Gallup highlights what seems to be a contradiction in its polling on financial reform:
When Wall Street is not mentioned, net public support (percentage in favor minus percentage opposed) for banking reform legislation is +3 points, but when it is mentioned, net support is +14. […]
On both questions, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to support banking reform. Seven in 10 Democrats favor the proposed new federal regulatory powers, regardless of the wording. By contrast, Republicans show greater support for reform when “Wall Street” is invoked than when it is not (35% vs. 22%).
Yglesias wonders what the cause of this strange difference could be and hypothesizes that it might be a hostility to New York. Krugman says:
I think what it really tells us is how little voters — and, I dare say, Republican voters in particular — understand the issues. My bet is that a lot of people really don’t realize that when we use the shorthand of referring to Wall Street, we’re actually talking about high finance in general. Scary — and it’s a lack of understanding that the likes of Mitch McConnell are happy to exploit.
I think there’s a simpler explanation: Republicans associate Wall Street with bailouts and bailouts with Democrats. That’s an effect of not understanding the issues, but I think it’s more a result of very powerful conservative propaganda which has succeeded in tying the Democrats to the unpopular Wall Street while keeping all those nice “other” big banks firmly in the Real American camp.
One of the consequences of letting this right wing populist swill ferment over the past year is that it’s now become an incomprehensible toxic cocktail of anti-socialism, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist cronyism all aimed at the left. It doesn’t make any sense, but they’ve managed to mix every evil symbol of the 20th century into their critique of the Democrats so that they no longer have to defend anything that’s unpopular.
Update: Uhm — I should note that packing the administration with Feddie Boyz and other Dear Friends of the Masters Of The Universe undoubtedly contributed to this perception. The Republicans are only half wrong — both parties are compromised.
I was watching a tedious debate on Hardball about the meltdown and financial reform, marveling at the faceless wingnut gasbag’s blithe statements that everything would be great if the government just stayed out of things in the event of a crisis. I shouted some epithet at the TV and then muttered, “they actually want another great depression.”
Mr digby said, “it worked for Hitler.”
Of course. I just haven’t been looking at all this from the right angle.
In case you were wondering about next steps, Robert Reich says there are three things that the new financial reform bill doesn’t do that it needs to do:
1. Require that trading of all derivatives be done on open exchanges where parties have to disclose what they’re buying and selling and have enough capital to pay up if their bets go wrong. The exception in the current bill for so-called “unique” derivatives opens up a loophole big enough for bankers to drive their Ferrari’s through.
2. Resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act in its entirety so commercial banks are separated from investment banks. The current bill doesn’t go nearly far enough. Commercial banks should take deposits and lend money. Investment banks should be limited to the casino we call the stock market, helping companies issue new issues and making bets. Nothing good comes of mixing the two. We learned this after the Great Crash of 1929, and then forgot it in 1999 when Congress allowed financial supermarkets to do both.
3. Cap the size of big banks at $100 billion in assets. The current bill doesn’t limit the size of banks at all. It creates a process for winding down the operations of any bank that gets into trouble. But if several big banks are threatened, as they were when the housing bubble burst, their failure would pose a risk to the whole financial system, and Congress and the Fed would surely have to bail them out. The only way to ensure no bank is too big to fail is to make sure no bank is too big, period. Nobody has been able to show any scale efficiencies over $100 billion in assets, so that should be the limit.
Wall Street doesn’t want these three major reforms because they’d cut deeply into profits, and it’s using its formidable lobbying clout with both parties to prevent these reforms from even from surfacing.
Update: This bodes well:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said a vote today in the Senate Budget Committee showed the potential for legislation to break up financial institutions considered “too big to fail.”
In a strong signal of the growing momentum behind proposals to dismantle financial institutions that dominate the U.S. economy, the budget panel narrowly voted 12 to 10 against a Sanders’ amendment.
“While we didn’t quite win today’s vote, we took a major step forward in showing there is a great deal of support for breaking up huge financial institutions,” Sanders said. “We must break up these behemoths not only because they are a burden on taxpayers but because of the incredible economic power they exert on the economy through their monopolistic practices. The enormous concentration of ownership in the financial sector has led to higher bank fees, usurious interest rates on credit cards, and fewer choices for consumers.”
Sanders said the four major U.S. banks – Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Well Fargo – issue two-thirds of the credit cards in the country, write half the mortgages and collectively hold $7.4 trillion in assets, about 52 percent of the nation’s estimated total output last year.
“Incredibly, despite all of them being bailed out during the Wall Street meltdown because they were ‘too big to fail,’ three of them are now bigger than before the bailout,” Sanders said. Since the 2008 taxpayer bailout of big banks, Wells Fargo has grown 43 percent bigger; JP Morgan Chase has grown 51 percent bigger; and Bank of America is now 138 percent bigger than before the financial crisis began.
Sanders said there is a wide and growing spectrum of support for breaking up big banks. Three Federal Reserve bank presidents – James Bullard, president and chief executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’ Kansas City Fed President Thomas M. Hoenig, and Dallas Fed President Richard W. Fisher – all support breaking up too-big-to-fail banks.
To find a “better”– in every sense of the term– House Speaker than Nancy Pelosi, you either have to go back in history from way before my time or you have to take some mighty powerful psychedelics. The idea of replacing the most progressive Speaker in any of our lifetimes with one as reactionary– not to mention corrupt– as John Boehner is… well, just unthinkable. But when you look at the DCCC Front Line list of their most vulnerable incumbents… well, with a few exceptions– Alan Grayson (D-FL), Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH), Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH), Dan Maffei (D-NY), Mark Schauer (D-MI), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Gary Peters (D-MI), Steve Kagen (D-WI), Jim Himes (D-CT)– who could even root for this motley crew of Blue Dogs and aisle-crossing cowards?
So… the best thing would be to play offense and help elect some progressives in open red seats, beat some Blue Dogs in primaries and then make sure they win in the general election in November, and, best of all, take on some Republicans and beat them outright. Blue America has been trying to help with all three tactics. Our main GOP incumbents so far have been Virginia Foxx (NC) and Ken Calvert (CA), where we have excellent progressive challengers in Billy Kennedy and Bill Hedrick. This week we added a third candidate, in the toughest race of all: Justin Coussoule, taking on the would-be Speaker, John Boehner, in western Ohio.
Justin will join us today (at 1pm, EST) at Crooks and Liars for a live session. You’ll find an exceptional young man, a West Point graduate and former Army officer, married for 10 years and the father of two young children. An attorney, he worked as a legislative assistant for outstanding progressive Rep. Maurice Hinchey, started and ran a small business and currently works for Procter & Gamble.
On Monday he did a guest post about John Boehner’s role in trying to make sure we can’t ever hold Wall Street accountable. Read it; it’ll give you some background about how he thinks and where he’s coming from.
And read the rest of Howie’s post to see just what a great candidate he is. As he points out, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that he could win. And God knows it’s worth having somebody challenge him and ask some of those touchy questions he doesn’t want asked. Keep in mind that in an anti-incumbent year very strange things can happen. It’s not like Boehner’s popular or anything:
Boehner received the lowest favorability rating (just 12%) of any elected official evaluated by respondents. Boehner’s favorable rating was lower than the President, Congress in general, the Democratic leadership, the Senate minority leader and even the IRS. And the poll was conducted by none other than Fox News. The poll results only confirm 8th District voters’ frustration with Boehner’s now legendary rants, emotional outbursts, degrading remarks and unprofessional conduct.
A reflection of that is that Boehner is facing two mainstream conservatives in a primary challenge and two teabaggers in the general, one a Libertarian and one the Constitutional Party nominee. The Tea Party itself is a big deal in western Ohio and the one thing they all remember about Boehner is that he voted for the bank bailout twice and twisted other Republicans’ arms to vote for it after it failed to pass the first time. Without Boehner, the bill would never have passed. Teabaggers– basically angry Republican activists– voting for the third-party candidates or staying away, or even voting for Justin, could help defeat Boehner.
Join us at 1PM at C&L and chat with Blue America candidate for congress Justin Coussoule.
Update: Alan grays sez:
Dear Ohio:
You have a choice.
You can elect a Congressman who spent five years as a West Point graduate in the service of our country, or you can elect a Congressman who spent eight weeks in the military and then quit.
You can elect a Congressman who will fight the lobbyists, or you can elect a Congressman who handed out tobacco lobby checks on the Floor of the House, when the House was voting on a tobacco bill.
You can elect a Congressman who will prevent bailouts, or you can elect a Congressman who bailed out of the stock market minutes after he attended an emergency meeting with the Treasury Secretary and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
You can elect a Congressman who will work hard to create jobs, or you can elect a Congressman who works hard on his tan.
You can elect a Congressman who will spend his time working hard to improve your lives, or you can elect a Congressman who will spend his time playing golf.
It’s your choice. I know whom I’d choose. And it ain’t the guy in the white shorts:
To paraphrase Woody Allen, if George Orwell were alive he’d never stop throwing up.
Here’s the latest “who me?” obscenity from Bizarroworld:
Kicking off an annual Earth Day tradition, Western Tradition Partnership (WTP) announced Thursday Florida Congressman Alan Grayson is the first-ever winner of the “Ted Kaczynski Award.” The award will be given annually to a member of Congress who excels in hurling rhetorical bombs in the name of turning back the clock on human progress.
“When it comes to hurling bombs at those who believe in human progress, no one does it like lone nut Alan Grayson” said Donny Ferguson, WTP National Director of Media and Public Relations. “Whether it’s voting to destroy 127,775 Florida jobs or increasing the average Orlando-area family’s utility bills by $1,607.16 with a National Energy Tax, Alan Grayson is obsessed with turning back the clock on jobs and prosperity.”
“In Alan Grayson’s America, we’d all live in tiny primitive cabins without electricity, plumbing or jobs.”
While Grayson’s hostile, unstable rhetorical bomb-throwing launched him to the top of the nominees’ list, his 100 percent rating from a radical group calling itself “The League of Conservation Voters” clinched it.
LCV founder David Brower openly boasted of his prowess in destroying jobs, comparing timber workers to guards at Nazi death camps. Brower also declared human reproduction a threat to the planet and suggested it be allowed only to select people with proper government permits. According to Brower, LCV’s mission is to be among the most radical of extremist anti-capitalist groups.
“It says something about your commitment to radicalism when you get the highest-possible rating from a group obsessed with reducing the number of jobs in Florida,” said Ferguson. “Anti-progress activists are just ‘nuts’ about Alan Grayson.”
WTP, on the other hand, is committed to protecting jobs, property rights, energy development and human progress through the peaceful means of educating citizens and legislators.
I’ve never heard of the Western tradition Partnership or this fellow David Brower and I doubt anyone else has either. But I have heard of this guy:
I’ve decided that I’m going to give out The Tim McVeigh awards (we’ll call them the “Timmies”) this year, for the bomb builders who receive all that love from the multi-millionaire crackpot revolutionaries on the Right like Glenn Beck. I’m going to need a stockpile.
I nominate this guy for the first “Timmie” of 2010:
GLENN: Nice to meet you, sir. Tell me, tell me your thoughts on progressivism.
PAUL RYAN: Right. What I have been trying to do, and if you read the entire Oklahoma speech or read my speech to Hillsdale College that they put in there on Primus Magazine, you can get them on my Facebook page, what I’ve been trying to do is indict the entire vision of progressivism because I see progressivism as the source, the intellectual source for the big government problems that are plaguing us today and so to me it’s really important to flush progressives out into the field of open debate.
GLENN: I love you.
PAUL RYAN: So people can actually see what this ideology means and where it’s going to lead us and how it attacks the American idea.
GLENN: Okay. Hang on just a second. I ‑‑ did you see my speech at CPAC?
PAUL RYAN: I’ve read it. I didn’t see it. I’ve read it, a transcript of it.
GLENN: And I think we’re saying the same thing. I call it ‑‑
PAUL RYAN: We are saying the same thing.
GLENN: It’s a cancer.
PAUL RYAN: Exactly.
[…]
GLENN: Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. I mean, I don’t think I’ve heard a politician, really, I’m looking at my producers. Have we had a politician on this show since when, when we first met Santorum maybe, maybe. DeMint is really, really good but I don’t know anybody, not even Santorum, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody ‑‑ I need to find out more about you, Paul. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody ‑‑
PAT: Nobody’s articulated progressivism like that.
GLENN: ‑‑that is articulating the problem in this country and knows what the root is like you have…Paul, tonight and for the next five nights I am going to be softening the ground. I am laying out an idea of cutting the budget, doing what we did in 1920 after the first progressive ‑‑
PAUL RYAN: Yeah, Calvin Coolidge, sure.
GLENN: And I’m going to cut the ‑‑ show America that the budget can be cut by 50%. It’s going to cause pain, but it has to. It has to be cut or we die. And show a way that we can reduce taxes to be ‑‑ do what Georgia did to Russia. Just keep lowering the taxes.
PAUL RYAN: Right.
GLENN: So they could survive. We need to do that. And I’m telling you that it’s ‑‑ I’ve been telling the audience it’s going to be wildly unpopular. You are going to hate me by the end of the week because everybody will experience pain. But man, I’ve got to tell ya, I’m not running for anything. If you can get people in Washington to actually stand up and say, I mean, I’ll soften the ground and show people why it has to be cut, but we’ve got to cut this and we need somebody with a spine in Washington that will stand up. I’m ‑‑ boy, I hope I don’t find out ‑‑ you are not like a dirt bag, are you?
PAUL RYAN: Yeah, right.
GLENN: I just don’t want to find out, oh, jeez.
PAUL RYAN: Look, I ‑‑
GLENN: You don’t know Eliot Spitzer ‑‑
PAUL RYAN: No.
GLENN: Or anything like that, right?
PAUL RYAN: I’m not running for president. I’m not trying to be somebody else. I’m not trying to be somebody I’m not. I’m not running for president. I’m a ranking member of the budget committee. You know, my background is in economics. That’s my aptitude…
GLENN: God bless you.
PAUL RYAN: ‑‑ that has been certified by the CBO as doing what I say it does.
GLENN: Okay.
PAUL RYAN: So I encourage you to take a look at it.
GLENN: I will. Paul, and I would like to stay in touch with you. I appreciate your correcting my error and I apologize for that.
PAUL RYAN: Sounds good.
GLENN: Appreciate it. You bet. Bye‑bye. Oh, my gosh.
PAT: You weren’t already married, I think you would have proposed to him.
GLENN: Oh, my gosh.
PAT: I think you would have proposed to him then. I saw the look in your eye.
GLENN: You know what it is? You know what it is? Hope, why, because someone knows the truth and knows how to articulate it.
PAT: He really does and did. That was really good.
GLENN: Let me ask you something. Let me ask you something. I said that my time would be done when I found somebody else that would articulate it.
PAT: I think you are in the clear.
GLENN: Can I go home now? Can I go home?
If that isn’t an award winning interview, I don’t know what is. Congratulations Congressman Ryan for winning the first ever Tim Mcveigh Soul Mate Award for making common cause with a barking mad wingnut freak. It’s quite an honor. He must be so proud.
Is Obama’s Wall Street speech supposed to be some kind of Sista Soljah moment? If so, is that a good idea? I suppose it is if you think it’s good that people perceive Obama as a friend of bankers who can give them a little scold and they’ll feel chagrined enough to do better.
Oh well, I guess the impression that he’s in the belly of the beast telling his friends that they are going to have to change their ways is better than nothing. But I think this would have been more politically useful if he actually went in their faces or if he’d given the same speech before a different audience. This avuncular approach seems more designed to make sure Wall Street doesn’t stop donating to the Democratic Party than anything else.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the fuss Wall Street’s putting up isn’t quite as sincere as one might believe. They don’t like it, of course, but they aren’t so lost in their arrogance that they don’t know on some level that they’ve gotten off easy. After all, they’re still in business, generating billion dollar bonuses. It’s all good.
Man oh man. It is truly galling when liberals use stupid rightwing cliches to bash their own. Case in point.* This is a review of In The Green Kitchen which looks like a very interesting, and very necessary, new book by Alice Waters. The book teaches basic skills, the kinds of skills that used to be taken for granted within families but which, for many reasons (including the fact that it is in Big Food’s financial interest to sell us overpriced shit rather than real food), many people no longer know how to do. Like boil water for pasta, or make eggs. I certainly could have used that 1 1/2 years ago when I first started cooking seriously every day and it probably still has a lot of stuff I could use.
This is all well and good, and the reviewer makes a good point about why eggs that cost 50 cents each at a farmers market are worth every penny. She also notes, quite rightly, that many people are surely intimidated by the fancy schmancy cooking of shows like Bottom Chef or whatever they’re called and decide cooking is too hard.
But then we get this:
And foodies. Do they feed families? Do they struggle to plan meals in the midst of soccer practice, homework and commutes? No, they can sit around, sip their wine, and consider their ingredients. If they do not have the 1/8 teaspoon of Aleppo pepper they need, they can just change their plans and go out for sushi.
I’m a beginner it is true, but I find the preparation of food, and eating it, a source of tremendous pleasure. I want the food I eat – all of it – to be not acceptable, not good, but wonderful. Why? Because it is so much fun and I get tremendous pleasure from it, as do the people I cook for – my family and close friends being the most typical victims diners.
So for the purpose of this discussion I’ll accept the label foodie.** Now, to answer her questions:
Yes, this foodie feeds his family. Every night, usually.
Do I struggle to plan meals in the midst of work and other family obligations? Hell fucking yes.
No, I don’t sit around sipping my wine while I consider my ingredients. I do that whenever I’m not working. Consider my ingredients, that is, not sip wine.
And yes, if I don’t have the ingredients I need I don’t make the dish. But fuck no, I don’t go out for sushi. I make something else.
What I’m doing is not elitism. It is pride in craft. Not only will I not apologize for caring about what I do – and I mean really caring – I deeply resent being stupidly caricatured with the clear implication that I shouldn’t care about excellence. And what if I did sit around calmly considering what I’d make for my family over a glass of wine? What the fuck is wrong with that? Since when is calm consideration something to sneer at?
This is a false dichotomy. There is no difference in kind between the skills I am learning/practicing/using and the skills and techniques both she and Alice Waters believe Americans need to recapture. I choose, out of passionate interest, to set very high standards for my cooking, but that hardly conflicts – let alone disparages – the thoroughly compatible goals of preparing simple food. Just the opposite. They are identical goals. Like most foodies I know, most of the food I cook consists of great ingredients prepared in a simple fashion. Doing that well requires devotion to craft. That is hardly showing off or affectation. (And what the fuck is Aleppo pepper anyhow? And where can I get some?)
If STELLAA wants to bash genuine elitists, she should start with the wealthy conservatives like George Bush who eat organics but provide tax breaks, subsidies, and special favors to the conventional food industry. These elitists have made it possible for the wealthy factory food owners to afford never to have to eat the slop they sell.
Stop doing the rightwing’s work for them. Every single foodie I know works like a dog, the vast majority are best described as solidly middle-class, not by a long shot are they all highly educated, none are wealthy, yet we still find the time to obsess about food AND feed our families.
Bush, Monsanto, Cargill, Smithfield – those are the elitists you need to sneer at. We’re on your side, STELLAA, and certainly on Alice Waters’. Leave foodies alone.
—-
*Yes, I know it’s a trivial example and it’s just a review of a cookbook, for crissakes. There are far more egregious examples of liberal self-hate than this one.
No kidding. That’s my point. We have become so inured to arguing the way the rightwing wants us to argue, to split our natural coalitions, that we can’t even recognize it when we’re doing it. Here, the reviewer buys into a rightwing trope of the Volvo driving, latte sipping, sushi snarfing liberal elitist. Nonsense. Caring passionately about food and wanting to make it as good as you can is not elitist. It’s about excelling at a craft. There are few liberal values as fundamental as this one. To disparage excellence and shame at one’s achievements is what conservatives do to sneer and dismiss liberal competence.
I often focus on micro-examples of rotten rhetoric like this one because the larger problems are patently obvious. Or should be. Examples like the one here fly beneath the radar but collectively they hold us back from effective advocacy of liberal values.
** With absolute perfect pitch, liberals have self-chosen yet another foolishly self-deprecating label that conservatives will hang around our necks (“politicaly incorrect” originated in liberal circles as a kind of amusing nudge that something may not meet all the social criteria we might like, but it didn’t matter that much, as in, “Pass that politically incorrect bottle of Scotch my way!”). I’ll use the term here only because it’s easier in this particular context. Since I have no intention of belittling my enjoyment of anything I get so much deep pleasure from, from now on, I will describe those of us who make an effort to cook and eat well as “people who care about food,” or something similar.
A leading conservative Roman Catholic bishop in Germany has written to Pope Benedict XVI offering to resign amid persistent allegations of physical abuse and financial misconduct, the Augsburg Diocese said Thursday…
[Bishop Walter Mixa] has been accused of hitting children while a priest decades ago. He initially denied ever using violence against youngsters, but later acknowledged he may have slapped children.
Although the case does not involve any allegations of sexual abuse, Mixa has been a key member of Germany’s Bishops Conference for more than a decade and his initial denial of physical violence fueled frustration among German Catholics that the church appeared to be unwilling to come clean on the issue of abuse.
Adding to Mixa’s troubles, a special investigator has found financial irregularities at a children’s home under his responsibility around the same time as the allegations of abuse.
And may he be only the first.
UPDATE: Here’s another one who should resign. And yes, the Paulus Institute, whatever its numerous faults and stupidities might be (an organization described as “conservative Catholic” sounds like we would, shall we say, disagree about just about fucking everything*), deserves credit for disinviting this creepy creep.
*Just about everything, but not everything. I love the traditional Mass and, because of the insipid music, I think the modern one isn’t as evocative and awe-inspiring. I just wish it hadn’t become a rightwing obsession.
I don’t know what the hell she was going on about, but it was very strange. Even stranger, the wingnuts are all taking this as evidence that Joan is really, really stupid like Sarah Palin when she couldn’t name what papers she reads.
What am I missing here? Joan asks who on the left is the equivalent of Rush and Beck and Mika morphs into one of those mean girls who bullied that that little girl into suicide. Who are these “obvious” leftwing extremists (“beep, beep, beep”) that Joan was supposed to have been calling out? Code Pink? Che’s corpse? Are any of them declaring that we are on the cusp of the Fourth Reich and comparing Sarah Palin to vermin? More importantly, have any of them had the leaders of the Democratic party come groveling at their feet begging for absolution?
I honestly don’t know what that whole thing was about and from the look on Joan’s face, neither did she. Whatever it was, it was very, very rude and Brzezinski owes Walsh an apology.
Update:Joan has written about this and she links to Newsbusters which offers these names as the left wing equivalents to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck:
Rosie O’Donnell
Mike Malloy
Bill “The Bomber” Ayers
Mrs. Bill “The Bomber” Ayers
Van Jones
Dylan Ratigan
Rachel Maddow
Keith Olbermann
Keith Olbermann
Keith Olbermann
What, no Dixie Chicks?
But hey, I’ll bite. I hereby admonish Rosie, Mike (is he still around?) Bill “the bomber” and Mrs Bill “the Bomber,” Van, Dylan, Rachel and Keith for their extreme rhetoric.
Now maybe The Left will disband all their militias, stop all their death threats, stubble the revolutionary rhetoric and accept the fact that democracy means they have to accept majority rule. In fact, now that I’ve called out our “leaders”, I’ll bet it will be as if all that stuff never happened.
Zero Water, which makes water filters, advertises on Glenn Beck, according to Media Matters. That is their right. It is also your right to tell them what you think about that. Go here.
