Politics Plus

The GOP Reichsministry of Propaganda made the mistake of taking on John Stewart.

Hallelujah! 😈

The GOP, realizing that not even their own party believes the leadership lies on Financial Reform has pulled a cowardly about face and are now trying to take credit for it.

It seems like maybe the tactic of defending Wall Street and obstructing reform isn’t something that the GOP caucus is staying united behind.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell struck a markedly different tone on financial regulatory reform today, suggesting an agreement could be struck with Democrats sooner rather than later. And Democrats have taken notice.

"We believe the process to achieve [a bipartisan bill] has now been reconstituted," McConnell told reporters after the Republicans’ weekly caucus meeting this afternoon. "We are all confident that this can be fixed… Senator Shelby [the Republicans’ chief financial reform negotiator] believes that there’s been a very serious effort to re-engage."

McConnell of course gave credit to his letter signed by all 41 Republicans saying they were opposed to the bill as the kickstart for negotiations. To which Democrats respond that negotiations never stopped.

"Talk about taking people taking credit for things–that’s like the rooster taking credit for the morning," Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), the Democrats’ reg reform point man, told reporters after a caucus meeting. "This has been ongoing for people who have been following this thing. Welcome to the discussion…. Where has the [Republican] leader been?"

… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Daily Kos>

Where has Bitch been?  He’s been being bought, that’s where!

Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes analyze.

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Now that the Republicans are on the ropes, we should take the opportunity to push for more real reform. Robert Reich has some good ideas.

…The Dodd bill now being considered in the Senate is a step in the right direction. Yet despite the hype, it’s a very modest step. It leaves out three of the most important things necessary to prevent a repeat of the Wall Street meltdown:

1. Require that trading of all derivatives be done on open exchanges where parties have to disclose what they’re buying and selling and have enough capital to pay up if their bets go wrong. The exception in the current bill for so-called "unique" derivatives opens up a loophole big enough for bankers to drive their Ferrari’s through.
2. Resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act in its entirety so commercial banks are separated from investment banks. The current bill doesn’t go nearly far enough. Commercial banks should take deposits and lend money. Investment banks should be limited to the casino we call the stock market, helping companies issue new issues and making bets. Nothing good comes of mixing the two. We learned this after the Great Crash of 1929, and then forgot it in 1999 when Congress allowed financial supermarkets to do both.
3. Cap the size of big banks at $100 billion in assets. The current bill doesn’t limit the size of banks at all. It creates a process for winding down the operations of any bank that gets into trouble. But if several big banks are threatened, as they were when the housing bubble burst, their failure would pose a risk to the whole financial system, and Congress and the Fed would surely have to bail them out. The only way to ensure no bank is too big to fail is to make sure no bank is too big, period. Nobody has been able to show any scale efficiencies over $100 billion in assets, so that should be the limit.

 

Wall Street doesn’t want these three major reforms because they’d cut deeply into profits…[emphasis added]

Inserted from <Huffington Post>

To these I would add two more.

Require that no Bankster be employed in an oversight role (including the current crop).

Move the CFPA out of the Fed and make its director a cabinet level post.

It’s not too often that I delve into politics on the far side of the pond, but this story is worthy noting.

For those inclined to root for a disruptive brand of politics, there’s an election going on for you. It just happens to be across the ocean in the United Kingdom. The nationwide election in the UK is May 6, and for the Liberal Democrats party, it can’t get here soon enough.

During the spring of 2008, I got my first taste of working with the Liberal Democrats, during the London mayoral contest. It was the typical frustrating election that Lib Dems tend to have had over the years. A bit of a rise during the initial parts of the campaign — one that builds up the hopes — and then a swift crushing downfall as the election date neared, ending with yet another third place finish.

That’s because the voters, fearing a wasted vote, usually near the end of the campaign, migrate to one of the more traditional candidates in the Conservative or Labour parties. Two weeks ago, a similar fate might have been about to occur to the Lib Dems. The Conservative party, with David Cameron, was in the lead with 38 percent of the vote; the incumbent Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour party trailed with 30 percent, and bringing up the rear was Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems, with polling numbers at 20 percent. The other 12 percent or so gets distributed among the smaller or regional parties. Over the past week though, running against the conventional wisdom, the Lib Dems have surged in the polls to pull even with the other two parties, each garnering around 30 percent of the vote.

Most point toward Clegg’s shining moment of clarity in the recent national televised debate as the reason. Nick Clegg was unanimously decided the victor in the debate between the three contenders for prime minister. But that seemed more like a tipping point, rather than a single event. Over the past few elections the Lib Dems have been silently laying the groundwork by building themselves up as a national party; and at the same time, British voters have been getting ready for a brand of disruptive politics they haven’t seen in a long time.

When Nick Clegg reassured the voters that they could reject the "old parties" in favor of a future fair, he struck a chord. That last bit of language, "for a future fair" is the slogan of the Lib Dems this cycle, but it’s much less potent than the disruptive parts of the Lib Dems’ message.

The traditional "more of the same vs. change" argument was reframed by Clegg: There are the two-party politics of old that flip back and forth in power with nothing really changing, and the alternative of supporting the Lib Dems. Nick Clegg deftly combined a message of "it doesn’t have to be this way" with a message of a new direction. And what should be noticed here is that Clegg isn’t talking about bipartisanship change, but rather disruptive change.

It’s tipped the standard "a vote for Lib Dems is a vote wasted" argument on its head. Now, to vote for the Lib Dems is to reject the status quo system as something that needs to be disrupted. A hung Parliament? Bring it on. When the Tory’s Cameron trotted out the argument, after Clegg’s winning debate performance, that a vote for the Lib Dems was a vote for chaos, he was effectively throwing fuel on the fire… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Alternet>

From what I understand, Brown is toast.  I soured on Labour when tony Blair cast himself as Bush’s poodle.  And Cameron is even further top the right.  So I wish Clegg every success.

However, lest we get ideas about emulation this, let me remind you that the deck is far more stacked against third parties here than in the UK.  Note that the catalyst was Clegg’s performance in the national debate.  Here, any third party candidate would be excluded from the debates and not have that opportunity.

Last night I watched the special narrated by Rachel Maddow and found it excellent.  Here is the first segment:

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For those of you who could not watch it, you can see the whole special here.