Philip Glass with Occupy Protesters

Philip Glass, the brilliant composer who wrote the opera, made a statement that was broadcast throughout the crowd by the group, which repeated each line. He made the statement, which is a passage from the Bhagavad Gita, three times:

“When righteousness withers away and evil rules the land, we come into being, age after age, and take visible shape, and move, a man among men, for the protection of good, thrusting back evil and setting virtue on her seat again.”

Philip Glass at Lincoln Center with Occupy Wall Street Protesters

Citizens United Opinion

 In 2010, Justice Stevens along with Justice Ginsburg, Justice Breyer, and Justice Sotomayor view Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission as having drastically weakened efforts to restrain the effect of money in government. In his dissenting remarks Justice Stevens states:

At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.

Citizens United Opinion by Justice Stevens

Wealth in America

The top 10% own 71.5% and the bottom 90% own 28.5% of the wealth.

The bottom half of America owns 2.5% of country's wealth.

The top 1% owns a third of it.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/new-charts-about-inequality-2011-11#half-of-america-owns-25-of-countrys-wealth-the-top-1-owns-a-third-of-it-5#ixzz1fJr3o0EY