Wall Street reform

Hillary Clinton has solicited and gobbled up immense amounts of money from Wall Street banksters. I doubt they give her so much because of her bubbly personality. The times I met her she struck me as a real uptight cold fish. But since she first ran for the U.S. Senator in 2000, the Financial Sector has ponied up $36,846,987 to support her political career. So far her presidential campaign has taken in $5,587,345 from the banksters.

At the kiddie table debate last night Chris Christie took the first opportunity he got to attack Dodd-Frank, the legislation passed to protect consumers from banksters and other financial sector crooks That ad above, which debuted last night at the very first commercial break (and then ran again), part of a 4-week, $500,000 buy from the the shady American Action Network-- an extreme right-wing group founded by Nixon's Jew counter, Fred Malek-- is meant to stir up fear and emotions by lying about one of Wall Street's biggest bugaboos, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

When conservatives were earning their keep from their Wall Street financiers-- working first to water down Dodd-Frank and then to defeat it and, more recently, to repeal it-- they made several arguments they hoped would appeal to the voting public.

Hillary Clinton & Cheryl Mills-- not enemies of Wall StreetYesterday was all about Hillary Clinton testifying at Trey Gowdy's taxpayer-funded partisan witch-hunt which brought her an awful lot of sympathy and gravitas.

CNN is reporting that McConnell plans to hold Social Security and Medicare hostage in upcoming debt ceiling debates when the government runs out of money (around November 5 or so). McConnell is wowing to not raise the debt limit-- forcing the government to go bankrupt and renew on its debts-- unless the Obama and the Democrats agree to deep cuts to Social Security and to Medicare.

Today is the fifth anniversary of Dodd-Frank, a package of legislative reforms that has helped protect American consumers from Wall Street banksters and other financial predators. It needs to be expanded and strengthened, but the full weight and power of the Republican Party has been devoted to gutting it and making it unworkable.

Who does Wall Street most trust in Congress to take care of their business for them and make sure they get the kind of friendly legislation the banksters claim they need to keep their bottom line robust, their bonuses obscene and the campaign contributions flowing?

bipartisanGenerally speaking, the New Dems are thought of as the arm of the conservative, corporate-oriented DLC inside the House. That isn't the way it was meant to be, however. Almost two decades ago 5 right-wing Democrats-- Blanche Lincoln (AR), Joe Lieberman (CT), Bob Graham (FL), Evan Bayh (IN) and Mary Landrieu (LA)-- started the Senate branch of the New Democrat Coalition, primarily to push through the unfair trade agreements Wall Street and Big Business were clamouring for.

When Ronald Reagan hustled off to Washington in 1975 to declare that he was challenging Jerry Ford's reelection bid-- Ford eventually won the Republican Party convention battle on the first ballot-- he made a typically nice-sounding but superficial speech. "Our nation's capital has become the seat of a 'buddy' system that functions for its own benefit-- increasingly insensitive to the needs of the American worker who supports it with his taxes.

The House passed Dodd-Frank on Decenmber 11, 2009 without a single Republican vote. As always, the Republicans were for the crooked banksters-- but so were 26 Democrats. Most of those Democrats have since been fired by the voters-- or forced to resign-- and only 6 remain in Congress today: