Blue America doesn't usually ask for contributions because of some phony Inside the Beltway "deadline"-- as if a $20 contribution is any more or any less crucial today or tomorrow or the next day. And yesterday we got a wretched plea from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, begging for money for the dreadful and unpopular incumbents whose voting records make it impossible for them to raise contributions from grassroots Democrats. "I need your help. We only have 6 hours left until our August FEC deadline, and we’re still $8,000 short of our goal. Eric Cantor outlined the Republican vision in a recent memo-- they will gut environmental regulations, repeal health care reform and attack workers. If Republicans outraise us and grab momentum, the Senate will be that much harder to defend. Must-win seats may be out of our reach. And this GOP vision could become reality."
He doesn't mention that some of these Democrats he's raising money for vote against the Democrats and with McConnell and DeMint. I mean who in their right mind is going to donate to conservative shills like Ben Nelson, Joe Manchin or Claire McCaskill? During his miserable Senate career Nelson has voted with the Republicans 56% of the time on the crucial votes and Both Machin and McCaskill are barely over 60%. They've alienated Democratic voters... and the lobbyists and Big Business interests they have normally counted on would rather replace them with Republicans. Good riddance!
On the other hand, Blue America is asking for help in sending a loud and clear a message to the DSCC and Beltway Democrats today (or tomorrow-- we don't care) by helping us support Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), two people who have fought long and hard for ordinary American families, not for the banksters and not for the corporate elites.
Unless this is the first time you've been on DWTyou already know Bernie. You probably know Elizabeth Warren too. This is what she told the Boston Globe yesterday: “It’s about being willing to take a good idea and fight for it. It’s being willing to throw your body in front of a bus to block bad ideas... There are some things worth fighting for and right now it’s about fighting for the middle class."
She's running for Ted Kennedy's old seat, which is currently occupied by Wall Street's favorite senator, Scott Brown-- and that's what business-friendly Forbes called him... admiringly. One day Elizabeth may be the tellers' favorite senator, but she'll never be the banksters' or hedge fund managers'!
"I came out of a hard-working middle class family. I lived in an America that created opportunities for kids like me... I now see an America in which our government works for those who already have money and already have power... I would walk out of a senator’s office and the office would be completely jammed with lobbyists who were there to explain why the consumer agency was bad. There was not enough room for them to sit down.’’
Blue America has only endorsed 2 people for the Senate so far this cycle. It's hard to imagine any other incumbents and so far the only other challenger who looks worthwhile is Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, although she hasn't declared yet. So we're asking you to take a look at our Senate page and see if you can give us a hand with Bernie and Elizabeth... even if it is after the DSCC's midnight "deadline."
Market jitters? The American financial industry is pointing to Europe and warning that a collapse of the banking system there could be nigh-- and could be catastrophic for everyone.
Insurance on the debt of several major European banks has now hit historic levels, higher even than those recorded during financial crisis caused by the US financial group's implosion nearly three years ago.
Credit default swaps on the bonds of Royal Bank of Scotland, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and Intesa Sanpaolo, among others, flashed warning signals on Wednesday. Credit default swaps (CDS) on RBS were trading at 343.54 basis points, meaning the annual cost to insure £10m of the state-backed lender's bonds against default is now £343,540.
The cost of insuring RBS bonds is now higher than before the taxpayer was forced to step in and rescue the bank in October 2008, and shows the recent dramatic downturn in sentiment among credit investors towards banks.
"The problem is a shortage of liquidity-- that is what is causing the problems with the banks. It feels exactly as it felt in 2008," said one senior London-based bank executive.
"I think we are heading for a market shock in September or October that will match anything we have ever seen before," said a senior credit banker at a major European bank.
France isn't calling it Austerity, but the proud nation is being dragged into the clutches of the banksters and calling it a "rigour package." Compared to the Austerity measures being proposed in the U.S.-- Obama even floated a trial balloon yesterday that sounded like bringing back indentured servitude-- the French version sounds down right benign.
The measures in the rigour package, dubbed by some the "financial turn of the screw," include:
• An "exceptional contribution" of 3% on taxable earnings for those earning above €500,000 to remain in place until France's deficit had been reduced to 3% of GDP.
• Higher taxes on tobacco and alcohol.
• A modification of capital gains tax on property.
...Among other measures, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, is reported to be considering the abandonment of tax-free overtime for workers. This was one of the measures that, under the slogan "work harder to earn more," was a pillar of his election campaign in 2005, but it has cost an estimated €4.5bn in lost revenues. The government is also looking at ending tax breaks for companies.
Having recently abolished the "financial shield," which set a limit on the total amount of tax that the rich were expected to pay, a new tax on the wealthy would avoid accusations that his austerity measures would hit those lower down the income scale in the run-up to next year's elections.
France and Germany are also discussing proposals for a tax on financial transactions-- a measure that is vehemently opposed by Britain.
Not just Britain... Wall Street is going insane at the idea and is spending millions of dollars in lobbying and in direct bribes campaign contributions to it's most dedicated mouthpieces in government. The 25 worst Wall Street shills in the House (this year only):
John Boehner (R-OH)- $986,787
Eric Cantor (R-VA)- $610,250
Chris Murphy (D-CT)- $380,500
Jeb Hensarling (R-TX)- $350,350
Dave Camp (R-MI)- $343,800
Scott Garrett (R-NJ)- $320,185
Ed Royce (R-CA)- $318,004
Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $315,200
Spencer Bachus (R-AL)- $309,115
Pat Tiberi (R-OH)- $300,549
Steve Stivers (R-OH)- $282,485
Robert Dold (R-IL)- $272,006
Nan Hayworth (R-NY)- $240,006
Jim Himes (D-CT)- $233,500
Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- $226,670
Randy Neugebauer (R-TX)- $224,133
Steve Israel (D-NY)- $204,000
Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)- $199,750
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)- $197,900
Joseph Crowley (D-NY)- $193,750
Shelley Berkley (D-NV)- $189,660
Peter Roskam (R-IL)- $188,700
Denny Rehberg (R-MT)- $187,330
Francisco Canseco (R-TX)- $183,852
Paul Ryan (R-WI)- $181,400
Bolded names are members of the Financial Services Committee, charged with "regulating" the banksters to keep them from ripping off consumers and society at large. Alan Grayson was on that committee when he was in Congress. Wall Street wasn't giving him money then and, now that he's campaigning to get back into Congress they're not donating to him either. I called Alan-- who's just back from a trip to Ghana-- this morning to get his take on all this. He told me he "always found it puzzling that business interests gave lockstep support to Republicans, despite their fondness for auctioning off the law to the highest bidder." He was just warming up:
The Republican Party may be the party of Big Business, but it is also the party of Economic Failure.
Let’s take the stock market, that very apt measure of how rich the rich are. In Tommy McCall’s classic 2008 article Bulls, Bears, Donkeys and Elephants, he pointed out that $10,000 invested in the stock market under Democratic presidents would have grown to $300,671, while $10,000 invested under Republican presidents would have “grown” to $11,733. That’s a 2907% Democratic profit versus a 17% Republican profit. Is that still true? Sure enough, the stock market started to recover less than one month after Barack Obama was sworn in.
Since federal spending alone now equals almost a quarter of GNP, is it really good for business to make government small enough to “drown in the bathtub,” as Grover Norquist always demands?
And how, exactly, is the banking system supposed to function without regulations? Reserve requirements are regulations. They are the only limits on the banks’ unbridled speculation and gambling with other people’s money. Remove the regulations and a crash will quickly follow. That wouldn’t be good for business.
Republican economic mismanagement takes down both the rich and the poor. In other countries, the rich seem to understand that, but not here. Here, the blanket support for Republicans by Big Business and the filthy rich amounts to an economic death wish.
There is an old saying: “if you’re so smart, how come you ain’t rich?” I have a different question: when it comes to political self-interest, how can rich people be so dumb?
If we can't count on Congress to protect us-- and we can't-- who can we turn to? That was the whole idea of why Elizabeth Warren came up with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau-- and why Wall Street fought so hard to cut it off at the knees. Obama has been nearly as friendly to Wall Street as any Republican president and it would be foolish to expect him to change his stripes. Matt Taibbi has done some great reporting in Rolling Stone about one of the few places where consumers can look for redress: New York's crusading Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman. Basically, Wall Street and their political puppets-- from Obama and the GOP to the rest of the states' attorney generals-- have "cooked up a deal that would allow the banks to walk away with just a seriously discounted fine from a generation of fraud that led to millions of people losing their homes." Schneiderman is the odd man out.
The idea behind this federally-guided “settlement” is to concentrate and centralize all the legal exposure accrued by this generation of grotesque banker corruption in one place, put one single price tag on it that everyone can live with, and then stuff the details into a titanium canister before shooting it into deep space.
This is all about protecting the banks from future enforcement actions on both the civil and criminal sides. The plan is to provide year-after-year, repeat-offending banks like Bank of America with cost certainty, so that they know exactly how much they’ll have to pay in fines (trust me, it will end up being a tiny fraction of what they made off the fraudulent practices) and will also get to know for sure that there are no more criminal investigations in the pipeline.
...But Schneiderman, who earlier this year launched an investigation into the securitization practices of Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and other companies, is screwing up this whole arrangement. Until he lies down, the banks don’t have a deal. They need the certainty of having all 50 states and the federal government on board, or else it’s not worth paying anybody off. To quote the immortal Tony Montana, “How do I know you’re the last cop I’m gonna have to grease?” They need all the dirty cops on board, or else the whole enterprise is FUBAR.
In addition to the global settlement, Schneiderman is also blocking an individual $8.5 billion settlement for Countrywide investors. He has sued to stop that deal, claiming it could “compromise investors’ claims in exchange for a payment representing a fraction of the losses.”
If Schneiderman thinks $8.5 billion is an insufficient, fractional payoff just for defrauded Countrywide investors, then you can imagine how bad a $20 billion settlement for the entire industry would be for the victims.
In that particular Countrywide settlement deal, it looks like Bank of New York Mellon, the New York Fed, Pimco and other players negotiated on behalf of defrauded investors. They told the Times they were happy with the deal, but investors outside the talks told Gretchen they weren’t happy with the settlement.
Schneiderman apparently listened to those voices instead of the Mellon-Fed-BofA crowd, which infuriated the insiders who struck the actual deal. In a remarkable quote given to the Times, Kathryn Wylde, the Fed board member who ostensibly represents the public, said the following about Schneiderman:
It is of concern to the industry that instead of trying to facilitate resolving these issues, you seem to be throwing a wrench into it. Wall Street is our Main Street-- love ’em or hate ’em. They are important and we have to make sure we are doing everything we can to support them unless they are doing something indefensible.
This, again, is coming not from a Bank of America attorney, but from the person on the Fed board who is supposedly representing the public!
This quote leads one to wonder just what Wylde would consider “indefensible,” given that stealing is pretty much the worst thing that a bank can do-- and these banks just finished the longest and most orgiastic campaign of stealing in the history of money. Is Wylde waiting for Goldman and Citi to blow up a skyscraper? Dump dioxin into an orphanage? It’s really an incredible quote.
Remember this?
She's running for the Senate now, in Massachusetts, against Wall Street's "favorite" senator, Scott Brown. Wall Street and the financial services industry are financing his campaign. Can you help Elizabeth's? Our House candidates worthy of help, like Grayson, are on another page-- this one.
This goes beyond class warriors Darrell Issa and Patrick McHenry using a Wall Street lobbyist disguised as a "staffer" to sabotage Elizabeth Warren's testimony in Congress. Keep in mind that Wall Street has showered Scott Brown with cash. His biggest single source of campaign "contributions" comes from the financial predators Elizabeth Warren has been urging government to protect consumers from. So far the financial sector has donated over $1.8 million to Brown's short career in federal politics. This year alone, he's taken in more money than any other Republican senator other than Bob Corker (TN) of the Banking Committee and, more to the point, the Subcommittee of Securities, Insurance and Investment. The crooks who run the big players in this sector will pay anything to keep Corker and Brown in office and in Brown's case-- to keep Elizabeth Warren out of office. The idea of her in the Senate drives the banksters insane.
Elizabeth Warren’s combative history with Wall Street could create a fundraising dilemma for her burgeoning Senate campaign.
Her ardent grassroots following on the left-- forged during stints as TARP watchdog and as mastermind of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau-- would likely make her a formidable Senate candidate in Massachusetts.
But her reputation as sheriff to Wall Street could also be a liability against Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), a popular Republican who has been stockpiling campaign cash in anticipation of a tight 2012 race.
..."I think it's pretty clear she's going to run the classic, grassroots campaign here in Massachusetts," said Mary Anne Marsh, a longtime Democratic operative in the state. "That means she's going to rely on folks here to give low-dollar donations here a number of times."
But without the support of heavy-hitting donors in Massachusetts, many of whom work at hedge funds and other financial firms, Warren might find it difficult to keep up with Brown’s fundraising juggernaut.
Dubbed “Wall Street’s Favorite Congressman” in a Forbes article last year, Brown reported having more than $9.6 million in the bank at the end of June. A good portion of that money came from the financial-services sector, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Employees of the Boston-based Fidelity Investments are the single biggest group of donors to Brown’s campaign committee, contributing more than $85,000 since 2007, according to the watchdog’s data. Employees at Goldman Sachs, Bank of New York Mellon, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America are also top donors.
Warren, on the other hand, is going to have to depend on... Americans who want to take back their government from the avaricious banksters. Last week, Paul Krugman made it clear just what that means: Finally, Someone to Run Against Wall Street
One of the truly amazing things about American politics in the Lesser Depression is that nobody in political life has been willing to run as the champion of ordinary Americans against the financial wheeler-dealers who brought this disaster on us. Republicans won’t, of course, because their worldview says that greed is good and government the only source of evil. But Obama has also been almost weirdly unwilling to express even the slightest populism.
So I’m glad to hear that Elizabeth Warren will apparently run for Senate. She’s no Huey Long-- her manner is more schoolteacher than rabble-rouser-- but that makes her more credible. And she’s got the best credentials on the financial crisis of any prominent figure in American life.
This should be edifying.
Yes, edifying... and expensive. Can you chip in? Blue America has only endorsed two candidates for the Senate this year, Warren and Bernie Sanders. We want to see both of them working together for regular American families... somewhat of a rarity in the good ole boys club that is the U.S. Senate. Hard to say exactly what will happen this early in the cycle but my guess is that Blue America may endorse one or possible two more Senate candidates this year. That's it. We want THE BEST, not "better than the horrible alternative."
Elizabeth Warren just made it official-- or official enough for ActBlue to open up a contribution slot for her-- which means she filed with the FEC. So... we added her to the Blue America Senate page, a page with two candidates-- her and Bernie.
If we collect $2,000 for her over the weekend, one random lucky donor will win a gorgeous RIAA Lenny Kravitz platinum award for his Greatest Hits album (above).
Last Sunday I posted about the likelihood that she would run for the Massachusetts Senate seat currently occupied by Tea Party flip-flopper Scott Brown. It seemed all but certain. Disappointed and disallusioned progressives in at least one state will sure have a reason to flock to the polls in November of 2012! At the time she said "I spent years working against special interests and have the battle scars to show it-- and I have no intention of stopping now. It is time for me to think hard about what role I can play next to help rebuild a middle class that has been hacked at, chipped at, and pulled at for more than a generation-- and that that is under greater strain every day." Music to all of our ears. Let's encourage her-- and imagine her and Bernie Sanders working together for ordinary American families... in the U.S. Senate, that hideous, hidebound bastion of privilege and entitlement.
So, again, contribute any amount before midnight and if we reach $2,000 for her, one donor will be thanked by Blue America with the beautiful Lenny Kravitz triple platinum award.
Thursday Elizabeth Warren did a guest post for Blue Mass Group, which has led a lot of people to assume she's running for the Massachusetts Senate seat currently held by wish-washy GOP flip-flopper Scott Brown. You'll know for sure the day Elizabeth Warren makes her decision because it will be trumpeted widely-- far more widely than when any "normal" candidate announces. That's because she's a symbol for Hope and Change... but the real thing this time. You'll also know that she's running because she'll be joining Bernie Sanders-- and only Bernie Sanders-- on this page. Barack Obama never made it onto any Blue America page ever. We knew what his version of Hope and Change was all about. Elizabeth:
Growing up, every decision for my family involved a careful calculation about how we could pay for it-- a visit to the doctor, a tank of gas to drive to my grandparents’ house, a new pair of school shoes.
My Aunt Bert cut everyone’s hair, my Aunt Bee bought my Easter dress every year, and my brother David paid for his school clothes with money from his paper route. There were plenty of ups and downs. When my father had a heart attack, the store where he worked changed his job and cut his pay. We lost our car, and my mother went to work answering phones at Sears so we could make the mortgage payments.
My parents worked hard all their lives. My three older brothers carved out their own futures-- one was career air force, one worked heavy construction, and one started his own business. I went to college on a scholarship, got married, and started teaching in an elementary school. But I never shook off the worry: did we have enough money to cover basic expenses, enough money to help our parents retire, enough money to build secure futures for our children?
After I graduated law school, I started focusing on what was happening to other hard working families like ours. The story isn’t good. For a generation now, incomes have been flat, while basic expenses like housing, health care, and child care have risen sharply. Families have turned more and more to debt to finance education, to pay medical bills, to cover a cutback in hours or a job loss-- or just to make it to the end of the month. With each passing year, families have found themselves with less economic cushion to absorb a major health care crisis, a job loss, or a divorce. What it means to be middle class in this country-- having a good job, owning a home, putting together the money to pay for college-- seems to be slipping out of reach.
Today, it’s harder than ever for middle class families in Massachusetts and across the country to get by. Each day, more families find themselves deeply worried about money. They wake up to news about wild swings in the stock market and a government that seems unable to exercise even the most basic common sense. They see shuttered windows on Main Street and hear about the latest neighbor to lose a job or a home. They wonder what will be the next shoe to drop in their communities or in their own families.
A few years ago, I decided to tackle one part of the problem-- big banks that drained billions of dollars out of families’ pockets by hiding costs in fine print and selling predatory loans. I started to work on an idea for a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) because I believed it could help make a real difference in the lives of middle class families. The concept is simple: in a world where debt has become so common and necessary, families need to be able to understand and to compare loan products like mortgages and credit cards so they can make good financial decisions. The costs and risks of financial deals should be clear and transparent-- no tricks, no traps.
After Congress enacted the new CFPB last year, President Obama asked me to help set it up. Starting from our first weeks, we were determined to make things better for American families. We worked to make federal mortgage paperwork shorter and easier to understand, we set-up an Office of Servicemember Affairs to help military families navigate the financial repercussions of deployments and frequent moves, and we developed systems to make sure that even trillion-dollar banks comply with the law. We put in place the building blocks for an agency that will make credit markets safer and fairer for families.
Last week, my role setting up the consumer agency ended. My husband and I packed up the car and made it back to our home of 17 years in Massachusetts.
I left Washington, but I don’t plan to stop fighting for middle class families. I spent years working against special interests and have the battle scars to show it-- and I have no intention of stopping now. It is time for me to think hard about what role I can play next to help rebuild a middle class that has been hacked at, chipped at, and pulled at for more than a generation-- and that that is under greater strain every day.
In the weeks ahead, I want to hear from you about the challenges we face and how we get our economy growing again. I also want to hear your ideas about how we can fix what all of us-- regardless of party-- know is a badly broken political system. In Washington, I saw up close and personal how much influence special interests have over our law-making, and I saw just how hard it is for families to be heard. I want to hear your thoughts about how we can make sure that our voices –our families, our friends, and our neighbors-- are heard again.
We have a lot of work to do in our commonwealth and our country. We need to rebuild our economy family by family and block by block. We need to create new jobs and to fix our broken housing market. We need to make sure that there is real accountability over Wall Street and that the greed and recklessness that created the last financial crisis do not create the next one. We need to restore the hope of a secure retirement and the promise of a good education. We need to stop measuring our economy by profits and executive compensation at our largest companies and start measuring it by how many families can stand securely in the middle class.
I am glad to be back home. And I’m looking forward to discussing with you what we can accomplish together.
There hasn't been a poll, at least as far as I know, that asks Americans if they think life imprisonment for banksters who, carried away with greed and avarice, tanked the economy, is too lenient. Nor has their been a poll that asks if politicians who have been paid off by these banksters to enable this kind of behavior deserve even greater punishment than the banksters themselves. And why should there be such polls, when we all know perfectly well that the system is so gamed that there will never even be serious investigations of the offending banksters or politicians?
On the other hand, AARP did commission a poll to find out how strongly Americans feel about the institutional financial reforms required to make the investment and banking markets safe for consumers, safe from predators and their political whores. Not surprisingly, most Americans feel strongly that safeguards are needed. Perhaps surprisingly, that even includes Republican Party supporters!
In fact, by a 3 to 1 margin Americans want financial firms held accountable and financial reforms to take effect as soon as possible. And they want the Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau-- so feared and loathed by Wall Street and their political puppets-- to be up and running as planned, not diluted by industry’s current attempts to weaken its funding and structure. This is what the poll found:
• Likely voters, including majorities of Independents, Democrats, and Republicans, favor the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law by a 5 to 1 margin (71% vs. 14%).
• Presented with information about challenges in Congress to the law, almost two-thirds (63%) believe that policymakers should allow the law to be fully implemented.
• Three-quarters (74%) of voters support the existence of a single entity with the mission of protecting consumers from deceptive practices.
• Voters also voice overwhelming support for the following consumer protection functions of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau: Requiring clearer explanations of rates and fees, restricting lenders from offering loans with risky or confusing features, and banning incentives to mortgage brokers to put homeowners into higher rate mortgages than they qualify for.
• Three-quarters (73%) of voters want to see federal oversight of financial companies that previously lacked national oversight, including mortgage brokers, payday lenders, and companies offering pre-paid debit cards.
Nancy LeaMond, Executive Vice President of AARP: “During the financial crisis, too many older Americans lost their savings due to the failure of an outdated and compromised financial regulatory system. That's why most Americans say they want clear, accurate information so they can make the best financial decisions for their families, and a watchdog that will protect them from financial abuse.”
Republicans in Congress will try to prevent the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from ever functioning. Right now, it's scheduled to start tomorrow. In the clip above, Elizabeth Warren explains to Rachel Maddow why she feels that it will work despite Wall Street and right-wing Members of Congress who are dead set against fairness in the system.
I thought it might be worth mentioning that this year the financial industry is once again pouring millions of dollars into the political system in the hopes of keeping Republicans in power. Of the 6 Members of Congress who have taken the biggest legalistic bribes from the finance sector, 5 of them are dead set against any reform that would protect consumers. Mostly very familiar names, as well; in order of the amount of bribes they've accepted (just this year):
Eric Cantor (R-VA) $378,700 John Bohner (R-OH) $355,325 Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) $235,800 Spencer Bachus (R-AL) $186,515 Ed Royce (R-CA) $185,879
This week Darrell Issa's inept and cartoonish committee tried, unsuccessfully, to terrorize Elizabeth Warren-- to the point where even Blue Dog Jim Cooper was so embarrassed and exasperated by his right-wing colleagues that he said "Some of us come here and we get so used to the food fight that we want it to continue. And you'll probably score brownie points if you make your partisan hit. You might even get on a better committee. Well, congratulations. You will not have solved a problem." The video above is of blatant corporate whore Dennis Ross from Florida who is pushing legislation to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act and prevent the regulation of the investment and banking industry. Short attention span, presumably.
The day after, someone in the White House-- presumably a Tiny Tim Geithner ally-- leaked to the media that Obama had decided to name someone other than Warren to head the consumer protection bureau that Wall Street and their allies are so scared of. Presumably he'll name either ex-banker Raj Date or Rich Cordray, neither of whom makes Wall Street banksters fear that they're criminal behavior is going to land them in prison cells.
The bureau’s director requires confirmation by the Senate. After 44 Republican senators announced in May that they wouldn’t vote to approve any candidate to run the bureau without changes in its structure, analysts said the White House might have to resort to a temporary appointment during a congressional recess. Sixty of the 100 senators are effectively required to vote for a nomination due to procedural rules.
In 1986 President Reagan nominated Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III to the US District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. When the Senate Judiciary Committee was confronted with incontrovertible evidence that Sessions is a dedicated and vicious racist and even a KKK "sympathizer" he was rejected as unfit for the judgeship and Reagan reluctantly withdrew the nomination. Alabama racists were outraged and Sessions' rejection led to him being elected Attorney General of the state and then to the U.S. Senate. He's the first Republican in history to be reelected to a Senate seat from Alabama.
Clearly Sessions was never going to vote to confirm Warren. And, in all likelihood, the Republicans would have been able to filibuster her nomination so that it would never have even been voted on. We'll never know for sure because Obama raised the white flag and wimped out-- depriving one of America's most gifted and dedicated civil servants with the opportunity to go before the people and make her case, an opportunity that could have done her as much good with the voters of Massachusetts and it did Sessions with the voters of Alabama 2 decades ago. And many in Massachusetts thinks she will be a candidate for the U.S. Senate, the only Democrat likely to beat Republican tight-rope walker Scott Brown.
From the lips of Washington’s top Democrats to the ears of Massachusetts party leaders, all systems are go for a US Senate run by Elizabeth Warren-- if she wants it... Warren is being touted as a Democratic star worthy of taking on Republican Senator Scott Brown. It’s a combination consolation prize and rescue mission.
“Elizabeth Warren is still in the running for the consumer protection job. I hope she gets that job,’’ said Massachusetts Democratic Party chairman John Walsh. But if it doesn’t come through, “I would love it if she were interested in joining the race. I would talk to her and encourage her in a heartbeat,’’ said Walsh, officially embracing the buzz that began with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator Patty Murray of Washington, who also chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
John Kerry says he isn't endorsing anyone in the primary, even though another Warren, Setti, is a declared candidate and a former aide. The Wall Street Journal on the other hand, delighted to see her out of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, called for her, perhaps sardonically, to run for the Senate in a snide OpEd Thursday.
Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren has become a great liberal hero as the architect of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and now she may be contemplating a run for the Senate in Massachusetts. Our advice: Go for it... By running for the Senate, the Harvard law professor could test her views against popular opinion. It's true she'd have to take on Republican Scott Brown, and a March survey showed he would beat her by 17 percentage points. But 59% said they hadn't heard of Mrs. Warren, and a famously liberal state like Massachusetts would surely give her a hearing. Step out of the shadows, professor, and embrace a little democratic legitimacy.
UPDATE: Obama Picks Cordray To Head The CFPB
Obama will announce tomorrow that Cordray, the former Attorney General of Ohio, is his pick for the top job at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He's currently the director of enforcement for the bureau.
By picking Cordray, Obama hopes to avoid a bruising Senate confirmation battle that would have occurred had he selected Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor who came up with the idea and ultimately helped to set up the agency.
"Richard Cordray has spent his career advocating for middle class families, from his tenure as Ohio's Attorney General, to his most recent role as heading up the enforcement division at the (bureau) and looking out for ordinary people in our financial system," Obama said.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, called the selection of Cordray a "great move. There's no question of Rich's qualifications."
