Occupy Wall Street

For those who want to hear both sides of the story. Occupy Wall Street has its own website, HERE.
You will see that they are preparing for winter by asking for donations of winter supplies. You can also see their agenda of meetings and seminars.

For this week, attention  has shifted to the Occupy Oakland movement which has called for a general strike on Nov. 2.

But How Did They Vote?

The easiest way to find out how your Congress members voted is to go to the web. A link to the Roll Call votes for both the House and Senate is HERE.

The Roll Call can provide insight beyond what is reported in the main stream media. A good example is Obama's Job Bill strategy.

Even though the full Jobs Bill failed to get pass a Senate filibuster, Obama has said that he would continue to put pressure on the Republicans by breaking up the Job Bill, and forcing a vote on each piece. Here are the results of the first two votes:

1) 10/11/2011, Full Jobs Bill, ROLL CALL

Vote Counts:	YEAs	50
	NAYs	49

2) 10/20/2011, Partial jobs bill for teachers and first responders, ROLL CALL

Vote Counts:	YEAs	50
	NAYs	50

At first glance it seems like nothing changed. But if you look carefully at the Roll Calls you see that the Democrats are actually losing ground. In first vote, Harry Reid voted with the NAYs, which was a parliamentary maneuver to allow the vote to come up again. But in the second vote, Harry Reid had to vote with the YEAs in order to get the critical 50th vote so they could claim the bill would have passed if it wasn't for the filibuster.  This means that Obama actual lost a vote in the second round. If he looses another vote in the third round, he will loose the claim that he has the majority.

If Obama wants to pursue his Jobs Bill, he needs to speak out against the Blue Dog Democrats who are providing the Republicans with cover.

Move Your Money

As discussed in our meeting, here is a link to the Move Your Money website.

This site encourages people to move their bank account from the big banks which caused the financial crisis to a community bank. It provides a list of community banks for your zip code.

Need 150 Signatures

These petitions need 150 signatures to be listed on the on We the People whitehouse.gov website. They originated before 10/3/2011 so they only require 5000 signatures to get a White House response, instead of 25000 signatures for new petitions. The ideas in these petitions are first-rate, but they do not have an organization behind them to get the first 150 signature threshold. They have only 30 days to reach 5000 signatures from the time they originated, but will not get noticed until they get the first 150 signatures. If these petitions expire, they would need 25000 signatures if they were resubmitted.

Please support these petitions before they expire. They may not get the 5000 signatures, but at least the general public will see them. Just click on the link and follow the directions to sign the petition.

1) Propose and initiate a financial transaction tax, expires 10/24

A very small tax on all financial transactions will have little effect on most people, but will make high frequency trading and many kinds of speculation less appealing, which will reduce dangerous gambling in the stock market.

2) End tax subsidies for moving jobs out of the USA, expires 10/29

Stop rewarding companies who move jobs overseas and give the tax subsidy instead to companies that move their good-paying jobs back to the USA.

3) Press for a full federal investigation of mortgage fraud before any settlement , expires 10/31

It is important to fully investigate any alleged wrongdoing in order that those responsible may be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Any settlement that gives banks blanket immunity from prosecution is unacceptable.