the MNR was toppled from power in 1964, Gueiler spent many years in exile. She was elected president of the lower legislature in Bolivia upon her return. After a series of military interventions and nationwide labor strikes, Gueiler was appointed president of Bolivia by the Bolivian congress in 1979.

A lifetime campaigner of women’s rights and progressive causes, she publicly supported the socialist leader Evo Morales in 2005 election.

Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy turned 50 in 2011. But more than this incidental turn of event for her, there was a more conscious decision taken by the Booker Prize winning progressive writer. She declared herself to be “a Maoist sympathizer”. In an interview to The Guardian, she endorsed any means possible to bring about revolutionary changes.

Guerrillas use violence directed against the state forces and at times innocent civilians sustain injuries and deaths. When Roy was asked to clarify if she condemned such violence, she was forthright: “I don’t condemn it any more. If you’re an adivasi [tribal Indian] living in a forest village and 800 CRP [Central Reserve Police] come and surround your village and start burning it, what are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to go on hunger strike? Can the hungry go on a hunger strike? Non-violence is a piece of theatre. You need an audience. What can you do when you have no audience? People have the right to resist annihilation.”

Betty Ford

Betty Ford

Betty Ford died on July 8, 2011. She was more than a First Lady. Through her contributions to women’s rights movements, she set precedents as a First Lady unafraid of taking on politically sensitive issues.

Betty Ford raised awareness about breast cancer following her mastectomy in 1974. She also drew from her personal experiences to politicize issues when she raised awareness of addiction following her battle with alcoholism.

As a pioneering feminist of her time, she actively supported Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), equal pay, and women’s right to abortion. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed Betty Ford to the National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year. She opened the National Women’s Conference in Houston, Texas where she helped create the National Plan of Action.

When in 1978, the deadline for ratification of the ERA was extended from 1979 to 1982 it resulted in a march of a hundred thousand people on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. Several leading feminists including Bella Abzug, Elizabeth Chittick, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem joined Betty Ford in registering protest.

(The List: Edited by Saswat Pattanayak)

by Jack Tuckner

How’s Work? It’s Great if You’re a Member of the Lucky Sperm Club.
How’s work? How’s the job? Is it secure? Are you earning what you’re worth? How’s your work/life balance? Do you have enough time to pursue supportive recreational activities? How about your pension, do you still have one, and if you do, will it still be there for you when you need it? How are your kids’ prospects for a comfortable future? Do you have cause for concern? Now, if you’re Lady Gaga, you’re having a really good year. But, unfortunately, Lady Gaga, you’re not.

Also, if you happen to be a member of the lucky sperm club, like Paris Hilton, or, if you’re a Wall Street investment “banker,” you’re doing pretty well for yourself, too. My our office is just a block away from Wall Street—they’re doing great—Tiffany’s just opened up a beautiful new showplace right on the Street so the bankers can buy themselves some shiny new diamond baubles as a reward for intentionally crashing the economy for the rest of us.

But what about the other 98% of us in the disappearing American middle class? That’s you, by the way. Because unless you’re one of the 42 top hedge fund managers (all men, of course), who “earned” an average of $2 billion in 2010 (that’s almost $1 million dollars per hour!!) for adding so much value–unless you’re one of those guys, that’s likely what you are, a middle class person (or you were a middle class person until recently).

You work for a living, you have bills to pay, as well as massive uncertainty about your future and your kids’ future. If that’s you, and it probably is given that 95% of the country is doing relatively poorly, you and you’re family (and me and mine) are taking a serious shellacking. Why is that? And why are so many of us hoodwinked into believing silly billionaire fairy tales about tax cuts for the wealthy and their impact on jobs and employment?

I’m Jack Tuckner, a civil rights lawyer with Tuckner, Sipser, Weinstock and Sipser, a New York City law firm with a long history of advocating for working people against powerful corporate and moneyed interests, and we understand just how far most Americans are falling behind. The vast majority of us are losing ground in direct proportion to the grotesque unchecked power that transnational, nominally American corporations wield over all us, through their ability to make, or buy, the rules of the game to suit them, and to hell with America, and the real human persons, not the corporate kind of person, that makes up the beating heart and soul of America.

Corporations are Persons, Women Not So Much
What’s a corporate person? A corporate person is the Frankenstein created by the United States Supreme Court, that powerful body where five extremist judges are now in the controlling majority. That’s the Supreme Court—the highest court in the land—and it ruled in January 2010, in a landmark case known as Citizens United (vs Federal Election Commission), that corporations are “persons” under the Constitution. This disgraceful ruling radically changes the world as we know it, and all for the worse. So, why is this decision so bad for us; and why is it likely that you don’t know anything about it?

Where Have You Gone, Teddy Roosevelt?
First, what Citizens United did was to overturn a law known as the Tillman Act of 1907–Teddy Roosevelt—a real Republican-before they got nuts—signed it into law–and what the Tillman Act did was prohibit big corporate money from polluting politics and corrupting politicians—a good thing, no? But in the Citizens United case, the five right wingers on the Supreme Court intentionally twisted the meaning of the Constitution to greatly enhance the already overwhelming power of big corporate money in politics—money used to buy the allegiance of our “elected” leaders. Citizens United gives corporations the right of free speech, just like a person’s supposed to have, but now, money equals speech, so if I have billions of dollars to spend on advertising to carpet bomb the airwaves with, even if my ads are false or desperately misleading, advertising works. And corporations and the super rich may spend limitlessly and anonymously on political campaigns and candidates until the masses of impressionable viewers, readers and listeners believe whatever they’re being fed, over and over again. Citizens United puts the corrupting influence of big money in politics on steroids for the upcoming 2012 election, so unprecedented billions will be spent to spin reality to make us see what they want us to see.

So, why is it statistically probable that you don’t know much about this radical Supreme Court decision? Perhaps because the vested powers that be in politics, business and the mainstream corporate media, all march to the beat of the same interlocking Board of Director drummers, and they don’t believe that it’s important that we know the true meaning of that obscene decision, giving corporations the right of free speech, turning corporations into persons. The framers of the Constitution meant “natural” persons of course, but if corporations are persons, why can’t companies like BP, Transocean and Halliburton be sentenced to the death penalty when they cause death and destruction, just like natural persons are when they kill? Doesn’t that make sense?

So, Who’s Actually Screwed?
But who’s actually royally screwed as a result of this high court decision? We are! We’ve already had more than 30 years of tax cuts for the wealthy through the lunacy of Reagan and Bushonomics, causing the riches to travel upstream from 98% of us to the top 2% of the richest Americans, these vast sums can now be funneled into the political process to buy more politicians and further poison what’s left of our great American experiment. Any right-wing lunatic can be elevated to a position of great power, if the billionaires that want to keep it all to themselves types, and/or Big Industry money is funding him or her, with unlimited cash to spend and no need to tell the truth on the “news” anymore since the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine by Ronald Reagan, it’s easier than ever to control people and manipulate them to vote against their own interests. Listen to this example of how our mainstream media, your nightly TV news show, selectively decides what is or isn’t newsworthy: this past April, nearly 10,000 bright, young people, all wearing ready-for-prime time green hats, converged on Lafayette Park in Washington to protest against the United States Chamber of Commerce’s recently reported crimes. The Chamber of Commerce, the group says, “spends hundreds of millions each year to buy politicians, corrupt elections, create front groups and lobby Congress on behalf of polluters and corporate barons,” and these 10,000 peaceful demonstrators were also there to raise awareness about climate, environmental, and social and economic justice issues around the globe. Do you think this significant event was even shown, let alone reported, on any major media outlet? CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN or in the NY Times? Forget about it. It’s not newsworthy—we don’t need to know about it—it’s not good for us to get too riled up with disturbing information that just might get us a little peeved at the corporate status quo.
But get 26 billionaire funded, low information tea partiers in a parking lot in Amarillo with a bullhorn, a whoopee cushion, and one “Ask me about Jews” t-shirt,” and the satellite trucks line up for miles down the road.

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Say Goodbye to the Middle Class.
As the middle class gets further destroyed, the top 1% of the richest among us now control more wealth than the bottom 95% of us—combined—that’s 400 Americans control more wealth than 150 million of the rest of us— combined —and the top 1% gets endlessly richer, while the national economy and all of us in it get starved out due to the lack of shared sacrifice of our corporations, Wall Street and our richest citizens. They don’t like to pay for the commons that sustain them; they’re selfish, but then again, they laud selfishness as a virtue. Call them bastards and they say, thank you.

We The People—Remember US?
So, the 95% of us on the bottom getting shafted–is almost-all-of-us. And who are we all collectively? Well–We’re We the People—remember US?—We the People—who created this Union to Establish Justice and Promote the General Welfare? And how do we do that? Through the commons that sustain us every day—our infrastructure, the water we drink and the air we breathe, our social safety nets, our bridges, roads, rail beds, tunnels, municipal services, our education and health care system, all these instruments of a social democracy that comprise our common humanity and our love for freedom and fairness. These are the pillars that support a true civilized nation, and they’ve been neglected and left to rot, or else put on the auction block for sale to the highest corporate or foreign bidder.

Are the Rich Job’s Creators? Forget About It!
52,0000 factories closed down over the last decade–that’s not 52,000 jobs eliminated–but 52,000 factories–closed in the US during the George W. Bush years alone, and with them hundreds of thousands of good paying union jobs—millions of jobs over the last supply-side-economics-thirty-years-of-getting-ripped-off-by-the-uber-rich and the cronies that serve them. And good paying union jobs are good for all of us, because when people have money to spend, and when they spend it right here in the United States of America, and in their own communities—it’s that demand for stuff that drives economies—that’s Econ 101, despite what these lying Reaganomics guys are still peddling. And can you imagine if the products that were demanded here by a middle class that again had disposable income, were also made here in the US of A—imagine the exponential dividends of keeping it all in the family, so to speak. Can you imagine? It used to be like that, in the 1950’s when Dwight Eisenhower was President, and the tax rate on the richest was 90 percent. Bought, sold and made in America—policies that would benefit all of us, including the Thieving Class currently ruling America’s roost, and as the Supreme Court recently held, money equals speech, therefore money equals power. The more you’ve got, the more important you are; the more juice you’ve got, and so you can wield your power to buy influence over the people who are supposed to have the backs of the common citizen. America-the-Beautiful was not designed to be an Oligarchy. Remember when we were the good guys? Remember when we were the land of opportunity and Justice for all? Land of the free, home of the brave, or is it home of the sociopathic bully, I forget. Even after twenty years of Reaganomics, remember when it still used to feel good to be us? How after 2001—just ten years ago–we all drove around in our cars beeping our horns and crying in solidarity while flying double-barreled American flags from our antennas? Most of us aren’t flying those flags anymore. What happened? Who’s fault is it that we’ve been laid so low?

