It's part two of our "Netroots Nation Goes To Vegas Piano Bar Extravaganza", and in keeping with tradition that means we are again taking a story request.
This time we won't be talking about energy security or "climate security"; instead, we'll discuss retirement security, keeping your money for yourself instead of paying it out in "mystery fees", and how one of the "usual suspects" is at it again.
Check out the latest thing the banking barons and their friends in the Senate are trying to do to us: steal more money from our IRA accounts.
George Miller's House bill to close some corporate tax loopholes and use it to pay for creating more jobs (which seems like one of those why-the-hell-didn't-they-do-this-a-long-time-ago ideas, but thank you to Chairman Miller for pushing this) has a provision in it that Senators who listen too much to banking lobbyists want to take out. The idea is simple: it would require any fees the bankers managing your 401(k) plans take to be disclosed, and require clear information about how much risk and return are in each plan a worker might invest in. Bankers are screaming bloody murder that they might actually have to provide information to their clients, and have convinced the Senate to go along with stripping this provision in the bill.
One of the big reasons banks have grown so big and made so much money over the last 30 years is that they nickel and dime us to death, oftentimes without disclosing what they are doing. Invisible fees for managing your 401(k), or the credit/debit card swipe fees I have been working on with business and consumer groups, are another example. And this nickel and diming adds up: the swipe fee thing siphons $48 billion a year out of the real economy and goes into the banking industries pockets, while a Dept of Labor bulletin estimated that just a one percentage point difference in 401(k) fees would reduce a person's overall retirement income from 401(k)'s by 28% over their lifetime.
This is big money, and it matters a lot - to consumers, Main Street businesses, and to the bank industry. I just saw a report that said that just through March, Visa, MasterCard, and the rest of the big banks had already spent $50 million in lobbying fees alone (that number doesn't include PAC contributions or advertising - just lobbyists) on the swipe fee issue. And their PR guys have gotten a lot of media people to parrot their lines - check out Jean Chatzky on the Today Show echoing word for the word at the end of this segment bankers' talking points about how regulating swipe fees could result in higher costs for consumers (I can't even figure out the logic of how lowering credit card swipe fees will result in consumers paying more, but logic and truth have never been an important component of bankers' lobbying techniques).
The bankers have grown too big, too powerful, and too arrogant for the good of the rest of us. They think it is within their right to gouge their clients, and nickel and dime us in every way they can think of. They get offended if we think they should disclose what fees they are charging, or have a cop on the beat to keep them from taking more of our money. It's time to rein in the power of Wall Street, and show them we aren't going to take their crap anymore.
A quick digest of the week's social media news with a side of fun? You're welcome. Introducing CRUSH, the weekly web-show that takes the news on the social media newsladder and crushes it down to reveal the gems.
In this weeks' edition, we discuss the coincidence of Google releasing Buzz at about the same time they struck a deal with the NSA to share info. No relationship - just like Glenn Beck getting a show on Fox the day before Obama was inaugurated.
Facebook, meanwhile made changes to its privacy settings allowing users more control of what info is shared. That won't help people who choose to share their info though. With the growth of location sharing, there is a new website that points out a nagging issue with letting people know where you are all the time.
On the political side of thigs, this past week marked the one year anniversary of the signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Organizing for America released this video to mark the occasion, and the House Committee on Education and Labor realeased a great video as well. This is not the first time the Ed and Labor committee has turned to creative webvideos to spread a message, and we hope it will not be the last.
Sarah Palin was asked what she thought the biggest threat to America is, and when her supporters shouted 'Obama' she felt the need to clarify that they had said it, not she. She didn't correct them though. If Mrs. Palin cared about 'those little facty things' she and her supporters might want to thumb through the Quadrennial Defense Review, which catalougues the various security threats to the nation as determined by, well, the people who spend their careers assessing threats to our nation.
Finally, this is from Ben Whitehair on Facebook, and it is hilarious:
5 steps to an AWESOME day: Step 1: Go to google maps... www.google.com/maps Step 2: Search for 39 Rugdeveien, Bergen, Hordaland, Norge Step 3: Zoom in until you get to street view Step 4: Look to the left of the truck and see two men in scooba gear Step 5: Click to make the truck go down the road and watch the men chase the truck....
On Thursday, July 30th, the Progressive Caucus held a press conference to draw a line in the sand when it comes to the inclusion of a strong public option in the health care bill.
Delegates from the disputed Florida and Michigan primaries shouldn't decide who wins the party's presidential nomination, said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the chair of the Democratic National Convention.
That's not particularly good for Clinton. Pelosi also discussed superdelegates.
Pelosi dismissed concerns that uncommitted party officials known as superdelegates would vote against the will of the majority of Democratic voters, and said if they did, that may cause troubles for the party.
``It's not just following the returns; it's also having a respect for what has been said by the people,'' Pelosi said. It would be ``a problem for the party if the verdict would be something different than the public has decided,'' she said.
There are many reasons she could have made these statements, and it's possible she's just being a good party steward. That said, her close lieutenant George Miller has already endorsed Obama and she did not have to step out on this stuff. She just chose to.
Iraq is only the half of it. Quite possibly, less than half.
As CQ barely sketches in today, a legislative logjam of epic proportions is in prospect.
For a start, we finally see that continuing resolutions are being discussed:
Pelosi, D-Calif., and other House leaders have been looking at two versions of the continuing resolution that is sure to be moved the week of Sept. 24. One version would last for five weeks, ending Nov. 2, the other for six weeks, ending Nov. 9.
Senate aides said an end date of Nov. 16 is also under discussion.
If on September 13 they're talking about November 16 - that's not frightfully promising!
I'm beginning to tire of the notion that there has been some great pressure brought to bear by the antiwar base of the Democratic Party.
In the Senate, the crucible of the debate, many Republicans have grown increasingly skeptical of the president's policy, though they are unwilling to go as far Democrats. And Democratic leaders, determined to end the war on their terms and under intense pressure from their antiwar base, have refused to yield enough ground to accommodate them.
In reality, the antiwar base has been as meek as lambs to the Democratic Party. First of all, the idea that there is nothing the Democrats can or could have done to stop the war is simply nonsense. The Bush administration admits as much in an article in the Washington Post on dissent around the surge strategy when it was first announced.
"There was a real question about whether we'd be able to do this at all," said a White House aide. Within five weeks, the House had voted to oppose the troop buildup, and Democratic leaders were vowing to tie Bush's hands. Most worrisome was the discontent among Republicans. "It could have potentially strangled this strategy in the crib," Wehner said.
The Democrats could have stopped it. They didn't. Democrats like Joe Biden are saying there's nothing they can do to stop the war, and progressives like Barbara Boxer are echoing his point. The narrative undergirding a lot of the stories here are that Democrats are under pressure from their antiwar base, but are standing up to it. That is a false narrative. Politicians respond to pressure, and that means the backsliding we've seen over the past six months is a result of the Democrats not feeling pressure on Iraq, or more likely, feeling more from elites and the right than from the Democratic base. When you look at the Presidential context, this is basically indisputable. Democratic base voters think that the leading candidates will withdraw all troops from Iraq, which is simply untrue. While the argument that Democrats in Congress are boxed in by procedural contraints holds some water, there is no conceivable reason why Democratic Presidential candidates should support keeping troops in Iraq... unless they really just want to keep troops in Iraq. That this mass deception is allowed to continue suggests that there is very little pressure on Democrats to end the war.
Moveon, for instance, has run one ad against Brian Baird, which was an extremely small purchase. By contrast, the White House approved group Freedom Watch is spending $15 million targeting Republicans, including an incredibly quick response helping Brian Baird. And though I have heard compliments from insiders about going after Baird, the anger at the Bush Dog campaign, which is simply designed to offer criticism, is remarkable. Anonymous Democratic aides are now yelping, 'what in the world are they thinking', as if offering pressure in the form of criticism and primary challenges is completely novel. And in fact, it is. There is still no organized funded campaign to recruit antiwar or progressive primary challengers (paging 'They Work for Us').
But it goes beyond primary challenges. Joe Biden went on Meet the Press yesterday and said there is nothing Democrats can do to end the war, and that he will vote for funding no matter what. He's up for reelection in 2008, and he's running for President. There was not one statement attacking Biden for his hawkish stance. This is consistent. The very liberal George Miller has echoed the line of funding the troops, and only Markos is pushing back on the Presidentials refusing to talk about the next supplemental; funding the troops, which is exactly 100% the wrong frame, is the message of the Democratic Party, and there is zero organized pushback.
If we can't get the Presidential candidates to even have a debate about troop levels in Iraq, don't tell me there's an antiwar movement in this country putting pressure on the Democrats.
Now, what this means is that we do start putting pressure on Democratic leaders, it's going to draw squeals very quickly. There's a lot of upside here. Moreover, the strategy of the antiwar movement has been to pressure the Republicans, assuming good faith behavior by Democratic insiders. That was a strategy that has helped move numbers against Republicans, and it has usefully showed Democratic leaders to be acting in bad faith. Now that the argument has been made, it's incumbent upon all of us to genuinely begin putting pressure on Democratic leaders, especially the Presidential canddiates, as aggressively as possible.
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