Saturday Afternoon With Little Chucky Schmucky-- Wall Street's Cat's Paw In The U.S. Senate

You can't imagine how hard Chuck Schumer pushed to win the Florida Senate nomination for not-Grayson. It helped that the hapless boob he put up has rich, ruthlessly corrupt parents willing to spend whatever, and that he had already proven himself an unquestioningly devoted Wall Street shill, voting with the GOP on the House Financial Services Committee to do whatever it took to disarm Wall Street oversight and reform. But Schumer shepherded $1,930,542 in Financial Sector cash into Murphy's coffers, more than any other House member other than Speaker Paul Ryan (even more than House Majority Leader/bribe vacuum cleaner Kevin McCarthy and even more than Financial Services Committee go-to-whores chairman Jeb Hensarling, vice chairman Patrick McHenry and 2016 stooge of the year Ed Royce. In fact, Murphy got more from the banksters than any non-incumbent from either party running for the Senate. And considerably more than endangered Wall Street allies like Ron Johnson (R-WI), John McCain (R-AZ), Richard Burr (R-NC), Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Roy Blunt (R-MO). All 5 have been setting their hair on fire in banksters' offices and begging for more money to stave off defeats in November. But for the last 12 months, Wall Street only had eyes for a hapless little worm from West Palm Beach, Patrick Murphy or-- more to the point-- Congressman Not-Grayson.

Schumer promised Obama a flood of cash for his presidential library from Wall Street and from "others" to get Obama to help defeat Grayson, probably the smartest and most committed progressive in the House of Representatives. Obama did what he was asked to do and that was the end of whatever chance Grayson had to get the nomination. He won his part of the state-- central Florida around Orlando where he is well-known-- and 5 or 6 counties in the northern part of the state where he managed to out-spend the cash-laden Murphy. But Grayson got wiped out by the $7,770,908 Murphy had spent by August 10, by $1,461,426 spent by a SuperPAC run by Schumer and Reid, $441,350 spent by Murphy's family's PAC and by immense sums of Saudi money, much of it illegally funneled into the political system through shadow donors and the kinds of donor swaps that put Ami Bera's father in prison and forced Steve Israel to announce his retirement from Congress.

Schumer was the brains behind the operation. Murphy doesn't have a brain. But now, Wall Street-- and their boy Schumer-- don't care all that much who wins in Florida. Oh, of course, Schumer would like to see an easy-to-control puppet in a blue tee-shirt in there, but it doesn't matter to him which candidates in blue tee-shirts win in November-- as long as there are 4 of them. Schumer sees Murphy as-- at best-- a long shot against Rubio and the DSCC has backed away from supporting their candidate. It doesn't matter to Wall Street because Rubio is at least as much of an unquestioning robot for them as Murphy is. For them Florida, post-Grayson, is a win-win. Grayson would have been another Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders-- on steroids. Murphy and Rubio... order-takers. In fact, of any Senate incumbent running for reelection this cycle, Wall Street has been most generous to Rubio, primarily because of all the money they spent on his aborted presidential race-- $6,607,150. But since ending his presidential race, so just for his Senate campaign, Wall Street has given Rubio $1,941,011, almost the exact same amount they gave Murphy.

The banksters are more interested in keeping their own Pennsylvania and Ohio pets, Pat Toomey ($2,777,384) and Rob Portman ($2,601,630), in their seats, than caring which Florida puppet-- now that threat of Grayson is out of the way-- wins. The Schumer-Wall Street connection has been a major theme at DWT for several years. We never get tired of reminding everyone that Schumer has taken more-- far more-- in Wall Street bribes than anyone who hasn't run for the presidency... and more than many who have. As of the last FEC reporting deadline Schumer had been lavished with $25,985,466 from the Finance Sector, more than the two next highest non-presidential candidates combined, Republicans Mitch McConnell ($11,810,276) and John Boehner ($12,218,198)!

Last week, Michael Sainato, jumped in on this as well. Reporting for the New York Observer, he went where no Beltway publications have ever or would ever dare-- right to the heart of Schumer's blatant corruption of our government. Sainato points to how Schumer has consolidated power for himself inside the Democratic Party with Wall Street's money, spreading it around and directing it, the way he did for Murphy this year in the primary. "In order to secure this lofty position [Democratic Leader]," Sainato wrote, "Schumer is busy spreading the wealth from years of dubious campaign contributions as a means to buy support from fellow Democrats who have the means to grant Schumer the power he desires. Politico reported on September 20 that Schumer has transferred $6.2 million from his campaign cash on hand to various Democrats in order to assist their upcoming election bids."

Given Schumer’s record advocating for Wall Street and tax breaks for the top one percent, working and middle class Americans should be alarmed. Further, the country should be wary of how much further into oligarchy Schumer’s leadership-- coupled with Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine in the White House-- will take the Democratic Party.

In July 2015, Schumer teamed up with Sen. Rob Portman to propose giving multinational corporations a massive hand-out in tax breaks. The current standard corporate tax rate is 35 percent, which multinational corporations have avoided paying by claiming profits are earned in overseas tax havens. Schumer and Portman advocate imposing a tax earned outside of the country at a much lower rate-- at least lower than President Obama’s proposed 14 percent.

“The obvious consequence if the Schumer-Portman scheme becomes law is that businesses based solely within the U.S. would be at a permanent disadvantage,” wrote Jon Schwarz for the Intercept. “Multinationals could earn profits in the U.S., get their armies of lawyers and accountants to make these profits appear to have been ‘earned’ in the Cayman Islands, and get taxed at the overseas profit rate. Meanwhile, purely domestic companies would either have to pay the higher domestic rate, or turn into multinationals themselves.” Essentially, Schumer wants to grant multinational corporations a permanent tax holiday.

Schumer’s modus operandi in the Senate has been to favor Wall Street over his constituents. In the wake of the 2008 economic recession, Schumer attended fundraisers with finance executives, pushing against efforts to regulate the industry. This included helping kill a progressive bill, with some bipartisan support, to break up big banks.

Wall Street rewarded Schumer, with 15 percent of their Senate donations in 2009 going directly to him-- nearly twice as much as any other senator received. Under Schumer’s leadership of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, donations from Wall Street to Democrats increased by 50 percent as he led his party’s efforts to deregulate the financial industry. While progressives like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were building a coalition to rein in Wall Street over the past decade, Schumer served as one of its biggest congressional allies.

“Wall Street welcomes expected Chuck Schumer promotion,” read a CNN headline from 2015 immediately following Reid’s announced retirement.

The Republicans, happy to cooperate, aren't running anyone against Schumer. The GOP candidate, Wendy Long, a silly Trump supporter, ran in 2012 against dull centrist Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand who beat her the largest margin for any statewide candidate in New York history, 4,822,330 votes (72.22%) to 1,758,702 votes (26.34%). She spent raised $784,778 to Gillibrand's $15,735,457. No Republican challenged her for the nomination this cycle. So far she's raised $160,195 and as of the June 30 FEC reporting deadline she had $53,525 cash on hand compared to Schumer's $27,517,363, the most, thanks to Wall Street, of any member of Congress (even though he has no contest at all).

Help good Democrats, who aren't part of Schumer's garbage heap world, make their care to the public this year: