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There's a tiny 12-person startup churning out of Des Moines, Iowa.Dwolla was founded by 28-year-old Ben Milne; it's an innovative online payment system that sidesteps credit cards completely.Milne has no finance background, yet his little operation is moving between $30 and $50 million per month; it's on track to move more than $350 million in the next year.Unlike PayPal, Dwolla doesn't take a percentage of the transaction. It only asks for $0.25  whether it's moving $1 or $1,000.We interviewed Milne about how he is building a credit card killer and Square rival from the middle of the nation where VCs and press are scarce.

Hundreds of protesters attended a rally after which they planted 558 crosses, representing the 558 uninsured Oregonians who die each year because they lack health care.  The group marched peacefully in two large groups along the sidewalks stopping for traffic. They proceeded without incident, and without a single police officer to escort or obstruct them to Pioneer Square. Following his apology for misleading citizens in a statement regarding the alleged rape of a teenager Police Chief Reese said: "Our Incident Commander Mike Leloff met with protestors before a march and asked if they wanted a police escort. When they told him no, he asked that they self-police their event and obey the law; police would only respond if there were complaints. The march participants agreed, and the event proceeded without any problems, or a police presence" An Occupy Portland Video Collective collaboration. Subscribe here for more daily updates. All content on this channel marked with a creative commons licence is available for derivative, non-commercial works only. Email occupyportland.mediacoalition@gmail.com to join our group of volunteers. www.occupyportland.org occupypdx.orgwww.occupytogether.orgwww.occupytomorrow.com

About the murderous rampage of US soldiers from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, who killed and dismembered Afghani civilians evidently "for sport," the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported on September 20, "Army officials have not disclosed a motive" for the outrage. Let me try.

Power does not rest with the electorate. It does not reside with either of the two major political parties. It is not represented by the press. It is not arbitrated by a judiciary that protects us from predators. Power rests with corporations. And corporations gain very lucrative profits from war, even wars we have no chance of winning. All polite appeals to the formal systems of power will not end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We must physically obstruct the war machine or accept a role as its accomplice. 

Not long ago I was sitting at home writing something for publication - I won't say what, except that it was a passage about a certain politician on the Hill. Out of habit I launched into a description that was full of nasty and personal language, and I was about to press on to the next part of the piece when suddenly I hit a mental speed bump. A voice in my head whispered - this really happened - "If you write that shit and Bernie Sanders sees it, he's going to be disappointed in you." So I went back and removed the gratuitous body blows from the article.

On July 25th, for instance, while John Boehner raced around the Capitol desperately pressing Republican House members for votes on a debt-ceiling bill that Harry Reid was calling dead-on-arrival in the Senate, America's new ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, took his oath of office in distant Kabul.  According to the New York Times, he then gave a short speech "warning" that "Western powers needed to 'proceed carefully'" and emphasized that when it came to the war, there would "be no rush for the exits." If, in Washington, people were rushing for those exits, no chance of that in Kabul almost a decade into America's second Afghan War.  There, the air strikes, night raids, assassinations, roadside bombs, and soldier and civilian deaths, we are assured, will continue to 2014 and beyond.  In a war in which every gallon of gas used by a fuel-guzzling US military costs $400 to $800 to import, time is no object and -- despite the panic in Washington over debt payments -- neither evidently is cost.

Scott Crow is an Austin-based anarchist community organizer, political activist, and writer. His grassroots organizing projects include the post-Katrina Common Ground Collective in New Orleans, which has been called the largest anarchist-influenced organization in modern U.S. history. Scott has worked with groups like Greenpeace, ACORN, and the Rainforest Action Network, and currently works at an anarchist recycling center cooperative in Austin. Scott's political activities have led the FBI to label him a "domestic terrorist," and earlier this year he was featured in a front page article in The New York Times about FBI surveillance of political activists. Scott's book, Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy and the Common Ground Collective, will be published by PM Press in September, 2011. Rag Radio is produced in the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas, in association with The Rag Blog (http://theragblog.blogspot.com) and the New Journalism Project. Host and producer: Thorne Dreyer; Engineer and Co-Producer: Tracey Schulz. Video produced for Austin Indymedia by Jeff Zavala. A ZGraphix video production. http://zgraphix.org http://austin.indymedia.org

Would more accurate news coverage prompt Tea Party and Republican leaders to pay more attention to facts in their assertions about the economy? Maybe yes, maybe no. But, suggests Henry Banta, if the coverage continues at its present dismal level, we'll never find out.

angella on September 27th, 2011 at 1:08 pm # Online Protest Your Voice Will Be Heard Right to political protest The right to political protest is protected by the Constitution. Section 17 of the Bill of Rights provides for rights to conduct peaceful and unarmed activities such as assembly, demonstrations, pickets and petitions. Political protest also involves imparting related information, and this right is guaranteed by the section regarding freedom of expression (Section 16 of the Bill of Rights). Although the right to political protest is protected by the Constitution, this right may be limited by principle. Activists must remember that none of the fundamental rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights are absolute. The Constitution gives government the power to limit these rights. Section 36 of the Bill, however, says the limitation of fundamental rights or freedoms must be reasonable and justifiable in an open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom. The Following Abstracts from the Bill of Rights Might Apply To Any On-Line Protest Section 15: Freedom of religion, belief and opinion Everyone has the right to believe or think what they want, even if their opinion is different to the government. Everyone has the right to practise the religion they choose. Government institutions, like schools, can follow religious practices (like having prayers in the morning) but this must be done fairly and people cannot be forced to attend them. A person can also get married under the laws of their religion. But these cannot go against the Bill of Rights. For example, a woman who marries according to customary law does not lose her rights of equality when she gets married. Section 16: Freedom of speech and expression Everyone has the right to say what they want, including the press and other media. Limiting this right There are certain kinds of speech that are not protected. These are: propaganda for war inciting (encouraging) people to u

'It is now virtually certain a child born in 1979 will not reach 50 years of age before the Arctic is ice-free in the summer. That is a rapid change on a planetary scale, with far-reaching consequences that scientists are just beginning to understand.' Stephen Leahy, Inter Press Service

"It's really alarming," Castro said. "We are cutting assistance to low-income people at the same time we're providing hundreds of millions in tax breaks to large corporations. It's just unacceptable, and I think it would be unacceptable to the public if they understood that. And I don't think that they do."

As the New York Times has detailed, "Some of the nation's largest corporations have amassed vast profits outside the country and are pressing Congress and the Obama administration for a tax break to bring the money home." Yet, across America, thousands of teachers are being laid off, programs to help feed needy children have been eliminated, and Medicare is under attack. It's time for us to fight back and tell Congress that corporations need to pay their fair share. The first step? Understanding the complex accounting tricks and loopholes giant corporations use to evade taxes. Here's the video that explains it all:

It's important, yes, and must be addressed. But by a wide margin, it's not the nation's most pressing economic problem. That would be the widespread and persistent joblessness that has plagued the labor market since the Great Recession began in 2008. Almost 14 million people - 9.1 percent of the labor force - were officially counted as unemployed last month. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. There were almost 9 million part-time workers who wanted, but couldn't find, full-time jobs; 28 million in jobs they would have quit under normal conditions; and an additional 2.2 million who wanted work but couldn't find any and dropped out of the labor force. If the economy could generate jobs at the median wage for even half of these people, national income would grow by more than 10 times the total interest cost of the 2011 deficit (which was less than $40 billion). So anyone who says that reducing the deficit is more urgent than reducing unemployment is saying, in effect, that we should burn hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods and services in a national bonfire. We ought to be tackling both problems at once. But in today's fractious political climate, many promising dual-purpose remedies - like infrastructure investments that would generate large and rapid returns - are called unthinkable, in the false belief that they would impoverish our grandchildren. Yet there are other ways to attack unemployment that could garner bipartisan support. Perhaps the most promising is a payroll tax holiday.

If, as Lessig conclusively demonstrates, Congress is indifferent to the will of the people and to democratic debate - because it has been captured by monied interests to whose interests it exclusively attends - then the people lose the ability to affect what government does in any realm. It doesn't make much difference which problem you believe is most pressing: this is the dynamic that lies at the heart of it. Inaction on climate issues is due to the power of polluters and energy companies; the power of the private health insurance industry blocks fundamental health-care reform; endless war and civil liberties abuses are sustained by the power of the surveillance and National Security State industries; and a failure to achieve real Wall Street reform is due to the fact that, as Sen. Dick Durbin amazingly acknowledged about the institution in which he serves, "the banks frankly own the place." Without finding an effective way to address that overarching problem, the only recourse for citizens becomes either passive acceptance of their powerlessness (i.e., apathy and withdrawal) or disruption and unrest fomented outside of the electoral system (the driving ethos of OccupyWallStreet).