Speaking in front of over 300 of the FDNY's newest firefighters, Mayor de Blasio on Monday lauded the bravest for their courage and told them the city needs heroes like them "more than ever."

"You made the heroic choice, you made that choice to serve ... people you don't even know, but whose humanity you are here to protect," he said at the FDNY Academy on Randall's Island.

He said serving in the FDNY is the "highest calling of public service."

"It is a profoundly important choice for New York City. Times like these, the city needs heroes more than ever," he said.

Why haven’t any big bankers been prosecuted for their role in the housing crisis that led to the Great Recession?

These finance executives took part in “scandals that violate the most basic ethical norms,” as the head of the IMF Christine Lagarde put it last month, including illegal foreclosures, money laundering and the fixing of interest rate benchmarks. In fact, banking CEOs not only avoided prosecution but got average pay rises of 10 percent last year, taking home, on average, $13 million in compensation.

These “gentlemen” are among the leaders of the industry’s efforts to repeal, or water down, some of the tougher rules and regulations enacted in the Dodd-Frank legislation that was passed to prevent another crash. As usual, they’re swelling their ranks with the very people who helped to write that bill. More than two dozen federal officials have pushed through the revolving door to the private sector they once sought to regulate.

And then there are the lapdogs in Congress willfully collaborating with the financial industry. As the Center for Public Integrity put it recently, they are “Wall Street’s secret weapon,” a handful of representatives at the beck and call of the banks, eager to do their bidding. Jeb Hensarling is their head honcho. The Republican from Texas chairs the House Financial Services Committee, which functions for Wall Street like one of those no-tell motels with the neon sign. Hensarling makes no bones as to where his loyalties lie. “Occasionally we have been accused of trying to undermine aspects of Dodd-Frank,” he said recently, adding, with a chuckle, “I hope we’re guilty of it.” Guilty as charged, Congressman. And it tells us all we need to know about our bought and paid for government that you think it’s funny.

This essay is part of the show Too Big to Fail and Getting Bigger. Watch now »

Bernie Sanders ?@SenSanders 32m32 minutes ago
Please join me in vigorously opposing the #TPP trade agreement. pic.twitter.com/PaupxK1ZVm

NYC Mayor Asks Protesters to Pause Until After Cops' Funerals

The atmosphere was mostly respectful, but there were scattered signs of protest even before the police officers' action when the mayor spoke.

A block from the church, though, retired NYPD Officer John Mangan held a sign that read: "God Bless the NYPD. Dump de Blasio."

In his speech, the mayor seemed to try to reach out to police, honoring not only Ramos, but the entire NYPD.

After directing his remarks to the Ramos family, he said he wanted to "extend my condolences to another family -- the family of the NYPD -- that is hurting so deeply right now."

Occupy Atlanta retweeted
N.O.T.O.R.I.O.U.S.™ ?@MrMilitantNegro 1h1 hour ago
One brave officer did not turn his back on the NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio. Notice his skin color.

Appearing on ABC, de Blasio three times refused to respond to the question of whether he respected the decision by a grand jury not to bring charges against Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer who put Staten Island resident Eric Garner in a chokehold during an arrest attempt. The decision led to large-scale protests in the city and across the country, which on Sunday continued into a fifth day. On Saturday night, violence broke out at one such demonstration, in California.

After de Blasio had deflected the question, saying “as an executive in public service” he respected “the judicial process, but …” host George Stephanopoulos interrupted to ask: “So you respect the grand jury’s decision?”

De Blasio replied, with emphasis on the last word: “I respect the process.” He went on to talk about initiating a “systemic” retraining of police officers in New York, in order to “fix the relationship between the police and the community”.

Stephanopoulos countered: “So you respect the process but not the decision?”De Blasio gave the hint of a smile but did not reply.

Government programs can effectively reduce poverty in the United States. Using the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM)—a more comprehensive measure of economic security than traditional poverty thresholds—the figure below illustrates the strength of the government to mitigate the incidence of poverty.

Social Security is, by far, the most effective anti-poverty program in the United States. Without Social Security, an additional 8.6 percent of Americans, or nearly 27 million, would fall below the SPM poverty threshold. Refundable tax credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, kept 2.9 percent of Americans, or 9 million, above the SPM poverty threshold. Other programs, such as SNAP (food stamps), Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies, and unemployment insurance, also have a significant impact on the ability of families to stay afloat.

A police officer who shot a 12-year-old dead in a Cleveland park late last month had been judged unfit for police service two years earlier by a small suburban force where he worked for six months, according to records released on Wednesday.

Officer Timothy Loehmann, who killed Tamir Rice on 22 November, was specifically faulted for breaking down emotionally while handling a live gun. During a training episode at a firing range, Loehmann was reported to be “distracted and weepy” and incommunicative. “His handgun performance was dismal,” deputy chief Jim Polak of the Independence, Ohio, police department wrote in an internal memo.

The memo concludes with a recommendation that Loehmann be “released from the employment of the City of Independence”. Less than a week later, on 3 December 2012, Loehmann resigned.

In March of this year, Loehmann was hired by the Cleveland police department. It is unclear whether the department had seen the Independence memo at the time of Loehmann’s hiring.

“Due to this dangerous loss of composure during live range training and his inability to manage this personal stress, I do not believe Ptl Loehmann shows the maturity needed to work in our employment. For these reasons, I am recommending he be released from the employment of the city of Independence. I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct these deficiencies.”

Government programs can effectively reduce poverty in the United States. Using the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM)—a more comprehensive measure of economic security than traditional poverty thresholds—the figure below illustrates the strength of the government to mitigate the incidence of poverty.

Social Security is, by far, the most effective anti-poverty program in the United States. Without Social Security, an additional 8.6 percent of Americans, or nearly 27 million, would fall below the SPM poverty threshold. Refundable tax credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, kept 2.9 percent of Americans, or 9 million, above the SPM poverty threshold. Other programs, such as SNAP (food stamps), Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies, and unemployment insurance, also have a significant impact on the ability of families to stay afloat.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for which we have data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them.

A recent Houston Chronicle investigation found that “police have been nearly immune from criminal charges in shootings” in Houston and other large cities in recent years. In Harris County, Texas, for example, grand juries haven’t indicted a Houston police officer since 2004; in Dallas, grand juries reviewed 81 shootings between 2008 and 2012 and returned just one indictment. Separate research by Bowling Green State University criminologist Philip Stinson has found that officers are rarely charged in on-duty killings, although it didn’t look at grand jury indictments specifically.

In cases of Cop Killings, GJs should be Federal.

Investigations should be Federal.

Independent Prosecutors need to be put in charge of these cases and they too should be Federal.

- Invest in our crumbling infrastructure with a major program to create jobs by rebuilding roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads and schools.

– Transform energy systems away from fossil fuels to create jobs while beginning to reverse global warming and make the planet habitable for future generations.

– Develop new economic models to support workers in the United States instead of giving tax breaks to corporations which ship jobs to low-wage countries overseas.

– Make it easier for workers to join unions and bargain for higher wages and benefits.

– Raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour so no one who works 40 hours a week will live in poverty.

– Provide equal pay for women workers who now make 78 percent of what male counterparts make.

– Reform trade policies that have shuttered more than 60,000 factories and cost more than 4.9 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs.

– Make college affordable and provide affordable child care to restore America’s competitive edge compared to other nations.

– Break up big banks. The six largest banks now have assets equivalent to 61 percent of our gross domestic product, over $9.8 trillion. They underwrite more than half the mortgages in the country and issue more than two-thirds of all credit cards.

– Join the rest of the industrialized world with a Medicare-for-all health care system that provides better care at less cost.

– Expand Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and nutrition programs.

– Reform the tax code based on wage earners’ ability to pay and eliminate loopholes that let profitable corporations stash profits overseas and pay no U.S. federal income taxes.