If you sign up for a usurious credit card from foreclosure fraudster, too-big-to-exist, bailed out corporate welfare leech Bank of America, they will donate 25 whole cents out of every hundred bucks you borrow to the LGBT lobby, a/k/a "The Human Rights Campaign."
In other words, they will make a profit of about a thousand percent off the APR backs of liberal do-gooders who still have enough credit to qualify for this scam. Has the Human Rights Campaign no shame for partnering with a global financial crime cabal responsible for creating human misery on a scale not seen since the Spanish Inquisition? This is the same bank, remember, that tried and failed to charge customers $5 for using their own debit cards, so we definitely know the financiers in this partnership have no shame. It is a moral characteristic absent in sociopaths. If corporations are people, then BofA is a person with an incurable personality disorder.
And what about this Human Rights Campaign? (not to be confused with Human Rights Watch, which I wrote about yesterday) According to Wikipedia, it is the largest LGBT advocacy and political lobbying group in the United States. It supports the re-election of, among others, Barack Obama (who is still "evolving" on gay marriage and recently passed on signing an executive order forbidding workplace discrimination against gays by government contractors.)
HRC came under hefty criticism for making a deal with President George W. Bush during his campaign to privatize Social Security: the lobby agreed to go along with his scheme in exchange for same-sex partners becoming eligible for benefits. HRC was also slammed for giving high corporate marks to tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds a few years ago. As you may recall from yesterday's post, the R.J. Reynolds family has also been very, very generous over the years to the Democratic Party and Obama.
And, as you probably already guessed, Bank of America itself has been a big contributor to the campaign coffers of Barack Obama. As much as the corporate media try to claim that newly-populist Barry has been rejected this cycle by Wall Street, he is still raking in the banking cash. Ninety-one individual employees of BoA have already given him almost $60,000 this year alone, according to Open Secrets. And when the president speaks at the Democratic National Convention in an anti-union state this September, the venue will be Bank of America Stadium. So, folks, be sure to get your BofA Human Rights credit card today and use it to get cash back in hotels and restaurants and bars, and for balloons and bumper stickers and
If the thought of this North Carolina orgy of crony capitalism is bumming you out, there will be alternate events, including a "March on Wall Street South" to coincide with the Democratic Con. Here's the website where you can get information on attending. You can even make a non-BofA credit card donation to help secure parade permits and other bureaucratic nonsense already being put in place to stifle dissent.
And don't forget May Day this Tuesday. If you are unable to attend a protest, don't have a job to call in sick to, don't have money not to spend, don't have a TV to turn off to avoid the propaganda, more ideas can be found here.
The solidarity promises to be severe. No credit cards are required.
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| Don't Leave Home Without It |
Off-topic, but in keeping my promise to the readers who've asked, here is my latest NYT comment -- this one in response to one of Maureen Dowd's gems on the Catholic Church and its infectious misogyny....
ReplyDeleteIt's obvious that the Catholic male hierarchy is terrified by strong women. How, exactly, are the Redcaps going to enforce their misogynistic edicts against the nuns? I am rooting for the good Sisters to call their bluff. Tell His Holeyness that if he doesn’t like their Jesus-like radical humanitarianism, he should just excommunicate them for willful disobedience. I would love to see him try. I would love to see hordes of Catholic women, worldwide, just up and leave. If there were a new schism of the church headed by women, I might even re-up, myself. Not because I am a true believer, but simply to support their good works. I doubt that nuns could be bought off by corporations seeking to privatize and profit from educating children and healing the sick.
According to the Gnostic gospels, Mary Magdalene was of the original disciples and an admired authority figure. But some elite Church guys decided back in the Dark Ages to suppress the story and falsely portray her as a trollop. Sound familiar? Sliminess of thought seems to be a prerequisite to vocations to the priesthood, Republican politics, and right wing talk radio.
Given that the Catholic Church has never moved beyond its inquisitorial mindset, the only thing that continues to baffle me is why intelligent, liberal women are still congregants. When will enough be enough? When a latter-day Torquemada conducts an auto-da-fé of nuns in St. Peter’s Square?
Sisters, Brothers, Deacons, Priests, Bishops, Archbishops, Cardinals, Popes: Tell me which end is up, and which end is down, and I'll have you figured out.
ReplyDeleteMy husband fell for it - He opened a CITI bank credit card which had a zero interest for balance transfers for 9 months. He transferred my tuition for this semester from another credit card that charged 13% interest which we would have paid off in about two months. After having to give CITI a ridiculous amount of personal information, they transferred the amount and . . . then charged us a hidden $200 yearly fee for the card! THAT is our first and last credit card in Australia!
ReplyDeleteThese banks and the bankers who run them are schemers. There is a reason that usury was seen as a sin and Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple. Even if you don't believe it really happened, there is a moral to that story! The bankers coming up with these gimmicks are bad people! We are all better served to stay entirely clear of them!
I am also rooting for the good Sisters and Catholic women.
ReplyDeleteI up and left many years ago, when the abusive power of the Catholic Church became all too apparent to me
As Gary Wills, “Bullying the Nuns,” wrote:
“The bishops are interested in power. The nuns are interested in the powerless. Nuns have preserved Gospel values while bishops have been perverting them. The priests drive their own new cars, while nuns ride the bus (always in pairs). The priests specialize in arrogance, the nuns in humility.”
“What Rome wants is all that matters…The real Gospel must be quashed in the name of the pseudo-Gospel of papal monarchs.”
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/apr/24/bullying-nuns/
The Vatican maintains that it still enjoys great confidence of the faithful, and that it is just a small minority trying to undermine that confidence. That minority is the church's own leadership and its commitment to hierarchical power.
Good questions, Karen. Why are intelligent, liberal women still congregants. When will enough be enough?
All kinds of organizations generate a culture of perverted loyalty in which otherwise decent people will collude in crimes for the “greater good.”
Yves Smith relates the following story told to her:
“I have trouble with members of my community. I think Obama needs not to be President. I think he needs to be impeached. But no one in my community wants to hear that. I tell them it’s like when your mother sees you going out with someone who is no good for you.
“Why don’t you leave him? What does he do for you?”
“But Momma, I love him.”
“He knocked you down the stairs, took your keys, drove your car to Florida, ran up big bills on your credit card, and Lord only knows what else he did when he was hiding from you.”
“But Momma, I still love him.”
Smith writes, “Her story applies equally well to the oxymoron of the establishment left in America. Obama is not only not their friend, but he abuses them, yet they manage to forgive all and come back for more.”
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/matt-stoller-obama-as-neoliberal-ideologue.html
@Denis
ReplyDeleteThanks for that pointer to the Gary Wills link. Here's another takeaway quote, which echoes my dealings with them:
"Now the Vatican says that nuns are too interested in “the social Gospel” (which is the Gospel), when they should be more interested in Gospel teachings about abortion and contraception (which do not exist). Nuns were quick to respond to the AIDS crisis, and to the spiritual needs of gay people—which earned them an earlier rebuke from Rome. They were active in the civil rights movement. They ran soup kitchens."
Nope.
ReplyDeleteObviously not.
Anyone documented if the same subornation has happened to them that happened to the Sierra Club, World Wildlife, etc., etc.?
Has the Human Rights Campaign no shame for partnering with a global financial crime cabal responsible for creating human misery on a scale not seen since the Spanish Inquisition?