Stimulus Money for Virginia: Sign the Petition

Stand Up for Virginia:

Real Virginians are hurting. Instead of providing relief to families and businesses, the Republican-dominated House of Delegates turned their backs on us. Last week, following the lead of gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, they rejected $125 million in federal money aimed at stimulating our economy and helping struggling Virginians. Stand up for displaced workers and our tax money: Tell lawmakers to go back to Richmond and do the right thing.

Sign the Petition here.

Bank Lobbyists and Apologists: Step the Hell Off Warren

Elizabeth Warren is an honest reformer with the expertise needed to see us out of the financial crises started by the unregulated greed of the banking industry.

Big surprise, the banking industry's paid shills are in a proper tizzy:

While the bubbly and brilliant 69-year-old professor is a darling of Democrats, Warren has become the scourge of conservative Republicans, who question her panel’s exploration of more-liberal approaches such as nationalization and bank liquidation.

Financial services lobbyists, who’ve long disliked Warren for highlighting predatory lending and abusive credit card fees, argue that she’s using her post to push her own, anti-industry agenda.

“A number of people wonder if this is the new Warren commission or the congressional oversight panel,” said Wayne Abernathy, executive director for financial institutions policy at the American Bankers Association. “It’s looking more like the former than the latter.”

They better step the hell off. Do these fuckers honestly think we are going to take their word over Warren's? She's the definition of a political outsider:

Warren, who proudly calls herself an “outsider’s outsider,” is comfortable announcing those kinds of very uncomfortable figures, even if that means taking some political punches.

“I’ve never held a government job, and I’m not looking for a government job after this,” she said. “I’m not out there trying to go and find my next landing spot.”

While they represent the epitome of corruption, greed, and insiders consolidating power and wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of all. Republicans and Clinton-style new-Democrats de-regulated like bunnies, and the banks stepped in with irresponsible levels of greed and fiscal blindness. And now we have the current financial crises.

Their criticism fails to distract from either their culpability or their continued obstruction in the face of successful reform:

Since then, Democrats have jumped on an idea that Warren first proposed two years ago, introducing legislation that would create a Financial Product Safety Commission charged with overseeing new consumer lending and investment products. Warren argues that a commission modeled after the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which oversees the security of toys and small appliances, would have kept the subprime mortgages that sparked the current recession off the market in the first place.

“It is impossible to buy a toaster that has a one-in-five chance of bursting into flames and burning down your house,” Warren wrote in Harvard Magazine last May. “But it is possible to refinance your home with a mortgage that has the same one-in-five chance of putting your family out on the street — and the mortgage won’t even carry a disclosure of that fact.”

President Obama backed the proposal on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” last month, using the toaster analogy to explain the idea.

The commission idea is opposed by conservatives and financial services firms, who argue it would prohibit innovation and impose unnecessary additional regulations on financial services companies.

“We wouldn’t be able to invest in anything the commission didn’t decide was absolutely safe for us,” said Peter Wallison, co-director of the American Enterprise Institute’s program on financial policy studies. “There wouldn’t be any innovation and there wouldn’t be any new ideas.”

Because in Wallison's view, innovation only comes with predatory financial products.

Warren's proposal is a solid one. Her criticism of the crisis and the bailout is central to keeping the process and its result viable. We need to do more than fix the crisis. We need to take steps to prevent it from happening again. Otherwise we are condemning Americans 10-15 years down the line to go through the same meltdown we are currently enjoying.

In this context listening to banking lobbyists and de-regulation cheerleaders makes all the sense of listening to the medical advice of a drug addict with a needle already in his arm. We need a doctor, and in Dr Elizabeth Warren we have one.

Dear Honest Teabaggers

I'm sure, somewhere amidst the Fox News organizers, the racists, bigots and nutjobs, and the idiots who equate returning taxes for the wealthiest Americans to pre Bush levels with oppression, there are those who legitimately want to protest the waste and corruption of the bailout.

So I read snarky posts like this with disdain. Not just because the author apparently got brutally thwacked with the fail whale. But because they miss the point.

Organize (real grassroots, not astroturf like those joke tea parties) a protest against the waste and corruption of the bailout. Leave out taxes (for most Americans, we are getting tax cuts, only the very wealthy are returning to paying what they were before Bush's fiscally irresponsible tax cuts). Get over the bigotry, racism and petty poltics of whining about a legitimate loss (question" if people protesting the corrupt and stolen 2000 elections were sore losers, what does that make someone who protests the legimate Republican thrashing in 2008?).

I had no idea the bailout was so corrupt until watching this Daily Show segment:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Clusterfu#@k to the Poor House - Goldman Sachs' Connections
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

When you realize just how hard we were hit during the bailout process (Elizabeth Warren Interview Parts 1 and 2):

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Elizabeth Warren Pt. 1
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Elizabeth Warren Pt. 2
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

It really puts things in perspective.

To be fair, the early corruption of the bailout process occurred under Bush (who's administration exhibited corrupt practices in Iraq via Haliburton). That said, Obama should be fighting this corruption with every ounce of his strength. It threatens to undermine our financial security and political stability over the long term.

I realize writing a letter to honest, sane tea party-goers is bound to reach a small audience. But a left-right coalition is always going to be needed to address systemic problems, and the corruption of the bailout process is one hell of a problem.

We need to agree on bringing back the regulations discarded over the past several decades, and make fiscal stability a priority. On the economy, we need to adopt Obama's pragmatic approach of putting success ahead of partisanship for partisanship's sake. Given the past few years, this is going to involve far more sacrifice from the principals of conservatism. It means allowing the government to resume the role and powers that have been chipped away in the name of the free market.

So, conservative readers, are you up to it?