25 Men Behind the Financial Crisis

No single person orchestrated, coordinated, and managed the financial disaster, but there are key players involved. For the purposes of this list, a "man behind the crisis" is someone in a position of power during the crisis who helped form, perpetuate, or aggravate it.

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Bank of America's corporate jet

Robert Greenwald: Fire Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis

The economic crisis is out of control, as Bank of America and the corrupt corporate elite continue to wage class warfare. It's time we hit back hard. It's time we fire CEO Ken Lewis.

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Revolt & Bonuses/ B of A shareholders want Lewis out

Bank of America shareholders meet today in Charlotte, N.C., and this year, angry shareholders are mobilizing to remove three members of the bank's board, including CEO Ken Lewis. Julie Rose reports.

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Money for Nothing

It’s necessary to rescue Wall Street to protect the economy, but financial firms should be acting like public utilities, not returning to the practices and paychecks of 2007.

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Wall Street Salary Caps Drive Away Assholes - Borowitz Repor

Experts Warn of ‘Douchebag Drain'

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Pelosi: 75% Of American's Want Investigation into Wallstreet

"At least 75% of the American people want an investigation as to what happened on Wallstreet. I'm not saying a criminal investigation, they just want to know. In order for us to make the right decisions going forward, we need to know what happened to get us here."

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Wiretap Recorded Rep Harman Promising to Intervene For AIPAC

Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.

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U.S. Soldier Killed Herself -- After Refusing Torture Duty

Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Ariz., native, served with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a "non-hostile weapons discharge."

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Jim Webb Says Drug Legalization is "On the Table"

The leader of a congressional effort to reform the criminal justice system said Thursday that all issues — including drug legalization — need to be on the table. Sen. Jim Webb, who has made criminal justice and prison reform a signature issue of his this year in Congress, is the most high-profile lawmaker to indicate openness to drug legalization

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Bush Officials Tried to Shift Bame for Abuse to Low Ranking

New Senate Report:Senior administration officials attempted to shift the blame for abuse to low ranking soldiers. Claims, such as that made by former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz that detainee abuses could be chalked up to the unauthorized acts of a "few bad apples," were simply false

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MADDOW EXCLUSIVE: Fmr. Bush official blasts torture memos

Philip Zelikow, former legal counsel to Condoleeza Rice and executive director of the 9/11 Commission, tells Rachel Maddow why he believes the Bush administration’s torture policy was illegal and reveals the legal advice he gave at the time to try and stop torture:

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Bailout Overseer Reports Progress To Congress

Neil Barofsky, special inspector, is charged with making sure that TARP bailout funds are being used properly. In a report to Congress released Tuesday, Barofsky urges the Treasury to join him in asking banks to account for their use of TARP funds. The initial vision was a $700 billion bank bailout. But today, TARP, is a $3 trillion effort

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Can Anti-trust laws break up Big Banks?

A congressional committee is discussing criteria to use in determining if a financial institution is too big to fail. Duke law professor Zephyr Teachout talks to Bob Moon about whether antitrust laws can be used to break up the financials.

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Who Will Face Down the Gun Lobby?

Is the American gun lobby is just too strong to let our leaders push a rational and limited gun regulation through Congress?

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EPA to clean-up 50 most polluted sites with stimulus money

The money announced Wednesday will pay to excavate contaminated soil from hundreds of residential lawns in Evansville, Ind., Minneapolis, Minn., Madison County, Mo. and Omaha, Neb.Up to $25 million will connect 180 houses in southeastern North Dakota to public drinking water. Their wells were tainted with arsenic from bait applied to control gra

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Arctic meltdown is a threat to humanity (Tipping point?)

" The permafrost is melting fast all over the Arctic, lakes are forming everywhere and methane is bubbling up out of them."The danger is that if too much methane is released, the world will get hotter no matter how drastically we slash our greenhouse gas emissions.

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Reich: Hold CEOs of big banks accountable, for bonuses etc.

Tim Geithner says he might fire the heads of big banks that are being bailed out, just as he disposed of Rick Wagoner, the former CEO of General Motors. And before Wagoner, the old heads of AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. Geithner's tough talk is designed to reassure a public that's lost all faith in the bank bailout. At the rate the bailout m

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Fair Elections Now - New Bill for Campaign finance reform

Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, Senate assistant majority leader, and Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter are introducing the Fair Elections Now Act, a measure that would turn the campaign fundraising system upside down. The measure would require Congressional candidates to seek support from constituents back home, not from those in Washington or wealthy enclaves across the country.

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Economist Joseph Stiglitz: Economic InEquality is increasing

Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explains what drove the US economy off a cliff and what steps need to be taken to rectify the situation during a Nation Institute panel discussion held to mark the release of a new book: "Meltdown: How Greed and Corruption Shattered Our Financial System and How We Can Recover"

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House Democrats backing away from "truth commission"

While Republicans have said they are against any effort to probe the Bush administration’s “war on terror” policies, Democrats also have been cool to the idea. Indeed, in early January, Conyers introduced a resolution, H.R. 104, to establish a national commission on presidential war powers and civil liberties. Two months later, the resolution had attracted a mere 27 co-sponsors.

from: http://digg.com/d1nxQp

More Tax Cuts for the Rich?

At a time of soaring deficits and growing needs, the Senate is weighing whether the wealthiest of wealthy Americans should get a tax break worth some $250 billion over 10 years. The Senate today could take up an amendment would shield the first $10 million of estates from taxation and lower to 35 percent the tax on amounts beyond that.

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FWD: Protest The Bloated Military Budget

Tax day is just around the corner. Do you know where your money goes?

Despite a much needed increase in funding for human needs in the FY 2010 budget, military spending still eats up 57% of the total.

This month, we ask you to stage an event outside your local post office on April 15 to protest the amount of tax dollars spent on the military.

We support the President's decision to put more of the budget toward meeting peoples' basic needs — that's one of our core values.

But we also believe in peace. The United States already accounts for about half of the world's total military spending. To stay true to our values, we must continue to protest the disproportionate amount of money our country invests each year in defense.

Let's take this opportunity to praise the president for shifting money to necessities like health care, food, and education.

Let's also use it to show people how much more we could do.

By working together, we can persuade President Obama to cut even more defense funding in next year's budget.

This month, remind people where their tax dollars are going — good and bad.

You can help!

* Host or attend an event on April 15 - http://support.afsc.org/site/Get...

* Download our resources to help educate your community we have exciting information you'll want to share - http://www.countdowntowithdrawal...

Join us on April 15.

Say yes to funding human needs. Say no to war.

The Wealthy need your help, from NYTimes

For Senator Blanche Lincoln, Democrat of Arkansas, and Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, the most pressing issue is clear: America’s wealthiest families need help. Now.

The two senators plan to propose an amendment to deeply cut estate taxes for the fraction of the top 1 percent of the population still subject to those levies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/opinion/02thu1.html

Dems Investigating Bush Administration Role In AIG Collapse

In November 2004, the Bush Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission agreed not to prosecute AIG for allegedly helping companies fudge their books. In exchange, AIG agreed to host a government-appointed auditor in company meetings. At the time, Greenberg said it brought "finality to the claims raised by the SEC and the Departmen

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