I blame John Amato for getting me hooked on the new Netflix Series, House of Cards. Kevin Spacey is fantastic, the pace is great, but unfortunately, the policy issues they tackle in this first season are predictably corporate.

Nothing screams corporate like the storyline about education reform. After Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) forces his colleague to abandon education reform because he's "too left", Underwood finds himself negotiating a package with union representatives that feels a lot like Reed Hastings' dream "reform package."

Adam Bessie introduces Ms. Reform, Hastings' dream girl of education reform:

Ms. Reform is the Marilyn Monroe of domestic policy. The corporate media – and the President himself – can’t get enough of her.

It’s no surprise she’s become famous. Ms. Reform is sexy and seductive, especially to the powerful: she looks like a philanthropist – kind and nurturing, committed to helping the poor, forgotten black and brown children in the inner-cities. Who in their right mind could be against her plans to help our children – especially our most vulnerable and least privileged – have a fair shot in life? But inside – a side she never shows the camera, and when she does, it’s Photoshopped – Ms.Reform is a cutthroat businesswoman: she’s read Ronald Reagan’s economic advisor Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom from cover to cover, she has complete faith in “free enterprise,” she’s never heard of John Dewey nor deigned to teach a day in her life, and boy, does she friggin’ hate unions. In short, Ms. Reform appeals not just to the bleeding heart social justice Obamaites, but also, to venture capitalists that think Obama is fomenting a socialist take-over of America. The only surprise is that she didn’t become famous sooner.

Now, Ms. Reform is starring once again, this time, along (another) Academy Award winner Kevin Spacey in the NetFlix original seriesHouse of Cards, which explores the sordid underbelly of Washington politics. The protagonist Congressman Frank Underwood – who has no allegiance but to his own power – takes on the education reform bill for the new President, one which looks strikingly similar to No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top: the bill increases charter schools, and ties test scores to teacher evaluation, echoing the corporate style, free enterprise reforms both bills have implemented. And of course, as is always the case, Ms. Reform is cast as heroine – and the unions, at best obstructionist and only interested in the needs of the teachers, and not the children (To be fair, though, it’s clear that the real villain in the show is not the unions, but Underwood himself – and as Underwood is supporting the bill, it might cast a negative light on the policies to some viewers).

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Bill O'Reilly won't like this, but Al Franken is proving his moxie as a US Senator yet again.

This is an important measure to be passed:

This is a big victory for financial reform:

The Senate on Thursday voted to impose tighter regulations on credit-rating agencies, which have been criticized for misjudging the risks of debt instruments at the core of the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

The ratings services were tied to the banks that were using them so here's a tool stripped away that helps perpetrate corruption on Wall Street.

There's more:

Chris Bowers at Open Left had a good summary of the amendment this morning:

Making the bill stronger: Sen. Franken (D-Minn.) creates a Credit Rating Assignment Board which would assign the credit rating agency that does each initial rating in order to reduce the inherent conflict of interest in the current business model - where the person who hopes to sell the rated product pays the rater. This amendment stops securities issuers from shopping around among credit rating agencies for the best rating, leading raters to inflate their grades as they scrap for market share.

Why it matters: Credit Rating Agencies got paid to slap AAA ratings on packages of dangerous investments they did not even try to understand or evaluate. Their triple A ratings created huge markets for these investments, and spread them through every corner of the market. When the House of Cards built on their false promises collapsed, millions of Americans lost their savings.

The financial reform bill gets stronger and stronger by small increments. This is a good result. Let's hope there is more like it to come.

And the ratings agencies should be held accountable. That is unless this gets kicked to the Supreme Court, who will vote for big business every time with Roberts leading the way.

This week, CalPERS, the largest U.S. public pension fund, won a court ruling allowing it to proceed with a lawsuit accusing the three biggest rating agencies of assigning "wildly inaccurate and unreasonably high" ratings, causing $1 billion of losses. The agencies say they expect to eventually prevail on the misrepresentation claim.

The clearinghouse measure could give smaller ratings agencies a chance to challenge the dominance of the top three firms.

Wait, wait, I can hardly read these sad statements through my tears - of laughter! This, from the people who brought us this entire house of cards that just collapsed? The people whose lobbyists have stacked the financial deck against people like us with late fees, pre-payment penalties and unregulated interest rates are actually telling us IT ISN'T FAIR?

WASHINGTON -- The banking industry is aggressively lobbying the Treasury Department to make it less costly for financial institutions to get out of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

The move could prove controversial for the banking industry, which is busy deflecting criticism about higher fees it is charging consumers for credit cards and other products and services.

At issue are "warrants" the government received when it bought preferred stock in roughly 500 banks over the past six months as part of TARP. The warrants allow the government to buy common stock in the banks at a later date so taxpayers can receive more of a return on their investment when the banking industry recovers.

Many banks want to return their TARP money and, as part of that effort, want to expunge the warrants. To do that, banks must either buy them back from the government or allow the Treasury to sell them to private investors.

Today, most of the warrants are essentially worthless, because their exercise price is higher than where most banks' stocks are trading. But the government believes the warrants still have value, since they give the Treasury the right to buy common stock at a set price for 10 years.

Bankers say it is unfair to charge what amounts to a "prepayment penalty," which makes it additionally onerous to escape TARP. Bank representatives say the cost of buying back the warrants could be equivalent to paying 60% annual interest on short-term loans. That, they argue, would exacerbate banks' existing problems.

The saga of Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank really is indicative of the US under neo-con control: A crony with fairly insubstantial bona fides within the arena is appointed to a position of critical importance on the world stage solely on the basis of his connections to ideological brothers. He then bullies and pushes his own arrogant notions, alienating his colleagues and promotes more cronies (and love interests) without regard to appearances. Then when the house of cards inevitably comes tumbling down, he pleads ignorance or cries victim and must send out other cronies to argue for his job. How many times have we seen this pattern--with very little variation--play out again and again in the Bush White House?

There was one passage in the WaPo report that I think may be a much larger issue than his promoting of his girlfriend

Both staff and management also have raised concerns over what several described as Wolfowitz's insistence that the bank accelerate its lending to Iraq and open an office there.

A principal architect of the Iraq war as deputy defense secretary during President Bush's first term, Wolfowitz has pressed the issue in the bank against strong concerns about security and poor governance in Iraq. "He was pretty aggressive about it, given that he's generally a mild-mannered person. He was really quite hard," said one source with first-hand knowledge of internal bank discussions on Iraq. "I don't know how much of it was flogging for the [Bush] administration rather than his own ghosts and convictions."

Olbermann goes over the news that Rove and Libby lied and follows that up with a lenghty interview with Joe WIlson

Download | play -WMP only

It all unraveling. Just a matter of time before the house of cards falls. Hunter at Daily Kos has a huge diary on today's hearings.

(Hat tip Dave for the video)

With all the news reports about and Rumsfeld coming out today.

Is the Bush house of cards finally starting to fall?