More on President Obama's Support for Wall Street

Dear Friends,

I came across another article about how Congress voted to permit the big banks to remain too big to fail.  I will quote three critical paragraphs from Zach Carter's excellent article (here):

Late last night, the U.S. Senate rejected the single most important element of Wall Street reform by a vote of 33 to 61. The SAFE Banking Act would have forced the break-up of the nation's six largest banks, and dramatically reduced the political clout of America's financial elite. The 61 votes against the measure are votes in favor of Wall Street's stranglehold on our economy. No matter what else is ultimately enacted in the name of Wall Street reform, Congress has decided that it will not confront the single greatest problem in the U.S. economy: Too Big To Fail.
On Wednesday, the Senate also voted down a $50 billion Wall Street tax that would have been used to fund the cost of shutting down a major failing bank. By rejecting both the break-up bill and the bank tax, the Senate has punted on ending too-big-to-fail. For now, it appears that Wall Street has emerged from the Great Financial Crash of 2008 with even greater political might than it wielded during the reign of George W. Bush. In the Citizens United era, both Democrats and Republicans have decided they can only get so tough with corporate America.
Last night, 27 Democrats joined all but three Republicans to vote against breaking up the banks. President Barack Obama opposed both the tax and the break-up measures, and hosted J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon for dinner at the White House on Monday. J.P. Morgan is the largest U.S. bank, and spent more money on lobbying in 2009 than any other bank. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has aggressively courted Dimon for campaign cash.

There is a theme in what is going on.  President Obama, the Democrats and the Republicans can all be bought with campaign contributions.  I hope you read the sentence above that President Obama had CEO Dimon of J.P. Morgan for dinner at the White House.  Why doesn't he invite me for dinner?  I should note for those of you who are from Minnesota that Senator Franken voted in favor of breaking up the big banks, but Senator Klobuchar voted to support Wall Street.  Let Senator Franken know that you appreciate what he did (here) and let Senator Klobuchar know that she needs to stand up for us not Wall Street (here).  

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Obama, Salazar and Big Oil

Dear Friends,

How much real hope and change is there in the Obama Administration?  It turns out there is alot more talk than action and sometimes actions that disprove the talk.

The drilling of the well the blew out in the Gulf of Mexico that is causing the current environmental and economic disaster was approved under the Obama Administration without any environmental review.  Department of the Interior Secretary Salazar gave that well and many others a "categorical exclusion" from having to perform the environmental impact statement normally required by the National Environmental Policy Act.  Here is an article from the Washington Post about this issue.  I want to reiterate this approval without environmental review was granted not by President George W. Bush as you might have expected but by the Obama Administration.

The rationale for the exclusion is that big oil said that there was no real possibility of an environmental problem.  President Obama bought this argument hook, line and sinker.  Here is what he said on April 2, 2010,

I want to put out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore.

You should read the scathing analysis at Firedoglake (here).  That article contains excerpts from an interview on Democracy Now that is a great summary of what President Obama should be doing, but isn't.  Here is part of that interview with Kieran Suckling, Executive Director of the Center for Biological Diversity:

Well, first off, I think that the President should announce a complete moratorium on all new offshore oil drilling. This three-week time-out is really too little, too late. And it’s very important to do that now because the president, under the urging of Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar, has planned to open up new offshore oil drilling in Alaska, in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and on the Atlantic coast. And that just needs to end. It’s not safe anywhere, anytime.Secondly, the president should immediately revoke existing oil permits and especially in Alaska. Shell Oil, this July, has- is going to start doing offshore oil drilling in the Chukchi Sea of Alaska. And if you think it’s difficult to clean up oil in the relatively warm, calm Gulf of Mexico, imagine trying to do this with icebergs and sea ice, twenty hours of darkness in the Arctic oceans. It just cannot be done. If this spill had happened in Alaska, its magnitude would have been ten times worse than has happened in the Gulf.
Then, thirdly, the President should start an initiation of an investigation of Ken Salazar and his role in allowing this to happen. Salazar has been a major proponent of the offshore oil drilling industry. He passed legislation as a senator in 2006 to open up the Gulf of Mexico in the first place to offshore oil drilling. He gets campaign contributions by British Petroleum. And then he walks into this agency he is supposed to reform, and instead of reforming it, pushes it to do even more offshore oil drilling. So Ken Salazar is part of the problem here, not the solution. He should not be doing the investigation of MMS. He should be under investigation for helping to cause this crisis.

Of course, no post about President Obama letting me down would be complete without a quick look at the role that money plays.  One of the things that candidate Obama was going to change in Washington was the role of campaign contributions, but ...  here is a story on Politico entitled "Obama biggest recipient of BP cash" which is mirrored by a story on CNN entitled "Obama was top recipient of BP-related dollars in 2008".  Both articles are worth reading.

So what happened to the change we can believe in?  It seems in many cases it is all words and no action.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

President Obama and Too Big to Fail

Dear Friends,

Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Ted Kaufman (D-Del) introduced an amendment to the financial reform bill that would have actually limited the size of banks so that they would not be too big to fail.  Unfortunately, the amendment failed 60-33 and got no support from President Obama or anybody else in the Obama Administration.  How can it be that everybody both Republicans and Democrats say they don't want banks that are too big to fail, but an amendment that actually does that doesn't pass and doesn't get White House support.

Here is the first paragraph of a press release by the White House on January 21, 2010:

President Obama joined Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve; Bill Donaldson, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission; Congressman Barney Frank, House Financial Services Chairman; Senator Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Banking Committee and the President's economic team to call for new restrictions on the size and scope of banks and other financial institutions to rein in excessive risk taking and to protect taxpayers.

You would think that with all those important people in favor of limiting "the size and scope of banks" that the Kaufman-Brown amendment would have passed easily.  But President Obama did not speak out in favor of it, and as usual the Democratic leadership caved into the demands of the big banks.  Apparently, money matters more than good policy.

Here are a couple of articles that I would recommend.  The first is by Gretchen Morgenson in The New York Times (here).  The second is by Andy Kroll from Mother Jones (here).

One might argue with the specifics of the Kaufman-Brown amendment but that was not the issue.  President Obama refused to put his support behind true financial reform that might have had a chance of actually preventing future bailouts of banks that are too big to fail.

Please write President Obama and let him know that you know he may be talking the talk, but he is not walking the walk. (here)

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Wake Up Call to Democrats

Dear Friends,

I notice a report of a new poll today about people in Minnesota that identify themselves as Republicans, Democrats and Independents.  It should be a real wake up call to the DFL in Minnesota and the Democrats around the country.  Here are some of the highlights:

• 36% of likely voters identify themselves as Republicans, 35% as Democrats and 24% as Independents with a margin of error of 4%
• a year ago the numbers were 36% Democrats, 37% Independents and 20% Republicans
• Republican endorsed candidate for Governor Tom Emmer (who was endorsed by Sarah Palin over his Republican rival) is running ahead of all three DFL candidates running in the primary with Emmer at about 41%, each of the three DFL candidates running at about a third against Emmer and the Independence candidate at 10%

 I have seen it happen over and over again, the Democrats fear that they will lose power so they move to the right and then they lose their base and any enthusiasm it has and they then of course lose power.  Howard Dean had it right.  His thesis was that there are far more people that do not vote than the Democrats could ever hope to get from the middle or the middle right.  So stand up for what you believe in, generate enthusiasm and take your positions to the people including those that do not often vote. 

The Democrats in leadership positions in Washington do not like this approach because it challenges the status quo and politicians are not risk takers or for that matter leaders.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Caving on Net Neutrality

Dear Friends,

The internet has been abuzz lately about the Obama Administration caving into the large telecommunications companies on the issue of net neutrality.  I wrote posts on this issue on April 11 and 20.  The recent excitement is the result of a recent lawsuit that has been interpreted to say that the FCC cannot regulate the internet the way that it wants to.  However, that reading of the case has come under some criticism.  There are many people that believe that the Obama Administration has the ability to regulate the internet to maintain net neutrality but is about to cave on this very important issue.

If you want to read more about this issue, see here, here, here, or here.

Candidate Obama took a strong stand in favor of net neutrality.  Here is a report from October 2007 that starts as follows:

If elected president, Barack Obama plans to prioritize, well, barring broadband providers like AT&T and Comcast from prioritizing Internet content.
Affixing his signature to federal Net neutrality rules would be high on the list during his first year in the Oval Office, the junior senator from Illinois said during an interactive forum Monday afternoon with the popular contender put on by MTV and MySpace at Coe College in Iowa.

We need to hold President Obama accountable for his campaign promises.  Please contact him here.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Journalism Shield Laws - Which Side is President Obama On?

Dear Friends,

Here is a quote from a Washington Post article by Howard Kurtz (here):

The Justice Department's decision to subpoena a New York Times reporter this week has convinced some press advocates that President Obama's team is pursuing leaks with the same fervor as the Bush administration.
James Risen, who shared a Pulitzer Prize for disclosing President George W. Bush's domestic surveillance program, has refused to testify about the confidential sources he used for his 2006 book "State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration."
"The message they are sending to everyone is, 'You leak to the media, we will get you,' " said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. In the wake of the Bush administration's aggressive stance toward the press, she said, "as far as I can tell there is absolutely no difference, and the Obama administration seems to be paying more attention to it. This is going to get nasty."
Kurt Wimmer, a Washington lawyer who helped win White House approval for a proposed federal shield law, called the move against Risen "disappointing" after "we had positive discussions with the Obama administration" on the need to give journalists a legal foundation for protecting their sources in most cases.

The Bush Administration issued a subpoena to Mr. Risen but when it was contested, it was allowed to expire.  The Obama Administration re-issued the subpoena even though President Obama has indicated that it would favor a shield law so that journalists could shield their sources.  But now the Obama Administration is re-issuing a subpoena that would be prohibited by the shield law that the Obama Administration claims to support.  Here is the clip from The Rachel Maddow Show about this topic:





We need to hold President Obama accountable for his campaign promises.  Please write to him.  Here is the link to contacting him.


Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal