So What's So Wrong With Florida Schumercrat Patrick Murphy?

Last week Politico, the Miami Herald, and the Sunshine State News all seemed to turn on Wall Street's (and, therefore Chuck Schumer's) handpicked candidate for the open Marco Rubio Senate seat. The Miami Herald reported that "In mid-December, Thomas Murphy gave $200,000 of his own money to 'Floridians for a Strong Middle Class,' and then on March 31, Thomas Murphy’s Miami-based construction company-- Coastal Construction Group-- shelled out $300,000 to the super PAC. The $300,000 donation was revealed Friday when the super PAC’s quarterly financial disclosure was made available online through the Federal Election Commission. It accounted for 74 percent of the super PAC’s intake between January and March, the report showed."

Politico noted that Murphy and his circle had "established a network of committees, including one with the Florida Democratic Party" to raise money for his campaign. These committees-- Murphy set up 7 so far-- "allow committees and members of Congress to join forces to raise campaign cash" and allow "$10,000-per-donor contribution caps" (rather than the $5,400 legal limit for contributions to candidates. Murphy's entire sleazy career in politics has been marked with getting around and bending campaign finance rules to allow his family and his businesses and Wall Street interests to buy him political office. The biggest of the new batch of committees was set in motion by Schumer and his DSCC sock-puppet Jon Tester. It will bring Murphy a flow of cash by raising for other Schumercrats running for Senate, conservative Democrats with looses ethics like Ted Strickland, Chris Van Hollen, Tammy Duckworth, Michael Bennet, etc.

Murphy's Orwellian campaign spokesman, an inveterate liar, Joshua Karp, defended his corrupt boss by insisting to Florida media that the right-wing "ex"-Republican Murphy is just a "progressive" pooling resources with other progressives. Calling a conservative a "progressive" doesn't change his right-wing voting record which shows him voting with the GOP more than any Democrat in Congress but 3 until he got into a Democratic primary race with an actual progressive, Alan Grayson, causing Murphy to start voting with Democrats for the first time in his miserable congressional career.

Florida Democratic Party officials say the agreements are usually requested by the candidates. The party does not generally play favorites in Democratic primaries, and says the agreement is not an indication it favors Murphy over Rep. Alan Grayson, who he is facing in the primary.

Party officials said the reason they don’t have an agreement with Grayson is because he didn’t ask.

...Among the $10,000 donors to the committee this election cycle are Murphy’s maxed-out family members and other donors who have given the maximum amount to his campaign, including: Henry Laufer, a retired hedge fund executive from Lantana, Frank Brunckhorst, chairman of the Boars Head deli meat company, and Daniel Abraham, the Palm Beach billionaire who founded Slim Fast.

Though state Democratic party officials say the agreement is not an indication of their preference, it does play into Grayson's narrative that Murphy is more in line with the party’s establishment than its grassroots supporters.

On the same day, the Sunshine State News, a Republican-orinted outlet, pointed out that "Patrick Murphy's Super PAC is out with its latest quarterly finance report, and-- surprise, surprise-- the vast majority of its haul came from Dear Old Daddy Murphy." Their criticism isn't gentle: "Murphy thinks he’s got it made in the Treasure Coast shade. He gets to spend his days playing congressman and doing cheesy campaign photo ops while Daddy foots the bill. Now he wants Floridians to hand him a Senate seat just like he’s had everything else handed to him in his life. As voters learn the truth about Patrick Murphy’s out-of-touch ways and stunning hypocrisy, they may decide his father’s money is better spent finding his son a new job."

How does Murphy explain his professed “disgust” with money in politics with his scramble for outside cash? Apparently by lashing out at reporters, as the Tampa Bay Times’ Adam Smith found out in March:

"But when asked by the Tampa Bay Times about the possibility of cutting off the biggest source of money flowing into his U.S. Senate race-- his Republican father, who so far has given at least $200,000-- Murphy made it clear it did not appreciate the question.

"'I hate the money in politics, and I hate the sort of gotcha questions too,' said the Palm Beach County congressman, drawing applause from members of the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club."

One good measure of who Congress' most corrupt members are

Murphy is the original co-sponsor of the debt trap Republican bill going through Congress to suppprt his generous contributors from the pay-day lending industry-- just look at that chart above.... the pay day lenders give to Republicans + Murphy (and a lot to Murphy, far more than they give to #DebtTrapDebbie Wasserman Schultz, who gets most of the blame for bringing this ugly Republican idea to corrupt Democrats. Murphy makes her look like a piker.) PolitiFact looked to see how much Murphy has been lying to Florida voters about his payday lenders bill. Short version: "We rate this claim False," this claim being Murphy's assertion that his payday lender bill is the best in the nation. "Consumer advocates, Pew researchers and the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have several criticisms of Florida’s law, including the high interest rate. Pew, an independent organization, says that Colorado has the best model law in the country. The Center for Responsible Lending points to 14 states-- not including Florida-- that cap interest rates at 36 percent as a better practice." The Florida law Murphy is pushing nationally "has some of weakest provisions in the country" for protecting consumers from Murphy's predatory campaign contributors. The director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray, told Congress that under the law Murphy is pushing “loans are still being made above the 300 percent, and they are being rolled over on average nine times."

Grayson got right to the point:

There are two reasons why Wall Street is spending millions of dollars to try to prevent me from joining the U.S. Senate. Those two reasons are as follows:
(a) Alan Grayson
(b) Patrick Murphy

Ever since his appointment to the Financial Services Committee, Patrick Murphy has simply handed his voting card over to Wall Street. In return, Wall Street has inundated him with sewer money-- more than any other Democrat in the House. (There are 188 of us.) In fact, Big Money has dumped more cash into Murphy’s hands than any Republican's, except for Paul Ryan (the Speaker) and Kevin McCarthy (the Majority Leader). More, even than the GOP Chairman of the Financial Services Committee.

When we returned from a 43-day recess last September, I spent the evening reviewing classified documents. Murphy had dinner with Goldman Sachs executives.

We can’t afford to elect yet another corrupt pol like Patrick Murphy to the U.S. Senate.

But then there is the other reason why Wall Street is all-in for Patrick Murphy. Me. I used to serve on the Financial Services Committee, but I didn’t sell my voting card to the highest bidder, like Patrick does. Instead, I kept close watch over our taxpayer money.

I was a “freshman” in 2009, my first year in Congress. There were around 50 of us newbies. And I was the first of us to pass a substantive bill: the Pay for Performance Act.

I passed it in nine days.

The Pay for Performance Act prohibited Wall Street from using bailout money for bonuses. (I said that Wall Street is “the only place in the world where you can steal from taxpayers, and then bill them for services rendered.” Wall Street toady Neil Cavuto on Fox News was so upset about this that he called me “Sweden in a suit.”)

My bill very quickly led to a 180-degree turn on Wall Street regarding bailouts. Before my bill, they were grabbing bailout money with both hands. And afterwards, once they couldn’t put it in their own pockets, they were pushing it away.

Not bad, for a freshman.

That was seven years ago. But Wall Street never forgets. There are very few elected officials who have the guts to stand up to them-- me, Elizabeth Warren, and ???

... Let me tell you about my successful effort to audit the Federal Reserve. Wall Street didn’t like losing to me on that one.

In 2009, in the midst of bailout mania, I powered the 30-year-old effort to audit the Federal Reserve, which controls our money supply. The Federal Reserve had never had any independent audit in its 100-year history. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) had first sought an audit when I was still in graduate school, but his bill hadn’t even gotten a hearing, much less a vote. Yet “the Fed” clearly was taking an active role in the bailouts-- it’s just that no one knew what that role was.

I patiently signed up more than 100 Democratic Members of Congress, one by one, to cosponsor the “Audit the Fed” bill. Then I steered it through the Financial Services Committee, and on the Floor of the House. Then I rescued it from a Wall Street counterattack in the Dodd-Frank Conference Committee [earning Grayson the undying emnity of Barney Frank, who went from making the laws easy on Wall Street to cashing on and being appointed to a board of directors of a Wall Street bank].

Secretary Tim Geithner, Wall Street’s man in the Obama Administration, said that his number-one priority in Dodd-Frank was not to save the world economy, but rather to strike that audit from the bill. But I won. And Wall Street lost.

The audit found $26 trillion in secret bailouts to financial institutions. That’s $26,000,000,000,000.00. You can read about it here. Wall Street was very unhappy. Five years later, they remain unhappy. That’s one reason why they’ve given my primary opponent more sewer money than any other House Democrat.

Blue America has endorsed Alan Grayson for the Florida Senate seat. Please consider making a contribution to his race here so that he doesn't get completely swamped by the millions from Patrick Murphy's father, the Wall Street banksters and Chuck Schumer: