The good news on the Senate financial reform bill these days is that we have a few provisions worth fighting for. Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) has introduced one of the most important - a bold section in the Dodd bank reform bill (Section 106) that will force the biggest banks to spin off their swaps (or derivatives) desks into a separate entity. That entity will be regulated and can remain part of the bank holding company, but it no longer has access to the Federal Reserve's flow of funds, FDIC insurance and the taxpayer guarantee. Supporters include legendary economists and public policy experts such as Robert Reich, Joseph Stiglitz, Nouriel Roubini, and Michael Greenberger.
In one fell swoop, Lincoln's measure will effectively protect taxpayers, downsize the behemoth banks, and end the federal guarantees behind big bank gambling. It's the strongest structural reform measure in the bill. These swaps have previously helped the 5 largest banks grow to mega-size and then take down the country. The 5 of them - J.P. Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley - account for 90 percent of these derivatives. Lincoln's amendment will go right after the deals that Goldman Sachs is now being officially investigated for and Lincoln's language is #1 on their hit list.
But the problem of course is that the Goldman Gang in Congress, like Senators Gregg and Chambliss, are lining up to strip this provision one way or other. They are being aided and abetted by conservative democrats like Indiana Senator Evan Bayh. Watch this smug interview where he talks about his hopes to defeat every good amendment. I, for one, am thrilled that he announced he will be retiring this year.
We have a right to know if our Senators will vote to end the federal funding of the Wall Street casino or vote to take Blanche Lincoln's language out of the bill.
We know what we need to do -- it's time for a whip count and a little push and shove. We need to find out which senators will support real reform and which ones won't. Just follow these three easy steps to make sure Senators work on our behalf. Please make your call today. It takes two minutes to reach out to two Senators.
1. Call (202) 224-3121 and ask for your Senators representing your state.
2. Ask them: "Does Senator XXXX support Blanche Lincoln's proposal for spinning off swap desks?" and you can follow up with something like "I expect my Senator to support the Lincoln language and to reject any amendments that weaken derivatives reform in the bill, such as Senator Gregg's amendment to kill Lincoln's language."
"In my view, banks were never intended to perform these activities, which have been the single largest factor in these institutions growing so large that taxpayers had no choice but to bail them out in order to prevent total economic ruin," says Lincoln.
Last night, Senate Republicans proved beyond any doubt that when it comes to the economy, they stand with Wall Street and against everybody else. Joined by lone Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Republicans successfully filibustered the procedural technicality of opening debate on Wall Street reform. It's an unmistakable ploy to kill the bill and collect campaign cash from bigwig bankers. The coming weeks won't be pretty.
Republicans are going to be battered by this filibuster. Financial reform is popular, and nobody on Capitol Hill wants to be seen as the agents of Wall Street in Washington come November. Republicans are hoping to rhetorically counter Obama's proposals, negotiate a fatally weakened reform package, and then vote with Democrats for reform-in-name-only before the elections. But the U.S. financial system is broken and voters know it needs strong medicine.
In a speech last week before Cooper Union Hall in New York City, Obama laid out what's at stake in the reform fight. Our biggest banks don't fear failure because they know the government will bail them out in a crisis. As a result, they take massive risks that endanger the economy. Our current regulators ignored predatory lending in order to protect Wall Street profits. To top it off, the risky, multi-trillion-dollar market for derivatives-the financial weapons of mass destruction that brought down AIG-remains beyond the scope of regulatory authority altogether.
Without major changes, the U.S. economy is doomed to repeat the destruction of the past two years. Epic bailouts, consumer predation and heavy job losses will become the new national norm, not just the conditions of a single, terrible crisis. Last night's Republican-plus-Nelson filibuster was an effort to preserve an unacceptable status quo.
Phony populism
As Matthew Rothschild emphasizes in a podcast for The Progressive, Wall Street Republicans have been spreading all kinds of crazy lies about Obama's reform legislation. While the legislation that cleared the Senate Banking Committee in March isn't perfect, it isn't a massive bailout for Wall Street, either. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been making the rounds calling it just that, in a dishonest effort to kill the bill. This is phony populism. McConnell says he's against bailouts, but his goal is to prevent reform from overturning the current system, which, as we saw in 2008, has bailouts baked in.
While Obama did a good job identifying what's wrong on Wall Street, the solutions he proposed are either too weak to end abuses, or simply not included in the Wall Street reform bill in its current form. Obama's initial proposal for a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency was great, but Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) watered down in the Senate Banking Committee to appease Republicans. The same thing happened to Obama's proposal to fix the wild market for derivatives, the financial weapons of mass destruction that brought down AIG.
How to make reform a reality
As Sarah Ludwig of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Program (NEDAP) emphasizes in an interview with GRITtv's Laura Flanders, most of the reforms currently under consideration are a "good first step." That is to say they are useful and productive-but not enough to fundamentally change the way Wall Street does business.
Fortunately, there are several amendments that can fix these shortcomings, most notably the SAFE Banking Act, introduced by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Ted Kaufman (D-DE). As Peter Rothberg emphasizes for The Nation, the amendment would force our largest banks to split up into institutions that could fail without jeopardizing the broader economy. It would also place a hard cap on the total amount that banks could bet in the financial markets.
Those amendments, of course, can only be added to the bill if Republicans allow debate on financial reform to begin. Progressives should be fighting hard to make sure that the break-up-the-banks measure is included in the bill that the Senate eventually votes on. And as Rothberg notes, there will be plenty of opportunities to do so this week. Protests calling for Major Wall Street reform have been organized all over the country. On Tuesday, protesters will speak out against predatory banking behemoth Wells Fargo in San Francisco. On Wednesday, they will target too-big-to-fail titan Bank of America in Charlotte, N.C. On Thursday, reformers will march straight into the lion's den on Wall Street itself to demand change. It's called the Showdown in America, and you can find out more here.
It's only just begun-but how did we get here in the first place?
But whatever happens with this bill, the fight to rein in Wall Street is just beginning. As Robert Kuttner emphasizes for AlterNet, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had no shortage of verve for Wall Street reform, but it still took him seven years to enact all of the New Deal banking laws. And as Simon Johnson and James Kwak detail for The American Prospect, reining in Wall Street means overturning the ideology that has dominated the halls of power in Washington, D.C. for three decades.
Since the Reagan era, politicians from both political parties have sincerely believed that what is good for Wall Street is good for America. The subprime mortgage monstrosity and Great Crash of 2008 put cracks in the foundation of that ideology. But the process of demolishing it may very well take longer than the legislative cycle that will end with the November elections.
Even if we do get a strong bill-one that breaks up the biggest banks, bans them from placing risky bets in the derivatives and securities markets and establishes a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency-other important aspects of the financial sector will need to be addressed in other legislation. Hedge funds, whose pivotal role in the crisis is only now being identified, will need to be reined in. Rating agencies, who actively fueled the subprime bubble, and whose business models are founded on conflicts of interest, must be restructured. The future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac must be decided. Families across the country still need foreclosure relief.
We need a strong Wall Street reform bill. There is no excuse for any politician from either party to be standing with bigwig bankers against the rest of the country. And with two-thirds of the nation supporting reform, any political party that throws in its lot with Wall Street will pay a major price come November. No amount of Wall Street campaign cash can counter the voter outrage over bank bailouts and bonuses. There's no way to know when Republicans will come to their senses, but whatever happens this week, there will still be much work to do this year and the next.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Last night, Senate Republicans proved beyond any doubt that when it comes to the economy, they stand with Wall Street and against everybody else. Joined by lone Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Republicans successfully filibustered the procedural technicality of opening debate on Wall Street reform. It's an unmistakable ploy to kill the bill and collect campaign cash from bigwig bankers. The coming weeks won't be pretty.
Republicans are going to be battered by this filibuster. Financial reform is popular, and nobody on Capitol Hill wants to be seen as the agents of Wall Street in Washington come November. Republicans are hoping to rhetorically counter Obama's proposals, negotiate a fatally weakened reform package, and then vote with Democrats for reform-in-name-only before the elections. But the U.S. financial system is broken and voters know it needs strong medicine.
In a speech last week before Cooper Union Hall in New York City, Obama laid out what's at stake in the reform fight. Our biggest banks don't fear failure because they know the government will bail them out in a crisis. As a result, they take massive risks that endanger the economy. Our current regulators ignored predatory lending in order to protect Wall Street profits. To top it off, the risky, multi-trillion-dollar market for derivatives-the financial weapons of mass destruction that brought down AIG-remains beyond the scope of regulatory authority altogether.
Without major changes, the U.S. economy is doomed to repeat the destruction of the past two years. Epic bailouts, consumer predation and heavy job losses will become the new national norm, not just the conditions of a single, terrible crisis. Last night's Republican-plus-Nelson filibuster was an effort to preserve an unacceptable status quo.
Phony populism
As Matthew Rothschild emphasizes in a podcast for The Progressive, Wall Street Republicans have been spreading all kinds of crazy lies about Obama's reform legislation. While the legislation that cleared the Senate Banking Committee in March isn't perfect, it isn't a massive bailout for Wall Street, either. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been making the rounds calling it just that, in a dishonest effort to kill the bill. This is phony populism. McConnell says he's against bailouts, but his goal is to prevent reform from overturning the current system, which, as we saw in 2008, has bailouts baked in.
While Obama did a good job identifying what's wrong on Wall Street, the solutions he proposed are either too weak to end abuses, or simply not included in the Wall Street reform bill in its current form. Obama's initial proposal for a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency was great, but Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) watered down in the Senate Banking Committee to appease Republicans. The same thing happened to Obama's proposal to fix the wild market for derivatives, the financial weapons of mass destruction that brought down AIG.
How to make reform a reality
As Sarah Ludwig of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Program (NEDAP) emphasizes in an interview with GRITtv's Laura Flanders, most of the reforms currently under consideration are a "good first step." That is to say they are useful and productive-but not enough to fundamentally change the way Wall Street does business.
Fortunately, there are several amendments that can fix these shortcomings, most notably the SAFE Banking Act, introduced by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Ted Kaufman (D-DE). As Peter Rothberg emphasizes for The Nation, the amendment would force our largest banks to split up into institutions that could fail without jeopardizing the broader economy. It would also place a hard cap on the total amount that banks could bet in the financial markets.
Those amendments, of course, can only be added to the bill if Republicans allow debate on financial reform to begin. Progressives should be fighting hard to make sure that the break-up-the-banks measure is included in the bill that the Senate eventually votes on. And as Rothberg notes, there will be plenty of opportunities to do so this week. Protests calling for Major Wall Street reform have been organized all over the country. On Tuesday, protesters will speak out against predatory banking behemoth Wells Fargo in San Francisco. On Wednesday, they will target too-big-to-fail titan Bank of America in Charlotte, N.C. On Thursday, reformers will march straight into the lion's den on Wall Street itself to demand change. It's called the Showdown in America, and you can find out more here.
It's only just begun-but how did we get here in the first place?
But whatever happens with this bill, the fight to rein in Wall Street is just beginning. As Robert Kuttner emphasizes for AlterNet, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had no shortage of verve for Wall Street reform, but it still took him seven years to enact all of the New Deal banking laws. And as Simon Johnson and James Kwak detail for The American Prospect, reining in Wall Street means overturning the ideology that has dominated the halls of power in Washington, D.C. for three decades.
Since the Reagan era, politicians from both political parties have sincerely believed that what is good for Wall Street is good for America. The subprime mortgage monstrosity and Great Crash of 2008 put cracks in the foundation of that ideology. But the process of demolishing it may very well take longer than the legislative cycle that will end with the November elections.
Even if we do get a strong bill-one that breaks up the biggest banks, bans them from placing risky bets in the derivatives and securities markets and establishes a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency-other important aspects of the financial sector will need to be addressed in other legislation. Hedge funds, whose pivotal role in the crisis is only now being identified, will need to be reined in. Rating agencies, who actively fueled the subprime bubble, and whose business models are founded on conflicts of interest, must be restructured. The future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac must be decided. Families across the country still need foreclosure relief.
We need a strong Wall Street reform bill. There is no excuse for any politician from either party to be standing with bigwig bankers against the rest of the country. And with two-thirds of the nation supporting reform, any political party that throws in its lot with Wall Street will pay a major price come November. No amount of Wall Street campaign cash can counter the voter outrage over bank bailouts and bonuses. There's no way to know when Republicans will come to their senses, but whatever happens this week, there will still be much work to do this year and the next.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
While the poor judgment of top-level officials at Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget frequently makes the news, there is another, unrecognized economic crew doing terrific work: Officials at the Department of Labor are restoring workers' rights after nearly a decade of neglect.
To top it all off, President Barack Obama appears ready to make another set of strong, though less high-profile, economic appointments that will help rein in Wall Street excess.
DoL All-Stars
As Esther Kaplan documents in a masterful piece for The Nation, the Department of Labor (DoL) has been transformed from an agency that enabled corporate excess to one that holds companies accountable. In less than a year, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and her team of deputies significantly leveled the playing field between ordinary workers and high-flying executives.
For decades, when conservatives have attempted to confront social problems, they've relied on the mantra of enforcement. If we had more cops, we'd fix everything. But as Kaplan documents, under President George W. Bush and his Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, the DoL simply stopped enforcing worker protection laws. From wage theft to mine safety, the Department essentially allowed corrupt employers to do anything they wanted.
That neglect has already ended. Armed with a budget of just $1.5 billion-that's roughly 0.2% of the Troubled Asset Relief Program-Solis and company have cultivated a list of economic accomplishments that seemed impossible when they took office. As Kaplan details:
"Facing badly depleted enforcement ranks, Solis hired 710 additional enforcement staff, including 130 at OSHA and 250 for the crucial wage-and-hour division, upping inspectors by more than a third. Another hundred will come on next year to staff a crackdown on the misclassification of millions of employees as "independent contractors"--a dodge to avoid paying taxes and benefits--a move that has set off enormous buzz on business blogs. Her team took a plunger to the stagnant regulatory pipeline, moving forward new rules on coal mine dust, silica, and cranes and derricks. She restored prevailing wages for agricultural guest workers and is poised to restore reporting rules on ergonomic injuries."
Fixing the Fed
Obama also appears ready to make another slate of strong economic appointments at the Federal Reserve, an agency stuffed with free-marketers who helped engineer both an economic catastrophe and resulting bailouts. Obama's rumored picks-economists Janet Yellen and Peter Diamond and bank regulator Sarah Bloom Raskin-are aggressive about making the economy work for everyday citizens, as I emphasize for AlterNet.
If Congress passes financial reforms similar to what Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) has proposed, the Fed's regulatory responsibilities will actually expand, despite its failures over the past decade. The Fed has never effectively regulated anything and it's not very concerned with unemployment as an economic problem.
That makes Obama's pending slate of officials who prioritize bank regulation and broader employment very important. Raskin, in particular, stands out with her strong record as a state banking regulator. If Obama ultimately nominates her, she'll be the first pure regulator ever appointed to the Fed. The potential picks don't make up for Obama's reappointment of bailouteer Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve Chairman, but they do show that the President is capable of sound judgment.
Strengthening the Dodd bill
But the strength of Obama's potential Fed nominees doesn't justify the weakness of Dodd's financial regulation bill. As Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now! reveal in interviews with economist Robert Johnson and ColorLines Editorial Director Kai Wright , the bill leaves plenty to be desired. Dodd is currently making the rounds and declaring that his bill will end the abuses giant banks deployed against the broader economy, but the truth is, the bill has largely been gutted by bank lobbyists. Here's Johnson:
"We're engaged in a Kabuki theater right now, hoping the material is too complex for the American people to understand, declaring victory, and yet basically encoding into law current practices of the banks. Every one of your listeners should ask the question, given this legislation, if the President, House and Senate pass it, will we be in a place where AIG couldn't have happened, Lehman Brothers couldn't have happened, Bear Stearns couldn't have happened, and, more importantly, nine, ten percent unemployment caused by the banking crisis couldn't have happened? I argue this bill does very little."
The importance of trust-busting
So Dodd's bill needs to be substantially strengthened as it moves through the Senate. But there's plenty of other economic work to be done outside of Wall Street. As Barry C. Lynn and Phillip Longman explain for The Washington Monthly, the steady expansion of corporate monopolies has resulted in a fundamentally unstable economy.
The U.S. simply does not create jobs at the rate it once did, and companies aren't held accountable to market forces like competition. Many of our monopolies are hidden, as Lynn and Longman note. Macy's and Bloomingdale's seem like competitors, but they're owned by the same holding company. The same dynamic holds true in auto manufacturing, banking, pet food, health care and IT. Consumers think they're choosing between competing goods and services, when in fact they're shopping in different divisions of the same corporate Goliath.
All hope is not lost. As Laura Flanders emphasizes for GRITtv, the passage of health care reform proves that the Obama administration and Congress can make substantive progressive changes when they put their minds to it. The question is whether Obama is willing to limit his economic accomplishments to lower-level issues, or go big and take on the deep-pocketed corporate campaign contributors.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) unveiled his latest financial reform proposal on Monday, and the stakes for the new legislation couldn't be higher. After consumer groups raised a major ruckus, Dodd has dropped one of his most egregious concessions to the bank lobby-cutting enforcement authority from the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). That's good news: Without a major regulatory overhaul, the U.S. economy's destructive boom and bust cycle will start all over again.
We've been down this road before. The Enron fiasco should have served as a wake-up call for policymakers, but instead, the weak federal response to Enron's major fraud helped pave the way for the current economic slump.
What does Enron have to do with the crisis?
As Megan Carpentier emphasizes for The Washington Independent, one of the key "reforms" Congress enacted in the Enron aftermath was a law requiring every CEO to sign-off on their company's accounting statements-but it has accomplished almost nothing.
Enron collapsed due to accounting fraud. Its executives weren't stupid or careless-they made their money by engaging in deliberate and coordinated acts of illegal deception. But CEOs of companies like Enron had always been able to deny that they knew about the shenanigans that were playing out in their accounting departments. By forcing CEOs to sign off on their accounting statements, Congress was attempting to "deny them plausible deniability," as Carpentier puts it.
But accounting fraud has plagued the U.S. economy, even after the Enron scandal. It also plays a major role in the Wall Street crisis. A recent court report from Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy examiner reveals that the company arranged a series of complicated transactions to hide $50 billion in debt, making Lehman appear healthier than it was. By hiding this debt, Lehman was able to make bigger bets on the mortgage market. The defense issued by Lehman CEO Richard Fuld? He apparently didn't know the accounting hijinks were happening
An epidemic of fraud
Most U.S. policymakers are still having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that our financial system is rife with fraud at almost every level. Writing for AlterNet, Joe Costello reports on a recent Roosevelt Institute conference featuring several major economic luminaries. Costello argues that some of Wall Street's biggest problems were driven by run-of-the-mill fraud. And a key vehicle for this fraud, Costello notes, was the derivatives market-the same market that allowed Enron to perpetrate its own frauds. Many of the scams aren't even particularly new or creative. They're simply the same cons that helped usher in the Great Depression.
"If we're going to get our economy up and running again, the first thing we're going to have to do is end the fraud," Costello writes.
Protecting Whistleblowers
But astonishingly, even after the worst financial crisis in history, bigwig bankers have been able to avoid fraud charges and investigations. Even when the Justice Department went after Swiss banking Giant UBS for a massive tax evasion scheme, they let the company's U.S. executives off the hook and instead jailed the very whistleblower who told the government about the fraud.
The whistleblower, Bradley Birkenfeld, is by no means innocent of wrongdoing-he even smuggled diamonds in a toothpaste container for a wealthy UBS client. But as Corbin Hiarr notes for Mother Jones, jailing the man who blows the whistle sends exactly the wrong message to anybody in Big Finance who recognizes a problem. Not only will your employer come at you with everything it has, but the government you aid will actually send you to prison. The fraudsters you finger get to retire to the Caymans.
This is part of the reason that successful financial reform is not just what the rules are, but who gets to enforce them. There were many reasonable rules against predatory lending that bank regulators at the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) could have used to thwart the financial crisis early on, but neither agency was interested in doing so. They were more concerned with short-term banking profits, and up until 2007, sketchy accounting was allowing banks to book big gains on the subprime market.
Why we need a CFPA
That's why all the way back in June of 2009, President Barack Obama proposed establishing a CFPA focused exclusively on defending consumers against banks. With no concerns for bank profitability, CFPA regulators could go after unfair practices and fraud because they were wrong, regardless of what they did for bank balance sheets.
The proposal was watered down significantly in the House, as Kai Wright notes for The Nation, and just a week ago it appeared that Dodd was ready to completely torpedo the new regulator in an effort to craft bipartisan support for a so-called "reform" bill.
He's backed off since then, but without strong enforcement authority, nothing is gained-the same corrupt regulators will simply continue to look the other way. But Dodd would still house the new agency at the Federal Reserve. Dodd insists the Fed would have no authority over the CPFA, but if that were the case, why would he introduce the provision at all?
"Reform in name alone will be useless to both consumers and politicians," writes Wright.
Strong financial reform is overwhelmingly popular. While it's good to see Dodd backing away from some of the gifts he'd previously proposed to bank lobbyists, progressives must keep the pressure high to ensure that financial reform is strengthened as it moves through the Senate.
It's easy for a corrupt lawmaker to vote against a weak bill: He can always plead that the bill wasn't good enough and be right. But serious, popular reform is not so easy to oppose. If Dodd and the Democratic leadership make the politicians backed by the bank lobby-that's literally every Republican, plus a handful of conservative Democrats-stand up and vote against a good bill, many of them will have to choose between their lobbyist friends and their political future.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
It's time to continue our look at the Cabinet in the upcoming Obama administration. Second - Secretary of the Treasury, perhaps the most important appointment President-elect Obama will make, given the current economic circumstances.
There are several excellent options - some who served in the Clinton Administration - some outsiders - and even some paradigm breaking choices. For convenience, I've taken the list from a betting site (yes, it is in the order of the oddsmakers' favorite).
There were Republicans on the list, and I've left out the "I don't believe it" names still on the betting lines such as Phil Gramm and Bob Zoellick. There's also some chatter about keeping Paulson on, temporarily to administer the bailout. So as distasteful as it seems, I kept his name on the list.
Perhaps one key criteria (which you're free to throw to the side of the road) is whether the candidate would inspire confidence in the markets.
(X posted at MyDD - will X post at DK, as soon as the clock allows me to post another diary there)
The same names keep popping up for Obama's VP choice: Dodd, Sebelius, Bayh, Biden, and Kaine seem to be the consensus favorites. But if we want to think strategically here, can't we throw out the Senators? We will need long standing Senators to shepherd legislation through Congress next year especially now that a 60 vote majority is looking unlikely.
Last night Senator Chris Dodd took to the Senate floor and besought his colleagues one final time to reconsider the retroactive awarding of immunity to telecom companies in their illegal surveillance of American citizens.
Few beside Dodd and acting Senate President Bob Menendez were present to hear the impassioned speech. Americans were invited to eavesdrop on C-SPAN2, but were obliged to flip to Jeapordy! or re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond.
The address was short, but comprehensive. Dodd outlined the nature of the provision under debate as no simpler than a challenge to the rule of law. Conjuring two of the 20th Century's most popular conservative leaders, Dodd implored his colleagues in the Senate to consider the consequences of lawlessness undisclosed.
"Where law ends, tyranny begins," Dodd asserted, quoting former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
If the sentiment were lost on his American peers, Dodd nonetheless buttressed it with a more familiar statesman's:
As Dwight D. Eisenhower who served our country both as President and as leader of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War Two, said:
"The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law."
That is why I believe history will judge this President harshly for his disregard for our most cherished principles.
The responsibility falls not only onto the President's shoulders though, as Dodd was quick to remind fellow Senators:
If we do not change course and stand up for our Constitution, for what is best in America, for what we know is right and just, then history will most certainly decide that that it was those of us in this body who bare equal responsibility for the President's decisions-for it was us who looked the other way, time and time again.
Senators Dodd and Feingold put their amendment to strike Title II from the proposed FISA bill to a vote in less than an hour. Dodd's last plea may meanwhile have fallen on deaf hears in the living symbol of our union, but YOU can read the speech in it's entirety in the extended entry...
* UPDATE * 1:15pm: Dodd-Feingold amendment fails 32-66. See the extended entry for complete vote tally.
Many of you have rightly criticized Sen. Obama for failing to vote against Kyl-Lieberman's quasi-Iran war resolution and other no shows (or late shows) on critical issues. And many of you have rightly praised Sen. Dodd's leadership on Habeas and FISA.
But today Dodd "pulled an Obama" and didn't show for a critical vote when it mattered. The nomination of Judge Southwick.
To make a long story short, if this is true and Reid intends to ignore Dodd's hold on the FISA Bill, then it is time to mount a leadership challenge against Senator Reid.
STATE BLOGS
Last night Senator Chris Dodd took to the Senate floor and besought his colleagues one final time to reconsider the retroactive awarding of immunity to telecom companies in their illegal surveillance of American citizens.