Sherrod Brown Wants To Fight Payday Lenders-- Or Does He?

The above is an e-mail I got yesterday from Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown. I agree with every word of it. Shred is usually right about domestic policy. He's been a dependable leader on fair trade for as long as I can remember him in Congress. And he's one of the best in Congress on reining in Wall Street's predatory excesses. No one's perfect, of course, but Sherrod's craven vote to support Bush-Cheney on torture, made it hard for me to get over this kind of betrayal for perceived political gain trust him again.

Brown sold out progressives by voting for Bush's torture legislation because he wanted to win an election. Ugly. Now he's selling out his own campaign against pay day lenders by backing Patrick Murphy against Alan Grayson in the Florida Senate race. Pay day lenders give their political bribery-- "campaign contributions"-- al;most entirely to Republicans and it is primarily Republicans that push the toxic pay day lender agenda that Brown is fighting. The pay day lenders are playing in the battle to win the Senate this year-- but, in the crucial Florida race, they're playing on the same side as Sherrod Brown: electing Wall Street errand boy Patrick Murphy:

Richard Shelby is the Chairman of the Senate's powerful Banking Committee, the committee Sherrod would become chairman of if the Democrats take back the Senate in November, the committee that oversees the activities of the pay day lenders. The industry's $82,700 to Shelby isn't a surprise to anyone. He protects their bottom lines. They are also significantly helping finance reelection campaigns for two other members of the committee: Tim Scott (R-SC) and Pat Toomey (R-PA), each of whom pays slavish devotion to the demands of the pay day lenders. But so far this cycle Patrick Murphy, who isn't even a senator yet-- but serves on the House Financial Services committee and champions the pay day lenders there-- is the second biggest recipient of pay day lender bribes of anyone running for the Senate. Patrick Murphy is a crook and Sherrod Brown is well aware of that. But Chuck Schumer, who can make it easier or harder for Sherrod to get his committee chair, asked him to endorse Wall Street's candidate for the Florida seat, so Sherrod sent out this:

I’d like to introduce you to Patrick Murphy. He’s a Congressman from Florida running a tough race for U.S. Senate this cycle. You may not have heard of Patrick’s campaign yet, but I can assure you, the Koch brothers and their Republican allies have already taken notice. Earlier this month, the Kochs' group, Americans for Prosperity, ran a full-page Op-Ed attacking Patrick for opposing Citizens United. Special interest groups spent more than $40 million against me-- one of the most expensive races in the country. And I can tell you who one of their top targets will be this year: Patrick... Patrick is the kind of person I want to work with in the Senate. He’s a tireless advocate for the middle class, and he has a track record of doing what’s right for his district.

That's all a big fat expedient lie from a politician it's getting harder and harder to trust. A few months after Sherrod started serving in the Senate, he was asked by Cenk Uygar of the Young Turks why he had voted for Bush's torture bill-- the only progressive in the House to have done so. "It was a bad vote," he admitted. "I shouldn't have. A vote I'll correct ... when it comes... I take responsibility. It was the heat of the campaign and I made a mistake." Yes he did make a mistake, a very grievous one-- making him the first and only candidate Blue America had ever endorsed and then unendorsed. And by backing Wall Street shill and so-called "ex"-Republican, Patrick Murphy, against Alan Grayson, Sherrod Brown has made another grievous mistake. Grayson, decidedly not the candidate of the Wall Street banksters or their paid political shills like Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, has a very clear vision of what he'd like to see done in regard to payday lenders. "What we need," he just told us, "is a normal banking system that covers everyone equally, like Elizabeth Warren’s post office banking bill, drawing upon the experience in Japan (where the post office is the largest bank, with branches in all neighborhoods, rich or poor). Large banking institutions have abandoned poor neighborhoods, relegating the poor to second-class banking." Please help Grayson get into the Senate, where he, unlike Murphy, will help Sherrod Brown fight against the corrupt practices of the payday lenders and Wall Street banksters.