Music and musicians have been at the heart of the Occupy movement. And while there may not be a single anthem that defines the cause; a notable, and badass artist who has used her voice to stand with the 99% is Amanda Palmer. The founding member of the Dresden Dolls has been performing impromptu ‘ninja gigs' all over the country including Oakland, Vancouver, New York, and in her hometown of Boston. Amanda uses social media outlets like Twitter (@amandapalmer) and her blog to share her travels and ultimately bring new faces to the movement. We got a chance to catch up with the ukulele cabaret punk who shared her thoughts on the power of music and her hopes for what the movement is really occupying in all of us.

What was your mission in playing at Occupy events?

Mostly to bring attention and awareness to the fact that it was happening. I generally do free, spontaneous outdoor shows (I call them "ninja gigs") everywhere I go, and since I had a tour coinciding with the start of the movement, it made sense to gather people at Occupy instead of a random local park. I like connecting the dots. A lot of my fans hadn't been to their city's Occupy site, and this was a good excuse to get them there to experience the site in person instead of just seeing footage on CNN. On top of that, I liked the idea that I could bring some random joy to the actual occupiers... like a traveling minstrel. I played music that was both geared towards the movement and played music that was totally irrelevant and simply entertaining... but that's not actually irrelevant, is it?

The Occupy movement has exploded all over the world. Since your travels to many of the occupation sites, what do you think is really at the heart of this movement?

People are discontent and this was a chance, an outlet, a platform from which to express their discontent. And yes, I think the Occupy movement has had an effect. It brought people together, it tightened communities, and it reminded a whole generation that democracy requires participation to function. If it only leaves a small wave in the ocean, that wave will hopefully grow to a tsunami when today's teenagers grow into tomorrow's leaders and recall the images of people trying to speaks their minds.

How did you see music play a role or place in the Occupy movement? 

I think music and protest are perfect bedfellows. Music can often get to to the emotional heart of a matter much more quickly than speaking, that's why songs are so powerful. Can you imagine the Vietnam War protests without the soundtrack provided by the generation of music-makers? Way more boring.

Do you think music has the power to cause real change?

What kind of change? I think music often changes people more than anything. Even if it's just for a moment. It's funny, I've been thinking lately what the world would look and feel like if music were suddenly removed from political TV ads, from commercials, from films? Imagine this clip about Occupy (my favorite) without the soundtrack. Music provides a bridge into the deeper parts of our emotional beings.

In your blog posts about your travels to the Occupy sites, you mentioned that “what was bizarre was how INCREDIBLY similar the feel of every occupation was; yet how different the energy was depending on the city.” Could you give an example of how the energy was different from place to place?

Oi vey. Sure. The energy at Occupy LA was slightly off-putting... Everywhere I turned people were getting pissed at each other. The main square was pumping techno and people were hula-hooping and playing soccer, but the vibe wasn't very...inclusive? I mean, in a way it was sort of cheerful, but it also just seemed like Burning Man had taken over a city block and people were just psyched for the party. Then again, my experience in all these places was based on an hour or so of walking around. Oakland had incredibly hard-working, peaceful energy around it. The energy in Boston was also very Boston-y, super-intellectual and slightly grumpy. The energy in Vancouver was stark ... A death by overdose had taken place there two days before.

What was single the most interesting thing you saw at Occupy?

i was definitely impressed by the vision of someone at Occupy Oakland providing ice cream en masse for the occupiers and the general public...  and for good measure, here's some beautiful graffiti at Occupy Vancouver: 

Some people think the movement is fading. What are your thoughts on that?  What do you think is (should be?) next for the movement, and the young activists involved?

My thoughts are that the movement will evolve. If it's fading, then it's fading and it's served whatever purpose it was supposed to serve. The real question is whether people will keep voicing their opinions without the romance and the drama of the tents and encampment. One of the best things I think could come of this is the opening of people's eyes to how they can take democracy into their OWN hands. On their own street. Maybe some barriers have been broken down and people will feel less reservations about helping their neighbors. I'd hope that's the case. If we're going to turn this system around, we have to go deep, to the root, and it means letting go of fear. Fear of helping each other. We're so disconnected from each other, and we've been convinced into it. We've all been raised by a culture that lead us to believe that to get ahead, we've got to step on the head of the person beneath us. And that's not really working, is it ...for anybody.

When Roger McNamee and his band Moonalice play “American Dream Rag” at Occupy Wall Street protests, not everyone knows he’s one of Silicon Valley's most successful investors.

Here’s a 55-year old, long- haired guy singing “They took everything we have, but we don’t cry/We can’t afford to drink, but we still get high.”

Would anyone guess that he’s Bill Gates’ self described “sounding board”? Or that he’s an early investor in Facebook? Or manages $1.9 billion in investments with an Irish partner… named Bono?

But the truth is that McNamee, who has spent the last 30 years helping to build technology companies in Silicon Valley, is firmly on the side of the occupiers.

“The country has been stolen,” says McNamee bluntly. “I expect to be involved in getting it back for the rest of my life.”

The Facebook page for his band Moonalice includes posters created for Occupy Wall Street by the band’s artists, including Chuck Sperry and Chris Shaw. McNamee has also appeared on CNBC’s news show “SquawkBox,” explaining to individual investors why they should support Occupy and debunking false reports about the movement.

On the evening when 10,000 protesters flooded the streets of Oakland, he shared his thoughts with us…

On what really happens on Wall Street:

I have been angry about this way longer than Occupy has existed. My first boss told me that “Wall Street is not the world’s highest calling,” but it wasn’t a bad place until the past decade. Irresponsible deregulation combined with unbridled greed has broken the back of our economy. And no one has been held accountable.

On his unique perspective:

I really know Wall Street. At one time my firm was an investor in the technology system that makes NASDAQ work. It wasn’t designed to rip people off, but it’s being used that way now.

On how he came to write “American Dream Rag”:

Somehow we wound up with a two-tiered legal system, where there is frequently no consequence for rich people who do horrible things. Wall Street has been increasingly dishonest for a decade. Wall Street was never an angel, but until recently it also wasn’t the devil. Every step of the way it has been aided and abetted by our government. And the press slept through the whole thing. When none of the major banks had been prosecuted by 2009, I took matters into my own hands and wrote this song in 2009.

His visits to Occupy Wall Street:

I’ve visited Occupies in several towns. My favorite was Philadelphia. I was there on the day they launched it. 500 people who showed up... watching them organizing themselves was a thing of beauty. I loved the simplicity of it. The fact that there was no political agenda. There isn’t any magic to it. It is the American Spring. It is analogous to the Arab Spring . . . and based on the same issues. After all, our income has become as unevenly distributed as Saudi Arabia. This is so disappointing.

Getting caught in a police parade:

In New York, Moonalice had the most amazing experience. We went down in the rain and played the song a bunch of times at Zuccotti. The next day we were scheduled to play a gig at BB King’s, which is a club on the edge of Times Square. It happened to be the day of Occupy Times Square. We didn’t really know it, but the demonstration went right past our hotel. We boarded our bus to go to the gig, and only got around the block when police stopped us at an intersection. While we waited, 8 or 10 paddy wagons turned onto Broadway in front of us. Our bus went up Broadway behind the paddy wagons. They were pushing traffic onto side streets, so our bus was the only civilian vehicle going up Broadway. Next thing you know, we are in the heart of the demonstration. That’s when we began tooting the bus horn. At first the crowd didn’t react, but pretty quickly they figured out we were on their side. That’s when the crowd went CRAZY. We took a really funny video of it. Big Steve Parish, who was Jerry Garcia’s roadie, was convinced we were going to get arrested. I tried to calm down by pointing out the irony of me getting arrested for supporting Occupy.

On New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s comments that Congress, not the banks, is responsible for the financial mess:

He knows it’s not true. There is no question that the government played a huge rule in enabling everything that happened, but the notion that the banks are not responsible is just crazy. The sub-prime market is not the portion of the market that Fannie and Freddie [Mac] were doing. Nearly all sub-prime loans were made by commercial banks.

How this was all inevitable:

History is very clear that when an economy sustains unemployment around 20%, social unrest is an inevitable consequence. The official U.S. unemployment rate is 9%, but an equivalent number of people are either underemployed or have given up looking. More important, America is no longer a land of equal opportunity. A handful of industries have paid for the right to set their own government policy. This has produced a huge change in the distribution of wealth in this country, entirely at the expense of the middle class.

The ‘brilliance’ of OWS:

What Occupy is doing is merely leaning against any obstruction put in its path. So the organization system is really nothing more than that. And therein lies its brilliance.

About the future of Occupy:

When Occupy started, our country was buried in a ridiculous national conversation. One party had pushed our country to the brink of insolvency and was arguing that $10 in spending cuts was not enough to justify one dollar of tax increases. Then Occupy began. Within a month, the national conversation had changed completely. We’re now talking about the right issues: jobs, income distribution, the failure of government, and the limits of capitalism.

The vast majority of Americans support Occupy on the issues, even if some are ambivalent about tents in parks. My hope is that the movement has grown beyond -- and is no longer dependent on -- what happens in city parks.

About the attempts to eradicate Occupy:

There is a story going around that the Department of Homeland Security may have organized a conference call with more than a dozen big city mayors to coordinate the eradication of Occupy camps. If that story proves to be true, U.S. government will find itself in the position of behaving like the dictators we have worked so hard to eliminate. The First Amendment guarantees Americans’ right to peaceful assembly. Unfortunately, mayors and police officers in several major cities seem to have forgotten.

Occupy is not a political movement. It is a protest against overreaching by businesses and the government, which means the more the government behaves like Syria, the bigger the protest will become.

The status quo is bad for America. It’s going to change. It will change peacefully unless the government chooses a different path. I hope our leaders will wake up and engage in a thoughtful discussion about the issues being raised by Occupy.

If you haven’t already heard, there’s a rare feeling of success within the environmental community this week. The State Department has decided to delay the decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline until 2013.  Though the pipeline is not definitively rejected, the delay will allow more time to explore the project's potential impact before a decision is made, and possibly re-route the 1,700 mile pipeline around environmentally-sensitive areas.

This is the issue that prompted 1,252 protesters to get arrested outside the White House during the summer, and another 12,000 to form a giant circle around the White House last week. All the signs had pointed to the pipeline getting approved - a decision that could have forever altered the Obama administration's already frayed relationship with the environmental community. Now, the President faces criticism that he put politics over job creation.

House Speaker John Boehner blasted the president, saying “By punting on this project, the president has made clear that campaign politics are driving U.S. policy decisions--at the expense of American jobs," Boehner said. "The current project has already been deemed environmentally sound, and calling for a new route is nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to avoid upsetting the president’s political base before the election.”

Activist and pipeline protest pioneer Bill McKibben had another take. “The people spoke, loudly, and thankfully the president heard…since we get few even partial victories on climate, this is a big day.”

The President did not directly concede that the protests drove the State Department's decision. But he did reference "a number of concerns have been raised through a public process" when stating his support for the delay.

The pipeline would bring oil from Canada’s tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico and built through the part of Nebraska that is home to the Nebraska Sand Hills, a thin layer of grass-covered dunes that lay atop the Ogallala aquifer. The aquifer and the highly permeable Sand Hills underlie 27% of the irrigated land in the U.S. and is a vital part of Nebraska’s environment. Should the pipeline ever leak or open, environmentalists say the damage to the aquifer would be irreversible. Nebraska ranchers had even called for it being re-routed. But there is equally strong support for the pipeline from the oil and gas industry, as well as labor unions. According to Boehner, the pipeline will create 20,000 American jobs.

With so many special interests having a stake in the pipeline, the non-decision has implications well beyond even that vast expanse of the aquifer as the decision will rest in the hands of whomever the President may be in 2013 when it comes to the table again. Both supporters and critics agree that the President listened to environmentalists on this issue, which may point to a major shift in the political dynamics of Washington.

Tom Hamilton of the bands Brothers Past and American Babies has been hitting Occupy Philly since the movement started. American Babies even performed there. Hamilton sat down with a HeadCount blogger to talk about Occupy and what inspired him to get involved - primarily, he says, the it was the fact that so many of his friends can't find jobs. (for more, check out  Part 2 of the interview here on Sensible Reason, where he discusses  Brothers Past, the new American Babies album, and why he supports HeadCount)

Tom, you’ve been a supporter of the Occupy movement since its early stages. How does it make you feel that the protests have spread not just around the country but also around the world?

I think it's awesome, I think it’s a great thing. In theory, at least right now, it’s a great thing. There isn’t a clearly defined message yet, which kind of … you have this thing rising up everywhere but it's not quite unified. Everybody is just pissy, but everyone is not pissy about the same thing. I’m hoping that it starts to come to a head, sharpen the point, and to get behind the same message. Obviously Occupy Wall Street has a pretty definitive thing. For starters there’s the 1% vs. 99%. You know, getting corporate money out of our politics or letting our politicians govern instead of playing politics. Which is what I totally believe, which is why I’m such a fan of the movement. It’s exactly what I feel and what I want to happen.

But it’s not necessarily that same message everywhere. Even on Wall Street it's not that same message everywhere. Everybody has their pet cause. Down here in Philly it's pretty fractured still. You have people that are talking about the original message to people that are there because they want marijuana legalization. And it's like, “I get it but let's keep our eye on the prize here." It's going to be interesting to see how it goes. I think it needs to become something more focused and get more powerful and make a statement that actually affects what’s going on, that actually affects policy, affects politics.

So you’ve said you have been almost a constant presence down at the Occupy Philly movement. What are you personal grievances, what are you down there for?

Well fortunately I'm a musician and I can still find work wherever we can find it. But that being said, I have a lot of friends. Most of my friends aren’t musicians and are collecting unemployment. Not because they are lazy people who want to live off the government, but because they can't find a goddamn job. It's an awful thing to see people you’ve known your whole life struggling. You know people with law degrees waiting tables, electricians and contractors, they can't find any work doing anything. And it’s a goddamn shame. And I like to be there [Occupy Philly] and be supportive for all of the people that are in these situations. That are on unemployment. These people just can't find work because there are no jobs. For the people that lost everything when the economy collapsed. It's awful, it's infuriating. You know when this whole thing started in '08 I was paying very close attention to what was going on and seeing it affect my friends and family. Most of the new American Babies album is written about this stuff and for these people. So I feel like if I’m going to be writing about this stuff and using it in my career and trying to be a voice for these people, I should be down there with the movement. Showing solidarity and putting my instrument where my mouth is.

Do you have any concrete ideas to address these issues or do you think it should be left to the policy makers who are there right now to come up with solutions?

Well, everybody has an idea. But I feel that within the movement what people should be doing is educating each other. I feel like a lot of people are angry and upset about what’s going on, but they are not completely informed as to why they are where they are, why things happened and how it got to where it is. Within the occupation they should be educating everybody on what the banks did, what Wall Street did, how the government bailout affected them. To give them a very real understanding of what’s happening. I also feel there should be something set up at the occupation where people can go and tell them where they live and somebody give them the phone number, the email, the Twitter, and every kind of contact information they can for their representative. So they can write them or call them and tell them, "I’m your constituent, I’m who you're working for and I want you to govern. I don’t want you to sit there and just play politics and go golfing." There’s more than one way to go about protesting. You know, while you're out there having civil unrest you can also work within the system to try and change it. And I feel like that should be happening.

So I’m wondering, what does “constant presence” and involvement mean. What have you actually been doing while you’ve been down at the protest? Just talking to people, holding a sign…

Yeah I’m always just talking to people. To see why they are there, to see what they think is going on, how long they’ve been there, where they are from. Just trying to get to know people, their stories. And inherently that always leads to conversations about what do they think should be going on and what do they think about what’s happening. Just talking and finding out their situations. As I’m talking to people I’m telling them things they don’t know and other people are telling me things I don’t know. It’s a great learning experience in that way.

One of my really close friends is a comedian and has a radio show that we do down here in Philadelphia called The Panic Hour. We play music, but he’s a comedian so it’s a comedy thing. It's basically me and him and 3 or 4 other people. Before the occupation it would be a weekly thing where we would sit around and in a pretty light way just talk about the news and what’s going on in the world. The range of the people on the show go from extreme conspiracy theorist to more rational people. So it's basically just a pissing match between all of us and we just sit around and bust each others' balls and talk about politics and the world and whatever. His name is N. A. Poe and he’s in charge of the media branch of Occupy Philly. He’s been living there since day one. And so when I am there that’s who I’m with; I’m in the media pen a lot. He goes around and interviews everybody he can find from random people that are down there for the right reasons to people that are obviously there for the wrong reasons. Like the trust fund kid with dreads that wants to just smoke pot and play in the drum circle. We interviewed the previous mayor of Philly when he was down there, the chief of police; we kind of run the gamut. It's looking at what’s going on, interviewing people and getting information out there. But we don’t have an agenda, like I said there’s everyone down there. There’s hippies, there's anarchists, there’s all of these people down there that have their own agenda and they are always pushing things one way or the other. My buddy N. A. Poe, he’s just a comedian, but also really believes in this thing that’s going on as much as I do. We’re trying to get the message out, get that content out, because the press isn’t reporting on it. So we’re going to get it out there and make it unbiased. You know, what the media is supposed to be doing, but also funny at the same time. You can check out the hundreds of interviews he’s done on his YouTube channel, which has gotten a huge number of hits so far. And I think it's because he’s just telling it how it is and being an unfiltered voice. That’s why I like being down there. Just trying to help as much as we can. And do things the way we feel is the right way.

Do you think the real problem is Wall Street and big business or do you think the real problem is the politicians and bureaucrats who regulate them?

Or don’t regulate is another way to say that. For me it's lobbyists really. I feel like that’s the problem, big business gets lobbyists into D.C. and there are all of these backroom deals being cut. And that's not the way its supposed to go. Even as the 99%, we don’t have lobbyists. We can't afford lobbyists. This is about lobbyists, that’s not what the government should be about. It's supposed to be about “we the people” and what we want. And that’s what should be going on, what's in the best interest of the country and the best interest of its citizens. And if you have been paying attention to what’s going on in Congress and the Senate right now you know that nothing’s going on, nothing's happening. Because there’s this fucking mandate that the right has put out that says that nothing that comes from the left -- especially the president -- goes through. And it has nothing to do with Americans. And has everything to do with some pissing match that’s going on in D.C. And we're suffering for it, and a bunch of guys [are] sitting there measuring their dicks, and it's like “hey man, that’s not governing.”

Is there a politician that you support that you think can get American where it needs to be? Or at least someone that has ideas that you agree with?

It's not something that a politician can fix. That’s not the solution. It's not a person, it’s the system itself is cracked right now. Some will say broken. And as for who I personally support politically, I'd really rather not say. I don’t think that that really matters. The system is what’s wrong. And that’s what needs to be addressed.

One of your projects, American Babies, performed at the Occupy Philly protest. How did it make you feel to “entertain the troops?"

It was an absolute honor. And that’s exactly how I looked at it, as entertaining the troops. These people are down there freezing, getting rained on, getting snowed on. They put themselves out of their comfortable homes into this situation, to try to make a difference and change things for all of us. The least I can do is strum a guitar and make them smile and dance for an hour.

Part 2 of the interview continues here on SensibleReason.com

A month ago the largest retail bank in the nation, Bank of America, was planning on adding a $5 monthly fee for debit card purchases. As a current customer of Bank of America, I was not at all pleased to hear this. Yes, its only $5, but for a recent college graduate like myself, every dollar counts. Molly Katchpole, a 22-year-old nanny from Washington, felt similarly. "When I heard about the fee, it was the last straw for me," said Molly Katchpole. Immediately after, she started an online petition urging Bank of America to drop the fees. The petition had collected more than 300,000 signatures, and I must say, “Well done Molly.” With all that is going on down on Wall Street, I find it quite refreshing to finally see Americans really focus on a task at hand and stand up for themselves.

Another individual, Kristen Christian, 27, has started another grass-roots effort, “Bank Transfer Day.” This month long campaign was started to encourage customers of big banks to move their money to community banks and credit unions. For most, the scrapping of the $5 fee is still not enough. The campaign will end this Saturday. Having previously worked for a credit union, I know first hand that they offer better interest and lower fees to members. According to the head of the Credit Union National Association, Bill Cheney, credit unions have seen a huge rise in the demand for accounts up to tens of thousands. Although in the short term, this may be a solution for consumers, this is not a solution that will resolve capitalistic bank practices over night.

Do I really think that because they lost this time around, they aren’t going to come up with other ways to make up the money? No. How else can we be taken advantage of? Requiring higher balances? Direct Deposits? Hidden fees? Well, in my opinion, probably all of the above. It may not be as obvious as slapping a $5 dollar fee on your account, but slowly and surely, they are going to bring those revenues back. It is apparent that their loyalty is not being valued, and its time to stop allowing banks to take advantage of us.

As of Tuesday November 1, Bank of America has abandoned their plan to charge customers $5 to use their debit cards for purchases. For many customers, this was the final straw. Once rivals JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. announced that they were dropping plans for similar fees, Bank of America followed suit shortly after. Bank of America's co-Chief Operating Officer David Darnell stated on Tuesday, "Our customers' voices are most important to us. As a result, we are not currently charging the fee and will not be moving forward with any additional plans to do so." Now let's be honest, it took 300,000 signatures, customers mobilizing to close accounts and take business elsewhere, and all the competition to back down before the “customers’ voices” were actually heard.

As of October 1, 2011, the Dodd-Frank Act was put into place, which limits fees banks can levy on merchants every time consumers swipe. This act was expected to cost banks anywhere up to $6.6 billion each year, which is put on top of the $5.6 billion lost on new rules restricting overdraft fees. The $5 monthly fee was created as part of an effort to raise revenue lost elsewhere. The banks can continue to blame the rise in customer fees on the new federal regulation, but in reality it's just part of their everyday business practices.

This blog post was originally posted on Greg Sarafan's Sensible Reason.

Yesterday, Greg Sarafan's blog about the Wall Street protests (Wall Street Protesters Don't Know What They're Asking For) generated a flurry of responses. Here is one, submitted by a reader, that captures many of the sentiments expressed.

Greg Sarafan penned what I consider to be a very poorly reasoned attack on Occupy Wall Street.

It is not that the Occupy Wall Street protesters are confused, it is Greg who is confused. Here is where he goes wrong:

1)      Greg assumes that all of the protesters, in order to be effective, or worthy of his respect, must share a single purpose. That's silly. The OWS protesters are united by a sense that things have gone very wrong in this country, and that this dysfunction is not a bug but a feature. The protesters believe the system has been co-opted by a few for their own benefit, and that the vast majority of people are suffering as a result. Since this is a systemic problem, it will have myriad manifestations, hence the myriad and disparate grievances of the protesters.

2)      Greg grotesquely mis-represents the actual grievances of the protesters, and blithely dismisses the problems of the economy. Sorry, Wall Street is NOT the "job creators" in this country. As Paul Volker famously said, the only truly useful innovation of the financial industry in the last several decades was the ATM.  The US economy has become dominated by financial structuring and risky speculation that does not create economic value, but merely liquidates and concentrates it. That is not China's fault, though nice try Greg.  Scape-goating the “other” is a classic tool of the right wing.

3)      The protesters are not simply protesting bank bailouts - that again is a gross misrepresentation. The protesters are outraged by the fact that there seems to be unlimited funds for bank bailouts, repayment of Goldman's bad investments at 100 cents on the dollar by the government, unlimited wars of aggression that don't make us safer, ALL WHILE ordinary Americans are told there is no money for education, health care, the environment, infrastructure, investment in new clean industry, etc.  The Tea Party gets endless adulatory coverage in the corporate media because they call for the American people to endure deep austerity, while the OWS protesters cannot get any respectful coverage by pointing out systemic problems in our economy and calling for the wealthiest 1% to pay their fair share.  Warren Buffett summed up a big part of the issue when he noted that he pays a lower tax rate than the secretaries in his office.  Here's another, unintentional demonstration of the problem: Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman thinks that efforts to raise the tax on carried interest and institute responsible regulation of the financial system is the same as the Nazi assault on the Jews in WW2.  This makes clear that a tiny minority of Americans think this country exists only to serve their interests, and that they have no responsibilities whatsoever.

Finally, YES I understand economics. I work in finance - I am a venture capitalist, investing in and helping grow companies that create real jobs. So park your arrogance, Greg, asserting that we protesters are know-nothings. The system is obviously broken, and no longer serves the interests of the American people. Upholding a long and honorable tradition, average Americans are finally standing up for their rights.  They deserve respect.

Photos by Brian Stollery

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times today, the Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has called on Congress to change the tax code to more appropriately reflect the income rates of the richest Americas. This plea might seem strange coming from the world's third richest man, but after hearing his arguments it doesn't seem strange at all.

Mr. Buffett points out that tax rates on the rich have been falling and are considerably lower then they were in the 1980's and 1990's. He says there is no basis for the Republican argument that higher taxes on "job creators" -- a Republican synonym for "rich people" -- stifles job growth. Citing the fact that in those two decades job creation was considerably higher then it has been in the past ten years, when the income taxes on the mega rich were lowered. So what really is the difference? Well Warren Buffett who has 50 Billion dollars (that's billion, with a "B"!) pays the lowest tax rate out of everyone that works in his office, including the secretaries. Where Mr. Buffett pays 17.4 percent of his taxable income, others in his office pay anywhere from 33 to 41 percent in income taxes.

Part of the problem, as Mr. Buffett explains it, is that he makes money with money. Meaning he pays a considerable amount less on income made from investments than he does on income derived from payroll. For the rest of us, that means that if most of your income comes from your salary than you pay a much higher percentage on your total income than super wealthy investors.

"Last year about 80 percent of [the government's] revenues came from personal income taxes and payroll taxes. The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes," the Oracle of Omaha says.

To add a bit more perspective, almost a quarter of the 400 richest Americans reported no wages at all with all of their income coming from investments.

Mr. Buffett's plan calls for a tax increase that would only affect the 2.3 richest Americans while actually cutting payroll income taxes on the middle class.

The issue of raising taxes has been a no-go for Republicans for years. But with the congressional deficit reduction "super" committee charged with reigning in America's budget issues, can they ignore someone of Warren Buffet's stature?

This is the first story that has come out of the financial world in the past few years that has made me truly laugh and smile. A win for the little guy.

A couple years ago, Warren and Maureen Nyerges a couple from Naples, Florida fulfilled the American dream: home ownership. They actually paid cash, which in these perilous financial times is a refreshing thing to hear. So you can imagine their shock when in 2010 they started to receive notices and phone calls from Bank of America, the largest retail bank in the country, telling them that the bank was foreclosing on their house.

The Nyerges struggled for some time to even find a lawyer who would represent them against Bank of America. In fact, the only one who would take the case  had passed the bar just 8 months earlier. Despite the lawyer's inexperience, they won in court, and a judge ordered Bank of America to pay attorneys fees and other menial damages amounting to around $2,500.

So that should be the end of the story, right? Well Bank of America -- in contempt of the court -- never bothered to pay. So on June 3rd the Nyerges gave the bank a little taste of its own medicine. They showed up to the BofA in their area and... foreclosed on it.

Accompanied by two local sheriffs, two RePo men and a truck, their attorney gave instructions to remove desks, computers, copiers, filing cabinets and "any cash in the teller's drawers." They even locked the manager out of the bank. Desperate, he manage to cut a check to the Nyerges about an hour later.

Hearing this story made me feel good. It made me want to tell everyone around me as soon as I heard. This couple foreclosed ON a bank....on a bank! It certainly took some dramatic flair, but that these Joe Everybodys were able to padlock the doors of the largest bank in the nation shows that the little guy can sometimes win against corporate America.

Today marks the 40th Anniversary of America's war on drugs. It's not a war that is generally considered a success, even by those who say it's important we continue to wage it. And today, an unlikely group is highlighting the drug war's failures and calling for legalization (of all drugs) as a solution to some "prohibition related" problems like black market violence, police murders, and overdose deaths: law enforcement.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) is a nonprofit organization of current and former law enforcement professionals like police officers, judges, and prosecutors, who feel the war on drugs has failed and can't be won. In the video above, LEAP's executive director Neil Franklin sits down with the hardcore Libertarian rag Reason Magazine to explain why, after years of fighting the drug war as a police officer, he now supports an end to the drug war.

This week, LEAP members arrived at the Office of National Drug Control Policy headquarters in Washington, D.C. to present Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske with a report titled "Ending the Drug War: A Dream Deferred." The report focuses on LEAP's belief that the Obama Administration has misled Americans with promises to shift away from the drug war and treat drug abuse as a public health issue. It also provides support for legalization from a law enforcement perspective and as a way to curb the escalating violence in Mexico that has now claimed nearly 40,000 lives. However, the Drug Czar refused to meet with them.

Drug policy reformers were optimistic when President Obama took office (after all, he has called the war on drugs an "utter failure" and has said that his favorite show is the Wire) and even more so after then newly appointed Drug Czar Kerlikowske, who was formerly the police chief of Seattle, stated that we should not be at war with our own people. But as LEAP says, the rhetoric of this administration has brought little change. Oddly enough, Norm Stamper was also a former Seattle police chief and one of the LEAP members who hoped Kerlikowske would meet and openly discuss this issue as members of law enforcement.

"Since President Nixon declared 'war on drugs' four decades ago, this failed policy has led to millions of arrests, a trillion dollars spent and countless lives lost, yet drugs today are more available than ever," said Norm Stamper, former chief of police in Seattle and a speaker for legalization-advocacy group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

And LEAP's report isn't the only one to come out criticizing the drug war and promoting a system of regulation and legalization. Just two weeks ago, the Global Commission on Drug Policy, released a report that encourages countries to experiment with legalization and regulation. Members of the GCDP include some heavy hitting activists, political leaders and business moguls:

• George Shultz, former Secretary of State (United States)
• Ernesto Zedillo, former President of Mexico
• Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former President of Brazil
• Kofi Annann, former Secretary General of the United Nations
• Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group

Yesterday, in a New York Times Op-Ed titled "Call Off the Global Drug War,"  former U.S. president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter wrote about the report:

The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.

These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”

Still, the Office of National Drug Control Policy says that legalization of marijuana or any drug is not going to happen. Drug Czar Kerlikowske claims that he while in theory he supports treating drug use as a public health issue, he doesn't think legalization can be part of that effort and would simply increase drug use and abuse. From a statement to the Huffington Post:

Drug Legalization runs counter to a public health approach to policy because research shows that illegal drug use is associated with voluntary treatment admissions, fatal drugged driving accidents, and emergency room admissions.

So a former President, law enforcement officials, and some of the world's leading thought-leaders believe legalization is the only rational choice. But on this 40th anniversary of the War on Drugs, those in the best position to shape and execute policy are not yet convinced.

As the threat of a government shutdown loomed last week, Congresswoman Donna Edwards (D-MD) channeled her inner Jack White to relay her party’s message to young people on the House floor. Her spoken word version of the White Stripes’ song “Effect and Cause” was a refreshing way to frame her opinion on the budget and a creative way to get the attention of young people, who arguably stand to lose the most.

Directly calling out her Republican counterparts, Edwards laid down a few verses like:

I guess you have a problem if you want to invent a contraption / First you cause a trainwreck and then you put me in traction / But first came an action and then a reaction / but you can't switch around for your own satisfaction / You burnt my house down and then got mad at my reaction

The reference was more than just an attempt to look “hip” or “cool” to her younger constituents; Edwards used the White Stripes lyrics to make some rather valid points.

“But if you’re headin’ to the grave, you don’t blame the hearse.” Edwards reminded her colleagues. To me, that's a valid commentary on lowered oversight on Wall Street and the financial disaster that followed. In other words, it's ridiculous to argue that the mistakes of the past have not been the "cause" of the problems of today.

As yet, Democrats have found it difficult to find their footing and frame their message in a way that resonates with young people.

Congresswoman Edwards’ approach is creative and youthful. Hopefully others on both ends of the political spectrum will take her lead by using such thoughtful and inventive approaches. As our friend Jack White would say, Ms. Edwards, I "salute your solution".

See her speech here: