Find a show you like and click the 
button. The show will be added to your My Playlist page and updated 24/7 with new videos.
Search Results
0 Views
11:32:56 02/10/12
What Mitt Romney needs to tell conservatives at CPAC - The Trail
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 11:32:56 02/10/12
Mitt Romney's next chance to try to persuade conservatives he's one of them comes Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC. But given that Romney hasn't won over conservatives after 5 years on the national stage, it's too late, says Brian Gardner, a public policy analyst for the investment bank Keefe, Bruyette and Woods, which specializes in financial services. Gardner says he doesn't see how one speech at CPAC will help.
4 Views
00:00:21 09/13/11
Bof A To Lay Off 30 000 Employees In Spite Of Corporate Tax Breaks
[LESS INFO] 4 VIEWS | ADDED 00:00:21 09/13/11
Bank of America has made it official: They plan to lay off 30,000 employees to bolster their bottom line and keep stock prices high.
Via Wall Street Journal : >
We knew the Bank of America ax was going to fall, but we didn’t quite know the number. Today — after BofA CEO Brian Moynihan made no direct mention of job cuts during an investor presentation — the bank said it will cut about 30,000 jobs over the next few years.
The job cuts are part of the first phase of a sweeping Bank of America efficiency drive. BofA said in a statement that attrition and leaving vacant jobs unfilled with be a “significant part” of the expected headcount cuts.
That's a whole lot of attrition. As Laura Clawson over at Daily Kos points out: >
Dealbook offers some insight into the lack of detail about 30,000 jobs and the emphasis on stock prices: Bank of America just isn't talking about it. When the bank's CEO described cost-cutting measures, he didn't even mention job cuts; that came later, in a statement that offered no specifics. Because to the big banks, jobs just aren't important. And financial reporters overwhelmingly go along with that.
While I agree with that analysis, there's something else people aren't talking about here that jumped out at me from this Reuter's article: >
The Moynihan speech "was pretty underwhelming. They need to address the bigger issues the bank faces ," said Jason Ware, equity analyst at Salt Lake City-based Albion Financial Group.
Ware is exactly right. The whole "job cuts and attrition" thing is BofA's way of putting employees on the firing line for continuing mismanagement of their mortgage division. Reuter's again : >
Yet it also has one big, fat albatross on its balance sheets: Countrywide Financial. Bank of America acquired Countrywide for $4 billion, a deal that has proven a huge headache not just in dollars and cents, but in terms of the bank's reputation. "Basically all the mortgages that Countrywide produced from 2004 to 2007 were excrement," Geracioti says. "The question is: What are Bank of America's liabilities from Countrywide? Some say $100 billion, others say, 'Who knows?' The liabilities could be ginormous. The government is hassling the bank in a big way."
Bank of America has long held that Countrywide's problems were it own doing. But on September 2, the Federal Housing Finance Agency sued 17 firms - including Bank of America and Countrywide - for violations of federal securities laws in the sale of mortgage-backed securities. In an 88-page filing, the FHFA alleges that around 2005, top executives of Countrywide - which it labels as a "notorious mortgage lender" for its practice - "complained to each other at the time that BOA's appetite for risky products was greater than that of Countywide."
You just have to love how these executives blame the government "hassling" Bank of America for their woes. Never mind that it's totally justifiable in light of how desperately they needed to be bailed out when it all came to light. Bank of America has a systemic problem that it's desperately trying to cover up: It holds billions in toxic mortgages. Those mortgages are probably legally invalid due to the sloppy paperwork/signature issues on many of them, and represent a large chunk of the mortgage scam that landed us in this mess to begin with.
The only good thing to come out of this news is the shiny-bright message that corporate tax breaks do NOT create jobs. BofA paid no corporate income taxes in 2009 or 2010, they received a tax refund of nearly $1 billion in 2010. See how that works? No taxes and a big tax refund equals 30,000 lost jobs.
Where is the money going? Well, let's see. In 2011 alone, $1,570,000 has been paid to lobbyists . How many jobs would that money have saved or created? They paid big cash bonuses to executives, too -- $900,000 in all, though they did manage to tie payment to stock prices, which have plummeted this year. In 2010, they spread around $1.3 million in campaign contributions, and those are just the ones we know about. How many jobs might that cash have preserved?
It's really difficult for me to weep big tears over BofA's mortgage troubles, when they were of their own making and when they drove the engine that drove the crisis . If they're looking to cut costs, they ought to start by dropping executive pay to zero and resolving not to spend even one thin dime lobbying Congress or contributing to candidates. It would be a good start.
0 Views
10:55:39 05/16/11
Video: Finances To Rule Mayoral Campaign, Leaders Say
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 10:55:39 05/16/11
The campaign for Baltimore's next mayor got under way Sunday as some of the city's former political powerhouses discussed what they thought would be the hot topic leading up to the fall election -- battling the city's cash flow problem.
1 Views
22:00:00 02/05/10
What's Next For Campaign Finance?
[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 22:00:00 02/05/10
In the wake of a controversial Supreme Court decision giving corporations and unions more freedom to spend on elections, many federal and state lawmakers are hoping to curb Citizens United V. FEC's effect on elections. Find out how some legislators are fighting to curb Big Money spending even as the Court invalidates laws in 24 states aimed at keeping elections clean.
9 Views
22:00:00 02/05/10
What's Next For Campaign Finance?
[LESS INFO] 9 VIEWS | ADDED 22:00:00 02/05/10
In the wake of a controversial Supreme Court decision giving corporations and unions more freedom to spend on elections, many federal and state lawmakers are hoping to curb Citizens United V. FEC's effect on elections. Find out how some legislators are fighting to curb Big Money spending even as the Court invalidates laws in 24 states aimed at keeping elections clean.
2 Views
17:30:12 08/19/05
Echo Chamber Project Vlog Episode 2: Media & Politics
[LESS INFO] 2 VIEWS | ADDED 17:30:12 08/19/05
Here is the second Echo Chamber Project video blog entry
Description: Technology is transforming media & politics, and large-scale collaborative media can provide some insights into grassroots leadership and bottom-up democracy.
Featuring: Chris Nolan , Jeff Jarvis , Doc Searls , Scott Heiferman , Markos Moulitsas , Mindy Finn & Kent Bye.
(5:08 minutes / 12.6 MB)
Download Quicktime
Subscribe: Vlog RSS / Blog RSS
Listed below is a full transcript of this video with additional links...
BIG NEWS! >
[ UPDATE: November 2, 2005 ] The Rasiej campaign was never able to provide the necessary footage for this proposed remix. More details here.
This video blog episode will be one of the first citizen videojournalism reports to be remixed by a political campaign. This could provide a viable model for how traditionally top-down driven political campaigns could release some control over their communications strategy, and facilitate collaboration with citizens and issue-based advocates for talking about the niche concerns of constituents.
Vlogger and citizen journalist Ryanne Hodson will be gathering sound bites from Andrew Rasiej's campaign for Public Advocate in New York City, and then remixing them with sound bites from this Echo Chamber Project vlog episode in order to create a message that is unique to their campaign.
Both entries discuss how technology is changing media and politics, and how the Internet could faciliate a true grassroots, bottom-up democracy like we've never seen before.
Here is the pitch that I sent to the Rasiej campaign in order to open source the National aspects of their local campaign.
I framed the potential vlog remix as a way to "catalyze and energize a National-to-Local, peer-to-peer communications strategy" by having bloggers to tell NYC Democrats to know for Rasiej on September 13th.
In other words, since the Rasiej campaign has been so focused on the local Get Out the Vote efforts, then they didn't have time to connect the dots for what Rasiej's vision means for grassroots democracy and how political parties could use technology in new and innovative ways. Since I had already made this argument in this vlog entry, then I suggested that we collaborate on getting this message out there by open sourcing his national campaign strategy.
New York City also has a lot of political and cultural power, and if Rasiej is elected and his vision for Universal municipal Wi-Fi is implemented, then could set a trend for other cities to follow.
Rasiej founded the Personal Democracy Forum, which advocates for using technology to manifest a more grassroots democracy. This also happens to be where I gathered these interviews.
Here is a link to Rasiej's remixed video blog entry ( Remix Still in Production ).
It's nice to have the opportunity to put some of this theory into action for what is possible with using citizen journalism as a way to "open source" political campaigns. It is also opening more doors and paving the road for more doing collaborative media.
The Echo Chamber Project has more plans for how to take this idea to the next level by creating the tools to make large-scale collaborative media possible.
I am still searching for potential funders and computer programmers, so please leave a comment below if you're interested in getting more involved. Screen Capture Transcript Kent Bye ( EchoChamberProject.com ): I wanted to talk a bit about the intersection between media and politics for a couple of reasons. Collaborative media can provide a lot insights into grassroots activism and bottom-up democracy. The Echo Chamber Project is also developing a lot of the open source tools for collaborative media that could also be used for political campaigns in the next election cycle. So here are some insights from the Personal Democracy Forum.
[Intro Music Cue from Telekinetic Soulmate "Searching" courtesy of Defective Records] Chris Nolan ( "Politics from Left to Right" Blog): Back five / ten years ago, the people at Wired Magazine used to say, "The Internet changes everything." They were right. We're just getting -- I mean, outside of Silicon Valley -- people are just beginning to understand just how dramatic and how important those changes are. Jeff Jarvis ( BuzzMachine.com ): If you give the people control of media, they will take it. If you don't give them control, you will loose them. And I think we have to look not just at media where this is occurring, but also in marketing and in politics. I don't think here at the Personal Democracy Forum we've yet seen nearly the endgame of the people taking over their political process, and I do believe that will happen. Doc Searls ( Doc Searls Weblog ): Sooner or later, the connected electorate essentially imposes Democracy back on government in a way we've never seen before. So I think five years from now what we're going to see is something that's much more like democracy than we've seen in the history of the Republic. Kent Bye: It's safe to assume that the Internet will continue to change the way that we interact with media and politics. One of the founders of Meetup.com talks about the challenges of coordinating large-scale collaboration. Scott Heiferman (Co-Founder/CEO Meetup.com ): How do organizations find that balance between top-down and bottom-up? How is that you can both give people direction and leadership while at the same time giving people enough freedom to truly have a grassroots feel? Not just look grassroots, but authentically be grassroots. Not just sort of look bottom-up, but authentically be bottom-up. Markos Moulitsas ( DailyKos.com ): Now people want you to be proactive. They want you to be innovative. They want you to really look for solutions to problems. They don't want you to just follow orders. Yet we have a media environment and a political environment that are still very top-bottom driven. They still expect to issue proclamations and edicts and have people follow those. It's not like that any more. And I think that what we're seeing with the blogs is a creation of this new citizen's movement to take over things -- like I said -- politics, journalism and activism. Mindy Finn ( Republican National Committee eCampaign ): We're really tasked with online strategy. Leveraging the web and new media to help advance the committee's goals at all levels. For finance goals, which is raising money. To mobilization -- our political goals, getting grassroots out there, getting folks to the polls and actually voting for our candidates. And message, which is getting our message out there and hoping that it resonates, and helping drive the message into the grassroots and to the public. Markos Moulitsas: But I hope that what we're creating is culture where people don't feel a need to wait for "so-called leaders" to tell them to act to do anything. It's that they'll take that initiative on their own -- the tools are available. Mindy Finn: There's some hierarchy to respect. And I think there always -- I think there always will be and there always has been just to make sure that it's efficient and organized. But that what that hierarchy is all about is really putting people in touch with like-minded individuals -- empowering the grassroots. I mean, you have to have someone kind of crafting message. You have someone making sure that message is getting out to these individuals. Kent Bye: I think it's important to find that balance between top-down leadership and bottom-up participation without being too extreme on either end. What I hope to do with my open source documentary is help find that healthy balance. What I've done is I've gone out and taken the initiative to gather all of these interviews -- and ask the questions. But I'm releasing a lot of control with how the final film comes together. So I hope to have a community help collaborative edit and shape the film. So here's Doc Searls talking more about open source communities work. Doc Searls: Groups of people that work together in much the same way as -- say as a group of farmers would raise a barn. Right? And there's a shared understanding of what needs to be done. People step forward who have particular expertise, and they'll work on that part of the project. Kent Bye: Large-scale collaborative media can provide a lot of answers to some of the questions surrounding grassroots activism and bottom-up democracy. Small-scale collaboration is already possible with blogs, podcasts and video blogs -- but additional tools -- like the ones that I described in the previous episode -- have to be developed in order to facilitate collaboration on a large-scale. I'm still searching for funders and potential [software] programmers. So if you're interested in getting more involved, then please drop by the website and leave a comment.
