Tag: exploitation

At BofA, a customer overdrawn by as little as $6 could trigger a $35 penalty. If the customer does not realise they have a negative balance and continue spending, they could incur that fee as many as 10 times in a single day, for a total of $350. Failing to repay the overdraft within a few days results in an additional $35 penalty.

How do ya like them apples?

Why anyone still keeps their money in these banks is beyond me.  Oh wait.  If you have a low credit score, you can’t open a new account anywhere else.  So if you’ve had the dominos start to fall, thanks to these banksters like those who run BofA and others, you are stuck with them and their goddamn thievery.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/43d1…

Data from Moebs Services, a research company, show that the crisis has prompted many banks to lift charges on overdrafts and credit cards in order to boost profits.

The median bank overdraft fee has this year rose from $25 to $26, according to Moebs, the first time it has gone up in a recession for more than 40 years.

“Banks are returning to a fee-driven model and overdraft fees are the mother lode,” said Mike Moebs, the company’s founder.

Hit ’em when they’re down.  That’s a great business plan.  It’s the mother-lode, baby!  Woo Hoo!  

The highest overdraft fees were charged by the largest banks, said Mr Moebs. At banks with assets greater than $50bn – a group including Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo – the median overdraft fee is set at $33.

So those “too big to fail” continue to do whatever the fuck they want, because, hell, these banks can’t even fail if they wanted to.   They tried to fail!   Congress wouldn’t let them!   So why not do whatever the hell pops into your head to rip people off, who’s going to stop you?

In the meantime, three more little banks, I guess those who were “small enough to fail” did in fact fail on Friday.

That brings the total for the year to 72.   Yup, 72 banks small enough to fail, while the Big Boys just do whatever the hell they want.  

In other news, Obama has lost Dailykos, which is the equivalent of George Bush losing the Freepers.   Now, we have “Everybody Hates Barry” playing out in Washington.  The right hates him, and his most devoted followers are completely disillusioned and crestfallen with him, talking about being “in tears” over his actions.  They like to cry.   Crying and cats.  I don’t get it.  

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

What is he doing?  He’s doing exactly what he’s supposed to be doing, being an errand boy for the corporate elite that put him in power.  That’s what he’s doing.   He’s there to let Goldman bail out Goldman.  

Oh, and let’s not forget that a British General has just come out and said that the “mission” in Afghanistan is going to take a good 40 years to “complete”.     He’s probably being optimistic.

*Warning, this post contains racially charged language, not as a reflection of my views, but to expose the ugliness and hatred of racism for the horrifying thing that it is.

Part 2 reflected, in part, on where your jobs went; the fact that “Free Trade” had little to do with anything other than being able to enter other countries and exploit their workers at a cheaper rate.

That shouldn’t be so hard to do the Math on, since the template for it exists right in your own backyards. American companies have been exploiting a segment of your fellow workers for years, and have taught you to HATE those exploited peoples by playing off of human’s innate fear of different appearances.

They told you the biggest lie of all, and many of you believe it.

“Its the niggers and wetbacks taking your jobs.”

I cannot cure this racist bullshit in one post, but maybe I can show you the Math on why racism is just a tool they use to fuck workers into less wages, and more profit for themselves. I can show how ultimately this is bad for EVERYONE.

I have a problem not unlike the one that got KO fired. 9/11 gets dragged out and almost celebrated by the fear-mongering right. It is a tragedy that gets relived over and over by a populace that had rarely know large-scale tragedies on its soil. I find the way they use it is abusive, true abuse in both the misuse fashion and the masochistic type.

2,974 dead. I remember my horror, my tears as it occurred.

4,076 Americans dead due to their being sent to invade Iraq for a crime Iraq did not commit.

1,255,026 Iraqis dead. Where is the horror for their deaths, the remembrance ceremonies for those who had their lives taken in retribution for something they had no part in?

It brings to mind what John Trudell said (not just in Thunderheart, but in real life when Leonard Peltier was framed.) “Sometimes they just HAVE to kill us. They have to make someone pay.”

Iraq is the biggest patsy ever created, created mostly for profit.

I got a little out of the news loop when I was on vacation.  Now it’s 3 AM and I have jet lag, so I’m catching up.  The Blackwater stuff keeps piling up, and Media Matters did me the favor of a day-by-day review of what happened with the Rush Limbaugh fiasco.  I see where some MN vets are being denied the GI bill, and that it is apparently okay to deny medical coverage to small, vulnerable children.

Now Bush says “We don’t torture.”  I suppose that depends how one defines “torture.” 

George Carlin talks alot about “euphemisms.”  You know – where they simply replace words that make people uncomfortable, to shade the truth?  So “toilet paper” becomes “bathroom tissue”?  A “mattress” is a “sleep system?”  “Torture” is now “interrogation methods”.

So anyway, the President says we don’t torture, but maybe the shock has just worn off.  Otherwise, how do you explain this commercial?!

(Thanks toNyc Alberts, NYC, who originally saw this commercial on television late at night in a longer version, and finally tracked it down & also wrote about it)

By the way, The New York Times Sunday editorial was entitled |”On Torture and American Values” and contained this statement:

“Once upon a time, it was the United States that urged all nations to obey the letter and the spirit of
international treaties and protect human rights and liberties. The people in much of the world, if not their governments, respected the United States for its values. The Bush  administration has dishonored that history and squandered that respect.”

UPDATE: I posted this after it had been up all day at Democracy Cell Project and I wanted more discussion.  On Nyc’s suggestion, I sent it to the main women at Feministing, who he’d contacted after he first saw it.  I’m headed for Docudharma.  Any other ideas, let me know.  Don’t see comments on here but have gotten some email such as “It’s no better than if it were about child molesting” or “It’s an obvious example of corporate propaganda to soften the image of torture.”

Not to mention:
Ordinary commercials (which are usually in bad taste or have crappy music) are annoying enough….

Have we gotten so low in our degradation scale under the Bush administration that we can make light of torture, the worst thing we can do to our fellow human beings (and other animals on the planet) and casually accept pseudo-torture to sell beauty products…? (Beauty products?!?)

I find the commercial offensive in the extreme. Eeeeeeeeowwww doesn’t begin to describe the mental/emotional recoil I had when watching it.

Gotta go wash out my eyes and disinfect my ears… but how do I get the images and the sounds out of my brain…?

Creepy, in the extreme.

See also Nyc’s blogpost which paralleled mine, at A Pen Warmed In Hell.