OBAMA'S US TOP COP FOR BANKS WANT LESS REGULATION, ECHOES REPUBLICAN WALL STREET PALS

AlterNet / By Zach Carter

Republicans are taking an unpopular stand with Wall Street. Dems need to have the guts to stand up against them both.

If you had any doubt about the bank lobby's vice-grip on public policy, look no further than the meeting of the American Bankers Association currently taking place in Washington. In a shameless effort to curry favor with the deep-pocketed financial industry, House Minority Leader John Boenher, R-Ohio, urged lobbyists to fight hard against financial reform. And astonishingly, the nation's top bank cop, Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan, actually agreed with him.

The ABA is the top lobby group for the nation's financiers, and has been fighting hard to prevent meaningful regulation of the industry that drove the global economy off a cliff in 2008. Their current conference is focused on "government relations," known to the rest of the world as "shameless vote-buying."

At Thursday's meeting, Rep. Boehner made an impassioned plea for the bank lobby to keep up the fight, according to a report by Dow Jones NewsWires:

"Don't let those little punk staffers take advantage of you and stand up for yourselves," Boehner said. "All of us are hearing from our friends and constituents on lack of credit, you can't get a loan, the more your government takes and taxes, the more regulations you have to comply with the more cost you have there and less amount you are going to have available to loan to customers."

Right now, the only demographic in the U.S. that is less popular than Wall Street bankers are the lobbyists who work for Wall Street bankers. What's shocking about Boehner's statement isn't the sentiment -- anybody paying close attention to the financial reform debate knows that every Republican has been in the bank lobby's camp since well before the crisis broke. Boehner has to know that siding with the same banks that screwed the public on their houses, their credit cards and their retirement is not a good idea. But Boehner believes the bank lobby is so powerful he's willing to publicly encourage the group to work with Republicans to fight against popular reforms. 

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We Stand on the Cusp of one of Humanity's Most Dangerous Moments

Chris Hedges, Adbusters

March 18, 2010

Aleksandr Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of anarchists about how to overthrow the czar, reminded his listeners that it was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it: “We think we are the doctors. We are the disease.” All resistance must recognize that the body politic and global capitalism are dead. We should stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to it. This does not mean the end of resistance, but it does mean very different forms of resistance. It means turning our energies toward building sustainable communities to weather the coming crisis, since we will be unable to survive and resist without a cooperative effort.

These communities, if they retreat into a pure survivalist mode without linking themselves to the concentric circles of the wider community, the state and the planet, will become as morally and spiritually bankrupt as the corporate forces arrayed against us. All infrastructures we build, like the monasteries in the Middle Ages, should seek to keep alive the intellectual and artistic traditions that make a civil society, humanism and the common good possible. Access to parcels of agricultural land will be paramount. We will have to grasp, as the medieval monks did, that we cannot alter the larger culture around us, at least in the short term, but we may be able to retain the moral codes and culture for generations beyond ours. Resistance will be reduced to small, often imperceptible acts of defiance, as those who retained their integrity discovered in the long night of 20th-century fascism and communism.

We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe. As long as the mass of bewildered and frightened people, fed images that permit them to perpetually hallucinate, exist in this state of barbarism, they may periodically strike out with a blind fury against increased state repression, widespread poverty and food shortages. But they will lack the ability and self-confidence to challenge in big and small ways the structures of control. The fantasy of widespread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that – a fantasy.

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WILL WEAK WALL STREET REFORMS WRECK THE ECONOMY AGAIN?

The Media Consortium / By Zach Carter

Fraud was a huge part of the financial crisis-- so why isn't the government going after the fraudsters?

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.

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A MOMENT OF TRUTH ON IMMIGRATION REFORM

America's Voice / By Frank Sharry

The people who will be in Washington on Sunday will be marching behind a banner that reads “Change Takes Courage.”

The tipping point is here. The time has come. In all political and social movements there comes a moment when the confluence of events is so powerful they just can’t be ignored or dismissed. The long-running effort for comprehensive immigration reform is one such movement and its moment of truth is at hand. 

Our immigration system is badly broken and a majority of Americans support reform. The White House supports it. Most Democrats and some Republicans are prepared to vote for it.  Only a vocal minority oppose it. Yet the question remains whether President Obama will make a forceful and public push for reform legislation, and whether Congress has the guts to pass it.

If they needed any indication that the time to act is upon us, they will get it on Sunday when tens of thousands of people from across the country – citizens and immigrants alike – descend on the National Mall in Washington in a show of support for immigration reform aptly named the March for America.

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ACTOR STEPHEN BALDWIN TAKES CHRISTIAN INDOCTRINATION TO THE XTREME

AlterNet / By Sarah Posner

Original investigative report: How a media-savvy, tough-talking duo are putting their knowledge of youth culture in the service of the paranoid Christian Right.

Actor Stephen Baldwin has a message for the millennial generation: Jesus is cool, Jesus is rad, Jesus will kick your butt, Jesus will help you kick the butts of secular liberals. Yet while Baldwin seeks to be the hip new face of evangelicalism, promoting the Jesus of skateboarders and cool kids, beneath his radical chic is the ideology of the old men behind the Cold War-era John Birch Society and Christian Crusade.

Together with Christian activist and radio host Kevin McCullough, Baldwin launched a youth-targeted for-profit Christian media company, Xtreme Media, LLC, and the radio program Xtreme Radio with Stephen Baldwin and Kevin McCullough. The aim of Xtreme Media, according to Baldwin, is to create "a content reality we want to utilize to fire up the conservative movement to stand up and push back louder and more ferociously."

Addressing a 2008 religious-right conference, the annual Values Voter Summit sponsored by FRC Action, Baldwin -- the baby of the Baldwin brothers acting family first put on the Hollywood map by brother Alec -- explained that he uses "extreme sports" to recruit young evangelicals "because I believe the way to ensure a better America in the future is make more Christians." At religious right conferences across the nation, Baldwin struts before young and not-so-young audiences, deploying his uber-masculine Christianity as a rebuke to the Hollywood liberals he claims are ruining America.

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GUT CHECK FOR GOP ON IMMIGRATION

Huffington Post / By Robert Creamer

There is a quiet battle underway within the GOP that may soon break out into the open. It will impact whether they can continue as a national political party in the decades ahead.

There is a quiet battle underway within the Republican Party that may soon break out into the open -- and it will heavily impact whether the GOP can continue as a national political party in the decades ahead.

The conflict is over how the Party will position itself with respect to the question of immigration reform -- and just as importantly -- the fastest-growing demographic group in country: Hispanic Americans.

President Obama has made it clear that he is intent on fixing the broken immigration system by passing immigration reform. He would do it with a package that combines smart and effective border enforcement with a crackdown on illegal hiring and unfair labor practices, and by modernizing the legal immigration system and requiring those who are undocumented to register with the government, pass background checks, study English, pay taxes, and get in line to work towards citizenship.

That would make sure that those who are here, are in the system legally; that all workers and employers are paying their fair share of taxes; and that those immigrants who come in the future do so legally.

But, more than with most any other issue, passing immigration reform requires bipartisan support -- both as a question of legislative math and politics.

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has been deputized by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) -- himself a strong advocate of reform -- to be point man on this issue for the Democratic Majority. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has worked with Schumer for months to hammer out the specifics of a bi-partisan bill.

Most of the substantive issues appear to be close to resolution. The major outstanding problem is entirely political: will other Republicans be willing to join Graham and provide support for a truly bi-partisan effort?

That's where the cleavage within the GOP will become so important.

For many Latino voters, and their friends and families, immigration reform is more than a simple matter of policy. It's an issue that involves the future of their families and their communities. That is particularly the case because enforcement actions continue every day. Almost 400,000 immigrants were deported last year. Those deportations touch legal immigrant families -- voters -- throughout America, and they increase the pressure building within the Latino community for action.

On March 21st, a huge national march will take place on the Mall to express the frustration of the immigrant community that even as deportations continue, there has been little action on immigration reform.

Immigration reform is a politically realigning issue for Latinos the same way civil rights was for African Americans.

One segment of the Republican Party completely understands that critical political fact. They understand that to compete successfully in the future -- on a national scale -- they must be able to contest for a sizeable segment of the Hispanic vote. Hispanics, after all, are by far the fastest growing demographic group in America. According to the Census Bureau, nearly one in six U.S. residents -- or 46.9 million people, are Hispanic -- a percentage that continues to grow.

If Republicans can't compete for Hispanic votes, they will become politically irrelevant in much of the U.S. over the next several decades. Many Republicans leaders get it.

But there is another group of Republicans who want to use immigration as wedge issue to win short-term political advantage among anxious voters who think of Latinos as threats to their culture, their tax dollars, and their jobs. As a practical matter, this group is willing to sacrifice long term political viability for short term political gain. And this second group has not been deterred by the fact that in recent elections hard core immigrant bashers have not fared well -- even in the short term.

These two factions do not fall neatly along traditional "conservative" and "moderate" lines. Former President Bush -- having seen firsthand the importance of the Latino vote in Texas -- strongly favored immigration reform. Supporters run the gamut from conservatives like Sam Brownback (R-KS) to moderates like Dick Lugar (R-IN). On the other side are followers of former Congressman and presidential candidate Tom Tancredo, with a tradition of anti-immigrant bashing that knows no bounds.

Immigration is one of the few issues that could garner truly bipartisan support in the current Congress. The social and economic forces involved in this issue do not reflect the other battles that have defined the last year and a half of partisan combat. Business and organized labor are united in their desire to fix the broken immigration system.

The President met yesterday with a group of grassroots immigrant leaders, and reiterated that he would use all means at his disposal to move the immigration agenda this year. Later on Thursday he delivered the same message to Senators Graham and Schumer -- both of whom reiterated their commitment to move a bi-partisan bill.

But Senator Graham needs to be able to count on the support of other members of the Republican caucus to make a truly bipartisan drive for passage.

The question facing Republicans in the next several weeks is simple: will the forces who favor immigration reform have the political courage to stand up for the long-term interests of their Party (and the country), or will they be cowed into silence by the immigrant bashers?

The bell on the immigration debate is about to go off. The Republican Party faces a critical, and potentially historic, decision. As a progressive Democrat, I would like nothing better than to see the Republican Party marginalized and unable to compete effectively for even one Latino vote. But the interests of the country require that the immigrant-friendly forces in the Republican Party stand up straight and join with Democrats to address this critical American problem.

STAKES GETTING HIGHER FOR OBAMA, LATINO VOTERS, AND IMMIGRATION REFORM

AlterNet / By Douglas Rivlin

The President had a series of meetings on immigration reform that reflect the pressure he is feeling to act.

Maybe there’s a game on. The President had three meetings on immigration reform at the White House today.  He is increasingly under pressure to act on promises he made as a candidate to enact immigration reform in his first year in office and, now in his second year, the patience of pro-reform advocates – and Latino and immigrant voters – is wearing thin.

The power of the Latino vote is a big reason the Democrats won the White House and control of both houses of Congress in 2008.  If the Democrats fail to address the immigration issue – an issue to which Latino voters are particularly sensitive and which helped drive their increased turnout in 2008 – the Democrats face even longer odds with voters in 2010.

The President met with Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who are leading the effort to introduce an immigration bill in the Senate and their meeting was sandwiched between two others.  The first was with a group of pro-reform advocates, including labor unions, a Catholic Bishop, and local and national ethnic, civil rights, student, and immigrant advocacy groups.  They had expected to meet with White House staff and ended up meeting with the President himself – a meeting he chaired.  The President’s last meeting of the day was with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and was planned to discuss both health care and immigration.

All of this comes at a particularly busy time as Congress prepares for the Easter recess.  The President is embarking on a major international trip (Indonesia and Australia, he leaves next week), is in the throes of a major public relations push for his health care proposal, and is trying to keep the focus on jobs and the economy.  Yet, he took almost an entire day to dig into immigration reform, an agenda item many thought – and some hoped – was dead.

Each of these meetings revealed something about the bind the President is in over immigration: he is already spread thin on other issues, but there are significant pressures on him to act, there are significant political benefits to acting, there are real costs to inaction, and meanwhile, Latinos in general and immigrants are not just feeling ignored, they are feeling betrayed as deportations escalate and communities continue to suffer.

Schumer & Graham

The meeting the press was prepared to cover was the one between the President and the best incarnation of the Odd Couple since Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon.  Senators Schumer and Graham were supposed to meet with President Obama on Monday afternoon, but it was delayed when Senator Graham’s flight from South Carolina was cancelled.  But at this point, delays are par for the course.  Over the summer, Senator Schumer assured the press and supporters of reform that he would introduce a bipartisan bill after Labor Day.  Now, almost six months later, he looks poised – again – to do so.  Senator Graham played a key role in getting an immigration bill passed in the Senate in 2006 and was one of the few helpful Republicans when a bill failed in the Senate in 2007.  However, he appears to be the only Republican to be stepping up to the plate this year.

Not much detail has been released about the Schumer/Graham proposal, but it is likely to track fairly closely to previous bipartisan efforts at compromise: 1) Stepped up border and interior enforcement targeting smugglers, criminals, and employers; 2) A worker verification system to allow employers to easily determine who can and can’t work legally in the U.S.; 3) A process for getting people who have been waiting for permission to come to the U.S. legally through the processing backlog that can stretch to 20 years currently; 4) Legal immigration channels for workers and family members as an alternative to illegal immigration; and 5) A requirement that people who are in the country illegally register with the government, pay fines, pass a criminal background check, and fulfill other criteria to get legal status that would eventually allow them to apply for U.S. citizenship like other immigrants.

The details will matter, both in terms of its political viability and – more importantly – whether it will work to solve our immigration issues.  Items like a mandatory trip out of the country for legalizing immigrants to “touch back” in their country of origin – a silly part of previous bills meant to somehow “reboot” the person’s legal status by making them leave and come back – is reportedly not part of the Schumer/Graham proposal.  The Wall Street Journal “broke” the story this week that the employer verification system in the bill would resemble a “national ID” of some sort, but it is unclear what that will entail.  In every bipartisan immigration bill that has gotten traction in recent years, a system similar to the E-Verify verification system has been slated for mandatory use by all employers for all employees, but Senator Schumer, a fan of a national ID, may have more in mind.

But it seems the President is prepared to back what the two Senators come up with.  In a statement after the meeting, the President said:

I told both the senators and the community leaders that my commitment to comprehensive immigration reform is unwavering, and that I will continue to be their partner in this important effort.

Nice words, but the community leaders he met with want more.  This week, they began ratcheting up the rhetoric.  The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) put out a video last week in English and Spanish with the President, as a candidate in July 2008, promising to address immigration, saying:

I think it's time for a President who won't walk away from something as important as comprehensive reform when it becomes politically unpopular.

And advocates have also been organizing the March for America, which promises to bring tens of thousands of immigration reform supporters to the National Mall on March 21.  Mr. Obama, who marched with the immigration reform movement in Chicago against the 2005/2006 House Republican anti-immigrant bill, knows the power of an immigration reform rally.

The advocates who have united under the banner of the Reform Immigration for America (RI4A) campaign – a coalition of labor unions, faith groups, progressive, student, ethnic, civil rights, business, and immigrant groups – want the President to make a firm commitment to support the Schumer/Graham bill and help push it through the Congress this year.

The Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, and a key leader of the RI4A campaign, said after the meeting between the advocates and the President:

We had a lively and straightforward meeting with the President and his staff. We made clear that we expect him to keep his promise to overhaul our broken immigration system…The President indicated that his administration is committed to driving a bill forward in the spring of 2010. Based on our conversation, we are optimistic and expecting aggressive and urgent action from the White House on comprehensive immigration reform before March 21.

While the President and his aides are feeling the pressure the community leaders are putting on him – which will be escalated in volume and visibility at the March for America, it is the reality of what is going on immigrant communities in the absence of reform that really got the President’s attention this week.

Deportation Nation

A press conference Monday, organized by the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM), a subset of community-based pro-immigrant advocacy coalitions, put the cost of inaction on immigration in sharp relief.

They documented how the number of deportations have escalated to anastounding 387,000 per year under President Obama.  That’s more than 1,000 per day and a population the size of Minneapolis or Tulsa every year.  Deportations are ripping apart families, destabilizing communities and forcing businesses to close.  Add to this the deplorable conditions in which we hold immigration detainees, the brutality with which we apprehend people, and the complete inflexibility of our legal system, and you have a deportation crisis.

Since we will never deport our way out of our current mess, many people would like to see a cessation of deportations until reform is passed.  Some of the advocates – who were invited to the White House after their presentation at the Monday press conference – made this plea directly to the President.

It would be nearly impossible for him to order the federal government not to be enforce federal laws.  His administration has argued that is targeting enforcement resources specifically at serious criminals and other high-risk immigrants – and not just average workers and family members who are in the country illegally.  The reality is that while there have been some changes, enforcement is happening at a furious pace.  He is not likely to call off the dogs, but, again, the important question is how much of himself and his political capital he is will to expend to change the laws and relieve the needless suffering of immigrant communities.

The CHC’s Hardball

Which brings us back to politics. The President’s last meeting of the day was with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. They have been playing hardball, floating the possibility this week that they would withhold their support for the President’s health care proposal if the treatment of immigrants and Latinos was not addressed in the bill and if they did not get assurance that immigration reform would be a top priority for the President.

Some may say this is an idle threat, but for the past couple of years, the Hispanic Caucus has been able to play a bigger and bigger role in the immigration debate.  Essentially, the Caucus has withheld support for any immigration-related measure unless it was comprehensive.  They have not allowed agriculture, high-tech, hospitality, and other business sectors to advance their agenda on immigration without including broader reforms to address the immigrants here illegally, family immigration, and broader worker visa issues.  The notoriously fractious Caucus has remained extraordinarily cohesive in this effort.

More importantly, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus represents the power of the Latino voter in the American electorate.  Between 2004 and 2008, the Hispanic electorate grew by 30%, adding more than two million voters. Latinos make up 25% or more of the electorate in 79 Congressional districts (54 currently held by Dems, 25 by Rs) and over 40 close House and Senate races could be won or lost on the strength of the Latino vote this year.  Not only that, but the potential size of the Latino vote is growing quickly, partly through immigration, but mostly because about 400,000 Latino citizens reach age 18 each year.

But while Democrats enjoy an advantage with immigrant voters – mostly because of the harsh GOP rhetoric on immigration – they are by no means solid a Democratic constituency. Latino Decisions, a polling firm, released a report late last year that indicated Obama and the Democrats are losing the broad support they once had among Latino voters.

In 2008, the Latino vote increased more than any other segment of the population and was a crucial part of Obama’s coalition, especially in Nevada, Florida, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, and even Indiana. However if Congress does not act on immigration reform and pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill that includes a pathway to citizenship, many Latino voters may think twice about voting Democrat in 2010 or 2012.

Many Latino voters in 2008 were new voters – those who registered and voted for the first time, many of whom were new citizens spurred to get citizenship and become voters, again, by the harsh rhetoric of the Republicans.  It is not clear that the level of enthusiasm displayed by these voters will be sustained through 2010 when there is already a natural drop in voter participation because there is no Presidential race.

One statistic from New York is troubling.  New voters – those who had cast their first ballot in 2008 – were among those least likely to vote in the New York City Mayor’s race, according to a research study conducted by City University of New York’s John Mollenkopf, reported on this weekend by the New York Daily News,

Just one in five of 2008's first-time voters cast ballots in November - 71,335 of 338,128. While 39% of New Yorkers who voted in 2008 also voted in 2009, turnout was just 21% for people who had cast their first ballots a year earlier.

This could be the strength of the candidate or the race, but first time voters are notoriously unlikely second time voters, especially if they don’t feel their vote made a difference.

In the case of Latino voters, many who watch voter turnout and mobilization closely are concerned that the growing electorate from 2008 could deflate significantly in 2010.  Clarissa Martinez de Castro of the National Council of La Raza observed:

The millions of Latinos who voted for the first time in 2008, and those who went through the arduous citizenship process to get that privilege, need to see that participating in the democratic process means something. Many had the expectation that their vote would help speed up the day when we got serious immigration reform enacted and now their patience is wearing thin. We must not lose momentum or let the Latino community's unprecedented civic engagement wither. As we look toward November, we don't care what party people vote for, but we do care that people vote and see that their vote has meaning and leads to action.

Both parties have an interest in engaging the electorate in the democratic process and both parties could make a play for the Latino vote or parts of the Latino vote (though the Republicans have a lot of damage to undo).  In the short-run, this President stands to gain a great deal from energizing the Latino electorate by working with Congress to move immigration reform legislation and get a bill introduced, debated, and hopefully passed by the time voters go to the polls.  It is only out of reach if the GOP flatly refuses to work on a bipartisan basis on any legislation, because there are Republican Senators and Representatives who would support reform.  One more thing would keep it out of reach: if the President and his fellow Democrats don't choose to push for it.

GOLDMAN'S GREAT GREEK SWINDLE AND THE AMERICAN BLOWBACK

AlterNet / By Scott Thill

Goldman's epic swindle may topple Greece and even the European Union. Wall Street's stranglehold on the U.S. is equally dangerous.

You've heard this crappy joke before. Financial vampire squid Goldman Sachs games billions on the books for a prestigious client, hiding its lack of real value, while both continue to lucratively trade on false data. Time passes, Goldman retracts its feeding tube, the prestigious client implodes, and the collateral damage escalates. Cue the cruel laugh track.  

The client this time? Greece, where Goldman executed a currency swap worth billions, without reporting it of course. The collateral damage? The euro, and perhaps the entire European Union, depending on how the house of cards falls. But to be fair, Goldman couldn't have done it alone. 

"The European Union bureaucrats that are driving the system wanted their own empire," economist Paul Craig Roberts, one-time assistant U.S. Treasury secretary in the Reagan administration, told AlterNet. "So the European Union was expanded into financially weaker states, which can no longer print money to cover their debts as they all use the euro. What Goldman Sachs did for the Greek government was to help hide the size of the Greek debt, since European Union membership requires maintaining a fairly low deficit-to-GDP ratio." 

What happens when you, unlike the United States and its money-makers at the Federal Reserve, can't simply print your way out of an economic meltdown to bring those numbers in line? In Greece, you get street riots, austerity measures,bank runs, runaway nationalism, crippling sanctions and what passes for a serfdom ruled by an oligarchy. Ask Roberts, however, and he'll argue no such thin red, white and blue line exists across the pond. Americans are stuck in the same mess.

KUCINICH AIRS HIS DISAGREEMENT WITH MARKOS MOULITSAS ON HEALTHCARE BILL

Democracy Now! / By Amy Goodman andJuan Gonzalez

The founder of Daily Kos slammed Kucinich for threatening to vote against the Democrats' healthcare reform bill. Kucinich defends his position.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We begin our show in Washington with Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who has been at the center of two important debates in the House this week. 

On healthcare, the Ohio Democrat is threatening to vote against his party’s healthcare reform package because it does not contain a robust public option. With House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scrambling to get enough votes, the fate of the healthcare reform bill could come down to a single vote. 

Dennis Kucinich’s bill to force the withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan was taken up on Wednesday. After a rare three-and-a-half-hour debate on the war, the majority of House Democrats joined with Republicans to defeat the measure. The vote was 356 to 65. Kucinich said he introduced the bill because he wants Congress to take responsibility for the war. 

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: This debate today, Mr. Speaker, we will have a chance, for the first time, to reflect on our responsibility for troop casualties that are now reaching a thousand, to look at our responsibilities for the costs of the war, which approaches $250 billion; our responsibility for the civilian casualties and the human costs of the war; our responsibility for challenging the corruption that takes place in Afghanistan; our responsibility for having a real understanding of the role of the pipeline in this war; our responsibility for debating the role of counterinsurgency strategies, as opposed to counterterrorism; our responsibility for being able to make a case for the logistics of withdrawal. After eight-and-a-half years, it is time that we have this debate.

AMY GOODMAN: Congressman Dennis Kucinich speaking on Wednesday. During the debate on Afghanistan, Rhode Island Democrat Patrick Kennedy condemned the media for failing to cover the issue. 

REP. PATRICK KENNEDY: Finally, if anybody wants to know where cynicism is, cynicism is that there’s one—two press people in this gallery! We’re talking about Eric Massa 24/7 on the TV. We’re talking about war and peace, $3 billion, a thousand lives! And no press? No press? You want to know why the American public is fit? They’re fit because they’re not seeing their Congress do the work that they’re sent to do. It’s because the press, the press of the United States, is not covering the most significant issue of national importance, and that’s the laying of lives down in the nation for the service of our country. It is despicable, the national press corps right now!

AMY GOODMAN: Rhode Island Congress member Patrick Kennedy, the son of former senator, or the late senator, Ted Kennedy. 

Well, Congress member Dennis Kucinich joins us now in Washington, DC. 

We welcome you to Democracy Now! 

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Good morning. 

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about trying to invoke the War Powers Act, Congressman Kucinich. 

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Congress has a clear constitutional responsibility, under Article I, Section 8, but the War Powers Act is a vehicle by which we can exercise our constitutional responsibility to be able to enter into the decision-making process as to whether we keep troops at war. I felt, after a eight-and-a-half years, we had waited long enough to have the debate, and so I used the War Powers Act to create the debate. 

I’m glad there was a debate. Now Congress has taken responsibility. The debate didn’t turn out the way I would have liked it to, but at least we brought it into the public’s awareness that Congress has now entered into essentially affirming the Obama administration’s policy on Afghanistan. 

JUAN GONZALEZ: Were you surprised by how few Democrats, of your fellow Democrats, joined you in the vote, and in terms of compared to how many Democrats, for instance, question what was going on in the war with Iraq? 

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, I think that Afghanistan, for the longest time, has been kind of the silent war. Yet with the troop surge—and we’ll have more troops in Afghanistan than in Iraq—Afghanistan will begin to emerge in the public’s awareness and in the awareness of members of Congress, not only because they have to vote on supplemental appropriations and defense appropriations, but because we’ve had a debate now. They’ve had to cast a vote to either keep the war going or not. And this resolution called for essentially an end to the war by December 31st, 2010. The Congress now has to have it in its awareness, you know, and around Washington, if you’re not having to vote on something, you just don’t have to think about it. And now we have to think about Afghanistan a little bit more than we did the day before yesterday.

Higher Corporate Spending on Election Ads Could Be All but Invisible

by Chisun Lee

he Supreme Court recently freed corporations to spend more money on aggressive election ads. But if businesses take advantage of this new freedom, the public probably won't know it, because it's easy for them to legally hide their political spending.

Under current disclosure laws for federal elections, it's virtually impossible for the public to track how much a business spends, what it's spending on, or who ultimately benefits. Experts say the transparency problem extends to state and local races as well.

"There is no good way to gauge" how much any given company spends on elections, said Karl Sandstrom, a former vice chairman of the Federal Election Commission and counsel to the Center for Political Accountability. "There's no central collection of the information, no monitoring."

Companies invest in politics to win favorable regulations or block those "that could choke off their business model," said Robert Kelner, chairman of Covington & Burling's Washington, D.C., political law group. But they'd rather hide these political activities, he said, because they fear backlash from customers or shareholders.

For instance, a company may want to help Democratic politicians who support health care reforms that would benefit the company, but it worries about offending "Republican shareholders who may care more about their personal ideology than about their three shares of stock in the company," said Kelner, who says he represents many politically active Fortune 500 companies. "The same would be true on the other side of the political spectrum."

Businesses must reveal their identities on public reports to the Federal Election Commission if they buy advertising on their own. But one popular and perfectly legal conduit for companies wanting to influence politics under the radar is to give money to nonprofit trade groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber and its national affiliates spent $144.5 million  last year on advertising, lobbying and grass-roots activism -- more than either the Republican or Democratic party spent, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis of public records -- while legally concealing [5] the names of its funders. The Los Angeles Times reported this week that the Chamber is building a grass-roots political operation that has signed up about 6 million non-Chamber members.

Some of the positions the Chamber has successfully advanced on behalf of its donors include a nationwide campaign to unseat state judges  who were considered tough on corporate defendants and opposition to a federal bill that would have criminalized defective auto manufacturing.

Now the Jan. 21 Supreme Court ruling that increases the potential political clout of businesses is drawing fresh attention to the problem of tracking them.

That decision (PDF), Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, allows corporations to run television ads that don't merely speak to an issue but say outright whether a candidate should be elected, and allows them to do so any time they want to, using their general funds. The ruling also gives nonprofit groups like the Chamber these new freedoms, because they are technically structured as corporations.

Before, corporations had to rely on employee and shareholder contributions to a separate political account to finance the most explicit commercials and, in the months before an election, any issue ads that mentioned a candidate. Although the decision addressed federal election rules, its constitutional rationale also dismantles similar restrictions in 24 states.

Soon after the ruling, two Democrats -- Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York -- announced they were writing a bill to make it easier to tell which companies are backing which ads in federal elections. An outline (PDF) of that bill, which is expected to be introduced this week, proposes forcing nonprofit groups to identify those who fund their political commercials.

At present, nonprofit groups don't have to disclose the sources of their advertising money, unless the donors specified that their contributions were intended for political ads.

"Unless you're sort of dumb enough to designate your contribution to the Chamber," said Meredith McGehee, policy director of the Campaign Legal Center, "no one will ever know who's the source of those funds."

Politically active nonprofits exist across the ideological and policy spectrum and include unions as well as trade groups. Their funders include both corporations and individuals, some of them very wealthy. But campaign finance experts say groups that advocate specifically for business tend to have the greatest resources, simply because corporations have the most money to give.

The lack of tracking mechanisms sometimes leaves company officials themselves in the dark about their organization's political activities, said Adam Kanzer, managing director and general counsel of Domini Social Investments, which files shareholder resolutions to push corporations to adopt self-monitoring and disclosure practices.

"In a lot of our conversations with companies, they say, 'We don't know exactly how our money is getting spent. It's hard to get those answers,'" Kanzer said. One major drug manufacturer, he said, signed on for voluntary disclosure after learning that its funds had supported a state judicial campaign that many voters -- who could be customers or shareholders -- viewed as racist.

The public price of spotty disclosure is not being able to gauge the real effects of corporation-backed politics, McGehee said. She questioned one argument, often made by defenders of the Citizens United decision, that the 26 states that have long allowed unlimited corporate advertising in their elections haven't suffered more political corruption than the rest of the nation.

"How would you know? Most of those states have next to no disclosure," McGehee said. Corporations "could be buying outcomes left and right, but because of no disclosure, we don't know." A 2007 examination by the National Institute on Money in State Politics found that, while 39 states required some degree of disclosure by political advertisers, the laws in most were riddled with loopholes. Only five states required enough detail to link sponsors with specific ads, the report said.

Rep. Van Hollen said the disclosure requirements he and Schumer are drafting would uncover the corporate political money flowing through nonprofit channels.

"If corporations spend money in these campaigns, we cannot allow them to hide behind sham organizations and dummy corporations that mislead voters," he said in a written comment to ProPublica. "Voters have a right to know who is delivering and paying for the message."

The requirements would apply to unions and liberal nonprofits as well as trade groups, according to the early outline of the bill. The proposal mentions additional transparency requirements -- such as mandating corporate disclosures to shareholders and "stand by your ad" appearances by CEOs of companies that finance commercials directly -- and seeks outright bans on political advertising by government contractors, bailout recipients and companies significantly controlled by foreigners.

A strong disclosure law would be "hugely effective" in revealing who is paying for political speech, said Trevor Potter, a former FEC chairman and head lawyer for John McCain's presidential campaigns, who is now general counsel at Campaign Legal Center.

But precisely for that reason, Potter said, politics may get in the way of any serious reform. He expects trade groups on the right, unions on the left and other cause groups across the board to fight hard against such legislation.

Already the political battle is taking shape.

Asked to comment on the push for more disclosure, the Chamber's chief legal officer and general counsel, Steven Law, instead attacked the political motives of the proponents. "Unions overwhelmingly support those who are pushing this legislation," he said in an e-mail. "This isn't about reform, it's about politicians trying to secure advantages for themselves before an election."

That reaction drew fire from one of the nation's most politically active unions, the Service Employees International Union, which also declined to comment on the new disclosure proposals. "The coming flood of corporate and foreign money into our elections through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a threat to democracy, plain and simple," said Anna Burger, SEIU's secretary-treasurer, in an e-mail. She called on legislators to "drag the Chamber's practices into the light of day."

The Chamber revealed more about its view of disclosure in an amicus brief (PDF) it filed in the Citizens United case on behalf of the 3 million business members it says it has. It supported the plaintiff, a nonprofit corporation called Citizens United, which wanted the Supreme Court not only to lift corporate advertising bans but also to strike down the existing disclosure requirements.

The Chamber argued that those requirements inhibited corporations from speaking out. If the public discovered that corporations were "taking controversial positions," it might punish them, the brief said. As an example, it pointed to a 2005 boycott of ExxonMobil products after the public learned the company was lobbying Congress to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

That argument failed to persuade the high court, which by an 8-1 majority decided to leave the current disclosure laws intact.

Transparency is important, wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority, because it helps voters "give proper weight to different speakers and messages," and because it allows citizens to "see whether elected officials are 'in the pocket' of so-called moneyed interests."

© Copyright 2010 Pro Publica Inc.

The Big Short Is A Bit Short

The Big Short Is A Bit Short In Missing The Reasons for The Crisis: Michael Lewis’s Delusion Thesis vs Senator Kaufman’s Case for Crime

By Danny Schechter

Host of The News Dissector Thursdays at 10 am

Author of the Crime of Our Time

It’s the number one book in the county. Every day, Michael Lewis’s the Big Short is getting B I G G E R, no doubt because he is so mediagenic, conversational and likes to laugh with the hosts who interview him about his findings.

On Sunday, he laughed with Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes when the two bantered on about how about stupid it all was and why so many smart people drank the Kool Aid.  The story he tells has no hard edges really…it’s about “delusion,” Wall Street deluding us all and then each other.

The idea of delusions feeds a psychological and cultural analysis of bankers cut off from the world, focused on their own pocket books and believing their own hype. It is in this sense Shakespearian---the stuff of drama, not calculation. What a web we weave when first we practice to deceive, to quote Sir Walter Scott.

At one point in the 60 Minutes two part interview purporting to explain the collapse, Lewis drifts off message and calls it all, an “elegant theft.”

Theft is a word we associate with crime, not personal greed or human failings. But that point was left unexplored by 60 Minutes, of course, because if the story is about crime, than we have to move into the arena of facts, not just opinions, insights, hyperbole and personalities.

Ironically, many of the facts that Lewis himself cites comes from an undergraduate college thesis according to the Deal Journal of the Wall Street Journal which calls his book a “yam.” They note that his book credited ““A.K. Barnett-Hart, a Harvard undergraduate who had just written a thesis about the market for sub prime mortgage-backed CDOs that remains more interesting than any single piece of Wall Street research on the subject.”

Perhaps even more interesting than his book?‘

Earlier, Lewis told the Atlantic what his main sources of information is: “Actually, if you were to draw a pie chart of where I get news from, I bet I get a third from whatever people in Berkeley—specifically the parents’ at my kids’ school—are outraged about. I’m surrounded by people who are alive to what’s going on in the world and who are quick to be outraged by it.”

So there he goes again, with emotion and attitude apparently meaning more to him than fact finding.

Lewis has criticized those who criticize Goldman Sachs, according to Bloomberg, writing earlier, “bashing Goldman Sachs is Simply a Game for Fools.”

Which side is he on I would guess, his side? On 60 Minutes, TV’s top newsmagazine, he was described as a former trader. Not according to Janet Takakoli who runs her own financial firm:

 “Imagine my surprise to see him billed as a trader on 60 Minutes, since he was actually a junior salesman, she writes on Huffington Post,  “Well-heeled male peacocks strutted the trading floor, and junior salesmen were girlie-men, mere eunuchs serving their pashas.”

She also notes that he was among the “experts” who downplayed the warnings about the very financial crisis that he has suddenly, thanks to validation from CBS and MSNBC, become THE expert on, charging, “he ridiculed their concern of a pending crisis due to the surge in derivatives demand and called it "this year's case in point." Then Michael showed how dangerous it is to be a brilliant writer with a poor command of facts and their true meaning”

Financial analysis is not what the media is well equipped to communicate. As a media dissector and editor of Mediachannel, I have followed the reporting of this story closely with many detailed articles and in two books since, even before it became a story back to 2005 when I made my film IN DEBT WE TRUST only to be dismissed by some as a doom and gloomer for exposing the subprime mortgage fraud.

I was hoping that Rachel Maddow would challenge his mass delusion theory but she bought right into it also, in her interview. At one point Lewis opined that there was DECEPTION (i.e., lying by the investment world) but that too was not examined as Lewis himself counterpoised two explanations for the disaster, asking, “was it mass delusion or crime? 

And then he “answered” his own question or appeared to, by asserting that when you ask the people involved, they say it was delusion.

Duh, Michael? What do you think they would say? Do think they would cop to their own criminality?  For them, it was all one big miscalculation, never mind who got hurt, which neither 60 Minutes nor Maddow explored.

Sorry to say, Jon Stewart did no better with his part of Lewis’ all star media mystery tour. He did introduce him as one of the people making big money on the crisis but then jokingly let him ramble on, praising the sometimes weird people who made small fortunes betting against Wall Street. They were his heroes. Again no concern was expressed for the people they cheated—only the idiots who lost money in the” kingdom where the blind man was king.”

Lewis like many non-fiction novelists prefers character-based story telling or “yarns” to more objective analytical investigation. It makes for better narratives, and bigger best sellers. It also gets e interviewers laughing instead of crying. Why? Because there are only smart men doing things that turn out to be stupid, it makes us all feel superior to them even if they had the last laugh on the way to the bank.

Sorry, the Big Short seems short---short of a serious consideration of what really drove the financial crisis and the reason that 82% of the American people recently said they want a crack down on Wall Street, not a chance to feel sorry for the “delusions” of its masters of the universe. They want a jail out---not a bailout.

On the very day of Rachel’s fawning, but well intentioned interview, United States Senator Ed Kaufman of Delaware, the state that provides a sanctuary for most US corporations and credit card companies, made a speech which got at the heart of the matter. 

Senator Kaufman did not get lost in the vague clouds of  “delusion.” He was more down to earth arguing.

“Fraud and potential criminal conduct were at the heart of the financial crisis”

Let me repeat and capitalize this brave Senatorial assertion: “FRAUD AND POTENTIAL CRIMINAL CONDUCT WEERE AT THE HEART OF THE FINANICAL CRISIS/”

The Senator goes on: “Americans could draw at least three lessons from the (Lehman) report: that we must "undo the damage caused by decades of deregulation;" that the United States must "concentrate law enforcement and regulatory resources on restoring the rule of law to Wall Street;" and that Congress must help regulators and other gatekeepers "by providing clear, enforceable 'rules of the road' wherever possible."

Unfortunately, says Kaufman, "I’m concerned that the revelations about Lehman Brothers are just the tip of the iceberg.  We have no reason to believe that the conduct detailed last week is somehow isolated or unique. Indeed, this sort of behavior is hardly novel."

Now, it so happens that I have been making a similar argument in my own book THE CRIME OF OUR TIME, and a film PLUNDER THE CRIME OF OUR TIME.” But I am not a former Wall Streeter or best selling author or a US Senator. So my work and the work of many other “outsiders” are still unknown.

The media prefers to seek the truth from the very people who either caused the crisis or who were in media perches that ignored it.

The point is that many people, many very qualified who have arguing the crime thesis—some in my film—have not so far had the benefit of the prime time exposure even though the American people believe it even was the media downplays it.

Will that change? Only if the people don’t believe the hype and demand the truth!

News Dissector Danny Schechters film and book will be released in April by Disinformation. For more information,Http://www.plunderhecrimeofourtime.com. Comments to dissector@mediachannel,org

British Ex-Spy Chief Accuses US of Hiding Torture

By Agence France Presse

LONDON - A former head of Britain's domestic spy agency has accused the US of concealing its abuse of terror suspects, stepping up an MI5 fightback over accusations that it colluded in torture.

Eliza Manningham-Buller said Tuesday she had not understood why alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been willing to talk to American interrogators.

She said she only discovered he had been waterboarded when she read about it after her retirement in 2007.

"The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing," she said in a specially arranged lecture at Britain's upper house of parliament in London.

The US had been "very keen to conceal from us what was happening."

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The Trial of Splitting the Sky Versus George W. Bush and the Calgary Principles

By Carol Brouillet

Host of Community Currency Thursday at 5 pm

Splitting the Sky and Anthony J. Hall will be guests on March 11th show

Dacajaweiah, John Boncore, or Splitting the Sky, is not a man of few words.  If you read his hefty 653-page autobiography, it is very clear that he has lived an extraordinary life and has survived more than his share of violence, to find deep within himself a well of energy and spirit enabling him to not only endure hardships, but to serve his people and the land in the timeless struggle against oppression and tyranny.  From the Attica Rebellion to Gustafen Lake to Calgary in 2009, when he attempted a citizen’s arrest of George W. Bush, “Dac” has consciously taken a leadership role to politically challenge the powerful forces that dominate the North American continent.  Brutally arrested for his action, he earned his “day in court” to voice not only his defense, but “to highlight the hypocrisy and criminality of the Canadian government for allowing Bush into Canada, and to firmly establish the legal defense of ‘civil resistance’, the duty of citizens to act when our governments and their agents are derelict in their duty. This will be very useful in the future to rein these criminals in.”  
 
