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Occupy Tampa (2011 reference information)

The election is over, the information below is for reference.

Weidner Running for Florida House of Representatives

Know Your Candidates
Tampa Bay Times
By Mark Puente, Times Staff Writer
Oct 17, 2012

Florida House District 68: Dwight Dudley (D), Frank Farkas (R), Matt Weidner (I)

In one of the state's most competitive races, Frank Farkas wants to help streamline government and get residents back to work. Dwight Dudley thinks he can do better for the community and for all Floridians. Matt Weidner, a 40-year-old attorney running as an independent, did not respond to questions. Read more

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THEN MAIL IMMEDIATELY TO:
MATTHEW WEIDNER
329 4TH AVENUE SOUTH
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This YOUR chance to be part of the MOST EXCITING REVOLUTION to sweep Florida politics in a generation. This opportunity to make your voice heard comes around only once every ten years. Please make the most of this opportunity. Print out multiple petitions and have your neighbors, friends and co-workers sign as well! Please forward this post around to as many of your social networks are you can. Remember, this is not just about getting me on the ballot, this campaign is about GETTING REAL, EVERYDAY FLORIDIANS THAT CARE ABOUT AMERICA ON THE BALLOT!

The crucial thing to understand about this is any registered voter, from any county in Florida, from any party can sign this petition to get me on the ballot! This incredible quirk of the petition process comes around only once every ten years. And it just so happens that in this tenth year, the incumbent politicians are more vulnerable than ever before. Read more

 

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Matt Weidner - For The American People


Speaking Out As Long As Political Speech Remains Protected

Home Foreclosure Defense
Matthew Weidner, Attorney at Law
Law Offices of Matthew D. Weidner P.A.

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Occupy Wall Street

 

Occupy Together 

 

We are the 99 percent

 

Occupy Wall Street, Wikipedia

We're still here. We intend to stay until we see movements toward real change in our country and the world. This is the third communiqué from the 99 percent.

Today, we occupied Wall Street from the heart of the Financial District. Starting at 8:00 AM, we began a march through the Wall Street area, rolling through the blocks around the New York Stock Exchange. At 9:30 AM, we rang our own "morning bell" to start a "people's exchange," which we brought back to Liberty Plaza. Two more marches occurred during the day around the Wall Street district, each drawing more supporters to us.

Hundreds of us have been occupying One Liberty Plaza, a park in the heart of the Wall Street district, since Saturday afternoon. We have marched on the Financial District, held a candlelight vigil to honor the fallen victims of Wall Street, and filled the plaza with song, dance, and spontaneous acts of liberation. Read more

 

 

 

Occupy Tampa, Facebook

 

ACLU pocket brochure, "What To Do If You Are Stopped By The Police, Immigration Agents or the FBI" 

 

Matt Weidner's invitation to Occupy Tampa October 6, 2011



Rise Up The System Is Broken! Occupy Tampa, October 6, 2011

Occupy Tampa
Gaslight Park Protest

October 6, 2011
by The Justice Network

America is broken. That was the message of the Occupy Tampa protest in Gaslight Park Thursday. The peaceful assembly was attended by several hundred diverse protesters. Although the park is located right across from Tampa Police headquarters, no officers showed up in the park, and only a handful watched from afar.

Protesters expressed their complaints on signs, and chanted "We are the 99 percent" and "Banks got bailed out, we got sold out" while marching to a beat provided by a young man with a drum. Some of the messages included "Rise Up The System Is Broken", "Healthcare Not Warfare" and "Hang The Bankers".

"Robert", a French national, complained about corrupt politicians.

"Robert", a French national, complained about corrupt politicians in Europe and America. His gray hair and business attire lent credibility to his complaints about the insurance, oil, and banking industries.

News organization helicopters hovering over the park created a deafening racket that made conversations difficult. The day-long protest included several marches around downtown Tampa. One such march began at 5:00 PM, went past the Bank of America building at Kennedy Blvd. and Tampa Street, then down Ashley Avenue past the art museum and library. The marchers turned at Zack Street, and again on N. Florida Ave., and continued to march past the Sam M. Gibbons US Courthouse. A few blocks further the protesters stopped for a rally on the steps of the old Federal Courthouse.

Keeping a beat for the protesters as they marched at Occupy Tampa

The Tampa protesters included many older people. This "Occupy" movement is no longer a youth movement, it is now mainstream, or as they say, the "99 percent" of Americans. I saw babies in backpacks. One man marched in a wheelchair. People of all ages, races and backgrounds marched and chanted side by side.

One woman wore a Ron Paul shirt. A sign proclaimed "Governments Stage Terror To Take Away Our Rights, Infowars.com". Another read "Stop The Creed Of Greed", and one said "Stop Killing Kids In Afghanistan". "End The Federal Reserve", "Capitalism is destroying our lives!" and "Corporate America You're Fired" were messages too, along with "Save the American Dream" and "For the People not Corporations".

They chanted slogans before returning to Gaslight Park. The mainstream and alternative news media were present. Shanna Gillette snapped photos for Creative Loafing. A reporter for WMNF 88.5 FM Community Radio covered the protest. News vans parked near the police building. A mainstream reporter stood by with a board look on her face, while the cameraman filmed the event.  

One protester said it best, "When Injustice Becomes Law, Rebellion Becomes Duty". 

 

Also see on Sardonicky Report from "Occupy Tampa" 

 

Click photo below to start slide show

The old Federal Courthouse, Occupy Tampa

Occupy Tampa - This is What Democracy Looks Like!

by Afterglow Video 

 

Click photo below to start slide show

Taking a break after the march

Occupy Wall Street protest underway at Gaslight Park in Tampa
ABC News
by Heather Gordon
October 6, 2011

 The Occupy Wall Street movement is staging a protest in Tampa's Gaslight Park. The protest got underway around 9 a.m. in Lykes Gaslight Park on Franklin Street and is scheduled to last until 5 p.m. At last word, about 100 protesters had gathered.

According to the Occupy Tampa Web site, Occupy Wall Street is a "leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions." The group says they are using the "revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants."

Tampa Police have said they are not overly concerned about the protest, despite a YouTube video that has threatened the department's computer systems. "We're not in the business of arresting protestors. We're in the business of arresting lawbreakers. If somebody breaks the law, yes they'll go to jail. We don't expect that to happen," said Tampa Police spokesperson, Laura McElroy. Read more

 

PRNewsChannel, Occupy Tampa, October 6, 2011

ABC News: Occupy Tampa plans to return to Gaslight Park Friday

Occupy Tampa protestors establishing new home base
Tampa Bay Times
by Jodie Tillman, Staff Writer
December 30, 2011

Members of Occupy Tampa, from left, Michael Fernandez, Ben McNulty and Michael Freincle pitch a tent at Voice of Freedom Park, a small parcel on W Main Street owned by Joe Redner. The group is moving from Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park to avoid dealing with police. Read more

Occupy Ocala: A Slice of Discontent?

Occupy Ocala Twitter 

Occupy Ocala Facebook  

Protesters Against Wall Street
New York Times Editorial
October 8, 2011

As the Occupy Wall Street protests spread from Lower Manhattan to Washington and other cities, the chattering classes keep complaining that the marchers lack a clear message and specific policy prescriptions. The message — and the solutions — should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention since the economy went into a recession that continues to sock the middle class while the rich have recovered and prospered. The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening.

At this point, protest is the message: income inequality is grinding down that middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people. Read more

Obama Has Kept the Machine Set on Kill
Democracy NOW!
by Allan Nairn
January 6, 2010

Journalist and Activist Allan Nairn Reviews Obama’s First Year in Office

In an extended interview, award-winning journalist and activist Allan Nairn looks back over the Obama administration’s foreign policy and national security decisions over the last twelve months. "I think Obama should be remembered as a great man because of the blow he struck against white racism," Nairn says. "But once he became president...Obama became a murderer and a terrorist, because the US has a machine that spans the globe, that has the capacity to kill, and Obama has kept it set on kill. He could have flipped the switch and turned it off...but he chose not to do so." He continues, "In fact, as far as one can tell, Obama seems to have killed more civilians during his first year than Bush did in his first year, and maybe even than Bush killed in his final year." Read more

AttackWatch.com

President Obama is collecting information on those who speak out against him on AttackWatch.com Talking points are offered in response.

Fed Chairman Bernanke

Here Comes FIATtackWatch: Ben "Big Brother" Bernanke Goes Watergate, Prepares To Eavesdrop On Everything Mentioning The Fed
Zero Hedge
by Tyler Durden
September 25, 2011

The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States, which in a Request for Proposals filed to companies that are Fed vendors, is requesting the creation of a "Social Listening Platform" whose function is to "gather data from various social media outlets and news sources." It will "monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria." Read more

GOP Candidate Ron Paul: "We’re Under Great Threat Because We Occupy So Many Countries"

GOP Candidate Ron Paul: "We’re Under Great Threat Because We Occupy So Many Countries" Democracy NOW!
by Amy Goodman
September 14, 2011

Near the end of Monday’s Republican presidential debate, Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas drew boos from the crowd and a rebuke from other candidates on the podium when he criticized U.S. foreign policy in discussing the roots of the 9/11 attacks. "We’re under great threat because we occupy so many countries," Paul said. "We have to be honest with ourselves. What would we do if another country, say China, did to us what we do to all those countries over there?" Our guest, Columbia University Professor Mahmood Mamdani, responded to Dr. Paul’s comments by saying, "He sounds like a professor. I mean, he’s trying to educate his audience, and the audience is not ready to be educated. It wants to be rallied to a cause that it doesn’t have to think about." Mamdani is the author of several books, including "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror". more

Massive Default Is Best Way to Fix the Economy Market Watch
by Brett Arends
September 12, 2011


NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — You want to fix this economic crisis? You want to put people back to work? You want to light a fire under the economy?

There’s a way to do it. Fast. And relatively simple. But you’re not going to like it. You’re not going to like it at all. Default. A national Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The fastest way to fix this mess is to see tens of millions of homeowners default on their mortgages and other debts, and millions more file for bankruptcy. Read more

BBC Speechless As Trader Tells Truth: "The Collapse Is Coming...And Goldman Rules The World" 

BBC Speechless As Trader Tells Truth: "The Collapse Is Coming...And Goldman Rules The World" Zero Hedge
by Tyler Durden
September 26, 2011


In an interview on BBC News this morning that left the hosts gob-smacked (google it... it is the BBC after all), Alessio Rastani outlines in a mere three-and-a-half-minutes what we all know and most ignore. While the whole interview is worth watching, the money shot for us was "This economic crisis is like a cancer, if you just wait and wait hoping it is going to go away, just like a cancer it is going to grow and it will be too late!". While he dreams of recessions, sees Goldman ruling the world, and urges people to prepare, it is hard to disagree with much (or actually anything) of what he says and obviously interventions and machinations means we will have days like this (in Silver for instance), there is only one endgame here and we hope there is less hopeful euphoria (and more preparedness) as we pull back the curtain further and further. Read more

Welcome To The Collapse Of 2011
Seeking Alpha
by Karl Denninger
September 22, 2011

Welcome my friends to the collapse of 2011. Remember the mantra that "consumers have delivered" which has been run over the last two years as an incessant bark from the media, attempting to goad you, the consumer, into more spending and more consumption to "lift the economy."

This claim has been a lie and a fraud upon the public and the new Fed Z1 makes this clear. The peak household credit liability was $13.92 trillion. It currently stands at $13.30 trillion, a reduction of a mere 4.6%.

This all came from home mortgages going ka-boom; $10.6 trillion to $9.9 trillion, a reduction of $700 billion. Total net reduction in liability was $620 billion; ex-mortgages consumer leverage has actually increased. Read more

Jack Cafferty

Will Our Economy Trigger Violence In U.S.?

For the first time maybe since the Vietnam War or certainly since the civil rights movement, there are some darkening storm clouds on the civility horizon. A growing number of voices are continuing to suggest that if this economy doesn't turn around, and people can't start feeling optimistic about their futures again, we could be headed for some ugly scenarios. A new CNN poll says 48 percent of Americans think the country is headed for another Great Depression in the next twelve months. That is a stunning number. Read more

Wolf Blitzer, CNN with Jack Cafferty, June 8, 2011

 

 

"A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead"

 

                                   - Leo Rosten



Dr. King Weeps From His Grave
The New York Times
By CORNEL WEST
August 25, 2011


Selected passages...

...[T]he age of Obama has fallen tragically short of fulfilling King’s prophetic legacy. Instead of articulating a radical democratic vision and fighting for homeowners, workers and poor people in the form of mortgage relief, jobs and investment in education, infrastructure and housing, the administration gave us bailouts for banks, record profits for Wall Street and giant budget cuts on the backs of the vulnerable...

King’s response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a re-evaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.

In concrete terms, this means support for progressive politicians like Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont and Mark Ridley-Thomas, a Los Angeles County supervisor; extensive community and media organizing; civil disobedience; and life and death confrontations with the powers that be. Like King, we need to put on our cemetery clothes and be coffin-ready for the next great democratic battle. Read more

Mayor Bloomberg

Mayor Bloomberg predicts riots in the streets if economy doesn't create more jobs
The New York Daily News
by Erin Einhorn and Corky Siemaczko
September 16, 2011

Mayor Bloomberg warned Friday there would be riots in the streets if Washington doesn't get serious about generating jobs. "We have a lot of kids graduating college, can't find jobs," Bloomberg said on his weekly WOR radio show. "That's what happened in Cairo. That's what happened in Madrid. You don't want those kinds of riots here."

In Cairo, angry Egyptians took out their frustrations by toppling presidential strongman Hosni Mubarak - and more recently attacking the Israeli embassy. As for Madrid, the most recent street protests were sparked by widespread unhappiness that the Spanish government was spending millions on the visit of Pope Benedict instead of dealing with widespread unemployment.

Bloomberg's unusually alarmist pronouncement came as President Obama has been pressuring reluctant Republicans to pass his proposed job creation plan. "The damage to a generation that can't find jobs will go on for many, many years," the normally-measured mayor said. Read more

_____________________________________________________

 

Bloomberg, on Radio, Raises Specter of Riots by Jobless
The New York Times, By KATE TAYLOR, September 16, 2011

Why a Working-Class Revolt Might Not Be Unthinkable
The Fiscal Times
by Mark Thoma
September 13, 2011

Selected passages...

"Many of the policies enacted during and after the Great Depression not only addressed economic problems but also directly or indirectly reduced the ability of special interests to capture the political process.... But since the 1970s many of these changes have been reversed. Inequality has reverted to levels unseen since the Gilded Age, financial regulation has waned, monopoly power has increased, union power has been lost, and much of the disgust with the political process revolves around the feeling that politicians are out of touch with the interests of the working class...There was a time when I would have scoffed at the idea of a mass revolt against entrenched political interests and the incivility that comes with it. We aren’t there yet – there’s still time for change – but the signs of unrest are growing, and if we continue along a two-tiered path that ignores the needs of such a large proportion of society, it can no longer be ruled out" full article

Chrystia Freeland

What happens when citizens lose faith in government?
Reuters
Chrystia Freeland
August 5, 2011

Tolstoy thought unhappy families were unique in their unhappiness.

But when it comes to countries, these days the world’s gloomy ones have a lot in common. From Fukushima to Athens, and from Washington to Wenzhou, China, the collective refrain is that government doesn’t work.

"2011 will be the year of distrust in government," said Richard Edelman, president and chief executive of Edelman, the world’s largest independent public relations firm.

 

For the past decade, Mr. Edelman has conducted a global survey of which institutions we have confidence in and which ones are in the doghouse. In 2010, the villains were in the private sector — from BP, to Toyota, to Goldman Sachs, corporations and their executives were the ones behaving badly.

But this year, Mr. Edelman said, we are losing faith in the state: "From the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, to the government’s response to the earthquake in Japan, from the high-speed rail crash in China, to the debt ceiling fight in Washington, people around the world are losing faith in their governments."

Even the Arab Spring, Mr. Edelman mused, was an extreme expression of the same breakdown in the people’s support for those who rule them. Read more

New Progressive Alliance

The New Progressive Alliance (NPA) is a grassroots organization founded in 2010, entirely online, in response to the Democratic Party’s complete and final forsaking of its role as the leading voice for Progressive ideals and reform in America.

In the 30 years prior to 2010, though their campaign rhetoric claimed otherwise, the party’s leadership and vast majorities of its Congresspeople and Senators had increasingly shown a willingness to sell out the vital interests of America’s poor, its disadvantaged, and its working men and women – and to capitulate on basic Progressive policy issues such as non-intervention, civil and human rights, and progressive taxation...

For many Progressives, the final straw came in early 2010. Despite control of both houses of Congress and the White House, Democrats failed to enact nationalized health insurance, or even to provide a publicly funded alternative to the high-cost "coverage" offered by profiteering, benefits-denying insurance companies. Read more

Ross Douthat

The Class War We Need

The New York Times
by ROSS DOUTHAT
July 11, 2010

 

The rich are different from you and me. They know how to game the system.

 

That’s one interpretation, at least, of last week’s news that Americans with million-dollar mortgages are defaulting at almost twice the rate of the typical homeowner. It suggests an infuriating scenario in which the average American slaves away to keep Wells Fargo or Bank of America off his back, while fat cats and high fliers cut their losses and sail off to the next investment opportunity. Read more

Frank Rich

The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

The New York Times

by FRANK RICH
August 28, 2010


ANOTHER weekend, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the "ground zero mosque." This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to "reclaim the civil rights movement" (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier. Read more

Covert Operations

The New Yorker

by Jane Mayer

August 30, 2010

 

The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama

On May 17th, a black-tie audience at the Metropolitan Opera House applauded as a tall, jovial-looking billionaire took the stage. It was the seventieth annual spring gala of American Ballet Theatre, and David H. Koch was being celebrated for his generosity as a member of the board of trustees; he had recently donated $2.5 million toward the company’s upcoming season, and had given many millions before that. Read more

Bob Herbert

Hiding From Reality
The New York Times
by Bob Herbert
November 19, 2010

The nation is in denial about the true extent of its problems, from the economy to the deficits to the wars overseas.

However you want to define the American dream, there is not much of it that’s left anymore.

Wherever you choose to look - at the economy and jobs, the public schools, the budget deficits, the nonstop warfare overseas - you’ll see a country in sad shape. Standards of living are declining, and American parents increasingly believe that their children will inherit a very bad deal.

We’re in denial about the extent of the rot in the system, and the effort that would be required to turn things around. It will likely take many years, perhaps a decade or more, to get employment back to a level at which one could fairly say the economy is thriving...

The wreckage from the recession and the nation’s mindlessly destructive policies in the years leading up to the recession is all around us. We still don’t have the money to pay for the wars that we insist on fighting year after year. We have neither the will nor the common sense to either raise taxes to pay for the wars, or stop fighting them.

State and local governments, faced with fiscal nightmares, are reducing services, cutting their work forces, hacking away at health and pension benefits, and raising taxes and fees. So far it hasn’t been enough, so there is more carnage to come. In many cases, the austerity measures are punishing some of the most vulnerable people, including children, the sick and the disabled...

We’ve become a hapless, can’t-do society, and it’s, frankly, embarrassing. Public figures talk endlessly about "transformative changes" in public education, but the years go by and we see no such thing. Politicians across the spectrum insist that they are all about job creation while the employment situation in the real world remains beyond pathetic.

All we are good at is bulldozing money to the very wealthy. No wonder the country is in such a deep slide...Read more

Comment 20, J J Bakunin, Tucson, November 20th, 2010, 1:42 am:

"Everything dies; people, countries everything. That is what the U.S. is doing. We are in an irreversible decline. We will not "recover". There is no community, it's everyone for themselves.
Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye; I'm glad I'm old"

The humiliation of Barack Obama

 

Al Jazeera
by Robert Grenier
September 20, 2011

As he prepares to singularly veto Palestine's statehood bid, he must be thinking to himself: 'This isn't right'.

Sooner or later, it's going to happen. Most likely, the moment will come just before his first head-of-state meeting in New York. Or perhaps it will happen just before his first side-bar meeting with Binyamin Netanyahu. Or then again, it may come as the cumulative reaction to a series of embarrassing encounters with fellow world leaders. But the moment will come.

At some point this coming week, during his visit to the this year's opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, US President Barack Obama is going to have a nearly irresistible urge. He is going to want to stand up to his hovering political handlers and the smothering bureaucracy which tries to dictate his every move, summon his personal dignity, and say "Enough". Read more

Ralph Nader: Corporate socialism runs US government


Uploaded by Russia Today Nov-02-10

With midterm elections in the US about to begin, RT has spoken with 4-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader about the real powers that govern America. Ralph Nader does not belong to either of the two parties ruling Congress. Nader believes that Theodore Dreiser put it very well many years ago, when he said that "the corporations are the government". "Knowing they [corporations] can't be out front because people don't like a lot of these big corporations, they are ripped off by the banks and credit card companies, they camouflage and their camouflage is that they give the Tea Parties certain deceptive information and focus on certain politicians, and therefore they continue their work behind the scenes. We have corporate socialism in this country where profits are kept and losses are socialized on the back of the taxpayer," Nader said. "There isn't a single department agency in the US government whose outside influence overwhelmingly is not corporate," he added. "They control from the outside, they put their representatives into government positions, funding the members of Congress with their cash [and] 35,000 full-time lobbyists in Washington -- they are the government."

From Fault Lines: The Top 1%
Al Jazeeria
August 2, 2011

The richest one per cent of Americans earn nearly a quarter of the country's income and control an astonishing 40 per cent of its wealth.

Inequality in the US is more extreme than it has been in almost a century - and the gap between the super-rich and the poor and middle class people has widened drastically over the last 30 years.

Meanwhile, in Washington, a bitter partisan debate over how to cut deficit spending and reduce the US' $14.3 trillion debt is underway. As low and middle class wages stagnate and unemployment remains above nine per cent, Republicans and Democrats are tussling over whether to slash funding for the medical and retirement programmes that are the backbone of the US' social safety net, and whether to raise taxes - or to cut them further.

The budget debate and the economy are the battleground on which the 2012 presidential election race will be fought. And the US has never seemed so divided - both politically and economically.

How did the gap grow so wide, and so quickly? And how are the convictions, campaign contributions and charitable donations of the top one per cent impacting the other 99 per cent of Americans? Fault Lines investigates the gap between the rich and the rest. Read more

The US needs all the cash it can get just now, and reducing the prison population would save billions of dollars. However, some have a vested interested in keeping as many people as possible behind bars. YouTube

War Inc. – Pentagon sucks in American youth

RT, Russia Today
August 12, 2011

As the U.S. economy remains on a consistent downward spiral, one thing the U.S. Government is never shy to invest endless cash in is the Pentagon. Which - on its end -- is pumping millions of dollars into luring in the young population of America into enrolling into the military. RT's Anastasia Churkina looks at some of those mesmerizing techniques, and what kind of effect they have had on those fit to serve. Read more