As The Senate Makes It Clear They're About To Grant Trump Immunity From His Criminal Behavior, Netanyahu Is Wishing He Had A Moscow Mitch Of His Own

On March 3, Israelis will go to the polls to try to elect a prime minister-- again. This’ll be the third time in 12 months. The acting prime minster-- Benjamin Netanyahu, a Trump-like figure (who Trump is supporting)-- is also a criminal. Yesterday, Cheri Shalev penned a piece for Haartetz that should make it easier for Americans who want some background to follow the election-- Immunity With His Orwellian Doublespeak, There’ll Be No Stopping Him. Trump, of course, has his own pardon power, though he will be the first president to use it on himself and his immediate family.

In the first chapter of George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984, detained and tortured dissident Winston Smith peers out from his cell at the two white towers of the so-called Ministry of Truth, on which the motto of the Oceania dictatorship is inscribed: “War Is Peace; Freedom Is Slavery; Ignorance Is Strength.” Citizens of Oceania prove their loyalty to country and Big Brother-- aka BB-- with proficiency in such “doublespeak,” which enables them to concurrently believe in two contradictory concepts and everything in between.

If Smith had been detained in Israel 2019, he would have felt right at home. Winston would appreciate the unique contributions of the local BB to the lexicon of doublespeak. “Immunity is a cornerstone of democracy,” for example. The immunity that Benjamin Netanyahu is so desperately seeking isn’t a cornerstone of democracy, of course, but an instrument with which one of its bedrocks, equality before the law, is demolished. But when Netanyahu proclaims with pathos that day is night, his disciples immediately swear it’s pitch-black outside.

The internal logic is similar. War unites the nation and stifles division, which brings peace. Freedom entails deliberation and choice, which is akin to slavery. Ignorance unites the masses behind the lies of their leaders, thus emanating strength. Netanyahu’s similar equation adds a creative twist: Immunity is a cornerstone of democracy because it heads off the “putsch” that Netanyahu alleges, which is a figment of his imagination in the first place.

Netanyahu’s uber-absurd immunity = democracy stipulation reflects his growing desperation after realizing that his chances of securing immunity from this or the next Knesset are slim and possibly nonexistent, Yossi Verter wrote in Haaretz this week. In recent days, however, Netanyahu’s distress has been augmented by seemingly contradictory symptoms of hubris. After garnering 72.5 percent of the vote in his decisive victory in the Likud primary last week-- despite his criminal indictments, his assault on the rule of law, the steep economic and social price of the elections he insists on repeating until he gets what he came for and the risk that his candidacy could remove his party from power-- Netanyahu has come to realize that in terms of ability to blur distinctions between truth and lies, the sky’s the limit.

His arrogance, one must concede, is well founded. Throughout the past year, Likud in particular and the right in general have been like putty in his hands. As a master of doublespeak, Netanyahu can navigate between two contradictory poles without his followers puzzling over it or even noticing. The charges against him will evaporate, Netanyahu asserts, but if not, it’s a conspiracy. National unity is a disaster, no national salvation, which means total catastrophe.

Immunity? Out of the question, Netanyahu indignantly replied in a TV interview before the last election. His fans didn’t even blink when it suddenly emerged that immunity is a cornerstone of democracy. They even scolded Netanyahu’s critics for refusing to acknowledge such a basic staple of constitutional norms.

Donald Trump may have moved the hitherto wary and hawkish Republican right to stop worrying and love archenemy Russia, but Netanyahu did him one better: He has taught Likudniks to detest their own country, which they profess to love. In doublespeak it might be phrased as "Patriotism Is Self-Hatred."

Netanyahu’s Israel, after all, is rotten to the core: The police are bent, public prosecutors play politics, judges are usurpers, journalists invent stories, civil servants are backstabbers and the politicians, poor souls, are left marginalized and helpless. Netanyahu’s Israel is controlled by dark and sinister forces that are carrying out a coup d’état in broad daylight aimed at deposing him and installing a defeatist, Arab-loving leftist regime in his stead. And there’s only one man still standing to defend our cherished way of life, and his name is BB.

In old Israel, in which the only way to elude a criminal indictment was by acquittal in a court of law, Netanyahu’s prospects would have been dim. In the new Israel, the one Netanyahu is feverishly trying to build, he has far more avenues of escape-- from immunity that scorns the law to transforming the elections to a popular tribunal that will decide his fate.

One thing’s for sure: If Netanyahu successfully completes his mission impossible, he won’t make do with immunity. Armed with a mouth that can transform saints to sinners, criminals to martyrs, laws to laughingstock and avoiding prosecution to a noble calling, there’ll be no stopping him. One day we will learn that “Empires Are Jeffersonian Democracy,” including a formal invitation to Netanyahu’s coronation.

King Of The Hill-- Disclosure Alone Won’t Topple Campaign Money As The Ruler Of Congress.

Legislating Legislation by Nancy Ohanian

by Skip Kaltenheuser

In Washington, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Except when they get worse. The recent Democratic Party Presidential Debates had me thinking on the enclosed essay on campaign finance, fished out of the wayback machine, that appeared in Barron’s. Way back, over two decades. At the time, I foolishly thought disgust with begging, with dialing for dollars, would propel politicians to embrace and expand public financing. I didn’t count on their fear of risking incumbent advantage and didn’t know candidate Obama would come along to help lobotomize the concept. And I didn’t realize how entrenched and powerful the lucrative campaign finance/public relations-military-industrial complex would become, sprinkling its meth into Pandora’s Box as it greases the big money narratives from FOX to MSNBC, and beats the drums of war.

Too much of the precarious Fourth Estate, with career paths now often leading to public relations, has become subservient, to advertising dollars and/or to the overlapping interests of those who own media. Witness CNN’s Jake Tapper doing corporate PR’s bidding as a debate “moderator” during Tuesday night’s debate with Bernie and Elizabeth Warren. He sounded almost frantic trying to get the predictable knives in and cutting short responses not going his way. I half-expected to see a CNN stagehand carrying a potted plant walking back and forth behind the two progressives every time they spoke, the plant growing taller with each passage across the stage.

Forgive a few anachronisms for a piece written in late ’96. For example, this was done long before Citizens United amped up the problem exponentially, including the greasing of dark money, well in play now by both major parties. The required fundraising sums mentioned in the piece have been dwarfed, cementing the power of the fundraising/consulting class. Since the 2010 decision on Citizens United, the far-ranging impacts have even souped up the purchase of state courts, as noted in this Barron’s essay, The Price of Justice. This builds an increasingly pro-big business judiciary, which I believe contributes to the wealth gap.

To be fair, the big money does a great job promoting bipartisanship. Witness the massive subsidies for fossil fuels, not to mention military support to protect those industries abroad. It’s a bipartisan success in helping speed future mass extinctions. One of innumerable items under the radar, witness the bipartisan corporatist destruction of the US patent system regarding prospects for small entity inventors challenging the big boys. Quick tip to Bernie: You can rectify a mistake by pushing a proper fix. It’s the perfect progressive issue on every level, and not addressing it means a power-dive for American innovation and the gobbling of our seed corn.

One other thing that’s happened since the essay is an astonishing increase in the wealth gap, and in the concentration of political power that goes hand in hand. What does the Big Money want? As noted here, what the Big Money wants is more.

In the oops category, my bad, (really bad), in the essay I lauded then-Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig’s regulations “modernizing” the finance industry. It appears Ludwig was complicit in Bill Clinton’s undermining of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933’s separation of commercial and investment banking. It’s still a great example of the issues phonies like Chuck Schumer dance around and speak out of both sides of their mouths about in order to generate campaign contributions from competing interests. But allowing banks to muddy the waters between commercial and investment banking, with tax-payers on the hook, brought about one of government’s greatest catastrophes. I’d sure like to disappear any favorable connotations in that example from the essay. So it goes.

You’ll note my essay below was triggered by illegal foreign money contributions to Bill Clinton via bag men like John Huang. The Clintons were ahead of their time in so many ways. Since then, Citizens United has made the barriers to influence via campaign money from foreign interests laughable, as predicted in the grand dissent by the late Justice John Paul Stevens, as noted in The Intercept.

Into the time machine:

Not Long ago the Clinton Administration crowed about agreements with a number of countries to curb bribery in business abroad. Wide implementation of measures such as tax-deductibility of bribes is still a long march away. Still, the laudable effort reflects the belief in U.S. charges that corrupt practices such as bribery in foreign procurement produce inefficiency, surprise derailments and social instability. The stock retort from parties resisting reform: There isn’t a dimes difference between bribery abroad and the U.S. campaign-finance system.

Plenty have professed to be shocked-- shocked!-- when the White House was caught Huanging it. Alas, many commentators conclude that stricter limits on donations and spending won’t work and that the only real solution is “absolute disclosure.”

Improvements in disclosure are needed, but by itself disclosure is woefully inadequate. Lip service for disclosure as the only route for reform is the fallback position of those in the lobbying world-- givers, incumbent receivers and the growth industry between them. They’ll mumble anything to head off public anger at the low art of the thinly disguised bribe.

Reform is a tricky puzzle. Before accepting disclosure not as a tool but as a panacea, consider this: Most voters lack either the ability or the time to adequately decipher the true meaning of campaign contributions. Who figures the National Wetland Coalition for oil and land-development interests? Witness past parades of donors calling themselves housewives, large contributors’ most frequently listed occupation.

Some contributors, like the tobacco industry, have readily identified goals. But others aren’t so easy to figure. How many voters will sort out the quid pro quo of folks like Dwayne Andreas, who gives piles of money to everyone and has a long list of diverse objectives? How many will plumb the desires of a patent-law firm whose favored clients are foreign companies? What of domestic subsidiaries of foreign companies? Try tracking “soft money,” wonderfully malleable stuff that is laundered by the political parties themselves, often comes from equal-opportunity givers and goes wherever the parties want to put it.

Organizations and competitors already rush to filter the info for voters, but much of their messages turn to mush in the flood of interpretations. Voters must also decipher the political spin and agenda of groups offering to do the voters’ homework. Let the press do its job? Presumably it already tries in the limited space it’s allotted, but shining a light on all the shell games is a daunting task and anyway, would lead to information overload.

I once asked a top staffer for former U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston, the California Democrat, how the senator coped with the flood of cash. He deadpanned: “People think if they give you a lot of money, they’re buying influence. But all they really buy is access.” Charles Keating must have thought the fictional wall between influence and access a hoot.

Just as corruption abroad results in inefficiencies that harm American companies, many U.S. government inefficiencies, including bloat and waste, are traceable to our system of campaign finance. Political action committees and trade associations are dominated by members who are the most active because they seek the most. They are bidders in a political bazaar focused on the short term. A legislator’s response, “We’re looking closely at this,” is often code for, “It’s on the block, open your wallets.” Because so many politicians are unable to move for fear of alienating contributors, matters are often not taken up until a crisis arrives.

One example of legislative paralysis is in the arena of finance. According to the Center of Responsive Politics, interested parties seeking to influence the House and Senate banking committees spent nearly $60 million in campaign contributions in the first 18 months of the 1995-96 election cycle, exceeding all other industry and labor groupings, and totals are expected to rocket when the final five months are compiled. Did this advance a rational, comprehensive modernization of the financial-services world? No. Competing interests fought to a standstill. Finally, Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig, whose patience had run out, issued regulations that will accelerate modernization of the industry. Pros like William Seidman, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., praise Ludwig’s action as strengthening safety and soundness but Republican Alfonse D’Amato of New York, says he is “deeply troubled” by the comptroller’s action, and Democrat Charles Schumer of New York, a member of the House Banking Committee, says the regulations’ impact on bank safety “is far too serious to be left to the discretion of regulators (in other words, open your wallets and we’ll get up another game).

As for rifle-shot legislation that succeeds, take a peek at our tax code. And from airwaves to sugar beets, gasohol to guns, the correlation between votes and contributions is startling.

One often hears that, in our $6 trillion economy, soft-drink advertising eclipses what is spent on campaigns. But it isn’t the amount, it’s where it goes, who gives it and how many on Capitol Hill spend most of their time seeking it. Senators raise an average of 15 grand or so a week, every week. Leon Panetta, the departing White House chief of staff recently estimated that legislators spend 60%-80% of their time with their palms out. He figures the madness continues because politicians are too insecure to tackle the system they know and which got them into office. Do we really want the chief criterion for the performance of our leaders – and often their staffs-- to be their ability to raise money?

Even more repugnant to democratic ideals is the flip side of politicians’ money-raising-- the threat, not at all thinly veiled, of retaliation against companies that give money to the opposition.

Oddly, one proposed solution to this state of affairs is to simply take off all limits and let politicians glide with a few fat-cat bakers, restrained only by full disclosure. Including soft money, the top 1% of income earners already provide the vast bulk of campaign cash, exceeding PACs. Politicians needn’t be rocket scientists to know the majority of people in the top 1% view many issues-- such as uncapped interest deductions on loans for high-priced homes-- pretty much the same way. Again, disclosure falls short of revelation.

If you think we have funny races now, turn all our candidates into horses owned by the biggest bettors. As they won’t differ much on real issues, we will be treated to demagoguery. Their strategies will center not on better ideas but on engineering the failure of the opposition.

Applaud any tightening of disclosure, but the only way to curb undue influence, from both international and domestic sources, is to curb undue influence. That means curbing money. Banning soft money and giving teeth to the Federal Election Commission would be a big start. Voluntary participation in a system with spending limits, meaningful media access and citizen financing-- which would also free politicians-- with tough limits on contributions from every source would be even better. The public cost would be a pittance compared with the savings from more government decisions based on the merits; consider just the cost of delayed oversight of the thrift industry.

Those who would limit reforms to disclosure cite the difficulty, both judicial and legislative, in keeping both foreign and domestic money from finding indirect routes. But that difficulty also applies to the proper disclosure of the routes money takes into one pocket and out the other. That’s why real contribution limits are necessary.

American Dream Revisited by Nancy Ohanian

Until the Supreme Court wises up and admits that unlimited money isn’t unlimited speech, participation in a public financing system will have to be voluntary. But polling shows strong, consistent support for public financing. Access to meaningful media formats at reduced cost must be a component. As voters rebel against the cynicism expressed by turn-of-the-century writer Elbert Hubbard, “Government is a kind of legalized pillage,” big spenders who scoff at a serious reform system are likely to suffer backlash.

The confused message our system sends abroad, and perhaps at home, was made clear recently when the bureau chief of a South American TV network asked me: What is wrong with influence from foreign contributions? After all, we live in a global economy.” I answered that if nothing were wrong with it, folks like Lincoln couldn’t pen phrases like “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” but I don’t think I was persuasive.

Conventional wisdom on the last campaign is that a wary public balanced a Democratic White House with a Republican Congress. But a nationwide agreement between voters to neutralize parties was less a factor then the money-raising power of incumbency.

That power is the enemy of reform. Vice President Gore, Rep. Dick Gephardt and others seeking the White House are already pulling levers on the fund-raising machinery, as are congressional incumbents. The desire for another day, another dollar won’t abate unless the public insists that this is a matter of national shame. Then real reforms may become an irresistible avenue for a White House mea culpa and political absolution. Restoring credibility to government will enhance elected officials ability to carry a tough sell, such as entitlement reform, to the public, without being handed their hands.

If the fallout from John Huang brings about real campaign-finance reforms-- perhaps the greatest accomplishment the President and Congress might achieve-- we should all take Mr. Huang to lunch. Campaign money, like rainwater, will always seek the leaks in our democratic roof, but that’s no reason not to keep plugging the holes. People who wait only for fixes that are absolutes will be waiting for Godot. Voters know our system of campaign finance attacks the concept of one person, one vote, and their sense of disenfranchisement just provided the lowest Election Day turnout since 1924.


_____________________________________________________


And now-- a little note from Howie and a few words from MoscowMitch, who had just been elected to his second term in the Senate when Skip wrote the above piece-- and hadn't turned into a Kremlin puppet yet... but was certainly already a proud shill of Big Money, as you will hear in this brand new recording from NPR. Today, McConnell is the #1 roadblock-- and unapologetically so-- standing in the way of serious campaign finance reform in this country-- the king (or queen, to be more technically accurate) of legalistic congressional bribery:

How Many More Seats In Congress Will The Democrats Win Because Of Trump's Trade War?

The big Politico headline early yesterday morning, Trump disputes impact of tariffs on American consumers, but warns China not to retaliate, was instantly controversial on two levels. First... well, just watch the chief Trumpanzee economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, admitting that his boss, Señor Trumpanzee, doesn't know shit from shinola about the impact of the trade war he's waging against China and American consumers and producers.

The second part of the Politico headline-- his absurd warning to China about not retaliating-- went down in flames as well. Washington Post: China said it will raise tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods effective June 1. That's what happens in a trade war-- tit for tatted everyone suffers as it inevitably escalates. The announcement of the retaliation by China sent world stock markets plummeting. The Dow was almost instantly down 600 points.

China is targeting U.S. agriculture, which has already been bearing the brunt of Trump's trade war. China knows that if Trump's support in rural areas starts to dissipate, his reelection bid is over. It's not just farmers in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa who can swing the 2020 election; peanut farmers in Georgia, wheat farmers in Kansas and Nebraska, poultry farmers in North Carolina and Arkansas are getting fed up-- and not seeing any of the financial relief Trump promised months ago.



What a terrible day for the news to break that former Illinois congressman, Bobby Schilling (R) is going to run for the open Iowa seat (IA-02) being given up by Democrat Dave Loebsack! "I'm a business man," Schilling said. "I won't make a decision to run unless I'm absolutely sure I can win it. ... I'm 98 percent there." The district, which includes Iowa City, Davenport and Burlington is 60% rural and hurting badly from the Trump trade wars. Obama had won the district twice but Hillary was the completely wrong candidate for the voters there and Trump took it 49.1% to 45.0%. Last year Loebsack was reelected 54.8-42.6% and won the 3 biggest counties in the district-- Scott, Johnson and Clinton-- with margins big enough to overcome big GOP majorities in the small, rural counties-- Wayne, Decatur, Lucas, Keokuk, Mahaska-- counties that are likely to react badly to Republicans next year with Trump on the top of the ticket. These are also exactly the kind of counties that Republican Joni Ernst will be depending on for her Senate race.

Meanwhile, it looks like the ignoramus is stumbling into a two-front war. His trade war now is against the whole world-- not Russia, of course. By the end of the week he's expected to announce a 25% tariff against European-made cars, not just exotic brands like Rolls Royce, Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley, Ferrari, and Bugatti, but also against more commonly U.S.-sold cars by Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, Fiat, Volvo, Land Rover, Audi and Jaguar. Our allies--or at least our pre-Trump allies-- in the E.U are putting the finishing touches on a list of American goods to target with retaliatory tariffs, likely designed to hurt Trump politically in red states.

Trump's response to China yesterday was to threaten more tariffs. This kind of thing is inevitable when you elect-- or Putin installs-- a dim-witted, unread school yard bully as "president." ZeroHedge:

Trump must be confused about who pays custom duties (or maybe he can't break the news to the deadbeat consumer ahead of an election year), as the US imposes increased tariff rates on Chinese goods. The tax is levied at the time of import and is paid by the American importer of record, and then passed onto consumers.

A new report from Oxford Economics, revealed that the 25% tariff rate on $200 billion in goods imports from China would cost the economy $62 billion in economic output by next year, which translates to an equivalent loss of $490 per household.

The research firm estimates that a tariff on all imports from China would cost the economy about $100 billion by 2020, which translates to an equivalent loss of $800 per household.

The announced tariffs have come at a somewhat inconvenient time for the economy.

Economic growth is rapidly decelerating besides Kudlow's bullish propaganda remarks, and the US faces continued headwinds from monetary policy tightening and actual fiscal drag in 2020.

Trump has stated that trade wars are "good and easy to win" and believes tariffs are the only solution to force China to make a deal.

The effects of the trade war are being felt by industries across the country, from farmers in the Midwest to auto manufacturers in the Rust Belt.

Senator Rand Paul told host George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that he's "very concerned" that the trade war will depend and end up hurting consumers, farmers, and manufacturers.

"I know of a big company that told me that the tax cuts specifically helped them but that the tariffs are almost equal in punishing them," Paul said, referring to the Republican-led tax overhaul passed in 2017. "The farmers in Kentucky are concerned about the tariffs, and I've talked to the administration about this. . . . The longer we're involved in a tariff battle or a trade war, the better chance there is that we could actually enter into a recession because of it."

Henry M. Paulson Jr., who was treasury secretary under President George W. Bush, spoke with "Face the Nation" on Sunday and said, "we don't have many good tools" to pressure China into a deal but warned tariffs aren't an ideal choice.

"They're a tax on the American consumer," said Paulson. He added: "Will it hurt us? If this persists too long, it will. There'll be a cost to it."

If President Trump ever admitted to his base that they were the ones paying the tariffs, not the Chinese, well, his base would be in an uproar, could jeopardize his 2020 run. So in the meantime, President Trump is keeping the American people content with fake news tweets while slowly pushing out Kudlow to spill the beans.

This is part of the note my financial advisor sent me yesterday evening: "Escalations in trade tensions between the U.S. and China continued to startle the markets. A trade deal was not reached Friday, and as a result, higher tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods went into effect. As expected, China announced that it will retaliate by raising tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods effective June 1... The markets reacted to the continuing uncertainty, and the major indices tumbled Monday on fears that higher tariffs will limit economic and corporate growth. Not only was there disappointment of no deal, but the growing size of potential tariffs appears to have changed the direction of the discussion. The risk that this could be a harbinger of more challenging discussions with Japan and Europe over auto imports increases uncertainty... The next move is likely the official initiation of a 25% tariff on an additional $325 billion of Chinese imports by the U.S., which will likely invite an additional Chinese response and more negative headlines. As a result, the equity markets may see more volatility in the foreseeable future." So... yesterday, the Dow closed down 617 points down. The NASDAQ was down 269.9 points. Watch CNN's take on Trumpanzee's "false economics" and how his trade war is going to hurt Sen. Susan Collins' reelection chances next year:

Paul Ryan's And Trumpy-the-Clown's Vision For America Is Very Dark And Horrifyingly Kafka-esque

You may well have woken up yesterday to Señor Trumpanzee's tweet (below), taking-- or at least sharing-- the "credit" with congressional Republicans obsessed with destroying the consumer protections the Democrats made some terminative steps towards implementing-- despite obstruction from the corrupt Blue Dogs and even more corrupt New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- while they were in power. House Republicans-- led by Wall Street whores Paul Ryan ($10,328,395), Jeb Hensarling ($7,746,848), Ed Royce ($7,281,557), Pat Tiberi ($6,594,495), Kevin McCarthy ($6,528,867), Peter Roskam ($4,548,803), Steve Stivers ($4,512,937) and Patrick McHenry ($4,396,186)-- have been furiously chipping away at Dodd Frank protections. So how does this manifest itself in the real world and what does it do to real people?

Republicans-- along with their Blue Dog and New Dem allies like Joe Crowley ($6,477,659), Steny Hoyer ($6,073,548), Carolyn Maloney ($5,751,077), Jim Himes ($5,749,252) and Kyrsten Sinema ($2,015,020)-- literally want to make it easier for their bankster campaign donors, the people who finance their careers, to rip off their customers with impunity. An exaggeration? Not at all. Have you heard about the new class action law suits-- which the GOP wants to ban-- accusing Wells Fargo of racketeering and fraud involving over half a million customers of the bank they were stealing from? That's very precisely what Paul Ryan's "free market" Ayn Randian vision looks like in the real world. Wells Fargo-- caught red-handed-- now admits having charged hundreds of thousands of customers doing business with them for car loans for insurance they did not ask for or need, causing nightmares in the lives of countless Americans who have been left on the side of the road by conservatives as prey for the banksters.

After the NY Times exposed the scam, Wells Fargo begged for mercy late last week and promising to refund about $80 million to over half a million customers they were caught stealing from-- including at least 20,000 people whose vehicles were illegally repossessed. Last night I heard a personalized version of the scandal on NPR's All Things Considered.

Who Snatched My Car? Wells Fargo Did

Wells Fargo is back in the spotlight for another scandal. This time, for signing up 490,000 auto-loan customers for insurance they didn't need.

This comes less than a year after the bank generated a massive public outcry for opening millions of unwanted accounts for customers.

Customers who already had car insurance say they had no idea they were being charged for this insurance from Wells Fargo. And the bank acknowledges that tens of thousands of people wound up in default, which affected people's credit scores, and thousands had their cars repossessed.

One of them was Michael Feifer.

One morning in February, he was heading off to his job in Maryland at a company that builds guitars. He walked to the spot where he'd parked his car, but it wasn't there.

"I called the police," he says. "I was livid. I thought somebody stole my car."

Somebody had improperly made off with Feifer's car. But it wasn't a car thief. It was Wells Fargo bank. The police informed him of this when he called them. "That's when I found out it was repossessed," he says.

Feifer says he had no idea why the bank would repo his car. He says his payments were automatically taken out of his checking account.

"I've never missed a payment," he says. "My insurance was current."

So he called Wells Fargo and found out the bank had put another insurance policy on his car. Lenders do this when a borrower doesn't have insurance. Wells Fargo calls it collateral protection insurance, or CPI.

And there's nothing wrong with that, but Wells Fargo imposed this insurance on nearly a half-million people who already had insurance. The bank outlined the scope of the problems and its efforts to resolve them in a statement.

Right after Feifer's car got repo'd, Wells Fargo told him he was marked as delinquent for not paying this insurance-- which he didn't want or need or even know about. "They said, well, you owe $1,500," he says.

..."I showed up at that bank with my bank statements showing all the payments I made for my vehicle and my proof of insurance showing that I've never had a lapse in my insurance," he says. "The people at the bank were like, 'Well, you shouldn't owe anything because it's not your fault.' They were just as confused as I was."

Feifer says the branch employees were trying to be helpful. They called up the Wells Fargo department for him that deals with car repossessions to find out what was going on. They kept getting put on hold.

"We were probably on hold for a total of 2 1/2 hours while I was in there," Feifer says. "I literally spent the whole day" at the branch. He says the employees were getting frustrated too. "They're like, 'This is ridiculous. You shouldn't be on hold for this long.'"

What Feifer didn't know was that Wells Fargo had already been doing an internal investigation into complaints from lots of customers for the same insurance mix-up.

Feifer was eventually told to call back several days later. Then he was told there was no record of his prior calls from the branch. He said the person he spoke to on the phone wouldn't let him talk to a supervisor. "She was rude to me, talking over me. I felt like she wasn't willing to hear anything I had to say," Feifer says. He says the Wells Fargo representative just kept telling him he had to pay the money.

Meanwhile, Feifer was told that the clock was ticking and his car would be auctioned off two weeks from the day it was repossessed. So, after much haggling with the bank, he paid about $600 to get his car back.

Feifer said he figured this was just some freak mistake. But when he heard this insurance issue affected hundreds of thousands of customers, "I was blown away," he says. "I wasn't alone in it and I felt like they're preying on everybody, taking people's money. I felt like they're crooks."

Roland Tellis, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, doesn't want to let Wells Fargo off the hook with their attempt to pay the $80 million. "Wells Fargo has long lost the right to decide what is best for its customers... Refunds don't address the fraud or inflated premiums, the delinquency charges, and the late fees. It will be up to a jury or court to decide the appropriate remedy." And that's where Ryan and the House Republicans come in. They're trying the abolish these kinds of class law suits and doing everything they can to make it more difficult for the public-- their own constituents-- to protect themselves from this kind of predatory behavior. Traditionally, Democrats have stood up against this kind of crap-- it was FDR, for example, who popularized the term "banksters"-- but certainly since the Clinton presidency and the rise of the New Dems, the role of Democrats in this equation had become less clear, more murky. In his interview last week with David Sirota, for Thomas Franks explained why "the Democratic Party is in deep trouble... The Democrats very gradually, but definitely, abandoning the interests of working-class voters, identifying themselves instead with a more affluent group, with the affluent white-collar professionals. It starts in the 1970s with the Democrats removing organized labor from its structural position in the Democratic party, and then it goes up through Bill Clinton getting NAFTA done, the free trade deals that the Democrats have ... By the way, in my opinion, free trade or the trade agreements, I should say, was probably the issue that if there was one issue that really did Hillary in, I think that's what it was: the trade deals under the Clinton administration, Obama sort of dropping the ball on labor's various issues, doing these incredible favors for Wall Street while he blew off the concerns of union. The ultimate evidence is what's happening with inequality. It gets worse and worse and worse every year. It's very easy to show how the Democrats have forgotten about organized labor, but what is really striking is the passion that they show for the knowledge industries, which includes Wall Street, Silicon Valley, big pharma, that sort of thing."

The Democratic party [used to be] this sworn enemy of Wall Street. Franklin Roosevelt broke up all of these banks, the Glass Steagall Act, put all these banks out of business, and set up the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate these guys, all of these regulatory measures. That's the Democratic heritage. That's the legacy of the New Deal. Up until the days of Clinton, that's really who the Democratic Party was. They had a very populist tone, and they would never identify themselves with Wall Street.

Barack Obama comes in, and I was one of these people who thought that he represented a turn back in the other direction and that he would be, very shortly would be, getting tough with Wall Street. He had all the bailouts were underway. He had total authority over these guys, and he didn't do it. Instead, he appointed all these various Clinton people to come in and manage the bailout situation.

And now we have a pipsqueak from New Mexico, as head of the DCCC, aiming to make it worse by recruiting and financing Blue Dogs and New Dems to further take over the Democratic Party. UGLY! South Bay congressman Ro Khanna has increasingly become one of the strongest and most powerful populist voices on economic issues for progressive Democrats. Last night he reminded us that "Democrats need to have a substantive platform for the middle class, not just a rhetorical one. This means standing up for labor unions. It means standing up for class action lawsuits. It means standing up for basic consumer protections and against economic concentration. We don't need fancy consultants to come up with a message. We need to stand on the side of people against powerful economic interests and be true to our roots."

Katie Porter, a respected academic who has written extensively about consumer protection and is now running against a Republican rubber stamp who opposes it-- Mimi Walters-- with Elizabeth Warren's backing, told us that "Whether we're talking about increases in outrageous banking fees, the latest Wells Fargo product scam or the fraud that occurred in the housing market ahead of the 2008 collapse, all of it has one thing in common-- Wall Street banks engaged in systemic fraud against consumers and knew Washington would let them get away with it. I witnessed this phenomenon firsthand in my own work as a consumer advocate. These banks planned and accounted for the profits they would reap from predatory actions against consumers. Companies like Well Fargo built their business model around cheating consumers! But while Washington made some headway fighting abuses after the 2008 crisis by creating the CFPB and passing Dodd-Frank (against intense opposition from the industry and pro-Wall Street politicians), Trump and members of Congress in both parties once again are trying to make it even easier for Wall Street to break the law and reap major profits from defrauding working families. Those are completely backwards and reckless priorities, and fighting those attempts is one of the biggest reasons why I'm running."

The other progressive Democrat hoping to win the CA-45 congressional district is Kia Hamadanchy, a young attorney who worked on the staff on Banking Committee ranking member Sherrod Brown. This issue is in his wheelhouse as well and yesterday he told us that "Time and time again institutions like Wells Fargo have demonstrated that as soon as people let up or stop paying attention that they will not hesitate to take advantage of their customers and bleed them dry. One of the things we learned in the aftermath of the financial crisis was how much of the business model at many of these institutions was premised on the ability to rip off consumers. It's no surprise that they're pushing for Members of Congress '"if men were angels, no government would be necessary.' What we know is that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior and what that tells us that its certainly not angels who are running these institutions and that they are in need of constant and relentless oversight."

  Maxine Waters and Dan Kildee, the ranking and vice ranking Financial Services Committee Democrats, asked the crooked Republican chairman, Hensarling, to call Wells Fargo’s top executives, CEO Timothy Sloan and Chairman Stephen Sanger, for a hearing "about ongoing violations of consumer rights, any lessons learned from the egregious behavior of the bank’s fraudulent opening of millions of unauthorized accounts, and what concrete steps are being taken to address all of the problems that have come to light." Last year Wells Fargo gave Hensarling a nice fat $10,000 bribe. Other crooked members of the House Financial Services Committee who accepted substantial bribes from Wells Fargo last year while they were investigating Wells Fargo's crimes were:

• Ann Wagner (R-MO)- $18,600
• French Hill (R-AR)- $15,250
• Vice Chair Patrick McHenry R-NC)- $15,100
• Keith Rothfus (R-PA)- $14,800
• Ed Royce (R-CA)- $12,500
• Frank Lucas (R-OK)- $10,000
• John Delaney (New Dem-MD)- $9,500
• Tom Emmer (R-MN)- $9,150
• Robert Pittenger (R-NC)- $8,500
• Sean Duffy (R-WI)- $7,500
• Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)- $7,500
• Carolyn Maloney (New Dem-NY)- $7,750
• Denny Heck (New Dem-WA)- $7,000
• Steve Stivers (R-OH)- $7,000
• Randy Hultgren (R-IL)- $7,000
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)- $6,500
• Bill Huizenga (R-MI)- $6,500
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- $6,100
• Mia Love (R-UT)- $6,091
• Andy Barr (R-KY)- $6,000
• Dennis Ross (R-FL)- $6,000

When crooked New Dems and Blue Dogs from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party are taking bribes from the same sources that pay off the crooked Republicans... well, that leads to a very special kind of bipartisanship. doesn't it. And Lujan and Pelosi want to recruit more of this garbage for the Democratic congressional caucus.

Despite The Corrosive Effect Of The DCCC, There Is A Reason To Believe

Hard to imagine, but even today 42% of Americans still prefer to see Republicans control Congress. A new poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal shows that just 50% of Americans would prefer Democrats take over Congress in 2018. NBC reports “that’s the largest lead either party has held on that generic ballot question in the NBC/WSJ poll since 2013, and the first time either party reached 50 percent on that question since 2008.” But still… this is the Republican Party those 42% want in control, the GOP so eloquently described by Charles Pierce for Esquire:

Today is not the day for you to ask for my understanding as to how you're going to afford Grandma's chemo now that she's busted the lifetime cap on her insurance. Today is not the day for you to ask for my sympathy for Grandpa who's going to get his ass hoisted out of his rest home and dropped onto the couch in your basement family room because his Medicaid ran out. Today is not the day for you to moan into TV cameras about how Cousin Clyde with the opioid problem has to go back to sticking up tourists for his fix because the little hospital up by the mountain closed.

Not today. Not this particular Thursday. Maybe by Monday.

The Senate unveiled its big secret tax-cut plan on Thursday morning. It also contains some elements dealing with healthcare that will make the lives of millions of sick and elderly Americans immeasurably worse, but, since it's actually a tax-cut bill, and it actually does cut taxes for the wealthiest among us, then I guess you can say the strategy was a success. And they say the Republicans can't govern. Hah.

Of course, it's as bad as we all thought it would be. It virtually zeroes out Medicaid down the line-- letting it "die on the vine," just the way Newt Gingrich recommended 20 years ago. It forces low-income people to pay more for policies once called "street-surance" back in the day. (John Grisham should sue these guys.They stole the entire plot from The Rainmaker.) There's a lot of "handing back to the states," which can be translated as "Give Sam Brownback more money to hand out to his donors." The bill is such a transparent sham that one of its provisions, the repeal of the tax on investment income for wealthy individuals and families, was made retroactive to the end of last year. There is no reason on god's earth to make this retroactive unless your main purpose is to shove more of the nation's wealth upwards. Which is what this bill is primarily designed to do.

Let me put it in measurements that are particularly of interest to me. By 2050, it is estimated that there will be 16 million people in the United States with Alzheimer's Disease. Right now, in 2017 dollars, the estimated costs of treating and caring for AD patients is $236 billion dollars. Of that, $154 billion is picked up by Medicare and Medicaid. Tell me now how that gap is made up by a plan that virtually eliminates Medicaid entirely by the time we get to 2025. Churches? Families? Winning the Lotto?

A cure?

Fat chance.

So, yeah, suckers. This is what you voted for. In fact, this is what you've been voting for, over and over again, ever since the Death Valley Days of jellybeans and missiles to the mullahs. This bill is the pot of gold at the end of Paul Ryan's personal rainbow. This bill is everything that every young conservative brought up in the luxurious terrariums of wingnut welfare is taught to revere from the first day of his political gestation, right down to its playing-to-the-cheap-seats whack at Planned Parenthood.

So far, four GOP senators have said they cannot vote for the bill. They are Ron (Shreds of Freedom) Johnson of Wisconsin, Aqua Buddha from Kentucky, Mike Lee, the konztitooshunal skolar from Utah, and Tailgunner Ted Cruz. They can't support it (at the moment) because it isn't repeal-ish enough for them. (Translation: The bill still coddles the poor and infirm beyond the limits God intended when He wrote the Constitution.) Now, as the redoubtable Digby often points out, if they were to torpedo this plague ship, it wouldn't be the first time the wingiest members of the tribe saved the day. But my money stays on the notion that they will find enough crazy ideas in the House during reconciliation to satisfy the likes of these four. As for the vaunted Republican "moderates," I have no faith in them whatsoever. I think Rob Portman of Ohio and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia will get bought off by an increase in the bill's stingy provisions regarding the opioid epidemic. Some version of this creature will stalk its way into law.

I'm sorry, but I can't let the suckers off the hook on this particular Thursday, not when I know in my bones that, in a year or so, there are going to be more expeditions into The Real America in which we hear sad tales about the closing of rural hospitals, and medical bankruptcies, and children who died because the insurance company denied them a life-saving treatment. There will be all kinds of reasons postulated for this terrible state of affairs. "Culture" probably will be one of them, and it will be the stupidest one of all.

What will not be mentioned is that many of these people brought their tragedies on themselves, that voting has consequences, and that using a presidential election to hock a collective loogie at "The Establishment" and at Those People is a particularly dumbass way to participate in democracy.

But, as Nick Harwood pointed out in his NBC News poll reporting “Republicans retain some important advantages as both sides look ahead to 2018. By 18 percentage points, Americans say they prefer Republicans over Democrats for dealing with ISIS; they also prefer Republicans for changing Washington (by 9 points), dealing with the economy (7 points), and dealing with taxes (4 points).”

Now, about that map up top. It shows what will happen nationally if the same swing towards Democrats and away from Republicans that happened in the Montana special election, happens across the country in 2018. Yes, the GOP will still win in Montana… a 14.5% swing won’t be enough there. But… look at Orange County, CA, look at the suburban districts around Philly, look at the “untouchable” Texas districts around Houston, Dallas, Ft. Worth, San Antonio and Austin, all 3 Republican-held swingy Iowa seats and, finally, O.K.L.A.H.O.M.A., Oklahoma-- OK! And say buh-bye to as many as 70 Republican incumbents-- not just poor doomed schlepps in blue-leaning districts, but GOP leaders like Paul Ryan, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Ed Royce, Virginia Foxx, Rodney Frelinghuysen, Lamar Smith… all those committee chairs flooding K Street with job applications at once! Sad!

And I’ll tell you something about that map-- it doesn’t take into account some special circumstances, like Duncan Hunter’s likely corruption indictment in a much redder southern California district or Devin Nunes’ little massive Putin-Gate problem up in California’s Central Valley.