     Prior to Bush’s visit, the Canadian group Lawyers Against the War asked Canadian officials to bar entry or try Bush for his suspected crimes since Canadian Law prohibits “people suspected of any involvement in torture or other war crimes and crimes against humanity from entering Canada for any period and for any purpose. The most recent report of the War Crimes Program affirms the necessity of barring war crimes suspects from Canada: ‘The most effective way to deny safe haven to people involved or complicit in war crimes or crimes against humanity is to prevent them from coming to Canada.’”

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What Are They Waiting for? Whither Financial Reforms? Fears of A Second Crash Are Real but Congress Lacks “Appetite” for Action

By Danny Schechter
Author, The Crime Of Our Time?

Host of The News Dissector Thursdays at 10 am

What will it take?  What are they waiting for? What part of the reality of a systemic crisis that will get worse don’t they get?

How is it possible that after near three years of economic turmoil, with possibly hundreds of TRILLIONs down the rabbit hole—not that anyone is counting or apparently can count—that the geniuses who run our economy still don’t “get” that the sh*t has already hit the fan? How many more jobs and homes have to be lost?

Michael Moore is not the only one predicting a second crash. Paul Krugman is all out words excoriating the Administration for its tepidness. Nouriel Roubini, who forecast the first meltdown, now says we are in serious danger of a “double-dip,” a lethal combo of rising inflation and deeper recession.

Woe to us if we can’t see the handwriting on so many walls.

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Empire, Oligarchy and Democracy

By Ralph Nader

CommonDreams, March 1, 2010

The twin swelling heads of Empire and Oligarchy are driving our country into an ever-deepening corporate state, wholly incompatible with democracy and the rule of law.

Once again the New York Times offers its readers the evidence. In its February 25, 2010 issue, two page-one stories confirm this relentless deterioration at the expense of so many innocent people.

The lead story illustrates that the type of massive speculation—casino capitalism, Business Week once called it—in complex derivatives is still going strong and exploiting the weak and powerless who pay the ultimate bill.

Titled "Banks Bet Greece Defaults on Debt They Helped Hide," the article shocks even readers hardened to tales of greed and abuse of power. Here are the opening paragraphs: "Bets by some of the same banks that helped Greece shroud its mounting debts may actually now be pushing the nation closer to the brink of financial ruin."

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War Politics: Numb and Number

by: Norman Solomon, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Andy.Schultz, The U.S. Army)

Playwright Lillian Hellman said, "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions."

The statement was in a letter to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The year was 1952. We tell ourselves that the McCarthy era was vastly different than our own - but what about the political fashions of 2010?

This year's fashions cut mean figures on Washington's runways. Conformities lie, and people die.

While the escalating disaster of war in Afghanistan keeps setting deadly blazes, the few antiwar voices on Capitol Hill usually sound like people whispering, "Fire!"

In 2010, this is what the warfare state looks like: a largely numbed state, mainlining anesthetics that induce routine torpor. In that context, the conformity of mild dissent is apt to be mistaken for outspoken moral acuity.

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Ralph Nader Was Right About Barack Obama

We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives. 

Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush. He promised us that the transfer of $12.8 trillion in taxpayer money to Wall Street would open up credit and lending to the average consumer. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), however, admitted last week that banks have reduced lending at the sharpest pace since 1942. As a senator, Obama promised he would filibuster amendments to the FISA Reform Act that retroactively made legal the wiretapping and monitoring of millions of American citizens without warrant; instead he supported passage of the loathsome legislation. He told us he would withdraw American troops from Iraq, close the detention facility at Guantánamo, end torture, restore civil liberties such as habeas corpus and create new jobs. None of this has happened.

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Reconcile This!

By Danny Schechter

Author of The Crime of Our Time.

Host of The News Dissector Thursdays at 10 am

Reconciliation is one of those words that sounds great when used in another country 

Right-wing whites along with the rest of the world embraced South Africa’s peace and reconciliation process as a way to put apartheid crimes on the record without a punitive witch-hunt that would intensify racial and political tensions. Archbishop Desmond Tutu chaired a panel to hear evidence without the power to execute or imprison or execute wrongdoers. 

The idea was to disclose the truth while attempting to bring a dangerously polarized society together. Forgiveness, it was thought, could help the country move on.

In the US, at least these days, reconciliation has another meaning and purpose; to allow legislators to find compromises in enacting legislation by reconciling Senate and House versions of the bill.

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The Unemployed Now Have Their Own Union, and It's Catching on Quickly

Labor Educator / By Harry Kelber

An ingenious grassroots union for the unemployed is only a month old -- and its numbers are growing.

February 24, 2010  |  

 

Photo Credit: Creative Commons

 

It's been only a month that a union for the unemployed has come into existence through an ingenious grassroots organizing campaign. In case you haven't heard about it, the union's name is "UR Union of the Unemployed" or its nickname, "UCubed," because of its unique method of organizing.

UCubed is the brain-child of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), whose leaders feel that the millions of unemployed workers need a union of their own to join in the struggle for massive jobs programs.

The idea is that if millions of jobless join together and act as an organization, they are more likely to get Congress and the White House to provide the jobs that are urgently needed. They can also apply pressure for health insurance coverage, unemployment insurance and COBRA benefits and food stamps. An unemployed worker is virtually helpless if he or she has to act alone.

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Populism: Democrats Ignore at Our Peril

By Burt Cohen

As we begin 2010, populism appears to be the exclusive province of the passionate right wingers. But it remains an opportunity for Democrats in the coming election.

    Democratic Party insiders consider me somewhat of a boat rocker (untitled is unmuzzled). I’ve always been a populist, a Jeffersonian. This may upset a few, but now more than ever, Democrats need to renew our call for decentralization of power and democratization of the economy.

    Which is what the tea partyists clamor for.  Those Democrats who ignore the populist revolt do so at their own peril. When Democrats are strong on these pocketbook issues, we do well. But if we yield the populist ground to the Republican Party, the results of 2010 will not be in our favor.

    The middle class feels abandoned by both parties, the American Dream is more out of reach than ever. When it comes to outrage at the bipartisan march toward centralization of power and wealth, it’s in our nature for Democrats to lead the charge.

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