Who Does Wall Street Own In Washington?

Jim Himes (New Dem-CT), Wall Street's candidate for the next DCCC Chairman

In her new book, A Fighting Chance, Elizabeth Warren spent a little time explaining how Wall Street tried sabotaging her campaign for Senate. Scott Brown was their boy and they shoveled more money into his campaign than any campaign in the country. He was the #1 recipient of their political contributions. And they did all they could to demonize Elizabeth Warren and her pro-working families message-- something they have continued without pause.

The big banks kept a low profile at first, but before long they started weighing in against my campaign, too. One executive was quoted as saying: "It's not even about Scott Brown… It's about: Do you want Elizabeth Warren in the Senate?" The answer came quickly: Wall Street bankers sent out "urgent appeals" to raise money for Scott Brown.

Wall Street's response probably didn't have anything to do with the video clip. The big banks had made up their minds about me long ago, and for good reason-- they knew where I stood on financial reform. The election was a long way off, and already these guys were in all-out assault mode. It knew that a super-motivated Wall Street was much more dangerous than a blathering Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh could talk (and talk and talk) but the bankers had something a lot more powerful-- endless buckets of money to throw into the elections.

Last night we saw one of Wall Street's favorite politicians of the decade, Eric Cantor, destroyed by a random teabagger who railed against him endlessly for pushing through Bush's TARP bailout of the big banks. Just this cycle, the financial sector had contributed $1,396,450 to Cantor's mammoth campaign coffers. But grotesque bribery from Wall Street isn't just about Republicans. This is a list of the dozen most corrupted designated point persons for Wall Street in the House (since 1990):

• John Boehner (R-OH)- $9,797,914
• Eric Cantor (R-VA)- $8,492,465
• Spencer Bachus (R-AL)- $6,257,494
• Jeb Hensarling (R-TX)- $5,540,181
• Charlie Rangel (D-NY)- $5,376,743
• Ed Royce (R-CA)- $5,006,718
• Pat Tiberi (R-OH)- $4,702,881
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- $4,612,825
• Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)- $4,574,624
• Joe Crowley (D-NY)- $4,526,330
• Pete Sessions (R-TX)- $4,505,220
• Paul Ryan (R-WI)- $4,056,918

You'll notice that there are several Democrats on that list. But that barely scratches the surface of how Wall Street works to control the Democratic Party the way they control the Republican Party. In April we looked at how so many of the Wall Street plutocrats were already signing up for Team Hillary. Voters need to understand why the Wall Street plutocrats are grumbling ominously about both Obama and the Republicans-- and why so many of their warm remembrances of Bill Clinton are likely to help finance Hillary's run for the presidency. At a fat cat shindig Goldman Sachs put on for Hillary at the Conrad Hotel, she "offered a message that the collected plutocrats found reassuring, according to accounts offered by several attendees, declaring that the banker-bashing so popular within both political parties was unproductive and indeed foolish. Striking a soothing note on the global financial crisis, she told the audience, in effect: We all got into this mess together, and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it. What the bankers heard her to say was just what they would hope for from a prospective presidential candidate: Beating up the finance industry isn’t going to improve the economy-- it needs to stop.

One of the themes of DWT is that the Beltway Democratic Party is unsupportive of grassroots populists and progressives and consistently pushing candidates from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- Third Way shills, corrupt careerists, New Dems and Blue Dogs. Guy Cecil and Michael Bennet at the DSCC are blackballing prairie populist Rick Weiland who sounds an awful lot like Elizabeth Warren with a midwest accent. Steve Israel, Joe Crowley and Jim Himes work tirelessly at the DCCC to undermine and wreck the campaigns of progressives while pushing unpopular Wall Street shills like themselves. Now Wall Street is already demanding that their boy Himes take over the DCCC when Israel leaves the committee after the expected catastrophe in November.

You'll notice that tribunes of working families like Raul Grijalva, Alan Grayson, Keith Ellison, Matt Cartwright, Louise Slaughter … are not being financed by Wall Street. Nor are any of the Blue America candidates. The bankster's are pouring cash into Paul Ryan's campaign coffers ($4,056,918), into Fred Upton's campaign coffers ($1,367,553), into John Kline's campaign coffers ($1,803,982) and into Sean Duffy's campaign coffers ($1,106,993)… but have made it perfectly clear they are not contributing to Rob Zerban, Paul Clements, Mike Obermeuller or Kelly Westlund, the 4 progressives challenging those 4 Wall Street stooges. But which Democrats are getting the big bucks from Wall Street? Among current Members of the House, these are true Democrats who have taken the most from the finance sector. Do you see any good guys in this lot?

• Charlie Rangel (D-NY)- $5,376,743
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- $4,612,825
• Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)- $4,574,624
• Joe Crowley (D-NY)- $4,526,330
• Nita Lowey (D-NY)- $4,022,785
• Jim Himes (D-CT)- $3,993,539
• Steve Israel (D-NY)- $3,626,934
• Richard Neal (D-MA)- $3,454,353
• Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)- $3,104,328
• Brad Sherman (D-CA)- $2,642,213

These are the Democrats from whom the banksters buy protection-- and they don't hand their cash out willy-nilly. If you wonder why the prisons aren't filled with banksters, just follow the money from Wall Street to Capitol Hill. There ought to be a law!

The media was quick to pick up on the absurd right wing frame that Cantor lost because he supported immigration reform (which he adamantly opposed). Polling shows voters in his district support that reform, they just don't support him.

Brat is an anti-immigrant fanatic, absolutely, but he also adamantly went after Cantor for being a robotic shill of the Chamber of Commerce, for being more in touch with Wall Street than Main Street and for his outsized role in Washington's pervasive culture of corruption. Watch the video below in which Brat tells VA-07 Republican voters that "All the investment bankers should've gone to jail. Instead they went onto Eric Cantor's Rolodex." In the same clip, he also went after Cantor for the personal corruption evidenced in his decisive role in gutting the STOCK Act, allowing insider trading by Congressmen. But the Beltway media-- which got everything about this race wrong from day one-- has decided Cantor lost because of Hispanics. As usual, they're completely off base.