It’s Not “Free Trade” When Union Members are Murdered
Call your Congressman, and ask them to vote against a free trade deal with Columbia, where more union activists are murdered than in the rest of the world combined.
Without the right to organize, and government enforcement against management thugs, Columbia is subsidizing the labor costs of business.
Congressional Democrats have just caved to Republicans on a tax to make banks pay for their next bailout:
Democrats on Tuesday planned to strip out a controversial tax from their landmark financial reform bill in order to win the swing votes needed to pass it through Congress.
With crucial Republican moderates threatening to withdraw their support, Democrats were weighing alternative ways to fund the most sweeping rewrite of the Wall Street rulebook since the 1930s.
Though a supposedly final version of the bill had been hammered out last week, Democrats in charge of the process called a fresh negotiating session, which got under way shortly after 5 p.m. EDT Tuesday.
Democratic lawmakers and aides said they planned to remove a $17.9 billion tax on large financial institutions. Instead, they would cover most of the bill’s costs by shutting down a $700 billion bank-bailout program.
Except, of course, that the next time that a big bank needs a bailout, they would get one.
Why Dems aren’t using ‘Phants coziness with the banks as a club with which to hit them is beyond me, except, of course, for the fact that President Hopey-Changey wants to have something on his desk soon, even if it sucks wet farts from dead pigeons.
Once again, keep Obama away from toilet paper, because he will sign anything.
The House of Representatives just passed another home buyer tax credit extension.
Now, it’s off to the Senate, where, like all bad ideas, it will become law.
My assesment of the financial reform bill that recently was released by the conference committee.
It’s better than I had hoped when the Senate first got its hands on it, but it is dangerously weak.
And here’s a surprise, it doesn’t have Blanche Lincoln’s derivatives restrictions, which is not surprising, that entire proposal was part of the incumbent protection in the US Congress, and with Lincoln having won the primary, it gets deep sixed.
Brian Buetler looks at and calls it a draw between liberals and the corruption caucus, but that’s only if you ignore the fact that the liberals had already ceded meaningful reform to the corruption caucus (and the WH, but I am repeating myself) early in this process.
It looks like my extended unemployment benefits , as well as those of a few million wanting-to-be-working Americans, will expire as Congress rushes out the door to take their vacation recess:
The House of Representatives Friday was to vote on a reduced package of safety-net spending and tax measures that would raise taxes on fund managers, but it likely was too late to avoid disrupting jobless benefits for hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Democrats, who say the bill would lower the country’s 9.9 percent unemployment rate, had hoped it would clear Congress this week to ensure that jobless benefits and other safety-net provisions do not expire. But the Senate was set to leave town for a week-long break without taking action.
As a result, hundreds of thousands of jobless Americans will probably lose the weekly payments that help them cover their bills as they look for work in a sluggish economy.
Congressional wrangling has delayed such benefits at least four times in the past year. Democrats say they will restore the benefits when they return in early June.
To whoever is slow walking this, and to whoever is letting them slow walk this, “Go Cheney Yourself.”
And then they weaken it significantly.
In this case, the White House is now behind repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell this year, because it’s clear that it’s going to hit the floor of the House, and probably the Senate, and while they have been fighting against this behind the scenes, Obama and His Minions™ don’t want to fight against this in public.
The thing is, in order to get Obama’s tepid support, they have created a repeal of DADT that does not repeal DADT:
Discussions around what that repeal measure would include were ongoing as Levin continued to lobby his colleagues. But a couple concessions designed to pacify Gates were being considered: allowing the Pentagon to complete its study before implementation proceeded and potentially requiring a stamp of approval (e.g. a certification letter) from military leadership and/or the president.
But by the time repeal advocates were invited to the White House on Monday morning to be briefed on a new compromise, a third concession had been added. There would be no nondiscrimination mandate. In other words, even after the law is repealed, it will not be replaced at any point with a policy that explicitly states gays and lesbians are allowed to serve openly in the military.
So, the repeal of DADT is just putting the policy back in the hands of Barack Obama, who will doubtless delegate to Robert Gates, who appears to be the most hostile person to gays serving currently working in the Pentagon.
Not feeling hopey changey.
The White House has come out against letting auto dealers cheat their customers.
To quote the first few ‘graphs of the official statement:
Later this afternoon, the Senate will vote on a motion to instruct conferees on the Brownback Amendment. That basically means members of the Senate will cast a nonbinding vote on whether or not they think the House and Senate conferees should consider carving out a loophole for auto dealers that make auto loans from the financial reform bill.
The President has been clear on this issue, repeatedly urging members of the Senate to fight efforts of the special interests and their lobbyists to weaken consumer protections. The fact is, auto dealer-lending is an $850 billion industry, which is larger than the entire credit card industry and they make nearly 80 percent of the automobile loans in our country.
Is there any question that these lenders should be subject to the same standards as any local or community bank that provides loans?
This is the right thing to do.
The Dutch Parliament has voted to cancel its procurement of the F-35 Lightning II JSF (also here):
Proposal 1 (SP):
The government not be permitted to contract any new obligations with the JSF programProposal 2 (Labour)
Cancelling the contract for the First LRIP3 test aircraft and get the money back from the US for the long lead items. Not buying/ signing contract for the Second LRIP4 test aircraft. Cancelling the participation in the MOU-IOT&E (Initial Operational Test and Evaluation)Proposal 3 (Green Left)
Because the Evaluations of the F16 replacement in 2002 and in 2008 were based on wrong estimates and unreliable data, there needs to be a new evaluation done with new RFPs (Requests for Proposal).All three proposals were approved by the Netherlands Parliament.
The Dutch were perhaps the heavily involved nation after the British on this program, and the fact that these motions passed, at least passed a 1st reading is telling.
This happened because the MPs believe that they program is late and over budget to such a degree that any program of offsets or technology transfer does not matter because the cost and schedule issues puts them in a situation with a hollow force that they cannot afford to actually operate the aircraft, or, for that matter, their military.
They understand the budget requirements of the Euro zone, and they realize that they are not willing to cut their social safety net, among the most generous in Europe, to support mindless wasteful military spending.
The Democrats in the New Jersey statehouse have passed a bill to raise income taxes on people earning more than $1 million a year, and predictably, the wingnut governor is promising a veto:
Lawmakers in New Jersey’s Democrat- controlled Assembly voted to raise income taxes on residents earning at least $1 million a year, as Republican Governor Chris Christie said he’d veto the bill.
The chamber passed the measure 46-32 in a vote that broke down along party lines. Of 33 Republicans, 32 voted no. The Senate approved the bill 23-17 along party lines, setting up a showdown with Christie, 47, as the deadline approaches to have a balanced budget in place when the fiscal year ends on June 30.
“We’ve got a lot of people who can’t afford to pay their taxes” and need the rebates that the measure may restore, Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver said before the vote. “Six- hundred thousand older adults would be better off.”
So now you have the Democrats lining up against Goldman Sachs traders, who get paid obscene amounts to screw their clients and other counter-parties with the guarantee of taxpayer money should they fail.
The optics are perfect, and the policy of making the wealthy pay for the damage that they cause, which has the side effect of providing a less recessionary impact on the state economy, is just plain good policy.
This is a win-win, and Dems should jam up Republicans like this more often.
The Senate passes the Financial Reform Bill.
The banks must be relieved. If the bill had been delayed any further, it would have gotten tougher.
It was a Pizarro world bill in a good way.
Unfortunately, I don’t see it getting any tougher in conference.
Cantwell of Washington and Feingold of Wisconsin continued to vote against cloture, but Republicans Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, and as well as Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who voted against cloture yesterday, voted for cloture, and with Harry Reid switching his vote, it means that the debate has been ended on the bill, and it can proceed to a vote.
It’s better than the status quo, but still crappy, which is what Barack Obama would call “post partisan,” I guess.
The vote was 57-42 against cloture, with Democrats Maria Cantwell of Washington and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin voting against cloture,* and Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine, voted for cloture, with Specter not yet back in the Senate.
Cantwell and Feingold are right here: They have been refused a vote on a number of important amendments and other issues, most notably:
It’s nice that some progressives have shown that they are willing to show teeth.
With Republicans coming to realize just how loathed Wall Street is, and realizing that Blanche Lincoln’s reelection driven decision to get rough on the banks has triggered a dynamic which makes the bill more extreme as time goes on, as opposed to the usual process of bills getting emasculated in the Senate.
Every day that goes by, it gets for any Republican and corporatist Democrat who is standing for reelection this year finds it harder and harder do do Wall Street’s bidding.
I think that after a few more days of delay, they’ll end up finding a way to break up the big banks.
*Harry Reid voted against cloture too, but that is so he can offer a motion to reconsider, allowing for revote.
If Blanche Lincoln had won the primary outright last night, then her proposal to require that banks separate themselves from their swap desks would be dead, and the bullet would have been Chris Dodd’s proposal, which was to defer implementation for a year for a ‘study’, and then let Timothy “Eddie Haskell as Wall Street’s Bitch” Giethner decide whether it was necessary.
We all know what Geithner would do.
But Lincoln is going to a runoff, and her opponent, Bill Halter, is already saying that this is exactly what she planned, that she would make the proposal, but would let it die once it was politically convenient.
So, Chris Dodd has decided not to introduce the “kill the regulation” amendment.
My guess is that he got a frantic call from Lincoln this morning, begging him to wait until after the June 8 runoff, and so the dynamics of the Congressional incumbency protection racket dictates that he pull the amendment off the table ……… At least until June 9.
As some of you are aware, the bulk of hedge fund managers’ income is taxed at the capital gains rate of 15%, rather than the 35% on amounts in the 6+ figure range that mere mortals pay.
Basically, they get a slice of the increase in price of their assets, even though they never put a dime of their own money in. It’s called “Carried Interest.”
Well, it appears that both Max Baucus (DINO-MT), who slowed down healthcare refiorm waiting for non-existent republicans to come on board, and Barack Obama’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orzag, have decided that it would be a good think to put a stake through the heart of this loophole in the interest of deficit reduction.
The money quote is this:
Hedge fund managers make hundreds of millions of dollars (and often billions) annually. Does anyone really think they will suddenly slam on the brakes if they have to pay the same tax rate as the janitors who clean their offices?
This makes this both good policy and good politics………For the win.
Byron Dorgan, who has not only been a strong advocate for financial reform, but predicted 15 years ago the clusterf%$# that would occur from Robert Rubin’s vision of finance, has proposed an amendment to the finance reform that would ban Naked (i.e. an insurance policy in which you bet on your neighbor‘s house burning down) Credit Default Swaps.
It appears now that the Senate leadership will not allow this amendment to be voted on, so the distinguished gentleman from North Dakota is threatening a filibuster:
In the Senate Democratic Caucus meeting today, Dorgan and other progressive senators pressed the leadership to allow their amendments to strengthen the bill to come to a vote. According to Dorgan, the leadership relented and said his amendment would be one of the ones to come to a vote.
But tonight, as Brian Beutler reports, when the list of amendments to be voted on was released, Dorgan’s was not among them. A frustrated Dorgan approached Dodd and Majority Leader Harry Reid on the floor this evening and told them he would filibuster financial reform if his amendment doesn’t get a vote. “I understand everybody thinks their amendment’s important, but the question of the unbelievable speculation in credit default swaps that have no insurable interest — if we can’t vote on something like that, given what we’ve seen in recent years, then it’s not really financial reform,” Dorgan told us.
I keep quoting the same article, which notes that specuilative insurance was recognized as a very bad thing 3264 years ago:
In 1746, Parliament passed the Marine Insurance Act, requiring anyone seeking to collect on an insurance contract to have an interest in the continued existence of the insured property. Thus was born the insured-interest doctrine. The indemnity doctrine, which precludes a buyer from insuring property for more than it’s worth, soon followed. The point of these rules is to limit insurance contracts to trading existing risks and not to create new risks by giving buyers of insurance incentive to destroy property. The doctrines have been part of insurance law in both England and the United States (which in 1746 were colonies under English common law) ever since.
But the masters of the universe who nearly killed us all insist that they know better.
Well, they don’t and they should not be listened to, because their interest is purely in their creating ways for them to make money, and if they crash the financial system every 20 years, well, they’ve got theirs.
The reason that Dorgan is not getting his vote is because the reform is so transparently the right thing to do: Just ask the average voter if their neighbor, the creepy one who seems to have strange visitors, should be able to take out insurance on that average voter’s house, so that the creep gets paid when the voter’s house gets burnt down mysteriously.
They won’t allow the vote because the bankers do not want it, and because if it comes up for a vote, they will have to pass it, because it is so transparently the right thing to do.
It’s enough to make me root for the “medicine for chickens” lady to beat Harry Reid in his reelection bid.
Remember when I said that Blanche Lincoln’s ambitious proposal to regulate banks was intended to fail?
I said that it was just a reelection ploy in a tight primary election.
Well, the US Senate is proving me right:
But they [Senate leadership, the Obama administration, etc.] may have gotten themselves stuck with it–at least for now. With their assent, the plan was authored by Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), who designed it to guard her left flank against a somewhat formidable primary challenge, and has been boasting of it on populist grounds for weeks. And that according to Republican and Democratic Senate sources, has led Democrats to quietly agree to postpone any changes they decide to make to her proposal until After this Tuesday’s election has passed, to avoid embarrassing her in front of voters.
(emphasis original)
Lincoln pushed it out of committee knowing that it would be shredded by the Senate leadership.
She just wanted someone else to be the villain, preferably on Wednesday, May 19, or a few days after that.
If there is anything that you can depend on, it is that whatever bill goes through Congress, it will either be killed, or weakened significantly.
Well, it appears that the reform of financial regulation is actually getting better and stronger in the Senate, which has added:
Seriously, I think that people inside the DC Beltway are beginning to realize just how unpopular the finance industry is, and the Senate is moving this way, because it wasn’t quite so obvious when the House passed the bill.
That being said, there were still things that show that Washington, DC is still the same as it ever was, specifically that they are looking to create a carve out for an industry that is notorious for cheating consumers, car dealers:
A measure under consideration in the Senate would shield auto dealers from a package of proposed financial rules aimed at protecting consumers.
Currently auto dealers are regulated by a host of state and federal consumer protection rules that prohibit practices such as “bait and switch” lending and loans packed with undisclosed extras such as extended warranties.
This is hardly surprising.
Car dealers are, as a whole, perceived by the public as an unsavory and dishonest lot, and so they have have consciously inserted themselves into government and elections as much as is possible, spreading largess, and making them patrons of politicians from dog catcher to Senator.
To his credit, and my surprise, Barack Obama is against exempting car dealers from the consumer financial protection agency.
And it’s pretty clear that Bernie Sanders gave too much up, because the vote was unanimous.
If he could not get even 10 Republicans, and 3 Corporate-Democrats, to vote against it, it is clearly too lenient.
I’d like to see it fixed in conference committee, but I doubt it, since Barack Obama and His Evil Minions™ will be doing a full court press against that.
Dean Baker, co-director of the CRPR, looks at the deal that Bernie Sanders cut with Chris Dodd, and declares it a victory for the little guy and a big step to making the Federal Reserve accountable, though he does also note the downside of the compromises:
Sanders did make some compromises. The audit has an arbitrary cutoff date of December 2007. The special facilities date from the summer of 2007. It also only has the audit as a one-off proposition, rather than establishing GAO audits of Fed operations as an ongoing principle. The compromise also explicitly exempts open market operations – the Fed’s daily buying and selling of short-term assets to control interest rates – from GAO scrutiny.
These concessions are unfortunate, the Fed is a creation of Congress and for that reason it should be subject to the same investigative procedures as any other federal agency, but they certainly are secondary compared with getting a full accounting of the money lent out through the special facilities. It is also important to note that in one very important way the Sanders compromise goes beyond the original Paul-Grayson language. Under the compromise, the information about the lending facilities will be made fully public where everyone can scrutinize it. The original bill would just have this information made available to the relevant congressional committees. They would then have to make a further decision about what information, if any, would be made public.
My guess is that the December, 2007 cutoff date is not “arbitrary”, and that even as we speak, the Fed is frantically backdating transactions to November 2007, but if this is a step in the process, then it appears to be a good thing.
Previous post here.
We have the good:
The bad:
And the confusing:
The audit sought by Mr. Sanders would scrutinize an alphabet soup of programs that injected liquidity into the markets, ranging from commercial paper to money market funds. Under the proposal, the accountability office will not question whether the loans should have been made but will focus on operational integrity and accounting practices.
The audit, however, would explore “whether the credit facility inappropriately favors one or more specific participants over other institutions eligible to utilize the facility” and “whether there were conflicts of interest with respect to the manner in which such facility was established or operated.”
It appears that Obama/Geithner/Summers still oppose the audit provision, and are implying that they might consider such a provision worthy of a veto.
As I’ve said before, Summers wants to be Fed chair, so he hates it, Geithner is afraid of being forced to resign in disgrace or of criminal prosecution, and they have Obama’s ear,* so we continue to here noise from the White House in support of opacity as policy.
*But remember, the Cossacks work for the Czar.