Here it comes again. This holiday weekend we'll see a lot of media coverage of Martin Luther King, Jr. But we'll hear very little about what he really was -- a brave and visionary leader whose vision is as relevant today as ever.

One year ago I listed ten quotes by Dr. King, and mourned the lack of a movement that would advance his kind of vision. Then came the uprising in Madison and the Occupy movement, which began a long-overdue national debate about economic, as well as racial inequality.

Once again, Dr. King's insights offer insight and vision for today's movement activists -- and tomorrow's.

1. "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." Where Do We Go From Here? August 1967 speech.

"Bain Capitalism" - a.k.a "vulture capitalism" -- didn't happen out of nowhere. It was made by politicians. It should be un-made by politicians. The system is the problem and it needs to change.

A long list of corporations and banks enriched itself by triggering the events that led to the Great Recession, and many of them took Federal bailout money when it happened. Each of them has a Corporate Social Responsibility policy, designed to show they're good citizens who give back to the community. And each of them has a fleet of lobbyists working to protect their privileged status and tax benefits.

Meanwhile the poverty rate, which had been declining, started to rise again in 2000. That year it stood at 11.3 percent, but by 2009 the Census Bureau reported that it had climbed back to 14.3 percent. At last count, 46 million Americans lived in poverty, more than 15 percent of the population. More than 16 million of them are children, which means that nearly one in four American kids (22 percent) is living in poverty.

Is that OK with you?

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While I'm grateful that Elizabeth Warren is challenging Scott Brown in Massachusetts, I think we can all agree that she was the natural choice to be the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) director, had Congressional Republicans and their bankaneer keepers not opposed her so vehemently. After she stepped down, the White House nominated Richard Cordray, a nomination which has been approved by the Senate Banking Committee on a straight party line vote.

That nomination is now headed for a vote in the Senate this week. Concurrent with that vote, the White House has released a white paper (PDF) on why it is so critical that Mr. Cordray be confirmed as CFPB director as soon as possible. Here are a few of the reasons:

• Payday Lenders: Before Dodd-Frank, payday lenders were not subject to federal supervision, enabling them to engage in predatory practices with little oversight or regulation. I had a look at payday lenders in California, a state which presumably has some limits on how far they can go. On one lender's website, they reported their APR as 460.16 percent! Predatory seems like an understatement, particularly when those most likely to take a payday loan are those who are already struggling to feed their families and pay bills.
• Credit Reporting Agencies: Right now, credit scores are governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Oversight of credit score agencies is not pro-active; that is, you can file a complaint under the FCRA if you believe your credit is unfairly tarnished, but there is no agency actively looking at how scores are developed, whether they are discriminatory, whether there are unacceptable levels of error or other factors which negatively harm consumers. Under the Dodd-Frank Act, oversight of credit reporting agencies would be part of CFPB duties.
• Debt Collectors: As anyone who has faced debt collections knows, debt collectors are relentless, despite laws to rein them in. The debt collection industry is lucrative with $1.2 trillion in consumer debt currently delinquent (and $834 billion past 90 days), yielding collectors about $40 billion from consumers out to collect the debt. This 2008 Kiplinger article describes what the inside of a debt collection operation is like. It isn't pretty. Death isn't even an escape hatch.
• Prepaid Debit Cards: You can't walk into a market or anywhere else this time of year without seeing a display loaded with prepaid gift cards alongside American Express, MasterCard and Visa cards. But prepaid cards are a very expensive way to give a gift. Loading the card and activating it will trigger a fee, as will reloading it. According to this article, branded debit cards are expected to be worth $440 billion by 2017. That's a substantial chunk of consumers' money that is unregulated at this time.
• Independent Non-Bank Financial Institutions: As the report notes, those most vulnerable to predatory practices by non-bank financial institutions are young military service members, the elderly, students and Latinos. Anyone who has college-age children has seen the storm of mail that hits the house as soon as the first SAT is taken, offering them the moon on a platter for the low, low price of 21% interest or thereabouts. Private student loans, credit cards, financial investment scams and overseas transfers are currently monitored by no one particular agency. While individuals might be able to challenge certain schemes, there isn't any kind of proactive oversight of schemes and scams that harm ordinary Americans.

Without the CFPB, banks will still have federal oversight and some level of accountability, but these other costly, often predatory, schemes will not. Republicans in Congress have done their level best to stymie every move toward launching this agency. It's really time to put the pressure on and force them to confirm Mr. Cordray and allow Dodd-Frank's provisions to begin to rein in the profit-taking on the 99 percent at the hands of the 1 percent. It isn't just banks. It's these actors, too.

In a post a few days back, I observed that the big Wall Street banks were in for a fall because they had become so arrogant in their power and wealth. One example of this is on the swipe fee issue, where their over-the-top market manipulation and hyper-aggressive political tactics are ticking off not just old progressive populists like me, but a lot of the rest of the business community. Small retailers, grocers, restaurant owners, gas station owners, and cabbies have become incensed the way these banks and their credit card companies charge exorbitant swipe fees and will not negotiate on the matter. I have started working with retail business groups on this issue simply because I’d much rather see these Main Street business folks get more of the $48 billion going out the door in swipe fees than the big banks that control more than 80 percent of the market. This issue is likely to come up for a vote within days in the Senate, so raise some hell.

Here’s a new Web ad an organization I chair, American Family Voices, just put up that does a great job of talking about this issue from the small business point of view. Check it out:

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The United States Chamber of Commerce has released an "open letter" to the President, Congress, and the American people which contains its blueprint for our political future. It lays out the current Republican playbook in stark terms, and it reads like the battle plan for those alien spaceships from Independence Day: Drain the resources, take everything from the population, strip the land to a husk... and then presumably sail away in mile-long spaceships toward the next targeted planet.

What we're seeing is the Politics of Plunder, revealed in all its nakedness. There will be another example of this corporate-driven mindset this week, possibly even today, when all but a handful of Republican Senators vote against a moderate set of curbs on Wall Street excesses. The Democratic Party may disappoint its supporters from time to time, but it seems that Republicans never do -- once you accept the fact that its real "supporters" are the mega-businesses represented by the Chamber of Commerce. Some of the delegates who chanted "drill, baby, drill" at the GOP Convention are staring out their windows at oil-soaked beaches, while others have gone broke in an economy ruined by Wall Street gambling. That won't stop the Politics of Plunder. (Come to think of it, "drill, baby, drill" would have been a perfect motto for those spaceships.)

To be clear, the Chamber of Commerce isn't the political lobbying arm of "business," as it sometimes claims. It specifically serves the interests of massive businesses, which are often at odds with the needs of small and medium enterprises. Any CEO of a smaller company who's pressured by one of the Chamber's sales representatives to join, as I was in my business life, is being asked to subsidize policies that will benefit the Chamber's mega-donors -- often at her or his own expense. The Chamber's letter serves those mega-interests well, and we can expect most Republicans to follow it in lockstep, no doubt with cheering crowds pumped up for the same old chants and a few new ones.

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This pretty much says it all: General Petraeus is going to Afghanistan at the President's request to lead the war effort there, but his wife Holly's struggle to defend our troops against the predatory lending practices of car dealers has been lost. Holly will become another military spouse who lost a battle with car dealers while a loved one serves overseas. Both Houses of Congress are apparently willing to "support the troops" only when it doesn't get in the way of doing favors for the guys raising money at those rubber-chicken campaign fundraisers back home.

Let's hope the General has better luck against Mullah Omar than his wife had against Tony Federico. Tony's the auto dealer we wrote about the other day - the one who says he always gets the best deals for his customers, but doesn't want anyone checking to see if that's true or not. In this Congress, the score is now Tony 1, Holly 0.

The House/Senate Committee approved a carve-out for auto dealers that exempts them from oversight by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. There are no good policy reasons for that. The argument that "car dealers had nothing to do with the economic crisis" doesn't wash. As Jeff Sovern observed in Politico, reform is designed to prevent the next crisis as much as it is to avoid a repeat of the last one. With nearly a trillion dollars a year written in auto loans each year, and with auto dealers having the same perverse incentives as mortgage brokers, it's a tragedy waiting to happen.

And it's a tragedy that is happening - every day, in communities all over the country. Holly Petraeus stepped in because she was one of many military family members who grew tired of seeing soldiers exploited by fast-talking bait and switch artists at a vulnerable and frightening time in their lives. When it push comes to shove, gladhanding contributors was more important to Congress than looking out for the interests of our soldiers ... and other ordinary citizens. The racially discriminatory patterns behind auto lending didn't disturb them, either, nor did the average of $647 added to the cost of each vehicle as a result of dealer markups. (More info here and here.)

Negotiators are working to undo a little of the damage done by this decision. As the AP reported yesterday, auto dealers will still be covered by Federal truth-in-lending laws, although the Fed will have to write a justification every time it tried to write rules that specifically deal with auto loans. And there's a plan to create a "fast track" for the Federal Trade Commission to write rules that address auto loans.

But these are band-aids on the gaping wound created by this sweetheart deal. Every lender but one will have to answer to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, leaving a messy and confusing two-tiered oversight system that's ripe for exploitation.

We promoted the CREDO/Campaign for America's Future fax campaign last week, saying " Send a fax. Call your Senator and Representative. If you do, we can have you in a nice financial reform package, complete with consumer protections against auto dealer rip offs." Apparently I was overselling - which may qualify me for a job at an auto dealership - but send the fax and make the call anyway. That will let them know you're unhappy, and that you want the FTC and the Federal Reserve to push for the strongest possible regulations. And let the Senators who voted to encourage Tony's giveaway (my Senator, Barbara Boxer, is one of them) know you want them to push for real oversight of these loans.

General Petraeus specializes in counterinsurgency, which is defined as "armed conflict against an insurgency by forces aligned with the recognized government of the territory in which the conflict takes place." Too bad he didn't share some of his techniques with his wife before she went to plead her case before Congress. In the battle between our troops and Tony Federico, the troops never really had a chance.

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Cross-posted (with some rewording) at Huffington Post and Our Future as part of the Curbing Wall Street project.

— Photo used under Creative Commons license by Flickr - user bitzcelt.

"What do I have to do to get you into this car?"

"How much can you afford to pay every month?"

"My manager's in a good mood."

They're trying to add a couple more car salesman cliches to the ones everybody knows:

"When you take out a car loan - probably the second-biggest financial decision of your life - you don't need a watchdog looking out for you."

"Watch out ... this will cost you a lot more if somebody's representing your interests."

And if you believe those last two statements, allow me to show you this brand new baby - it's got whitewalls and mag wheels, tinted windows, I'll throw in the deluxe sports package along with that ... oh, and we strongly recommend undercoating.

Campaign for America's Future and CREDO have set up a site where you cen send a fax to Barney Frank and Chris Dodd with a simple one- or two-click process, urging them protect American consumers from shady auto loans. And, if you act now, it's absolutely free! (Racing stripe and rustproofing not included with fax.)

It's easy to sound flippant, since everybody knows why we all hate car dealers, but the topic's deadly serious: As we've discussed at length, auto dealer lending practices are a disgrace. A massive, multi-year study showed that African Americans are charged more than whites for the same loans. Auto dealers routinely mark up the loans they offer, without disclosing that information to customers - a practice that costs consumers $20 billion per year and adds an estimated $647 to the cost of each vehicle sold. Auto dealers also play games with "gap insurance" that covers the replacement cost of your vehicle for loan purposes if it's totaled.

Another common car dealer trick is to "sell" a car to a customer by claiming they qualify for a no-interest or low-interest loan, letting them drive away in it, then calling them a week or two later to say the loan fell through. Dealers do this because most customers will have gotten used to the car by then, which means that many of them will accept loan terms that wouldn't been unacceptable at the point of sale.

Car lenders have made a particular point of preying on young soldiers, who are living far from home in great distress. That's why Holly Petraeus, wife of Gen. David Petraeus, is strongly in favor of regulating auto loans. The Petraeus family are hardly known as big lefties ...

Car dealers and their allies love to say they should be exempted from financial reform because they weren't part of the financial crisis. But think about it: Why should auto loans be regulated when they're provided by banks and credit unions, but not when they're provided by auto dealers? That's anticompetitive. What's more, we've already seen that auto dealers sometimes encourage applicants to lie when applying for a loan. If bank auto loans are regulated but car dealer loans aren't, unscrupulous bankers will simply use car dealers as willing minions to make an end run around consumer protection. With auto lending a nearly $1 trillion market, the last thing we need is a replay of the "no doc" mortgage scandal with car salesmen playing the part of mortgage brokers.

The defend-car-salesmen crowd has a couple more arguments, and a credulous Associated Press commentary by Rachel Beck summarizes them: First Ms. Beck repeats the assertion that lending legislation would affect dentists who allow patients to pay over time (the Senate bill does not and this will undoubtedly be clarified and corrected in conference.) Then, she conflates "family dentists" with auto dealers, as if they were both trusted service providers. (It's true that buying a car is as painful as a root canal, but that's as far as the comparison goes.)

That sleight of hand allows her to come up with this:

Just like the dentists, (auto dealer Tony) Federico says that more regulation will boost his costs. It could mean he does fewer loans, or is less generous in the deals he offers. Consumers then would have to seek out loans elsewhere, which could be less convenient and cost more.

"I am always looking out for my customers' best interests, but I also want to do deals that are worthwhile," Federico says.

So, who are you gonna believe - somebody named "Holly Petraeus," who's concerned about military families, or your trusted family friend Tony Federico? Hey, Tonyyy ...

Tony says you'll pay less getting a loan through him, even when he's done taking his market - and when has a car salesman ever lied? Sure, studies show that he's wrong, but who are you gonna trust here - the Center for Responsible Lending .... or your old pal Tony?

Rachel Beck's piece is embarrassing to read. Why would newspapers run it? Let's not forget that, like politicians, newspapers rely on car dealer revenue for their bread and butter. (Why, the Sun-Times was even willing to cut a deal with the New York Times this week to run luxury car ads in the Chicago market; luxury ads are especially lucrative.) Ad revenue buys a lot of credulity, especially on the editorial pages.

Hey, maybe everybody's wrong but Tony Federico and Rachel Beck. They're not - but let's say for argument's sake they are: Why not support this provision anyway? It doesn't prevent auto dealers from handling loans, it simply provides oversight when they do. If the Federicos of the world are really providing better loans at reasonable rates, there's no reason why the Consumer Financial Protection organization won't simply give them an "attaboy" or "attagirl" and tell them to keep up the good work. (Attaboy, Tony!)

Or look at it the other way: If they're not doing anything wrong, why are they so concerned about a little oversight?

Auto dealers throw a lot of lucrative fundraisers back home for DC politicians. That's why 62 House Democrats have joined their Republican colleagues in pushing for an auto dealer exemption. That's the money talking. Talk back to it: Send a fax. Call your Senator and Representative. If you do, we can have you in a nice financial reform package, complete with consumer protections against auto dealer rip offs, probably by this time next week.

Heyyy ... what a deal.

(modified from a post prepared for the Curbing Wall Street project of the Campaign for America's Future)

Sen. Scott Brown is starting to hear it from his teabagging supporters over his vote for the Senate Financial Reform Bill.

As quickly as they had latched onto his campaign four months ago, they repudiated him yesterday through a flurry of blog posts, editorials, and Facebook messages.

“His career as a senator of the people lasted slightly longer than the shelf life of milk,’’ said Shelby Blakely, executive director of New Patriot Journal, the media arm of the Tea Party Patriots, which includes various Tea Party groups around the country. “The general mood of the Tea Party is, ‘We put you in, and we’ll take you out in 2012.’ This is not something we will forget.’’
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Brown’s crucial support infuriated critics who believed that the financial legislation will lead to a bigger and more intrusive regulation. Americans for Limited Government wrote an online editorial called “A Lamentation of Scott Brown.’’

Some of Brown’s former supporters posted blistering comments on his Facebook page. “Scott Brown is a turncoat and I am ashamed that I did so much campaigning on his behalf,’’ wrote one. Another former backer wrote, “I am hereby officially un-liking you.’’

Much of the criticism appeared to be coming from interests outside Massachusetts. If the right continues to be disenchanted by Brown, it could hamper his fund-raising, most of which came from out of state.

Christen Varley, president of the Greater Boston Tea Party, said she doesn’t think people are “ready to throw him under the bus . . . but there’s a lot of questions and a lot of chatter . . . and a lot of perplexed voters.’’

Brown has to win reelection so he can't just kowtow to the anti-government Tea Party crowd -- which means he'll side with the Dems on occasion, and that is going to be a problem for him. Was he ever a real Tea Partier? Sports Talk radio in Boston helped torpedo Coakley as much as anything else. He's more like a pinup poster hottie for the likes of Sally Quinn.

Digby writes:

Oh please. He'll probably lose his seat not because the teabaggers wield their mighty swords, but because he won on a fluke against a bad candidate in an off year with an electorate that was mad at the world. But hey never underestimate the arrogance of opportunists and charlatans. These guys will make a lot of money and help progressives defeat Brown, so I'm all for it.

Update: Speaking of Scott Brown, when I read Erick Ericksson's revealing remarks that hot women like Nikki Haley don't like ugly poor men, it occurred to me that many of the Tea Party heroes are pin-ups: Brown, Palin, Bachmann, Rubio. (Rand Paul is the exception --- not that he's particularly unattractive, but he's no Cosmo centerfold or beauty pageant winner.) Since Scott Brown was never actually a Tea Partier and Palin actually hails from the corporate/social conservative wing of the party, I'm guessing that these folks are just suckers for a pretty face.

Judd Gregg strode to the Senate floor yesterday and denounced the provision in the Dodd bill to remove derivatives from banks and put them on their own exchange in the sunlight for everyone to see. Remarkably, he centered his argument around the irrationality of populist anger, which he likened to Argentina in the 50s and the Peron years.

You know, I have really been trying to figure out what's behind this type of language [derivatives sunlight], because it's so destructive to our competitiveness as a nation, really.