With all that cash for the very wealthiest Americans (many of whom made it the old fashioned way—they scammed it from the rest of us), with all that vast gilded wealth, still–child poverty jumped ten percent between 2008 and 2009, one in five children live in poverty–of the 24 most developed nations in the world we ranked dead last in child poverty—‘cause for 46 million of us, that’s how we’re living; 25 million Americans can’t find jobs, two million Americans are homeless; 45 million Americans need food stamps to live—that’s 1 in 7 Americans—on its way to 1 in 6 Americans real soon. 60 million Americans don’t have health insurance, yet the CEO of United Health Care insurance company got paid $100 million last year alone, and more than 100 other United Health executives earned more than $1 million last year, yet United Health simultaneously denied claims for sick children. They fight you when you ask them to provide what you paid them to provide. A For-profit health insurance industry, that skims 30% off the top for itself and provides no health care. What a great idea! A health care system run by gangsters! Nice racket, if you can get away with it.

People being thrown off Medicaid, dying ‘cause they can’t get their organ transplants, while hundreds and millions of dollars are gifted back in welfare payments to the corporations and millionaires and billionaires who run them, so they can stash their cash it in the Caymen Islands where their “American” companies are incorporated, to enable them to dodge all US taxes, of course. They could care less about America. Don’t patriots want to invest in the country they profess to love? How about just paying your fair share, boys?

XXXXXX

Get Your Ass Out of Kindergarten and Get Back to the Factory
In our current woeful state of economic affairs, 11 million people are slated to lose access to primary health care in community health centers, 5 million jobs have been sent oversees where it’s more profitable for the Investor Class to pay someone 22 cents an hour rather than keep the jobs at home; and we now have bills introduced in legislatures all over this country to eliminate child labor laws—Hello–bills have been introduced in American legislatures to eliminate child labor laws, so that there’ll be less competition for higher wages, which will drive wages down. You see, an 11 year old will gladly work for three bucks an hour; offer him minimum wage, it sends him into paroxysms of joy. How can you compete with that? Eliminate child labor laws—get the kids back in the factories—where they belong. Get your little ass out of kindergarten and get down in that factory—you know how many grown ups would love your job? You’re an ungrateful, rotten kid.

US Manufacturing is down from 27.5% of the workforce involved in making things here in 1950, down to 6.9% in 2008; private sector union memberships lost 834,000 members just last year, bringing membership down to 7.2% of the private-sector work force, compared with 20% of the workforce in the early 1980’s;

Let More of Our Kids Get Cancer, as the Republicans Want?

The Environmental Protection Agency is poised to lose 30% of its funding, so more of our kids will get cancer from the deregulation of heavy industries that pollute our air and water with carbon emissions and nuclear and chemical waste; cuts to spending for the Women, Infant and Children nutrition program that helps reduce low weight birth rates, can you believe that? Cuts to the Women, Infant and Children nutrition program! Cuts to children’s hospitals, draconian cuts to student loans programs and cuts to Pell grants which help bright kids go to college when they can’t afford it. And who can afford to pay $250,000 for a bachelor’s degree in a private college anymore? Thomas Jefferson said that the fundamental thing that would make America great is a free education for all who have the ability and desire. I mean how stupid are we?

Senior centers are closing throughout the nation, tens of thousands are losing the lifeline of unemployment benefits (we’re the only developed nation in the world—the only member of 34 nation OECD that throws people off the unemployment rolls while they’re still unemployed), and Wall Street banks continue to foreclose on more than one million homes per year, the same Wall Street banksters that destroyed the economy in the first place, and are now hiring robo-signers to lie, cheat and steal their way through the foreclosure process in Court to get people thrown out of their homes onto the street.

If You’re Old, That’s Your Fault and That’s Your Problem
Social security (our retirement accounts) is under attack from the robber barons who want to gamble our savings in their Casino, and despite the lies these Economic Royalists and their PR flaks in the media tell, social security hasn’t lost a dime in almost eighty years, and it did exactly what it was designed to do–save tens of millions of people from the indignity of impoverishment and needless suffering in old age.
You know–old people–our grandparents, our parents, and us, sooner than you think. And social security did this with a fixed 3% overhead cost. You know what those Wall Street guys are gonna charge us for their service and protection if they get their hands on social security? Trust me, we can’t afford the vig.

But wait. There’s more. 218,000 kids to be kicked out of the Head Start program; cops and other essential public employees being fired by the thousands, and yet, we’re still giving welfare to millionaires and billionaires and the corporations that serve them—billions in cash give backs, tax credits, subsidies and refunds. Steal from the poor to give to the rich. Outright corruption and insanity. The lowest effective tax rates for the wealthy since the 1920’s, and the most tax loopholes for corporations. Exxon Mobile had the most profitable year in its history last year and it paid how much in federal taxes? Zero. Actually, it got three billion dollars back in tax credits that our Congress just voted this past March to give them yet again, three billion dollars cash back into Big Oil’s pockets, even though they all tell us we’re in such dire financial straits. Socialism for the rich, Capitalism for the poor.

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Bank of America Paid Nothing in Taxes Last Year–How Much Did You Pay?
In 2009, Bank of America, not only paid nothing, nada, zero in federal taxes, it also received a tax refund of $3.5 billion, even though it reported $4.3 billion in profits, because Bank of America has more than 100 off shore tax havens to protect its money from the exposure of paying its fair share into the common coffer used to pay our country’s bills. Is that patriotic? Is that right? Henry David Thoreau said, “It is not so desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.” Are such fundamental gaps in economic fairness right or just?

25% of US corporations paid no federal taxes last year at all, and our richest few citizens, the actual capitalists among us (that’s not you, by the way), paid an approximately 15% effective marginal tax rate on their income, as they can structure that income as capital gains and dividend payment checks, which they can then wait for while sitting around their pools. That’s way less an effective tax rate paid by you, and me, ‘cause we actually work for a living, and can’t afford a lobbyist. And they want to do away with even having to pony up that little bit. So, how do we let them get away with robbing us so blind?

Now, first, bear in mind, historically, America always thrived as a nation during times of higher taxation on the wealthiest among us, as we did from the 1930’s until the 1980’s, when Ronald Reagan lowered the tax rate on the wealthiest from approximately 70% to 28%, and it’s been four decades of more or less the same failed, heads-we-win, tails-you-lose, totally-made-up-out-of-thin-air-supply-side-drivel, leading us to the crazy precipice where we hang today, where the richest get away with gorging themselves at a sumptuous banquet while telling the rest of us to just go ahead and eat cake.

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Three Factors That Created the Current Shit-Storm We’re In – Part 1
This perfect storm of greed and immorality was created by the confluence of several relatively recent factors.

The first factor–is our utterly bogus “free trade” treaty nonsense that’s been practiced over the last 40 years–another one of those Chamber of Commerce canards that no one really talks about in the mainstream media—because Big Corporate Media likes it the way it is. Yet, Clearly, you’ve noticed that we don’t actually make anything here in America anymore? How can we expect to be a great nation, when nothing’s actually produced here, except maybe smoke and mirrors? Why do you think that is? Some of us actually can remember when we were proud that something was “Made In America.” Those of us old enough to remember the times we call “BCC” (Before Corporate Culture) can still remember the commercials that told us to “Buy American,” and to “Look For The Union Label?” Is anything that’s sold in WalMart made in the United States of America? Almost nothing. Speaking of almost nothing, that’s how many American made products are sold in the Smithsonian Museum gift shop in Washington, DC, including the statuettes of all our former American presidents—they’re all made in China—that’s China the dictatorship, by the way. Doesn’t that sound like a serious Travesty of Trade that needs addressing? There’s no balance—it’s not free trade—we’re the only one who gave up “protectionism.” President Obama’s Jobs Czar, General Electric’s CEO Jeffrey Immelt, recently announced that GE would be moving the headquarters of its 115 year old X-Ray division to Beijing—he’s the Jobs Czar, he’s one of the jobs creators, right—yes, he’s creating them, but for the Chinese not for us.

Free Trade Ain’t Free—Isn’t it Obvious by Now?
American manufacturing has been completely decimated; entire American industries have been put out of business. So, who benefits from “free trade,” which is neither free, nor actually trade as most of us understand that concept? Large transnational corporations benefit, and the few men who run them, and the top shareholders who profit handsomely if they can pay someone pennies an hour for labor in China compared with our relatively exorbitant minimum wage of seven bucks and change an hour. We need a sane trade policy again—which means we need Tariffs such as we used to have in place until the corporations came on the scene during Reagan’s corporate counterrevolution—Tarrifs—Tarrifs paid for almost everything for the first 200 years of our Republic—and corporations paid 25% more than they do now—we didn’t have to take food out of the mouths of sick orphans to balance the budget. What we have now is that great sucking sound that Ross Perot predicted, of all our jobs and prosperity leaving the country, though instead of on foot to Mexico, most leave the US on private jets; first stop, the Bahamas to sock away some tax-free cash.

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Three Factors That Created the Current Shit-Storm We’re In – Part 2

The second factor in this maelstrom (or male storm) of cultural regression, is the Big Bucks factor—which came about as a result of the 1999 repeal of the Glass Steagall Act, which since 1933 when it was enacted, prohibited commercial banks from collaborating with brokerage or investment banks that gamble with other people’s money. Capishe? Do you what I’m talking about? This slick deregulation allowed Wall Street to get drunk with power and go on a gambling spree with our money, all the while insuring their bets, hedging them on the side, so they’d still win even when we lost, and then, cause they’re such nice, rich guys, and especially cause they’re the best buddies and hefty campaign contributors to the professional politicians in Washington, we bailed their butts out with our own tax money to the tune of almost a trillion dollars–with no questions asked. And what do they do after they blow it all like dopey drunken sailors on their first R and R in Bangkok, they flip us the bird and create for themselves a new banner year in phony profits and a hundred forty billion dollars in bonuses—for a job well done, eh, boys? Keep up the good work. You do Ayn Rand proud. Wall Street’s roaring back, the newspapers say. How did that happen? And what are they roaring about? What did they produce, save for emptiness and suffering. Isn’t this level of unalloyed corruption fascinating? The worst economic downturn and poverty in the country since 1928, with way worse to come, and caused by a broad-based banking industry fraud, where all the Big Banks were knowingly taking mismarked mortgage-backed securities; dangerous, toxic subprime loans, chopping them up and then re-packaging them as triple A-rated investments, and then selling them to state pension funds, insurance companies and foreign banks. The corpse of their last victim, the real estate market, still rots openly on Main Street, but the banksters on Wall Street didn’t miss a beat before lining their pockets with the new phony bubble profits of their current victim, the commodities market, while the rest of us are left slack-jawed in awe of their conscience-free gall.

There’s so much money in these huge cartel industries of Big Finance, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Insurance and our Hyper Military Industrial Complex, and they pay starting salaries of $375,000 to $2 million dollars per year, to 37,000 lobbyists (there were only a few hundred lobbyists prior to Ronald Reagan’s presidency), and these 37,000 lobbyists ply our elected representatives with gifts, campaign contributions, trips, women (and men), and high stakes big money pressure, so they’ll be assured that these politicians will be economically obliged to do their bidding. Say Hello to the new American Profitocracy. The problem for us is, we can’t afford to buy these guys off. Certainly not individually, and that’s why they’re intent on breaking the unions, the one place left for progressives to coalesce; an organized body where the whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts. Our elected leaders in Washington are supposed to do the people’s business, not the billionaires’ business, but more and more these guys make me think of the film, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where Butch says of the railroad company owner who foils Butch’s robbery attempt by installing elaborate security on his money train, and Butch says in frustration, “If he’d just pay me what he’s spending to try to make me stop robbing him, I’d stop robbing him.” That’s what our politicians say about us, in effect; if they’d just pay us to stop screwing them, we’d stop screwing them. But us natural persons don’t have the resources to compete with those big ol’ corporate persons, with their very loud and very green “speech.”

Three Factors That Created the Current Shit-Storm We’re In – Part 3

The third factor in our, how-did-we-get-to-be-so-screwed formula, was the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine by Ronald Reagan, which removed the penalties for news organizations that lie. That allowed money to pollute the business of news reporting, creating the bottom line driven need for infotainment to replace the sometimes inconvenient and harsh reality of hard, true news, and it opened the door for baldly ideological organizations such as Fox “Faux” News to lie through its collectively corrupt teeth.

For example, this past February, the state of Wisconsin drew one hundred thousand people to protest Tea Party Governor Scott Walker’s fight to eliminate collective bargaining rights for public workers, and to make it easier for the Governor to transfer public property to big campaign donors like the Koch Brothers in no-bid deals. The biggest political rally in the history of Wisconsin and the biggest labor rally in the history of the United States, and it was joined by rallies in solidarity in the capitals of all 50 states, and the mainstream corporate media did not report it—they didn’t even see it—the corporate media just doesn’t know how to wrap its head around such human rights stirrings, and mostly because of its pure profit ethos–the managing editors and owners are all entrenched and wealthy bigwigs beholden to the transnational shareholder, where profit motives underscore all decisions involving the dissemination of information, which is, of course, nuts.

You see, the corporate news and entertainment industry have interlocking or shared boards of directors with giant parent companies whose sole mission is to make as much money as possible under whatever conditions are most conducive to that one prime directive. Money. It’s all about the money—Stupid–it’s all become just a business—we’re America, Inc. And we’re losing our soul in the process.

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Fox “So-Called” News—Our Very Own “Matrix” Machine
The corporate media create a through-the-looking-glass inverted reality at the behest of the Privileged Class to spin the story as directed. Fox “So-called News, for example, wanted to air their Big Buck Biased view that the demonstrators in Wisconsin were violent thugs so that their viewers would dis-identify with the teachers, and other public and civil servant demonstrators and their righteous mission, but unfortunately, reality conspired against Fox, because the Wisconsin demonstrations were entirely peaceful. The police were joining the demonstrators in solidarity. But no worries, Fox just used footage from a different, much angrier demonstration, in order to give the impression (also called lying) that the peaceful union protestors were violent hoods. The only problem with this footage was, there were palm trees in the background, because that demonstration actually took place God knows when or where, but too bad if it’s a blatant lie.

Now, James O’Keefe is a Rethuglican operative who used hidden cameras, tricks and deceitful editing to destroy the not-for-profit organization ACORN, and then he was allowed to do it again through lies and trick video editing to attack Planned Parenthood and National Public Radio, and the mainstream media reported this known trickster as if he were a legitimate source. Spreading Lies and Disinformation Works—and it’s all driven by out of control corporate money that’s indistinguishable from the Republican Party and unfortunately, most of our Congress, as these guys and gals leave government and immediately land cushy jobs in the industries that sponsored and bribed them when they were supposed to be representing their real constituents—the natural persons in their communities.

They have so many well paid spokesmodels, whereas the Progressives (you know, the sane good guys and gals among us) have so little money by comparison, and so only the very few have the resources and courage to stand ready, willing and able to speak truth to this level of runaway Plutocratic Power. They’ve got us seriously outgunned.

In the film, The Matrix, humans lost control of the artificial intelligence they created, and this Frankenstein Monster created a virtual world for what was left of humanity—but it was a mirage—a computer-generated dream world created to keep humans under control, as the machines used people as batteries to fuel them. People lived their entire life spans unconscious in a vat of electrolytic goo, as their life energy was harvested for bio-electricity. Cool. The world that humans think they know, is merely a mental projection of their digital selves, only existing as part of a neural, interactive simulation called the Matrix. Where people saw in their dreams a gleaming, modern American city, that real world was in fact desolate, dark and destroyed.
Today, we have our very own American Matrix, a place where the top 1% of the wealthy and greedy command the increasingly unregulated resources and power to create their own sophisticated spin machine, aided and abetted by corrupt Judges and Politicians; they’re our Matrix machines. You see, the transnational corporations and the few who profit from sending the factories and jobs to China, and the Politicians who profit from doing their bidding, need to fool us into believing it’s all about Freedom, or Terrorism, or Gay Marriage, or Illegal Aliens, or Prayer In School, or “Too Much Government,” or “Barack the scary Muslim Black Man,” or any other emotional wedge issue, distraction or lie that can fire up the average pissed off and hurting Joe and Jane in the heartland, so that they’ll march like lemmings to their ruin by following these lying pied pipers of avarice right down the garden path and over the cliff. Because that’s what these tea partying “conservatives” want, you know, less of us. Their Mother Superior, Ayn Rand, a raging madwoman who worshipped a serial killer named William Edward Hickman, tells us that most of us are parasites unworthy of love and happiness, which is reserved for the “Productive Class;” mostly members of the lucky sperm club born into wealth, who then cultivate a spirit of perfect selfishness and egoism. Ayn Rand, required reading for staffers of some of our Republican elected officials and Supreme court judges. Great.

The ability for citizens to make informed decisions is crucial for a free and functioning democracy, but our ability to do so is now threatened by a concentration in ownership of corporate media giants, which are silencing diverse voices, abandoning quality journalism and eliminating local content. Do you know, there used to be more than 5,000 independent radio stations in this country—now, just 4 companies control the majority of the most popular radio markets.

Back in 2000, Ralph Nader famously said that George Bush is a corporation disguised as a human being. That was, of course, true, and bad enough, but now, thanks to Citizens United, we have corporations disguised as human beings. We’d all likely be up in arms over this perversion of democracy and this grifting of America, but the problem is, most of us don’t know about it, as the big business media machine doesn’t want to disturb our delicate constitutions with such trifling details, as it may threaten to wake us all up out of our dumb delusions brought on by overexposure to The Billionaire Fairy Tales—by the Brothers Koch and their ilk. We’re like, America, the Reality Television Show, except that more people are watching Jersey Shore, and far more are voting on American Idol for their favorite vocalist than in national and state elections for our leaders.

For the 2012 election, President Obama is seeking to raise a billion dollars or more for his re-election bid, cause you can’t run for President in our strictly pay-to-play environment without that type of big number capital, that’s 1000 million dollars. Advertising, marketing, lobbying work–and in this sad Corporate Culture–it’s essential. If you need that kind of money to win, to buy advertising just to get the message out, you’ve got to kiss the rings of the rulers of the powerful Luxury Class; you can’t be worried about average citizens with their $100 donations—it’s survival of the richest.

If you can lie at will and have unlimited funds to promote your agenda and attack your opponent with any smear that the tabloid and corporate media will run—the more money you have–the better are your odds of winning. And the lies work–like with ACORN, which was basically an apolitical not for profit organization, just signing up poor people to vote. But the Republicans and their enablers knew that informed working people would not likely vote for them–they’d vote for the interests of the country and its actual citizenry, not the interests of corporations, so they sent this O’Keefe guy on a mission to infiltrate ACORN and create a fake scandalous story through lies and Photoshop editing, and even though it was immediately understood that ACORN was set up and scammed, it was too late in terms of the swift public relations fallout in our twenty four/seven gotcha news cycle—the damage was done—Congress defunded ACORN—and all over an intentional attack based on lies. But our pervasive corporate Media Matrix is primed for this type of faux infotainment, as, when O’Keefe again was up to his same dirty pool tricks against Planned Parenthood this time, no one on the major news outlets even questioned the source of these bogus allegations against Planned Parenthood, even though O’Keefe was a known con artist. “A lie,” they say, “can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.”

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Lisa Brockington, Deboralee Lorenzana and Rupert Murdoch
At Tuckner Sipser, we stand up to those same powerful and entrenched interests, on behalf of working people. Last year we represented Deboralee Lorenzana in a widely reported gender discrimination matter against Citibank, and when her then-current employer tried to silence her, Deboralee stood up to them with our support, as well as the support of widespread public scrutiny, and so they finally stood down. Then Debraleee decided that another firm could better represent her interests in the wider media, and we wished her well. Yet, the moment that occurred, the local right wing media machine, in the form of the NY Post, owned by foreign billionaire Rupert Murchoch of Fox News fame, you know, the guy who hacked the phones of 9/11 victims and their loved ones looking for juicy stories, placed a “sources tell us” fabrication on its Page Six gossip column, indicating that Lorenzana hired another lawyer, because she learned about a sexual harassment lawsuit by a former employee of this firm accusing me of outlandish behavior. Now, this lawsuit was based on an intentional conflation of my personal life with my professional life, in an effort to embarrass me, which it surely did, although the events described in the complaint never happened. And the allegations by the NY Post two years later were lies, but certainly convenient for its muckraking, hatchet job purpose. The woman who brought the lawsuit against me in 2008, Lisa Brockington, who has since changed her name to “Lisa Rambo”, voluntarily withdrew her sexual harassment complaint due to “misunderstandings and miscommunications” several months after she filed the case. And that was it. But, here’s the point, the moment we stand up to corporate greed, discriminatory treatment, sexism, unfairness and corruption, the moment we speak truth to power and hold the feet of the Powerful to the fire, they trot out tabloid perfect headlines to embarrass and shame and undermine this women’s rights law firm’s work and credibility, and unfortunately, such tactics work, of course. As ACORN learned, you really can’t shake the smear of false allegations, even when everyone knows it’s not true, as long as the internet continues to blare the headlines and doctored photos relentlessly and forever. As the recently discovered document from attorneys for the US Chamber of Commerce reveal, the right’s modus operandi is, and this is a quote, “to Discredit, Confuse, Shame, Combat, Infiltrate, Fracture.” These are US Chamber of Commerce lawyers indicating that their professional mission is to “Discredit—Confuse—Shame—Combat—Infiltrate and Fracture.” And why will they resort to such tactics? To “mitigate the effect of adversarial groups.” It’s a war out there—Brothers and Sisters–and Truth and Fairness doesn’t matter to Them—they want all the marbles and to hell with this country.

The right wing corporate media machine in its many guises will do whatever it can to silence individuals and organizations that promote social and economic justice, as they don’t want Americans to see the actual wormy heart and putrid underbelly of the men behind the GOP curtain. Just like the machines in the Matrix dispatched Agents to destroy those who threatened to reveal the dream world as a Hoax–Our Corporations and its Enablers–who’ve stolen the democracy out from under us, understand that without the dirty tricks and FOX-type News disinformation to keep everyone bamboozled, the jig would quickly be up. This is a lot worse than in the Movie Matrix though, cause, this sham is seriously and deadly real. We really need to be vigilant, and we’re going to have to liberate ourselves from enslavement to corporate greed, one person at a time, until our grass roots movement hits a tipping point and gets some real traction–so we can get back to some semblance of sanity in a world run by real human beings doing the people’s business, with compassion, intelligence, gratitude and respect for the general welfare of all of us, in this once great nation of ours.

Wall Street has been occupied by those representing the 99%. But what about the top 1%? How do they fare? They might be throwing cakes at the hungry masses down below, but how do they share their pies? They might be unleashing atrocities upon the huge majority of people through criminal manipulations, but how fairly do they treat each other?

A look at their annual salaries points to crucial factors of inequality and biases within the top 1% themselves. The masculine, patriarchal and sexist nature of corporate greed duly relegates its women accomplices to the inferior salary brackets. No matter if the women are in the same ranks of CEOs or Presidents, they are just paid way less. In fact, the highest paid woman Safra A. Catz (President, Oracle Corp.) earns less than any of the first 12 highest paid men! And the second highest paid woman Wellington J. Denahan-Norris (COO, Annaly Capital Management) earns less than any of the top 25 highest paid male executives.

The cumulative total earning for the first 9 months of last year was $381,105,205 for the highest paid male executives, while the cumulative total earning for the highest paid female executives for the said period was $118,233,692.

When such disparities in pay across genders have been normalized within the top echelon, it is no wonder the financial bosses of the Wall Street do not think twice about the increasing class society afflicting America today.

Here, then, is the breakdown (first 9-month period, 2010) -

Top 5 Men

Philippe P. Dauman
President and Chief Executive Officer
Viacom, Inc. (VIAB)
2010 Total Compensation: $84,469,515

Mark V. Hurd
President
Oracle Corp. (ORCL)
2010 Total Compensation: $78,362,540

Lawrence J. Ellison
Chief Executive Officer
Oracle Corp. (ORCL)
2010 Total Compensation: $77,556,015

Ray R. Irani
Executive Chairman
Occidental Petroleum Corp. (OXY)
2010 Total Compensation: $76,107,010

Thomas E. Dooley
Chief Operating Officer
Viacom, Inc. (VIAB)
2010 Total Compensation: $64,610,125

Top 5 Women

1. Safra A. Catz
President and Chief Financial Officer
Oracle Corp. (ORCL)
2010 Total Compensation: $42,095,887

2. Wellington J. Denahan-Norris
Vice Chairman, Chief Investment Officer and Chief Operating Officer
Annaly Capital Management, Inc. (NLY)
2010 Total Compensation: $23,634,800

3. Carol Meyrowitz
Chief Executive Officer
TJX Companies, Inc. (TJX)
2010 Total Compensation: $19,252,740

4. Susan M. Ivey
Former Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Reynolds American, Inc. (RAI)
2010 Total Compensation: $16,823,900

5. Marina Armstrong
Senior Vice President and General Manager
Gymboree Corp. (GYMB)
2010 Total Compensation: $16,426,365

Sources: Equilar & CNN Money.

Occupy Wall Street and Slut Walk NYC

I’m a feminist because I believe in equality based on gender.
I’m a feminist because I believe that no one has the right to touch you without your consent.
I’m a feminist because I believe that all women should have free and unfettered access to reproductive health care and abortion services.
I’m a feminist because I believe women deserve equal pay for equal work.
I’m a feminist because I believe that women should be able to wear what they want to wear without fear of being assaulted or harassed in the street.
I’m a feminist because I believe that when a woman is sexually harassed or sexually assaulted, we should be asking what the perpetrator was doing or wearing so we can catch him, not what the woman was doing or wearing, so we can blame her for inviting it.
I’m a sex-positive feminist because I believe that sex and sexuality is not the problem, lack of consent is the problem. Clothing is not consent. Consent is consent. The only person responsible for a rape, or for sexual harassment, is the rapist or the sexual harasser.

I’m a feminist because I have faith that once we individually and collectively harness our feminine energy sufficient to offset the pure masculine ethos of the unregulated corporate person, with its unlimited billionaire underwritten speech—we will get back to a relatively lush, safe and sane America where we all share in the beauty of the commons and we all share the costs of maintaining our general welfare.

My name is Jack Tuckner; I’m the co-founder of Tuckner Sipser, a women’s rights/employee rights law firm in NYC, and I want to talk about two significant and related protest gatherings that occurred simultaneously in NYC on October 1, One was SlutWalk NYC, and the other was Occupy Wall Street, but they’re both really protesting the same pathologies afflicting our body politic.

The “Slut Walk” started in Toronto when a cop told a group of female university students to “not dress like sluts in order to avoid being victimized.” This victim-blaming mentality catalyzed a long overdue movement, as sexual violence and sexual harassment are still widespread in our culture and have been for far too long.

In our Rape culture, the rapist/harasser/assaulter fails to control his own impulse to molest, violate, humiliate, harass and/or abuse a female subordinate, for example, or a woman walking down the street, or date who is raped, because he feels little to no empathy, respect or equality between himself and his target object; like Wall Street’s Ayn Randian view of living in perfect selfishness, the rapist is a sociopath, he seeks only his own gratification, and sees his victim as an object, as other, as less than, so her pain, fear, shame, or death is of no consequence to him.

Now take Wall Street culture, part and parcel of Rape culture, only on the Street, the faceless rape “victim” is the poor, the weak, the young, the old, the sick, the middle class; the female, almost all us, really—99% of us, in fact.

In Rape culture, the male cannot or will not reign in his sexual and/or gender- conflicted impulses, so he acts them out on each woman who comes within his destructive path, and in the Wall Street (rape) culture, the boys continue to rape, pillage and plunder Main Street while its enablers victim-blame teachers, cops, fire fighters, factory workers, students, Medicare recipients, immigrants, the EPA; seniors and the unemployed whose benefits are running out–these are the victims that Wall Street blames–the greedy, needy $40,000 per year worker trying to pay her bills, never mind the 2 billion dollar per year hedge fund manager who pays way less percentage of his “earnings” into the common coffer than the rest of us poor folk.

Rape culture and Wall Street culture are symptoms of Male Privilege run amok. No Yin, All Yang. All brain and balls; no heart and no soul.

As women’s rights advocates, we support Occupy Wall Street, as well as drastic changes to our criminal crony corporate culture. Women should not have to face deep cuts to the Women, Infant and Children nutrition program to cut down on low infant birth weights, so that another American company can join the other 18,000 companies incorporated in the same building in the Cayman islands to avoid paying federal taxes to help our country pay its bills. Is that patriotic?

And kids shouldn’t be kicked out of Head Start programs, and young people shouldn’t have to give up their Pell Grants and therefore college, so that the million dollar an hour hedge fund manager who wrecked the economy on purpose can continue to pay a 15% marginal tax rate on his “capital gains” cause he skims other people’s money for a living. And we can’t let these hoods in Congress get away with vilifying, scamming, investigating and destroying Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading sexual and reproductive health care provider, just because they take care of our American girls and women. Shame on those bastards.

Social, economic and gender injustice affects and poisons everything. Look at this bleak landscape we’re living in—and the reason is simple—the billionaires and giant transnational corporations increasingly own and control our commons, and they own the elected leaders through the use of 37,000 highly paid lobbyists in Washington, yet they steadfastly refuse to join us in the fight to keep the jobs in America, to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure by investing in this country they profess to love. Wall Streeters and the politicians they own are stingy, greedy, selfish, small-minded and mean-spirited, and they’re dumb too, as they apparently aspire to living filthy rich in a poor country.

As corporations are now “persons” under the Supreme Court’s grotesque 2010 ruling, yet we still can’t get the Equal Rights Amendment for women passed into law, let’s never forget that first and foremost, we must vigilantly strive to raise the status of women while lowering the status of corporations, if economic, social and gender justice is our goal.

Gladys Ricart was murdered by a former abusive boyfriend on September 26, 1999, on the day she was to wed someone else. The annual event commemorating the anniversary started in 2001. According to New York Latinas Against Domestic Violence, the idea for the March was originated by Josie Ashton, a young Dominican woman from Florida, who was moved by the murder and outraged at the media and community’s insensitive response.

Josie resigned from her job and sacrificed more than three months of her life away from her family to walk, in a wedding gown, through several states down the East Coast ending in her home state of Florida, all in an attempt to draw attention to the horrors of domestic violence.
Several organizations in New York City, including the Dominican Women’s Development Center, the Violence Intervention Program (VIP), the Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation, the Dominican Women’s Caucus and the National Latino Alliance for the Elimination of Domestic Violence, helped Josie organize the first March, which served as a send off for her 1,600-mile journey. They organized supporters in the New York metropolitan area, including the family and friend of Gladys, to join Josie on the first leg of her walk from Gladys home in New Jersey, to the Church in Queens were Gladys was to marry that September 26, 1999.

To date, thousands of women, men, and youth, among them members of the Ricart family and other families affected by domestic violence, along with elected officials, civic leaders, clergy, students, and scores of domestic violence advocates and survivors, gather every September 26, rain or shine, to memorialize Gladys and the many other victims who have also lost their lives to domestic violence, and raise awareness of the horrors of domestic violence.