Tag: Congress

One Candidate Won’t Win, and One Candidate Shouldn’t Win

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The Kentucky primary has now been called, as has the Colorado primary, and Amy McGrath has been declared the victor in Kentucky and John Hickenlooper the victor in Colorado.

McGrath is a hot mess, her performance during the debates, her paralysis over policing protests, and her statements on policy had her almost losing the primary despite raising over $40 million.

Her performance has one longing for the inept Alison Lundergan Grimes who was trounced the last time that McConnell was up for reelection.

Still, with lots of money, I’m sure that the consultants will make bank on this, even if Moscow Mitch remains a cancer on the US Senate.

As to Hickenlooper, this is a man who equated climate change activism and Medicare for All to Stalinism, and demonstrated his fealty to the fossil fuel industry by literally drinking a glass of fracking fluid.

And then there are his ethical and rhetorical lapses.  (He was fined by the state ethics commission)

Colorado has become fairly reliably blue on a statewide level, so Hickenlooper is likely to win, particularly since Corey Gardner is seriously wing-nutty, but, should he win, he will be an impediment to any and all progress on the major issues of the day.

It’s Come to This

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Congress is looking to returning to fines and imprisonment for witnesses who refuse to testify before oversight committees. (Mostly fines)

This really has not been done in about 75 years, but the increasing assertions of the “Unitary Executive” and the complete capture of the Department of Justice by Donald Trump, leaves only “Inherent Contempt” as alternative:

House Democrats increasingly frustrated by the Trump administration for defying subpoenas are proposing legislation that would ratchet up their power to punish executive branch officials who reject their requests.

 Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), and five other members of the House Judiciary Committee, unveiled a rule change Monday to formalize and expand Congress’ power of “inherent contempt” — its authority to unilaterally punish anyone who defies a subpoena for testimony or documents.

 Though Congress has long had inherent contempt power, it has been in disuse since before World War II. This power, upheld by courts, has included the ability to levy fines and even jail witnesses who refuse to cooperate with congressional demands.

 ………

 [California Democrat Ted] Lieu’s proposal only focuses on monetary penalties. It would establish a process for negotiations between Congress and executive branch officials when disputes arise over testimony and records. The measure would allow federal agencies to lodge objections to congressional requests, and it would permit the president to weigh in and assert any applicable privileges. The measure would also establish a process for holding recalcitrant officials in contempt, including hearings before the full House in which the subject would be permitted to present a defense and would face questions from lawmakers on the House floor.
 If the House supports contempt after such a proceeding, it would then vote a second time to impose a financial penalty of up to $25,000. The penalty would be delayed for 20 days to allow for continued negotiations before subsequent penalties may be imposed up to an aggregate of $100,000. The measure would also bar taxpayer dollars from being used to cover any fines assessed through this mechanism.

I would note that while this is rather aggressive by the standards of recent history, but given the level of  disdain shown by recent Presidents in general, and the Trump administration in particular, to Congressional oversight, this is weak tea.

Times Endorses Jamaal Bowman

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The New York Times just announced its Congressional endorsements, and they just endorsed Jamaal Bowman over incumbent Eliot Engel:

………

DISTRICT 16 (northern parts of the Bronx and southern half of Westchester County, including Mt. Vernon, Yonkers, New Rochelle and Rye): The current representative — Eliot Engel — has been in Congress since 1989, and his connections to the district seem to have frayed.

He was criticized for not returning home even as the coronavirus raged through communities he represents, particularly New Rochelle. When he did return for this race, he was caught on a hot mic pushing for a chance to speak during a protest rally, saying, “If I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care.”

His main challenger is Jamaal Bowman, an educator for more than 20 years and a fierce advocate for public schools. Mr. Bowman helped found a public middle school in the Bronx, the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, and promises to work for all of the district, including sections he says have been neglected during Mr. Engel’s time in Congress.

Mr. Bowman says he wants to see the United States adopt a kind of Marshall Plan for climate change, jobs, housing and education. “We need political imagination,” he said. In a district that needs new energy, Mr. Bowman will bring it.

I’m beginning to think that Bowman is less of a long shot than I thought when I wrote about this 11 days ago.

It’s important to remember that primary challenges are important even when they fail, and a relatively low success rate is a given.

Dan Lipinski has already been taken out this election cycle, and if Engel is taken down, it will put fear in the hearts of a lot of Democratic Party incumbents.

Good.

H/T Diane Ravitch.

Some People Only Live to Hate

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Case in point, the Liberty Counsel, a right wing Christo-Fascist group who is trying to get all references to the LGBTQ from the anti-lynching bill in the Senate, because without their hate, they would have nothing.

Congress is finally close to passing a bill that makes lynching a hate crime — but an evangelical group is trying to remove any reference to LGBTQ communities from the legislation.

When the Senate unanimously passed the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act in December, it marked an important step in a roughly century-long effort to outlaw the practice at the federal level. But before the House begins considering its version of the legislation, the Liberty Counsel, an evangelical litigation group, is calling for the bill to be stripped of language that refers to gender identity or sexual orientation.

It’s no wonder that the SPLC has labeled the group a hate group some time back.

That’s pretty much their entire reason for existence.

Only the Moderate Democrats Want the Surveillance State

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My guess is that so-called “Moderate Democrats” are the only ones who want an expansive FISA renewal because they are the ones who get the big bucks from members of the US state security apparatus and and their corporate profiteers.

We now have Donald Trump, the most right Republicans in the House, and progressive Democrats are cooperating to shut down the FISA renewal, while the Democratic leadership is determined to make sure that there the intelligence-industrial complex gets what they want.

What can I say, but “Puck Felosi”.  This needs to stop:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and top Democrats postponed a vote on Wednesday to reauthorize key parts of the federal surveillance program known as FISA, after an 11th hour revolt by Republicans and progressive Democrats.

 Democrats have not decided when or if they will take up the bill. The legislation had broad bipartisan support in the Senate, but lost support from GOP lawmakers after sudden resistance from President Donald Trump and the Justice Department.

 “We haven’t made that decision,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said in an interview late Wednesday as he left Pelosi’s office.

 It was clear for much of Wednesday that Democrats lacked the votes, with few, if any, Republicans willing to buck Trump and his veto threat. Without them, the House’s delicate coalition fractured and Democrats found themselves without the support to pass it on their own. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, which has roughly 100 members, formally opposed the bill, virtually guaranteeing that Democrats would need GOP votes.

………

The latest rupture began over a proposal by Wyden to block the FBI from collecting the web browsing data of Americans. Wyden’s plan failed by a single vote in the Senate, but Lofgren negotiated with House leaders to bring it up for a House vote when the chamber considered the broader bill.

But Lofgren also negotiated a deal with House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff to tweak the language to narrow the restrictions on the FBI, a deal that infuriated Wyden and left him and other progressives calling for the defeat of the measure.

By, “Narrow the restrictions,” they mean, “Emasculate.”

The FBI, and the CIA, and the rest of these three letter organizations have no interest in protecting your civil rights, and they will go to whatever line we set, and cross that line if they think that they can get away with it, but folks like Pelosi and Hoyer don’t care, they just want their money for their PACs.

Of Course They Are

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Republicans are looking to use the next Covid-19 stimulus to gut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid:

A proposal by Sen. Mitt Romney to establish congressional committees with the specific goal of crafting legislative “solutions” for America’s federal trust fund programs has reportedly resurfaced in GOP talks over the next Covid-19 stimulus package, sparking alarm among progressive advocates who warn the Utah Republican’s bill is nothing but a stealth attack on Social Security and Medicare.

Politico’s Burgess Everett reported Wednesday that Romney’s TRUST Act, first introduced last October with the backing of a bipartisan group of senators, “is getting a positive reception from Senate Republicans” in coronavirus relief discussions, which are still in their early stages. The legislation, Everett noted, “could become part of the mix” for the next Covid-19 stimulus as Republicans once again claim to be concerned about the growing budget deficit.

Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM), told Common Dreams in an interview that he is not at all surprised to see Romney’s bill crop up again and said it should be diligently opposed.

………

“Social Security is the piggy bank that Republicans seem to go to whenever it dawns on them that we’ve gotta do something about the debt,” Richtman said, “notwithstanding the fact that they passed a huge tax cut that added trillions to the debt and benefited mostly wealthy individuals and corporations.”

………

Richtman warned that in the near future the public is likely “going to start hearing more and more” GOP proposals to cut Social Security under the guise of “entitlement reform” as the party suddenly rediscovers its concern for the mounting deficit.

“Obviously this is a way to push in cuts to Social Security and Medicare without leaving fingerprints, or not many fingerprints,” Richtman said of the TRUST Act.

………

Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, said in an emailed statement to Common Dreams that “at a time when current Republican policy is to let seniors die of Covid-19 by the tens of thousands without lifting a finger to help, it is beyond shameful that Mitt Romney’s focus is to rob those same older Americans of their earned Social Security and Medicare benefits.”

“Romney’s TRUST Act would create a fast-track, closed door commission to cut Social Security and Medicare,” Lawson said. “If Republicans cared about the American people, especially seniors, they’d be passing legislation to get PPE to essential workers, help the unemployed, and rush assistance to the nursing homes that are turning into death traps.”

“Instead,” Lawson added, “they are focused on using this pandemic as an excuse to gut our most popular and effective government programs.”


This is my Shocked Face

I am completely unsurprised that Republicans are using a national emergency to attempt to destroy Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

After all, this is pretty much what they do every time that they are confronted with an emergency and a must pass bill.

Republicans may be an unalloyed evil, but they own it.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizens

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The Senate has voted to allow warrantless collection of your web browsing history.

The US Senate has voted to give law enforcement agencies access to web browsing data without a warrant, dramatically expanding the government’s surveillance powers in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The power grab was led by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell as part of a reauthorization of the Patriot Act, which gives federal agencies broad domestic surveillance powers. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Steve Daines (R-MT) attempted to remove the expanded powers from the bill with a bipartisan amendment.

But in a shock upset, the privacy-preserving amendment fell short by a single vote after several senators who would have voted “Yes” failed to show up to the session, including Bernie Sanders. Nine Democratic senators also voted “No,” causing the amendment to fall short of the 60-vote threshold it needed to pass.

Yes, I am very disappointed that Sanders was not there to support the amendment, and mad as hell at the Democrats who voted against the the amendment to strip this from the bill.

Hopefully, Nancy Pelosi won’t ram it through the House.

Who am I kidding, OF COURSE Nancy Pelosi will ram it through the house.

Mixed Emotions

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It’s a big deal when the FBI formally serves a warrant to someone that they are investigation.

It’s an even bigger deal when they seize the phone of the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee:

Federal agents seized a cellphone belonging to a prominent Republican senator on Wednesday night as part of the Justice Department’s investigation into controversial stock trades he made as the novel coronavirus first struck the U.S., a law enforcement official said.

 Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, turned over his phone to agents after they served a search warrant on the lawmaker at his residence in the Washington area, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a law enforcement action.

It’s interesting, because authorization for this had to come from the most senior levels of the Department of Justice, meaning Attorney General William Barr, a man who has exhibited no interest whatsoever in pursuing this sort of corruption.

What’s more, there have been no similar serving of warrants to Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), who is objectively in an even more egregiously compromised position:

In late February and early March, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) sold stocks valued at between $1.25 million and $3.1 million in companies that later dropped significantly, including ExxonMobil. She also bought shares in Citrix, which makes telework software.

Loeffler, who was appointed to her seat to fill a vacancy and faces an election later this year, said after the sales became public that she and her husband would divest all individual stocks.

Why would William Barr do this when it is so out of character, and not go after the least senior member of the Senate?

Perhaps because Burr has temporarily stepped down as Chairman of the Intel Committee, and Burr has bee working to release a declassified version of his committee’s report of Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign:

………

The public evidence again Burr is quite damning, so there’s no question that this is a properly predicated investigation.

Still, coming from a DOJ that has gone to great lengths to protect other looting (and has not taken similar public steps against Kelly Loeffler), the move does raise questions.

Particularly given the focus that Richard Burr gave, during the John Ratcliffe confirmation hearing, to getting the final volume of the SSCI Report on 2016 declassified and released by August.

………

If Richard Burr is prepping to reverse his prior public comments about “collusion,” it might explain why the Bill Barr DOJ, which has stopped hiding that it is an instrument used to enforce political loyalty to Trump, would more aggressively investigate Burr than others.

Again, there’s no question that this is a properly predicated investigation. But in the Barr DOJ, properly predicated investigations about political allies of Trump all get quashed. This one has, instead, been aggressively and overtly pursued.

This is a political hit against a guilty man conducted by the most corrupt Attorney General in the history of the United States.

On the other hand, Burr is as guilty as hell.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

The Latest Right Wing Flying Monkey Panic

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Eric Arthur Blair, aka George Orwell has achieved high rotational momentum

Almost a year ago, the U.S. Judicial Conference Committee on Codes of Conduct announced that it was listing that the Federalist Society was explicitly an advocacy organization, (patently obvious) and so it was prohibited for sitting federal judges to attend their events.
Now, the right wingers dedicated to subverting fair trials and just in the United States are throwing a sh%$ fit over this:

The left doesn’t care about judges; the right does. If you want proof, look no further than a major campaign underway in conservative circles around a new ethics rule that could undercut the power of the Federalist Society. Haven’t heard of it? That’s the point.

The rule change, which was proposed by the ethical advisory arm of the federal judiciary and began circulating in January, would ban judges from being members of groups like the Federalist Society, the right-wing legal group that has been central to Trump’s transformation of the courts, and the American Constitution Society, a liberal legal group. It wouldn’t affect the ability to attend and participate in Federalist Society and American Constitution Society panels and events; the proposal simply says that active membership in these organizations is inconsistent with a judge’s ethical obligations. And conservatives are up in arms.

………

Twenty-nine Republican senators, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, sent a letter to the chair of the Committee on Codes of Conduct in March, urging they “withdraw this flawed draft opinion.” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., in a statement from his office, told National Review that it’s “wrong to target the Federalist Society,” calling the draft rule the “product of liberal smear campaign that will erode confidence in an independent and fair Judiciary.” Democratic senators, for the most part, have made no effort to publicly defend the rule or weigh in on the debate.

Shorter Ben Sasse, who is inadvertently channeling Groucho Marx, “Who ya gonna believe me or your own lying eyes?”

Needless to say, the rent-a-crowd is going insane over this.

In a World of Contemptible People, Nancy Pelosi Shines

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While Nancy Pelosi is studiously avoiding progressive proposals to help everyone, she is planning to extend bailout money to lobbying organizations.

Nancy Pelosi is using the shutdown of Congress to promulgate her agenda without a nod to progressives, and now she is trying to throw federal money to the lobbyists.

Seeing as how Pelosi has the first Democratic Party opponent in the general election in years, as a result of California’s jungle primary, it would be a very good time to donate to Shadid Buttar’s campaign.

I get that she’s an effective Speaker of the House, she knows how to count to 218, but she is a disgrace to the party:

………

Meanwhile, Pelosi has been talking about what she’ll add to the next bill, and it’s relatively unconstrained by wish lists. One of the elements is changing the eligibility standards for PPP small business loans to include 501(c)(4) and (c)(6) nonprofit organizations. You might know (c)(6) organizations by another name: lobbyists. Unbelievably, K Street has asked for a bailout and is on the road to getting it. I mean lobbyists are good at lobbying, I guess.

As far as I can tell, lobbyists have not stopped lobbying amid the crisis. There’s been a “frenzy” of lobbying around Mitch McConnell’s desire for a corporate liability shield from coronavirus-related lawsuits, for example. Why do high-powered lobby shops need a free $10 million per firm, exactly? Also, PPP will be out of money by the time any bill passes. Does tweaking eligibility signal giving more to this program, in part to just shovel money at lobbying firms?

Meanwhile, Jayapal’s bill to guarantee payroll support from the government for the duration of the crisis was “very worthy of consideration,” said Pelosi. That’s code for “nice work but it’s not getting in the bill.”

The House Democratic slogan is “for the people.” And that’s selectively true. Pelosi listens to some people, powerful people. And she pays lip service to others. She does this because she knows she can get away with it. There’s been essentially no dissent from those on the losing end of that equation. The House still doesn’t even have remote voting in place, and caucuses are doing Zoom calls rather than official hearings. Hundreds of members of Congress representing hundreds of millions of people have been disenfranchised. If there’s state and local government aid in a future bill (if it ever happens), progressives are going to shrug and support something with a lobbyist bailout in it. You can see it now.

Seriously, the members of her district need to toss her geriatric ass out of Congress.

Her policy of waiting until the Republicans f%$# up so badly that she gets a majority is doing long term damage to the party and the nation.

Seriously, just donate to donate to Shadid Buttar’s campaign.

Today in Corruption

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Just days before a high-profile Senate confirmation hearing to fill a vacancy on the prestigious U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the court’s chief judge has opened the door to an inquiry into whether ethical improprieties occurred in the creation of the coveted opening.

In an order dated May 1, Judge Sri Srinivasan asked Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to assign another circuit to look into a complaint filed by the progressive advocacy group Demand Justice, which questioned the timing and circumstances of Judge Thomas B. Griffith’s retirement announcement in early March.

………

With the number of federal judicial vacancies to fill nearly exhausted, Mr. McConnell has been urging those contemplating retirement to step aside this year if they want to assure that their successors will be nominated by a Republican president and confirmed by a Republican-controlled Senate.

………

In his order, Judge Srinivasan, who was placed on the appeals court by President Barack Obama, said he decided to request “review and disposition” of the complaint by a judicial council in another circuit to avoid any question of bias about the outcome.

“The organization’s request for an inquiry concerns the decision of a judge of this court to retire from service and the resulting creation of a vacancy on this court, which would be filled by a future colleague on this court,” the judge wrote. He said the circumstances made it obvious that it should be reviewed outside the D.C. circuit court.

Judge Srinivasan said he made his ruling without “any inquiry by this court into the statements contained in the unverified correspondence or the questions posited by the organization in the correspondence about the possibility of judicial misconduct.” He said he decided to make his order public to show that the accusations were not being ignored since the questions raised by the group “about the possibility of judicial misconduct have been reported in various major news outlets.”

………

The organization, formed to raise liberal consciousness about the importance of judicial nominations, appealed to Judge Srinivasan after The New York Times published an article on the judicial efforts by Mr. McConnell.

“The coordinated manner of Majority Leader McConnell’s involvement in the judges’ decision-making is quite unprecedented and raises significant ethical questions for the judges who heed his advice,” the group said in its letter requesting an investigation. It said a “thorough inquiry into the judge’s announcement and scheduled retirement, including when and how the decision to retire was made, and with whose input, is crucial.”

I really want Moscow Mitch to end his life in a jail cell.

Today in Evil

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Trump and the Republicans want to prevent any sort of accountability for employers who kill their employees through recklessness:

Congressional leaders are girding for a huge fight over the reentry of millions of Americans to the workplace, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) insisting that employers be shielded from liability if their workers contract the coronavirus. He appears to have the backing of top White House officials.

Democratic leaders have declared they will oppose such blanket protections, putting Washington’s power brokers on opposite sides of a major issue that could have sweeping implications for health care and the economy in the coming months. The battle has unleashed a frenzy of lobbying, with major industry groups, technology firms, insurers, manufacturers, labor unions, and plaintiffs lawyers all squaring off.

The Trump administration and Moscow Mitch want to take basic due process rights from regular Americans, and this is exactly how the Democrats should frame this.

Instead, McConnell will steamroll the hapless Chuck Schumer, and incorporate something minor that the Republicans wanted anyway, and Schumer will declare it a victory, because that is how the Democrats work.

More accurately this is how the Democrats play to lose.

It’s Called Perjury, File Charges

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They should file a criminal perjury complaint.

He lied, and he knew that he lied, and I am sure that Donald Trump’s stooges in the Department of Justice would love have him jailed:

Amazon is in hot water with a powerful congressional committee interested in the company’s potentially anticompetitive business practices.

In a bipartisan letter sent Friday to Jeff Bezos, the House Judiciary committee demanded that the Amazon CEO explain discrepancies between his own prior statements and recent reporting from The Wall Street Journal. Specifically, the letter addressed Amazon’s apparent practice of diving into its trove of data on products and third-party sellers to come up with its own Amazon-branded competing products.

As the Journal notes, Amazon “has long asserted, including to Congress, that when it makes and sells its own products, it doesn’t use information it collects from the site’s individual third-party sellers—data those sellers view as proprietary.”

………

In the letter, the House Judiciary Committee accuses Bezos of making “misleading, and possibly criminally false or perjurious” statements to the committee when asked about the practice in the past.

Seriously, why guys like this are allowed to lie with impunity is beyond me.

A few days, hell a few hours, sitting in a cell, might do him a world of good, and a few years in jail will do the rest of us a world of good.

Nancy Pelosi’s Gift Just Keeps on Giving

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It turns out that Nancy Pelosi’s under qualified pick to monitor the Federal Reserve’s bailout programs, Donna Shalala, somehow or other managed to forget to report her stock transactions as required by federal law.

And this woman is supposed to supervise the most powerful central bank in the world?

Miami Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala, the lone House Democrat on the committee set up to oversee $500 billion in taxpayer money being used for coronavirus-related payouts to large businesses, violated federal law when she failed to disclose stock sales while serving in Congress.

Shalala told the Miami Herald on Monday she sold a variety of stocks throughout 2019 to eliminate any potential conflicts of interest after she was elected to Congress in November 2018. But the transactions were not publicly reported as required by the STOCK Act, a 2012 law that prohibits members of Congress and their employees from using private information gleaned from their official positions for personal benefit and requires them to report stock sales and purchases within 45 days.

Shalala’s office said the congresswoman and her financial adviser made a mistake.

Shalala, the former head of the Department of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton, is in the process of setting up a blind trust for her assets, and transactions made within a blind trust without a lawmaker’s knowledge are not required to be disclosed. But the blind trust isn’t finalized, meaning any transactions would need to be made public.

While acknowledge her political skills, on policy, there is literally nothing on policy that Pelosi won’t make a dog’s breakfast of.

I have come to the conclusion is not that Madam Speaker is not a fachidiot, someone whose expertise in one area is mirrored by incompetence in unrelated areas, but that this is intentional.

She wants no meaningful change nor any accountability as it applies to the rich and powerful.

Classic Pelosi

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There is a congressional committee that is supposed to provide oversight of the Federal Reserve’s actions during the bailout.

One of the 3 members is appointed by the Democrats, and Pelosi ignored knowledgeable people who wanted the job and appointed freshmen Congresswoman, corporate stooge, and strike breaker Donna Shalala (D-Fla.), because bailing out rich people and f%$#ing the American worker is a core value of Speaker Pelosi:

For the past week, we’ve watched this absurd spectacle where money is flying out the door of the Federal Reserve bailout programs, and the only person in a position to conduct oversight has nothing more than a Twitter feed. Bharat Ramamurti, the former Elizabeth Warren staffer who I interviewed last week, was until yesterday the only member of the Congressional Oversight Commission, a five-member panel outside of the executive branch (so Donald Trump can’t fire anyone associated with it) charged with monitoring the bailout.

Ramamurti and his tweets have been unusually effective, getting the Fed to agree to publish all transactions that use public funds, and some detailed information. But it’s clear that he needs some help: a staff, an office, and maybe the other four members on the panel to cover what could reach $4.5 trillion in corporate lending.

He got three of them yesterday. Republican leaders in the House and Senate chose nondescript Congressman French Hill (R-AR) and Chamber of Commerce mole Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA). The pick to watch was the House Democratic seat. There was no obligation to choose a sitting member of Congress, but Katie Porter (D-CA) was actively seeking the job, and really was the only member actively seeking the job. With deep experience in financial services and demonstrated aptitude with oversight, there was really no better person for the job.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chose her friend, freshman Congresswoman Donna Shalala (D-FL).

This is a stunning selection. Shalala, according to sources, had no interest in the job. She has no expertise in the financial industry or the Fed. The two committees that would prepare you for this position are Financial Services and Oversight (Porter sits on both). Shalala sits on Education and Labor and Rules. She’s on the early childhood education subcommittee, so if that ever comes up in discussing the Fed’s corporate bond or high-yield ETF purchases we’re in good shape.

Yes, Shalala was Health and Human Services Secretary. In her public statement, Pelosi highlights that, saying Shalala will “ensure that this historic coronavirus relief package is being used wisely and efficiently to protect the lives and livelihoods of the American people, and not be exploited by profiteers and price-gougers.”

But the oversight panel has nothing to do with public health or the pandemic. It’s supposed to examine Federal Reserve lending programs and whether they are assisting the public in economic stabilization and job recovery. These are deliberately complex programs that require for oversight someone with a passing familiarity with the financial system and corporate America. The only expertise Shalala has in all that comes from all the stocks she owns.

I know that Pelosi does a good job of keeping the House Democratic Caucus in line, but she has spent her entire career working for rich people at the expense of the ordinary working people.

Her career needs to end.

They Really Are Contemptible

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I can get why some people would want to primary Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

I disagree, but I understand why.

Still selecting a recently Republican wing nut who called Social Security a Ponzi scheme is an indication of just how detached from reality they are.

My guess is that they decided that no one would notice if one Hispanic woman was replaced with another when they chose Michelle Caruso-Cabrera as their “Great White Hope.”

Some advice for AOC:  Unless you become Joseph Crowley and sell out completely, they are going to continue coming after you, so go ahead and endorse primary challengers to corporatist DINOs:

Wall Street titans are financing a direct challenge to firebrand progressive lawmaker Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the New York primary on June 23.

Disclosures show that at least two dozen finance industry professionals, including several prominent private equity executives and investment bankers, made early donations to Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a former CNBC contributor who is challenging Ocasio-Cortez. Caruso-Cabrera was a registered Republican until a few years ago and authored a 2010 book advocating for several conservative positions, including an end to Medicare and Social Security, which she called “pyramid schemes.”

The donors include Glenn Hutchins, the billionaire co-founder of Silver Lake Partners; James Passin of Firebird Capital; Bruce Schnitzer of Wand Partners; Jeffrey Rosen of Lazard; and Bradley Seaman, managing partner of Parallel49 Equity.

………

But the candidate’s beliefs are explained in detail in a book she authored in 2010 titled, “You Know I’m Right: More Prosperity, Less Government,” which included a forward by Larry Kudlow, who now serves as President Donald Trump’s director of the National Economic Council.

In the book, Caruso-Cabrera calls Medicare and Social Security “the country’s biggest pyramid schemes,” and wrote that she would end both programs in favor of a privatized voucher system. Medicare, Caruso-Cabrera wrote, “is another pay-as-you-go Ponzi scheme” that should be replaced with a health savings account that gives “seniors $1,000 or $2,000 a year to start.” Social Security, she notes, should be replaced with a private account system, in which Americans are incentivized to invest in the stock market.

In her book, she stated that tax evasion as essential to freedom, “Freedom and democracy are best secured when banking secrecy and tax havens exist.”

Making nice to these people will not get you more power in Congress, nor will it do anything to secure your position as the representative in New York’s 14th district.

In fact, given that Andrew Cuomo is governor and he hates progressives, you should be prepared for your district to be sliced and diced like Masaharu Morimoto making sushi by 2022.

Now We Know Who the House Oversight Committee Needs to Call as Witnesses

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It looks like Donald Trump is using his position as President to coerce forbearance out of Deutsche Bank and Palm Beach County for the Trump Organization.

Time for Congress to call senior leadership of both the bank and the county to ensure that Trump is not abusing his position for personal benefit: (Spoiler, he IS abusing his position for personal benefit)

All over the country, businesses large and small are seeking breathing room from their lenders, landlords and business partners as they face the financial fallout from the coronavirus crisis.

President Trump’s family company is among those looking for help.

………

Representatives of Mr. Trump’s company have recently spoken with Deutsche Bank, the president’s largest creditor, about the possibility of postponing payments on at least some of its loans from the bank.

And in Florida, the Trump Organization sought guidance last week from Palm Beach County about whether it expected the company to continue making monthly payments on county land that it leases for a 27-hole golf club.

………

The Trump Organization’s requests put lenders and landlords in the awkward position of having to accede or risk alienating Mr. Trump.

………

Other companies may be able to tap into a $500 billion rescue fund that will be administered by the Treasury Department. But the economic bailout package, which Mr. Trump signed into law last week, specifically barred the president and his family from access to that money.

Late last month, Mr. Trump’s representatives contacted their relationship managers in Deutsche Bank’s New York private-banking division, which caters to wealthy customers. They wanted to discuss the possibility of delaying payments on some of the hundreds of millions of dollars of outstanding loans that the Trump Organization has from the bank, according to a person briefed on the talks. The discussions are continuing.

………

Deutsche Bank has lent Mr. Trump and his companies about $2 billion since 1998, the only mainstream financial institution consistently willing to do business with Mr. Trump and his companies. At the time he became president, Mr. Trump owed the bank about $350 million, including on loans to buy and renovate the Doral golf resort near Miami and to develop a luxury hotel in the Old Post Office building in Washington.

Both properties are suffering in the economic shutdown. In response to Miami-Dade County’s rules, the Doral resort has ceased all operations, while the Washington hotel continues to operate, albeit with few guests and with its restaurant and bar closed. The Trump Organization rents the Washington property from the federal government, and the company had been soliciting bids from potential buyers for the lease, a process that is now on hold, The Washington Post reported.

Mr. Trump received the loans for those properties, as well as another related to his Chicago skyscraper, from 2012 to 2015. Because of his history of defaults and bankruptcies, Deutsche Bank insisted that Mr. Trump provide personal guarantees on those loans, meaning that the bank has recourse to his personal assets if he were to stop paying back the money.

Ever since Mr. Trump’s election, Deutsche Bank executives have been fretting about what would happen if he were to default, according to bank officials. Seizing the president’s personal assets would be an unattractive proposition. But opting not to collect on the loans would be the equivalent of an enormous financial gift to Mr. Trump, whose administration wields enormous power over the bank. Deutsche Bank’s operations in the United States are supervised by federal regulators, and the Justice Department has been conducting a criminal investigation of the bank.

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The Trump Organization reached out on multiple occasions last week to Palm Beach County to ask whether it expected the company to continue making the monthly payments of tens of thousands of dollars due under its long-term lease, according to people briefed on the discussions.

(emphasis mine)

It’s already clear that Trump is going to ignore any attempt at Congressional oversight of the bailout, and he’s already doing things like diverting ventilators to states with “friendly” governors.

Since he’s already issued a signing statement that he will not cooperate with Congressional oversight, subpoenaing Trump’s creditors is a way to get some leverage over him (remember, Trump is personally liable for the Deutsche Bank loan) to get compliance on oversight.

You grill folks from the bank and the county, and suddenly they will be disinclined to cut Trump slack.

Politics ain’t beanbag.

Of Course She Is

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Nancy Pelosi has a plan for additional stimulus, and the details, that it will only put meaningful money in the pockets of people who make significantly more than $100,000.00 a year should surprise no one:

As lawmakers prepare for another round of fiscal stimulus to address economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested the next package include a retroactive rollback of a tax change that hurt high earners in states like New York and California.

A full rollback of the limit on the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, would provide a quick cash infusion in the form of increased tax rebates to an estimated 13 million American households — nearly all of which earn at least $100,000 a year.

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The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimated last year that a full repeal of the SALT limit for 2019 alone would reduce federal revenues by about $77 billion. Americans earning $1 million a year or more would collectively reap $40 billion of those benefits. Most of the rest would go to households earning $200,000 or more.

Well, we now know who her REAL constituency is.

As an aside, this change is literally the least bang for the buck possible as a stimulus, but it does appeal to overpaid pundits living in places like DC, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and I guess that this is all that matters to her.

Pelosi, Schumer, and the Whole of Congressional Democrats Were Just Taken for Chumps

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Hoocoodanode?

When President Trump signed the $2 trillion economic stabilization package on Friday to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, he undercut a crucial safeguard that Democrats insisted upon as a condition of agreeing to include a $500 billion corporate bailout fund.

In a signing statement released hours after Mr. Trump signed the bill in a televised ceremony in the Oval Office, the president suggested he had the power to decide what information a newly created inspector general intended to monitor the fund could share with Congress.

Under the law, the inspector general, when auditing loans and investments made through the fund, has the power to demand information from the Treasury Department and other executive branch agencies. The law requires reporting to Congress “without delay” if any agency balks and its refusal is unreasonable “in the judgment of the special inspector general.”

Democrats blocked a final agreement on the package this week as they insisted on stronger oversight provisions to ensure that the president and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin could not abuse the bailout fund. They feared that Mr. Trump, who has previously stonewalled congressional oversight, would do the same when it came to the corporate aid program.

But in his statement, which the White House made public about two hours after the president signed the bill, Mr. Trump suggested that under his own understanding of his constitutional powers as president, he can gag the special inspector general for pandemic recovery, known by the acronym S.I.G.P.R., and keep information from Congress.

………

The signing statement also challenged several other provisions in the bill, including one requiring consultation with Congress about who should be the staff leaders of a newly formed executive branch committee charged with conducting oversight of the government’s response to the pandemic.

No one should be surprised by this happening.

In fact, it would be a shock if this were NOT the case.

Schumer and Pelosi are showing the political acumen of Little Orphan Annie.

Taibbi Says It, so I Don’t Have To

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Late last week, Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina briefly became the most detestable politician in America, at a time when public outrage toward politicians was at an all-time high.

Burr dumped hundreds of thousands (if not millions) worth of stocks after non-public briefings about the extent of the coronavirus crisis in the Senate Intelligence Committee.

………

On February 7th, days after being briefed by intelligence officials on response by foreign powers to the outbreak, he co-wrote an editorial on “steps the U.S. government is taking to protect you.” In it, he declared:

The United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats… in large part due to the work of the Senate Health Committee, Congress, and the Trump Administration.

Six days later, Burr sold off 33 stock holdings. Later that month, on the same day Donald Trump was saying coronavirus will “disappear” like “a miracle,” Burr spoke at a private luncheon for heavy financial hitters at the Tar Heel Club. “[Coronavirus] is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history,” he said.

………

Recapping: the Senate’s Intelligence Committee chief was briefed by intel officials, actively reassured the public, dumped stock, whispered the real dope to rich connected folk, got busted by media, then feebly claimed he made financial decisions watching CNBC, before a seething public bracing for years of agony due to financial collapse. If there’s such a thing as a grand slam of political assholedom, Burr hit it.

………

The Burr scandal shows how difficult it is to effect meaningful reform in Washington. If not just one but many members of congress feel sufficiently bulletproof that they’re not scared of trading against a pandemic, how will the government ever deal with less obviously grotesque issues?

This is why we can NEVER trust any sort of Republican bailout package, there is literally no limit to their capacity for corruption.