Who's Your Daddy? Corporate Senate Dems (Again) Do Banks' Bidding
Not that I had any doubts, but it's exceedingly clear that the banking industry owns Congress. The failure of the cramdown vote is nothing less than a disgrace:
The Senate on Thursday rejected an effort to stave off home foreclosures by a vote of 51 to 45. It was an overwhelming defeat, with the bill's backers falling 15 votes short -- a quarter of the Democratic caucus -- of the 60 needed to cut off debate and move to a final vote.
The death of the bankruptcy reform measure -- which would have allowed a small number of homeowners who met strict conditions to renegotiate mortgages under bankruptcy protection -- is a major tactical win for the banking industry. But allowing the foreclosure crisis to continue unabated may end up being a failed strategy for the financial sector.
It wasn't easy for Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who led the effort on behalf of homeowners, to wrangle the 45 votes.
Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who had been on the fence for weeks, gave Durbin his support and nudged him on the way out of the chamber, alerting him of the anti-bank position he'd just taken.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, a conservative Democrat, also cast a courageous vote in favor of the measure. He gave Durbin a hard slap on the arm on the way out.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a strong backer of the bill, spent a good deal of time trying to persuade his colleague Jim Webb (D-Va.).
As she got close to convincing him, she called in Durbin. "Hey Durbs," she could be heard saying, "help me with Jim."
I wonder how our newest Democrat voted? Why, Sen. Specter voted nay! In other words, it's perfectly okay to help the wealthy hang onto their vacation homes, boats and cars (because they're allowed the use of the same bankruptcy procedure for which Congress just deemed You the People unworthy). Other nominal Democrats who agreed that you didn't deserve that kind of help included many of the usual suspects: Baucus, Bennet, Byrd, Carper, Dorgan, Johnson, Landrieu, Lincoln, Nelson (NE), Pryor, and Tester.
Let's give props to Bayh and Warner, who did vote with the majority of the Dems - for a change.
Arianna Huffington is having a WTF? moment:
As for credit card reform, the House's resounding 357-70 passage of Carolyn Maloney's Credit Card Holders' Bill of Rights would seem like a rare defeat for the banking lobbyists who furiously opposed it. But a number of elements of the legislation demonstrate that even when the bankers lose, they still win. For instance, despite the desperate urgency of the situation, all but one of the consumer-friendly provisions of the bill won't take effect for a year. And the bill doesn't contain any cap on credit card interest rates -- an amendment to cap rates at 18 percent never got any traction. And, of course, the bankers will get another crack at derailing credit card reform when the Senate takes up its version of the bill, sponsored by Chris Dodd, later this month.
So no matter how badly the banking industry fails and how much its failures cost us, it continues to be Washington's 800 lb gorilla -- and the greatest risk to Barack Obama's presidency.
And finally, David Sirota has two questions. Someone in the corporate media should ask them - that is, if anyone still values their integrity.
Just follow the money. The banks get our trillions, they donate a pittance to the politicians and spend a few millions on lobbying. Voilá, the Congress is theirs.
That is pennies on the million. What a bargain!
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
"too big to fail."
against this and I am furious....I called ---you should too!
Let them know this is once again playing into the bankers/Corps hands!!AGAINST THE PEOPLE>>>>>>
1.800.828.0498 or 1.866.220.0044....
oh dear god !say it aint so! a bought and paid for bunch of whores hmmmmmmmm i suspected as much!
Here is Jane Hamsher saying essentially the same thing.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
There's a bunch of us old ladies, who take government money and do nothing all day but bitch on message boards about conservatives and Christians. Come join us!
you know what would get the banker's attention?
this would take a lot of guts to pull off, but
if everyone who has a credit card would not pay
their bills for two months.....then see where
these bastard's hands are holding on to their
shorts full of surprise sh*t.
and yes, that would effect a lot of people's
credit history, but there is power in closing
your purse to them.......
I would not recommend that at all.
More like pay off all your debt, do NOT close your credit card accounts, but don't use them.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
We should all stop paying credit card and mortgage bills until they approve the credit card bill of rights AND the mortgage cramdown.
Just say no!
A former award-winning journalist and lifelong class warrior, keeping a jaundiced eye on the Washington elite.
Your credit score is used in perverse and inappropriate ways.
How much you pay in home insurance, car insurance for instance.
We have a government controlled by the corporations.
If I could punish them, I would try not to work against my own interest.
To each their own.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
are the plutocrats and oligarchs who have stolen our future and put it in their own pockets. They made this mess. They raped us as a people and a nation. And they did it for a long long time before Obama came to town. They got the green light in the early 1980s.
yet, the president continues to employ and seek advice from those that help establish the neoliberal system.
personally, i think this helps further expose the inverted 'totalitarianist' nature of our one party system (of which the dems and reps are merely different wings of the same party), which functions solely to protect the ruling class' interests
Otherwise known as a No Win Situation
it to be true that Corps own the legislators but instead of blogging you can call them 1.800.828.0498 or the local offices...They hate being put on record as being against their people.
Do something call - email--DC and locally!!!
The banks, corporate America, Wall Street, and the wealthy have proven themselves repeatedly to be no friend of the working poor, or the middle class. They do everything they can to exploit working Americans and keep us as poor as possible, while increasing their own wealth. They keep our wages low, and our cost of living high. The corruption, exploitation, and greed in America is both encouraged, and systematic. Conservative hate, and are opposed to socialism because they don't want the corruption, exploitation, and greed to end. America should be a nation where every man, woman, and child has a decent quality of life. Affordable food, health care, and housing shouldn't be a unattainable dream, they should be an unbreakable promise for all Americans.
so thats a bonus. I guess. I'm still really on the fence with both Wyden and Merkley but so far they appear to be voting the way me and the rest of the Oregon Dems are writing/urging them to vote.
What does this have to do with Beck?
"I mean Romney is the most conservative on illegal immigration and I don't think Ronald Reagan could get elected in California today."
Ann "Clipped" Coulter
raised my credit limit once or twice a year for 8 years - I never asked for it, I never came close to the limit and paid my full balance every month. But there I was with a $30,000 credit limit - until this month when they sent me a letter telling me they were dropping the limit to $15,000. I don't care, since if I wanted to borrow that kind of money I'd go to my credit union, except for the fact that it can affect my credit rating. If I can't figure out if they are just dropping everyone's limits or if they had a reason (a vague phrase about history of use) I'm sure they didn't give the credit bureaus a reason. They raised the rate on cash advances from 7.9% to 29.99 (not that I have ever taken that sucker bet) but so far my purchase rate hasn't changed. I can't help wondering if that is the next step.
debt slavery.
I am now more concerned about my cash-rating than my credit-rating.
Credit ratings matter mostly to those criminal extortionists that sell you their wares. For most people, if they don’t purchase via credit, it makes no difference.
There are many companies that will check and monitor this mostly meaningless number for you. They too are selling you something you don’t need.
The only time you used to truly need good credit was when buying a house (not something I would recommend at the moment, btw). Even then, if you saved enough to put down more than 20% (and do away with the mortgage-insurance scam), the rating wasn’t as important.
I called out the housing crisis 3 years before it happened. I was sure as hell that all these over-inflated housing prices sold to people who were losing their jobs to outsourcing ... I was sure it was going to mean people like me with shit credit would be able to buy houses from desperate banks for dirt cheap.
in another 2-3 years "good credit" is going to matter as much to bankers as "good attendance" matters to today's employers.
protip: thanks to the CDS mess, 50% of your debts were sold to a 3rd party small business ... who has probably gone bankrupt, and/or lost your data during the credit/data exchange. go to freecreditreport.com or something, look up your debts, object to every single one of them, and watch your credit record skyrocket in a matter of days ..... even though you technically never paid off your debt! =)
I just refinanced my house for 2% drop in the loan rate, my car is nearly paid off and both of those debts are thru and serviced by my credit union. Those are my only debts and I'm not looking to borrow anytime soon, but I hate the idea that they can randomly do things over which I have no control.
It is nothing but legalized loan sharking for the banking industry. I am so sick of these Senate democrats already, that I do not hold out any more hope for our country.
The United States has been driven so far into the clutches of corporate fascism, that FDR's "party of the people" is now run by a bunch of aristocratic, baby-boomer, corporate-fascist sellouts!
What exactly is the difference between lobbyist cash, and bribery?
F*** all of these parasites to hell!
I think I hate the blue dog idiots more than the repukes!
Rush Limbaugh is what a smart person thinks a stupid bigot sounds like.
"I was stamping out some beautiful hoods for the Dodge Ram, our supervisor came up, shut the lines and told us they received an e-mail from Auburn Hills headquarters that we were to stop all operations as of right now, immediately, exit the building for at least 30 days until further notice," said Chrysler employee Harold Keith.
0:00 /2:29Chrysler breakdown
Word had come straight from the top. In a "Dear Chrysler Employees" e-mail time stamped 4/30/2009 12:49 p.m., outgoing CEO Bob Nardelli shared news of the global partnership with Fiat, the "structured bankruptcy" filing, and the fact that most manufacturing operations will be temporarily idled.
Sirota's right on. It's sad how rarely Congress will actually represent average citizens versus corporations.
The current lobbying and campaign laws, along with gerrymandering and unreliable voting machines, make for a system where most of our politicians are not that representative of their constituents and certainly do not represent their interests.
I was watching this vote too. It is pretty disgusting.
is if they hung a huge Goldman Sachs logo on the Capitol dome and then branded it onto the foreheads of leading members of Congress and executive branch officials
Surprised he got 45.
Get a shovel, dig a hole.
As the pages tear off the calendar years roll by thinking lawmakers are going to do anything besides steal from us. Or that as many as 3 new SC seats or a 60 seat senate majority will do a damn thing other than expose who they're working for hint: it isn't us.
last fall when the citizens of this country told their elected representatives THREE HUNDRED TO ONE to not bail out the banks.
But then we got "Change" elected and everything's coming up roses now! So far it's been a rebranding like Blackwater/Xe or AIG/AIU. THe policies are continuing: Pulling out some forces from Iraq (yet leaving many there including tons of private contractors) and moving them to another clusterf*ck, continuing the bailouts but pretending to have accountability attached (hard to do with no transparency), continuing indefinite detention at Bagram after claiming an end to that at Gitmo...
I swear, President of the U.S.A. is about as in charge of our nation's actions as Ronald McDonald is in governing the fast food chain. He's nothing but a fancy mascot.
Hopefully humanity will one day learn to be humane.
Wasn't Who's Your Daddy? the name of a FAUX "Reality" show?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
grasp mindlessly at the blatantly ridiculous notion that this is a representative democracy, denying all evidence to the contrary.
.
The Constitution is thrashed, banks get all the cash. Healthcare forget it. Plenty of war for the Military Industrial Complex. A perfect takeover, you betcha.
continue to believe the propaganda they were fed that the politicians, somehow, represent them...serve them.
we should write lots and lots of letters and sign petitions and protest recalling how effective that was since 2000. Maybe we should tell them how we FEEL.
Sure glad I wrote letters, called congress folks and marched in protests against war in Iraq, warrantless spying, indefinite detention and all that jazz. So much came from that: Got to be on a watch list, smeared in the media and ignored by our representatives because I was too stupid to comprehend the hard proof that Saddam had attacked my city and was planning to nuke us in just a few weeks!
Hopefully humanity will one day learn to be humane.
Speaking of smearing:
Now that newspapers are getting passe
Do we have to allow our parakeets
To take a dump
Right onto our laptops?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
let them poop on corporate prospectuses and earnings statements instead. ;)
Sounds like you need to join a single issue group, like safe Air Bags or Special Olympics fundraising, or Pro-life Pro-war video op excitement. They'll tolerate you then, and you may even get a warehouse full of signed basketballs.
Bankruptcy Bill (2005), FISA, Pakistani bombing, 2 million Iraq refugees in Syria & Turkey with no US aid, 500,000 homeless veterans in the US, privatized prisons, privatized military, socialized corporate welfare & privatized corporate profit, coporate tax avoidance by Fortune 500 companies, Halliburton hiring illegal aliens to rebuild New Orleans after being given a no-bid/guaranteed profit contract, war profiteering, 88 new taxes in NY while the Yankees and Mets get tax-payer subsidized stadiums, lower 75% of Americans actually pay more income to taxes by percentage when sales tax, gas tax, lottery and all other taxes are added to the equation, we continue to expand out illegal prisons (Basrah)...
Now, how many of these "single issues" have our Democratic leaders stood up against in unison? None.
The left was crying Fascism for five-to-eight years, the right is crying Fascism now. For the most part, neither seems to believe their own party is pulling the same tricks.
So, you can ignore "single issues" like international war crimes and civil rights because at least we have a Democrat in office, but I'd prefer to aim for a just and democratic system. But then again, I'm just a stupid git.
Hopefully humanity will one day learn to be humane.
...what appears to me to be an understanding of what justice is, or a dislike of a rigged game or an apparent disgust with the dishonesty of it all earn you the title "Stupid Git"?
You're speaking my thoughts for me. Thanks.
while i have been pointing out thiers no difference in the repigs and the democrats others have been busy tring to shut me up , aint gonna happen ! thier selling us out , they will allways sell us out, politicians are scum sucking pigs and a million dollar bribe goes along way in influenceing thier vote! as the saying goes , tyrees on my ignore list! bwha haha ha ha hah!
I seem to be on your ignore list, tyree. I agree w/you 200%
not at all crazytown , i just dont want you to be silenced by the useual botts who will brook no criticizement of thier beloved douchbags here its known as guilt by association! and the useual term is troll , or worse , fear not though they cant do anymore then label one as just bitching to be bitching!! ,
there's being a jerk and there's being honest...
I'll agree to a point with what you originally said, but I don't like to lump one specific group of people into one category. I like to give some the benefit of a doubt.
That said... Pryor and Lincoln (both of Arkansas and in the pockets of Wal-Mart) suck! WANKERS!
"When are we going to stop trying to tell elected officials what to do. Our job is to spend the taxpayers' money the best way we can." -- Tommy Watkins, Justice of the Peace, Crawford County, Arkansas
and i fall under what ? being a jerk? give them all the benifit of the doubt you want but thiers few who arent sellouts , kucinich is one whos not , the rest take lobby money and will bend over for a buck ! name a few who wont sell you out for the right price, these clowns take turns being the good cop bad cop !
however, those who have the deserved benefit of the doubt are either destroyed or in the process of drowning in the untended outhouses of the houses. They are ignored. This problem overwhelms any chances of our interests being carried out.
That leaves being a jerk and trolling.
there is difference btwn the 2 wings of the dem-rep party, they made sure of that.
enviro issues, choice issues, equality issues, etc.
yet, none of those issues have (as of yet, although enviro came close) challenged the ruling class and their stranglehold on the pseudo-democracy. we are allowed to fiddle around the edges. yet, when issues that come about that might eat into the power/clout/money of our financial overlords, the two wings of the party are quick to coalesce into one political behemoth and eliminate the challenge to the status quo.
those single issue-takers keep the illusion going.
ie., I feel a bit nuts when I hear Roe v Wade bickering when fascism eclipses that to the back burner. Why can't we SEE that?
Well said! And Obama's full of shit too! I don't think these assholes will ever get-it, until the American people go 1792 on them.
But considering that nearly half of them were willing to vote republican again last year, I don't think we are anywhere near political critical mass.
P.S. I hope everyone of these Senate dickheads loses next year! I'd rather see a repuke win, than watch the Ben Nelson's of the world screw us.
Rush Limbaugh is what a smart person thinks a stupid bigot sounds like.
Until campaign corruption is fixed, or we get viable third parties it's hard to imagine things changing.
The real Republicans have some hope in Ron Paul, the real left can dream of Kucinich or McKinney... until then we have (as South Park once stated) a choice between a giant douche or a turd sandwich.
Hopefully humanity will one day learn to be humane.
so what's going to be done about it?
.
With any banks. Take all of your business to a Credit Union. I have and I will never look back.....
and who do you think banks the credit unions.
"Anyone that makes less than $150K in this country, has no business voting Republican."
grinning chimp of the past eight years, for whom the Constitution was "just a piece of paper"?
It's me sharpening my pitch fork...
Don't let the 45 who voted for this bill fool you into thinking they are a bunch of rebels. It's all theater, produced by wall street.
The people of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage." J.K. Galbraith
that couldn't possibly be true the 45 aren't PURE.
Thanks for nothing Pryor and Lincoln.
Lincoln is trying too hard to appear conservative for the run-up to the midterm elections.
I hope she loses. I would hate to lose a Democrat in the Senate, but with the way she's been voting as of late, it doesn't seem like it would be that much of a loss on our part.
"When are we going to stop trying to tell elected officials what to do. Our job is to spend the taxpayers' money the best way we can." -- Tommy Watkins, Justice of the Peace, Crawford County, Arkansas
I hope she loses too! That idiot conspired with the psychopath Kyl to eliminate the inheritance tax for all those poor billionaires who worked so hard all of their lives - stealing the taxpayers blind.
What a piece of garbage she is.
Rush Limbaugh is what a smart person thinks a stupid bigot sounds like.
A rigged and cruel one at that...
One that would see us all dead once the last bit of earth is sold out from under our feet...
One that would have us ignore the pile of toxins we sleep on because there is no where else for them to be stored..
One that enables the select few who manage to eat through the pile of bodies placed on them to join those born outside the pile, to beat the pile with sticks and any other assorted sadistic shit they feel like..
It is a foul system, that is a cancer of the human race...
yelling "get a job loser!" at pedestrians these days.
approves that message. So long as those lazy losers who won't get a job don't max out their credit cards and wash their hands.
I say not yet. These 10-12 obstructionist Dems are likely to change from time to time and I'm sure Bahy and Warner are in the mix. That way each gets to play "good guy" every once in a while.
We've beaten the Right in the Republican Party, but they still have power with the Dems.
Corruption favors the wealthy.
Today, the financial sector constitutes about 22 percent of all U.S. economic activity, notes former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips in "Bad Money." As for manufacturing, it is down to about 12 percent of the economy. These facts reflect less the dynamic character of American capitalism than its underlying instability and weakness. Why? Because the financial sector creates nothing of real value. It is, as Bello notes, "tantamount to squeezing value out of already created value." It should be an ABC of economics that only industry, agriculture and their accompanying trade and services introduce real value into the economy.
It should also be ABC that the current crisis is the result of bipartisan policies. It was the Clinton Administration and Congress that engineered passage of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, leading to repeal of decades-old regulations restricting banks from offering investment or insurance services. The runway was thus cleared for an already burgeoning investor economy to soar into the speculative stratosphere. After all, why invest in actual economic growth when the real money is to be made buying and selling other people's mortgages?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/28-5
.
Clinton did it. yeah...we know.
"Anyone that makes less than $150K in this country, has no business voting Republican."
As much as I'd love to have more faith in the Democratic Party it's hard when they've been trying to become more like Reagan since he handed them their @sses back in '80. I swear, I'd vote Democrat again if they gave us a real candidate. Same with Republican - if they offer a true "small government" option that actually believed in decreasing defense to a reasonable level, decreasing corporate welfare and all that instead of just strangling social services and infrastructure while trying to get states rights for the sole purpose of allowing southern Theocrats to wage Christian war on democracy and segregate minorities.
Hopefully humanity will one day learn to be humane.
That sector creates almost zero real wealth. The only thing they do is parasitize the wealth that others create.
Nationalize the entire sector, including the Federal Reserve Corporation.
CME hog market higher after recent losses
WHO dropping "swine flu" name helpful
Let's become pork belly speculators!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EjdC0pjo1A&fe...
shows just how profoundly fucking stupid we've become.
Maybe a little culling of the really destructive herd via purging virus would be a good thing. Don't pretend not to have thunked it.
how you look at it only this time Rome is the whole planet. Rome didn't fall overnight.
...Specter changing parties was such a big fucking deal. Doesn't mean a god damned thing because nothing will ever change in Washington, no matter who is in the White House or in controll of congress.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDIguDs5i6w&fe...
(Only Godsmack hits that spot today)
This is outrageous--Obama is going to take big hit over this. this won't go away.
i guess we are supposed to be diverted by the supreme court pick. but roberts has basically made the supreme court completely ineffective by taking on cases that have no effect on most people., and just taking on cases that deal with little things.
Oh no way! Not the liberal left Democratic Party! Oh no. There is no way they are the same as the Republicans. No way. They are really just setting up the Republicans for the kill! Ya, that's it.
Except not really.
Removed by author.
..is to kick the prostitutes out of office. I know Webb and Warner got a lot of communications from their constituents telling them to shape up or dust off their plans for what they intended to do after they were finished with public service. I think it made a difference.
What the progressive/liberals need to do is identify those who are making careers out of betraying their constituents and put up true Democrats to stand against them. Their records should be kept front and center in local newspapers, radio and local public debates so that every act of prostitution and selling out of their offices can be kept fresh in the voters minds. The DCCC and DSCC won't likely respond to the demands of the electorate, since they seem to exist mostly to run dog and pony shows. But, Blue America can nullify them. Every prostitute needs to be challenged in state primaries and reminded that, while banks and PACs have money, they don't have so much as a single vote.
It's also long past time to work the idea into the public paradigms that lobbying is an intolerable form of corruption. that their money is nothing less than pure and simple bribery, that those who are amenable to accepting bribes are unworthy of the public's trust. That's a job the blogosphere can and should initiate, keeping up the dialog until elements of the MSM, like Olberman or Maddow pick it up and run with it. If keeping company with lobbyists can be made to be popularly percieved as being synonomous with being an untrustworthy crook, regardless the lame excuses offered by the crooks, it might be possible to change a few things for the better.
Lobbying with cash = bribery! End of story.
Rush Limbaugh is what a smart person thinks a stupid bigot sounds like.
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