We're the "small people". I guess Rep. Barton, Limbaugh, RedState and the rest of them aren't alone. The NYTimes also worries about Obama holding corporations accountable.
Twisting Arms at BP, Obama Sets Off a Debate on Tactics,
With that display of raw arm-twisting, Mr. Obama reinvigorated a debate about the renewed reach of government power, or, alternatively, the power of government overreach.
The conclusion of this piece is equally risible. Obama must be very careful about delicate corporate feelings, otherwise we risk the following:
[...][H]e will have to avoid painting with such a broad brush that foreign and domestic investors come to view the United States as a too risky place to do business, a country where big mistakes can lead to vilification and, perhaps, bankruptcy.
In short, our best bet is to act like some third world shithole that bends over backwards to get a little corporate investment, no matter what the cost.
It's no coincidence that this front-page news analysis piece was written the Times' chief Washington correspondent, David Sanger. For the DC Press Corpse, the "rule of law" is a quaint notion that went out at the turn of the century.
Slowly and tentatively, in fits and starts yet with gradually gathering momentum, the iron grip that big corporate interests have on the throat of our democracy is loosening a little. Credit card companies got needless delays in the implementation of last year's reform bill, but they were forced to live with the outlawing of several of their most egregious practices. The insurance companies stripped the public option and some other great things out of health reform, but would have much preferred no bill at all, and certainly not one with new regulations and expectations about pre-existing conditions, lifetime caps, and recissions. The student loan industry got an outright smackdown which will result in more money for student loans. Now Wall Street is in a wild fight on the floor of the Senate, and Senators are either deserting them on major issues like auditing the Fed and consumer protection, or else Senators are having to make very uncomfortable votes on the big bankers' behalf. Progressives who want to rein in Wall St's power are losing on some important issues, but we are making our mark on this bill, and setting the stage for future fights.
Check out Simon Johnson's brilliant post on the vote to break up the banks, suggesting that while they won this round, they may be facing their Waterloo soon. He points out that as things like Greece continue to happen that unravel the world financial situation further, that it will become harder and harder for the defenders of the big banks to hide. Although our side lost the vote, getting over half the Democrats, the Majority Leader, the 2nd ranking member of the leadership, and the ranking Republican on the Finance committee to all vote with us on a bill to fundamentally restructure the financial system was a pretty big deal. With Senators now all on the record as to whether they support the big banks or not, we have a lot of potential to do some damage in the coming elections. Even when we lose, we are getting these issues aired and getting people on the record. That's all to the good.
Let me throw a couple of electoral examples into the mix. Take Delaware, a pretty strongly Democratic state where a locally popular Republican congressman, Mike Castle, is a heavy favorite to win an open seat. He voted against breaking up the big banks. If the Democratic candidate Chris Coons makes this big issue in a pretty working class state, maybe Castle's easy victory gets a little- or even quite a bit- harder.
Or take an old home state of mine, Iowa, where voters have a very deep populist streak in them (see Harkin, Tom). Grassley, the ultimate incumbent insider, ranking member and former chair of the Finance committee, voted for letting the 6 biggest banks continue to own the equivalent of 63% of our GDP. Roxanne Conlin is a crusading lawyer who has made her living going after corporate malfeasance. Grassley is favored in this race, but his vote makes things a lot more interesting, especially for a strong populist like Roxanne.
Moving on to the issue of auditing the Federal Reserve. Yes, Sanders compromised on the issue. But most observers following the issue see this as a solid compromise, not a cave-in: we got something real out of the deal in terms of looking at what went down over the last few years. And the House language they go into conference on is very strong. Rumor has it that Geithner is still trying to figure out how to unravel this deal, so we can't take anything for granted, but we have the momentum on this issue, and winning on it would be a very big deal.
We're winning so far on the consumer protection agency; we're making progress on derivatives. It is the progressive amendments that have the wind at their back right now.
Look, I don't want to overstate this. This bank bill has some serious weaknesses in it, and with the Brown-Kaufman bank break-up amendment failing, it still doesn't solve the most central failing of our banking system. On health care and other issues, progressives have had our share of truly bitter and disappointing defeats. But progressive populist economics and a political strategy of challenging special interest corporate power is gaining traction right now. A citizen movement is bubbling up through the barriers of special interest concrete in our nation's Capitol that is not driven by tea party anti-government fervor, but by the hopes of regular folks who believe we can take our country back. Let's keep building on our momentum.
When the Republicans do their version of populist class warfare, they only target two categories of rich people: Hollywood celebrities and wealthy trial layers. They go after these two kinds of rich people because they are the only kinds that don't shower the Republicans with money and share their conservative worldview. A lot of Hollywood celebrities care about issues like freedom of speech, gay rights, choice, funding for the arts, separation of church and state, and other issues that make Republican social conservatives crazy, plus Hollywood folks are famous and make easy targets.
Trial lawyers are a different story. They are hated by Republicans because they make a living by helping regular folks without much money who are doing battle with (mostly) big corporate interests. Republicans deride them, scorn them, and try to do everything they can to destroy their business model because the GOP don't like anyone taking on their big business allies (trial lawyers do take on individual doctors in malpractice cases, but most of their business is in suing big corporations who screw people over). For example, they don't want trial lawyers to be able to get much in the way of contingency fees, because they know that the contingency fee system allows lawyers to take poor people's cases on for free upfront, which means more people have the ability to take on big companies' high-priced legal teams.
I mention all these basic facts about our tort system for one reason today: my friend Linda Lipsen has been named head of the American Association for Justice, the trial attorneys' trade association.
Linda comes out of the consumer movement originally, and has been a stalwart friend of progressive causes her entire career. She is a great strategic thinker, a savvy legislative tactician, and an innovative organization-builder. It will be a very good thing for the broader progressive cause, and great for AAJ, to have her at the helm.
Along with the labor movement, there is no other well-resourced institution in America that understands the dangers of too much corporate power, and takes that corporate power on directly. I am thrilled that they have a great new leader in charge.
WASHINGTON, DC — In honor of Thomas Jefferson’s 267th birthday, the Green Party of Florida and the People’s Lobby Coalition for Public Funding Only of All Elections will hold a forum on the influence of corporate lobbies on US elections. The forum will take place at the National Press Club (http://npc.press.org) in Washington, DC, at 7 pm on Tuesday, April 13, 2010.
The speakers will discuss ‘Money Morality’ and the effect of corporate money on health care, energy, the economy, treatment of the poor, and other major issues, with an analysis of military expenditures in light of campaign contributions from defense contractors.
"We’ll talk about the correlation between the influence of the 13,000 special interest lobbyists and our elected officials’ voting trends in relation to these issues. And we’ll propose necessary changes to our election system to restore democracy," said Jennifer Sullivan, organizer of the event.
The event is open to the public, with doors opening at 7 pm. Admission is free for all members of the media with proper ID. General admission is a suggested donation of $10.00 or $15.00 per couple; no one will be turned away.
Refreshments will be served, with a variety of selected hors d’oeuvres, house specialty dips, gourmet chips, beverages, and a cash bar.
Guest speakers at the forum:
• Dr. Margaret Flowers, Congressional Fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program (http://www.pnhp.org), advocate for single-payer national health care, from Maryland
• Jesse Johnson, chair of the West Virginia Mountain Party (http://www.mtparty.org), twice-nominated candidate for the US Senate, the only third-party candidate to receive an endorsement from the Sierra Club in his 2008 race for Governor of West Virginia, and filmmaker (http://www.mtparty.org/nominations/2004/jesse/bio.html)
• Pat LaMarche, weekly columnist for the Bangor Daily News (http://www.bangordailynews.com), 2004 vice-presidential nominee of the Green Party of the United States, and advocate for the homeless
• Head-Roc, Hip-Hop artist and community organizer (http://www.head-roc.com), from Washington, DC
• Jennifer Sullivan, regional representative of the Green Party of Florida (http://www.floridagreens.org) and coordinator of The People’s Lobby
More speakers will be announced soon.
WHAT: The People’s Lobby: Forum on the influence of corporate special interest money on public policy and the erosion of US democracy, Tuesday, April 13 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC
WHEN: Tuesday, April 13, at 7 pm
WHERE: 529 14th Street NW, Washington, DC (map: http://www.press.org/directions.cfm)
Johann Hari, a columnist for the London Independent, was on Democracy Now! this week, to discuss his new article at The Nation, focusing on why leading US environmental groups are lobbying against the kind of dramatic policy changes that the science itself says are needed to save the planet from global warming:
The Wrong Kind of Green By Johann Hari
Why did America's leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen and lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests--and runaway global warming? Why are their lobbyists on Capitol Hill dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as "unworkable" and "unrealistic," as though they were just another sooty tentacle of Big Coal?
At first glance, these questions will seem bizarre. Groups like Conservation International are among the most trusted "brands" in America, pledged to protect and defend nature. Yet as we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world's worst polluters--and burying science-based environmentalism in return. Sometimes the corruption is subtle; sometimes it is blatant. In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be exposed.
As with Obama on health care, the arguments offered may be dressed up as "pragmatism", but the money trail tells a different story. Only this time, we're not talking about the party establishment being corrupted, it's the supposed progressive advocacy organizations that are being corrupt and dishonest. And it's been going on for quite some time now, beginning all the way back in the 1980s:
Yesterday, the New Mexico House of Representatives unanimously decided to move the states' money into small banks and credit unions, becoming yet another example of the fact that progressive change will not come from the top down.
In the context of the larger movement against the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street, this is a dramatic repudiation of that behavior from a somewhat unexpected source.
The bill enables a possible switch of $2-5 billion of state funds into CUs and small banks.
If enacted, the municipal funds bill, in the works since last year and still subject to a Senate vote, would represent a setback to large national banks, like Bank of America and Wells Fargo, which have had a lock on such funds.
The altered view of New Mexico lawmakers in favoring local control of state funds, officials said, follows national mention of the New Mexico effort in the "Move Your Money" campaign of New York pundit Arianna Huffington in her online Huffington Post columns.
The Employee Free Choice Act is key to rebuilding the American middle class - news of Senators wavering in their support for the bill revalidates a key truth about Congress: the main stumbling block to strengthening and expanding the middle class is corporate power.
The same pattern emerges every year on TheMiddleClass.org. Throughout the year, DMI uses the site to share analysis about the impact of Congressional legislation on Americans' ability to gain - and hold onto - a middle-class standard of living. Once a year, we take a step back and look at the big picture. It often looks depressingly familiar: fiscal conservatives notwithstanding, Congress does fairly well when it comes to measures that simply involve spending more, but falls short - often far short - when powerful corporate interests clash with the wellbeing of the nation's current and aspiring middle class.
In 2008, for example, Congress stood up for the middle-class on issues like providing more funds to higher education and passing a consumer safety bill that's even been endorsed by the industry its regulating. Virtually all Democrats voted for these bills, and most Republicans as well. Similarly in 2007, college aid did well and majorities from both parties in the House voted for common sense contracting reforms.
But Congressional support for middle-class Americans falls off precipitously as soon as major corporate interests are at stake.
In 2007, the Peru trade bill was the skunk at the garden party, provoking 64 percent of Senate Democrats and 48 percent of House Democrats (along with nearly every Republican) to vote for multinational corporations and large investors at the expense of their middle-class constituents. Last year, it was a willingness to put banks before struggling homeowners, telecommunications companies before consumers, and those @%$& banks again before taxpayers. These weren't the only policy disappointments of the year for middle-class Americans, but they were the main cases where significant numbers of Democrats joined nearly all Republicans in selling out the middle class.
This year, I fear Thomas Frank is right when he predicts the same fate for EFCA. Sure, Congress will approve health coverage for low-income kids (an important boost for aspiring middle-class families in its own right) but when it comes to standing up for middle-class Americans against a full-scale corporate lobbying campaign, Congress may not have the guts. That's terrible news for the middle class.