He predicted the Senate will likely confirm Cordray for the post "unless they get to be hyper-partisan. My only fear is Republicans don't think we should have consumer protection rules."
The Cordray selection places pressure on Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who has voiced objections about some of the powers of a new agency. Brown said, "I fully expect Rob Portman to support Rich Cordray."
Obama acknowledged Warren's leadership in a statement announcing Cordray's nomination, thanking Warren "not only for her extraordinary work standing up the new agency over the past year, but also for her many years of impassioned leadership, and her fierce defense of a simple idea: ordinary people deserve to be treated fairly and honestly in their financial dealings.
"This agency was Elizabeth's idea, and through sheer force of will, intelligence, and a bottomless well of energy, she has made, and will continue to make, a profound and positive difference for our country," he said.
Warren, who hand-picked Cordray to serve in the agency shortly after his loss in last November's elections, expressed support for his selection.
"Rich has always had my strong support because he is tough and he is smart-and that's exactly the combination this new agency needs," she said. "He was one of the first senior leaders I recruited for the agency, and his work and commitment have made it clear that he will make a stellar director."
UPDATE II: Elizabeth Warren's Statement
"Last year, when President Obama and Secretary Geithner asked me to help them stand up the consumer bureau, I enthusiastically accepted the position and got to work because I believe firmly that the CFPB can make the consumer finance markets work better for American families - eliminating fine print, making costs, benefits, and risk clearer, and holding those who break the law accountable. In the time since, we have been hard at work building an agency to do just that.
"Today, the President announced his intent to nominate Richard Cordray to serve as the first Director of the CFPB. Rich has a proven track record of fighting for families during his time as head of the CFPB enforcement division, as Attorney General of Ohio, and throughout his career. He was one of the first senior executives I recruited for the agency, and his hard work and deep commitment make it clear that he can make many important contributions in leading this agency. He will make a stellar director. I am very pleased for Rich and very pleased for the CFPB.
"In May, forty-four Republican Senators wrote a letter saying that they will block anyone from serving as CFPB Director. Many of them don't like either the agency or the ideas that led to its creation. They lost that fight last summer in a straight up vote, but they have said they will use a filibuster over nomination to undercut the agency and its effectiveness.
"I remain hopeful that those who want to cripple this consumer bureau will think again and remember that the financial crisis-- and the recession and job losses that it sparked-- began one lousy mortgage at a time. I also hope that when those Senators next go home, they ask their constituents how they feel about fine print, about signing contracts with terms that are incomprehensible, and about learning the true costs of a financial transaction only later when fees are piled on or interest rates are reset. I hope they will ask the people in their districts if they are opposed to an agency that is working to make prices clear or if they think budgets should be cut for an agency that is trying to make sure that trillion-dollar banks follow the law. I hope they will ask their constituents if they are opposed to the confirmation of someone who saved $2 billion for retirees, investors, and business owners as Ohio Attorney General and who has worked hard on the front lines fighting against fraudulent foreclosures and abusive lending practices.
"Partisanship may be the most important thing in Washington, but in the rest of the country, people expect their public servants to work together to learn from past regulatory failures and to put our energy into solving problems, not scoring political points. In visiting with people and business leaders across the country-- including community bankers and credit unions in all 50 states-- I see a real eagerness to move forward, to work together to repair a broken credit market. I hope that Republicans in the Senate take notice and stop their fight to preserve a regulatory system that failed us.
"Prior to the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, the President and I fought side by side to make the new agency possible. And, if we need to, I know we will continue to fight side by side, to keep it strong and independent and to make sure it has the tools it needs to serve the American people."
On the other hand, Blue America is asking for help in sending a loud and clear a message to the DSCC and Beltway Democrats today (or tomorrow-- we don't care) by helping us support Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), two people who have fought long and hard for ordinary American families, not for the banksters and not for the corporate elites.