I mean, this is the type of thing, as I said earlier, you would have seen in Argentina that -- Argentina in the 1950s -- bashing on entities simply because they're large and because obviously there's a populist feeling against them, which ends up, by the way, significantly affecting Main Street in a negative way.

Look at Argentina in 1945 - 1937, somewhere in that period. They were the seventh-best economy in the world. 7th most prosperous in the world. Now they're like 54th or something.

It is because of this populist movement which has driven basically their ability to be competitive offshore.

So now we have this huge populist movement here. I'm trying to think, what really is the rationale here other than just rampant pandering to populism?

He follows that with this:

Is there anything in this country that gets broken up because there is an attitude that big is bad, whether it contributes or not, unless you happen to be big and union, in which case you get saved, as the UAW was able to work out for GM and Chrysler.

Senator Gregg is either arguing for a corrupt extreme right regime or he has not studied Argentina's history lately. Here's a quick review. Argentina's economy followed other emerging countries in the early 1900s. In 1920, it was the 7th largest economy in the world, but the Wall Street crash took a deep toll.

Unfortunately, the 1930s witnessed a reversal in the legitimacy of the rule of law in Argentina. To stay in power in the 1930s, the Conservatives in the Pampas resorted to electoral fraud, which neither the legislative, executive, or judicial branches checked. The decade of unchecked electoral fraud lead to the support of citizens for the populism of President Juan Peron and the impeachment of the majority of the Supreme Court. The aftermath of Peron has been political and economic instability, which partially accounts for the fall of Argentina from the top ten of income per capita countries in the world. Read more...(PDF)

Did Senator Gregg really intend to self-indict conservatives in our time and country by comparing today's populist anger to Argentinian populist anger?

There are many, many parallels between Argentine conservatives of the 1930s and American conservatives of today. None of them are complimentary and all of them imply a severe indictment on the corruption, money and greed that seems to drive conservative legislators.

What really stands out, though, is the utter cynicism of a conservative senator criticizing populist anger while his party is spending millions upon millions to capitalize on that same populist anger.

As Lloyd Blankfein prepares to testify today that Goldman Sachs is innocent of allegations that the company knowingly sold bad products to clients, Senate investigators are saying that Abacus was just the tip of the iceberg. Stay tuned for fireworks:

In a statement prepared for the hearing and released on Monday, Mr. Blankfein said the news 10 days ago that the S.E.C. had filed a civil fraud suit against Goldman had shaken the bank’s employees.

“It was one of the worst days of my professional life, as I know it was for every person at our firm,” Mr. Blankfein said. “We have been a client-centered firm for 140 years, and if our clients believe that we don’t deserve their trust we cannot survive.”

Mr. Blankfein will also testify that Goldman did not have a substantial, consistent short position in the mortgage market.

But at the press briefing in Washington, Carl Levin, the Democrat of Michigan who heads the Senate committee, insisted that Goldman had bet against its clients repeatedly. He held up a binder the size of two breadboxes that he said contained copies of e-mail messages and other documents that showed Goldman had put its own interests first.

“The evidence shows that Goldman repeatedly put its own interests and profits ahead of the interests of its clients,” Mr. Levin said.

Mr. Levin’s investigative staff released a summary of those documents, which are to be released in full on Tuesday. The summary included information on Abacus as well as new details about other complex mortgage deals.

On a page titled “The Goldman Sachs Conveyor Belt,” the subcommittee described five other transactions beyond the Abacus investment.

One, called Hudson Mezzanine, was put together in the fall of 2006 expressly as a way to create more short positions for Goldman, the subcommittee claims. The $2 billion deal was one of the first for which Goldman sales staff began to face dubious clients, according to former Goldman employees.

“Here we are selling this, but we think the market is going the other way,” a former Goldman salesman told The New York Times in December.

The first test cloture vote is taking place right now in the Senate. In true form, Ben Nelson has voted with his Republican friends and Wall Street benefactors to filibuster financial reform. He didn't even have to do it: The Republicans had already promised a united front to block it from proceeding to debate.

Ben Nelson's message to the rest of us? Wall Street doesn't need no stinkin' reform. At least, not any reform that might actually be, well...reform.

Other remarkable moments from the debate ahead of the vote include Judd Gregg (R-NH) bashing populist anger against Wall Street and Bernie Sanders answering that point for point. I'm trying to find the video on that, because both are moments worth watching.

Update #2: Reaction has been swift and harsh:

President Obama is "deeply disappointed" that Republicans voted as a block and Nancy Pelosi's blog has a whole string of reactions. The theme is the same: Blocking debate benefits no one but Wall Street.

Update #1: Q1 Campaign contributions to Nelson 2012

3/31/2010:

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