I'm headed home to Nebraska this weekend for a family event, which reminds me of yet another Nebraska politician making a fool of himself on the national political stage (I'm not going to go through the embarrassing recent history here, it's too painful. I do want to say that William Jennings Bryan 115 years ago and George Norris in the 1930s made us proud).
Nebraska's State Treasurer, Shane Osborn, already has quite a history as State Treasurer, including allegations of spousal abuse and apparently moonlighting for a private company while serving as State Treasurer. But his most recent notoriety is flacking for his big banker friends while defending his ripping off of poor Nebraskans. Check out this great piece from the New Nebraska Network about this issue (which I have also been working on, naturally). Osborn isn't running for re-election, so maybe he's looking for a job with the banks with this latest job carrying their water.
The weirdest thing about all this is that Osborn is flying to DC next week to do an event on this issue with Sen. Mark Warner. Huh? I know Warner has been flacking for all the bankers on this issue, and in general on financial reform. But doing an event with a right-wing flake like Osborn is really over the top for Warner. Folks in Virginia really ought to give him some trouble about hosting Osborn. I know Warner wants to be Mr. Bipartisan, and I know he loves him some banksters, but he should mind the company he keeps.
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