Erica Vladimer, Another Strong Progressive Challenging Carolyn Maloney In New York

It's always tough for Blue America when more than one competent progressive runs in the same district. Several are running this cycle to represent New York's 12th district, which encompasses part of the east side of Manhattan as well as Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn and Astoria, Long Island City and Sunnyside in Queens. The seat is held by Carolyn Maloney, a Wall Street Democrat who may not be aware that her district includes chunks of Brooklyn and Queens-- or even the Lower East Side. Maloney is all about the Upper East Side. She represents, for example, Trump Tower. A few weeks ago we talked with Lauren Ashcraft, another super candidate running for the seat. Now let's meet Erica Vladimer. If you like what she has to say, please consider contributing to her campaign here.


Where Have All The Leaders Gone? Why We Need New Voices To Lead Us In Congress
by Erica Vladimer

Way back in June, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi publicly addressed where the Democratic conference stands on addressing rape allegations made against “President” Trump by E. Jean Carroll: “I don’t know what Congress’s role would be in this,” she said at a press conference, “but in any of these things, this is about what the President’s own party would do… I’m busy worrying about children not being in their mother’s arms.”

Quite frankly, that is an insulting misdirection that belies out-of-touch leadership. It is classic demagoguery, employed to evade addressing the issue at hand. And what’s behind it is worse: the idea that Congress would proactively choose to limit its role in addressing sexual violence is not only abdication of duty, it is also eerily reminiscent of a lesson that should have been learned from the recent spectacle of an out-of-control New York state legislature, one I sadly witnessed firsthand. More on that in a moment.

This feigned helplessness by elected officials is not surprising and it seems to have become a required skill on all levels of government and on so many pressing issues. Remember when the 1994 Firearms Act that banned assault weapons expired in 2004, and Congress refused to renew it-- in part because Democrats put politics over protection of the people? Or just recently, Speaker Pelosi’s pooh-poohing Medicare for All, implying that an issue polling above 70% nationally might still cost Democrats dearly on Election Day 2020? Spare us.

This is just more evidence of everything wrong with a Democratic leadership that had to be dragged to even discussing the possibility of considering impeachment proceedings, and still hasn’t gotten up the guts to really go after Trump’s cabal of stooges and third-rate grifters with the full extent of the law. It’s cowardice that extends to the Democratic establishment across state governments, too, including here in New York State.

Without true blue Democrats who espouse aggressive-progressivism, and center the voices of their constituents, we will continue to get nothing more than lip service from our status quo representatives, who have long been allowed to talk-the-talk without ever walking-the-walk.

That goes for now, but it also goes for January 2021, and even with a Democratic president in the Oval Office (which we will have). Because it’s not enough to be concerned with children being ripped from their mothers’ arms while also passing a budget that includes additional ICE funding.

It’s unacceptable to say you support the Green New Deal, like my opponent Rep. Carolyn Maloney runs around town saying, while continuing to bankroll your re-election campaign with corporate and PAC funding from the world’s largest fossil-fuel investor, Black Rock, as my opponent also happily does. Oh, by the way, she also refuses to return years of donations from one Donald J. Trump. That’s not just a tin ear, it is a slap in the face to the constituents of one of the most progressive districts in America, and it’s the biggest reason I am running-- to give a voice to those who have been ignored by their current representative for far too long.

It’s time to elect legislators who will be the change agents we expect them to be, who will fight for the long overdue reforms that have fallen to the wayside.

Two examples from New York. One: The Child Victims Act languished in limbo for over a decade in Albany, while legislators caved to powerful lobbying influences: the insurance industry and the Roman Catholic Church. It was never even brought to the Senate floor, not even when a rogue group of Democrats, known as the Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), held a power sharing agreement with Republicans, who controlled the Senate for forty years. With the IDC caucusing with the GOP, pretending to be some kind of sentinels of true progressivism, actual progressive legislation sat on the shelf for years. Sounds a lot like the status quo Democrats on Capitol Hill going along to get along, doesn’t it?

Two, and another failed opportunity to learn: In January 2018, I spoke publicly about how Senator Jeff Klein, the leader of the IDC, abused his power over me, shoving his tongue in my mouth outside a bar one night. Along with other survivors of sexual harassment, assault, and retaliation we asked the governor and legislative leaders to include victims in a meaningful process to craft stronger protections. Known as New York’s Sexual Harassment Working Group, we pointed to Senator Klein’s mere presence in the negotiating room as blatant disregard for the dignity of all workers-- especially legislative staff. He remained, the bills were jammed into a must-pass budget bill, and the protections fell woefully short of what was truly needed.

But all of that changed in September of 2018, when New Yorkers elected representatives who ran in part on a simple promise-- to put people over profits, and human rights over politics. The New York Legislature convened in January 2019 with a fully-- truly-- Democratic Senate, with Senator Jeff Klein no longer in office, and the IDC completely disbanded.

Working in partnership with the Sexual Harassment Working Group and other workplace protections advocates, these thoughtful, bold (and mostly new) legislators also helped advocates secure two joint-legislative public hearings on sexual harassment-- the first of their kind in 27 years.

In June, the Senate and Assembly passed sweeping legislation that will better protect millions of New Yorkers against workplace harassment and discrimination, passing nearly unanimously in the Assembly and unanimously in the Senate.

The Child Victims Act was also-- finally-- brought to the Senate floor, and passed. Unanimously. After years of languishing, it passed... Just ... Like ... That. Meaningful legislation passing because of the new voices and new vision of a new generation of leaders.

Grassroots efforts on issues like these, aimed at inclusion and breaking down barriers of old, launched New York forward to become the progressive capital of the country. It’s the type of movement we continue to see in states like Virginia and California, the kind of movement we need all across our country.

That means in a legislative body of 435 people, we need electeds who will embody leadership that is illustrative and respectful of where we need to go as a society. The sweeping reforms we seek will only happen with sweeping new representation, otherwise we’ll continue fighting with long-term incumbents who prioritize the status-quo (and the campaign cash behind them) over everything else.

I challenged the status quo once, shirking demands from state leaders to “shut up” and “go away” because my fellow advocates and I were making it harder for them to, you know, do their job and keep state workers safe from harassment.

And I’ll challenge the status quo once again in Congress, until our full representation governs with the forward-thinking compassion and inclusivity we all deserve.

Because I do know what Congress role is-- it’s to do just that.

Can Carolyn Maloney Be Beaten In A Primary? Meet Lauren Ashcraft

In her introductory video (above), Lauren Ashcraft noted that "in 2018 there was a wave of nominations that changed what we thought was possible. People who were funded entirely by small dollars. They got loud and stood up for their principles against all odds. These are not the people who play it safe. These are the people who are making it safer for us. They were the first wave. I'm part of the next."

Lauren is running in a deep blue district (NY-12) that spans parts of 3 NYC boroughs-- Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn. People think of it is the fancy upper east side district-- what was once the "Silk Stocking District." That isn't what it is anymore, even if the incumbent, Carolyn Maloney, doesn't quite get that herself. Until Trump moved to Mar-A-Lago last month, it was his home district. There are still some Republicans on Manhattan's Upper East Side and, in fact, Around 20% of the district's votes went to McCain and Romney when Obama ran. But in 2016, the voters knew exactly what Trump is and Hillary beat him 83.3% to 13.5%. The PVI is D+31.

Carolyn Maloney is what many Democratic voters think is all they can expect from their member of Congress. She's moderately liberal, serves the interests of the wealthy people of her district and takes immense sums of money from specula interests, particularly from Wall Street. In fact, since being elected to Congress in 1992, Maloney has taken $6,884,871 from bankster-related sectors, more than anyone else serving in the House besides two notorious crooks who should both be rotting in prison-- Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy ($9,472,747) and Democratic majority leader Steny Hoyer ($7,355,624). Maloney-- chair of the Financial Service Committee's subcommittee on Capital Markets-- is #3. Last year, the anti-Trump electorate in NY-12 dutifully marched to the polls and reelected Maloney against a Republican, Eliot Rabin, 217,430 (86.4%) to 30,446 (12.1%). This is how the 3 boroughs performed for her:

• Manhattan (from the Upper East Side, Yorkville, Lenox Hill and Midtown to Kips Bay, Alphabet City and the Lower East Side)- D+72
• Queens (Astoria, Long Island City and Sunnyside) D+80
• Brooklyn (Greenpoint and Williamsburg)- D+85

The Republicans know Maloney is the best they can do in this district and so far this cycle, they're not even fielding a candidate. Maloney, though, may be in for the challenge of her life. She has 4 Democrats challenging her in the primary, Lauren Ashcraft, Peter Harrison, Suraj Patel (who took 40.4% of the primary vote in 2018) and Erica Vladimer. So far Ashcraft has managed to raise the most of the primary challengers. She's spending it all on grassroots organizing-- and while Maloney works strictly for the Upper East Side, Ashcraft's campaign is everywhere in the district, especially in the outer boroughs and in the southern Manhattan parts of the district where no one even knows Carolyn Maloney represents them in Congress. She told me on the phone that her campaign is all about prioritizing people over profit by fighting for urgent changes.

Like many of the people in the district, she worked in the financial sector and she is well-aware that trickle-down economics do not work no matter how much our representatives keep trying! "The Trump tax cuts," she told me, "resulted in record CEO bonuses, senior executive raises, and stock buybacks, but not in decreased layoffs or increased hiring or wages for average workers." She said she realizes that "we cannot expect CEOs to stand up for what is right, so we must elect representatives who stop trying old tricks to direct money to their corporate donors." She also told me she wants "to reinstate a modern Glass-Steagall Act. We bailed out the big banks ten years ago and we’re heading down a dangerous path where once again, the people will carry the burden to help big banks. Banks shouldn’t be allowed to gamble with our savings, much less take on massively risky behavior, but then ask for government bailouts. [She] wants to utilize her experience working in the financial services industry to sit on the Financial Services Committee and improve regulations which should hold banks accountable to the people, not the other way around."

She is campaigning on making corporations and billionaires pay their fair share of taxes, and on removing corporate influence from our politics. Like almost all Democrats, she said "we need to Get Big Money Out Of Politics!  We need to end Citizens United and also introduce a Federal Tax Credit which can be used to donate to federal campaigns rejecting Corporate and Super PAC money." Her ultimate goal is public financing of federal elections. (Right now, though, you can contribute to her campaign here.)

She told me she "fully supports the Green New Deal because it recognizes urgent action is key" and calls for "a ban on single-use plastic by 2030 (and subsidizing compostable 'plastics')... and knows that we need to end subsidies to factory farms and the fossil fuel industry immediately and increase funding to research that will save our planet."

While Maloney is prepared to compromise on Medicare For All, Lauren "will specifically advocate for Single-Payer Medicare For All with immediate forgiveness of all medical debt. Nobody should be in debt for life because they got sick. Let’s remove the for-profit nature of our healthcare system completely."

I asked her to write a guest post introducing herself by talking specifically about her district and Wall Street and how her campaign is threading that needle.

What A Democratic Socialist Learned Working At JP Morgan Chase
-by Lauren Ashcraft

In my Congressional district of NY-12, 14.5% of folx are employed by the financial services industry, and over 70% of folx are employed in the private sector. My district possesses a deep understanding of what it means to work at a place that does not necessarily ideologically align with us in order to pay the bills. I am writing this blog entry from Long Island City, the former future home of Amazon HQ2, and also as a former employee of the financial services industry.

Until yesterday, I was employed by JPMorgan Chase & Co as a project manager who helped monitor banking regulation compliance. Working for multiple financial institutions since moving to New York has strengthened my already democratic socialist leanings, because I continued to see how the entire industry has been allowed [by representatives] to place its risks and burdens on the American people. That’s why I am a democratic socialist who seeks to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act and break up big banks.

Let’s look at the Trump Tax cuts as an example of why I feel this way. This legislation added $3.7 billion to JPMorgan’s profits, hence Jamie Dimon’s praise of the cuts. Dimon received $24.5 million of restricted stock tied to performance, an annual base salary of $1.5 million and a $5 million cash bonus for a 5.1% bump in pay thereafter. And the most important question: did these tax cuts trickle down to the average employee in the industry?

In addition to some hefty layoffs, according to a recent article in Bloomberg, JPMorgan Chase & Co along with much of the banking industry is considering shifting jobs out of New York City. This is despite the fact that our city is the headquarters for most big banks. In other words, even with tax incentives paid for by the people, the 14.5% of the district relying on paychecks from the banking industry are probably all too familiar with “relocation” talks at their companies. Because of at-will employment in our society, if one does not accept the relocated job they may be ineligible for severance, as it is not technically a layoff. So, despite handing these banks billions of dollars in incentives, my district will be hit hard by corporate greed.

Yes, we can rightfully feel anger toward the CEOs and senior executives of large corporations, but we cannot let those in government avoid blame. Our representatives have had the power to protect the people of their districts against corporate greed, but they have lacked the will. These same representatives have accepted money from these very CEOs and senior executives who have praised Trump’s corporate tax cuts. They represent corporations, and not people.

But there is so much hope in this progressive movement building around all of us. Community leaders across the entire country are coming together with their life experience and passion for change and are rejecting all corporate PAC influence while they run for office. I feel the call to utilize my experience in the private sector to replace my current representative and sit in the Financial Services Committee. I will hold the entire industry accountable to the people, not the other way around.


 

2020 Primary Challenges Could Get Pretty Ugly-- No, No... They Will Be Ugly For Sure

No one can put the Ocasio-Crowley primary in a box and sell it in other districts

Last week the New York Times published a lazy piece by Shane Goldmacher, The Ocasio-Cortez Effect: Wave of Challenges Hits Entrenched N.Y. Democrats, that defines superficial reporting. It should be lost on no one that Ocasio Cortez's stunning and successful campaign against New York's ultimate congressional insider ("the next speaker of the House"), Queens County machine boss, Joe Crowley, was utterly missed-- if not purposefully ignored-- by her hometown paper. Perhaps they're making a half-assed attempt to make up for it by covering some generally non-existent primaries in the area. "Half assed" is better described as quarter-assed... if that. The first sentence may be correct-- let's hope: "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be just the beginning." But Goldmacher goes nowhere from the correct way to begin his piece.

Blue America has been involved, on one level or another, in every successful Democratic primary against a conservative incumbent since 2006-- Donna Edwards, Beto, Matt Cartwright, AOC... We have also been involved on a ton of them that haven't been successful. If I've learned one thing it's that they succeed when a determined and capable challenger (very, very hard to find, let alone invent) takes on an easily-defined villain with an established bad record. That was certainly the case with Edwards in Maryland, Beto in Texas, Cartwright in Pennsylvania and Ocasio Cortez in New York. Each of them is an extremely talented and charismatic politician and each ran against a corrupt, out-of-touch conservative who was supported fully by an establishment generally loathed by the grassroots.

Goldmacher generally neglected to look at any of that and instead spouts irrelevant nonsense like "Party insurgents are plotting and preparing to battle with the entrenched establishment-- targeting as many as a half-dozen Congress members in and around New York City-- over what it means to be a Democrat and a progressive in the age of President Trump. The coming New York uprising could result in a series of races that lay bare some of the same generational, racial, gender and ideological cleavages expected to define the 2020 presidential primary. The activist left, in particular, hopes that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s victory will inspire a brush fire of Democrat-on-Democrat campaigns that will spread from New York across the nation."

"Party insurgents?" Really? Grass roots activists might be a better way to describe the point he's fumbling towards. As for "generational, racial, gender and ideological cleavages," which worked in Ocasio Cortez's campaign, we'll have to look at each race Goldmacher is reporting to be a potential primary battle. He's certainly right when he claims "serious primary challengers for House seats have historically been rare, and it is almost unheard of for so many to emerge in one region so early in the election cycle." And they haven't emerged, except on the page in the Times his piece was published on.

The first member Goldmacher identifies as a potential target is Jerry Nadler-- who represents a district that includes areas of Manhattan (the Upper West Side, Soho, Chelsea, the Village, the Financial District) and Brooklyn (mostly Borough Park). His super-highly educated Manhattan constituents are not likely to be persuaded he's a villain at all. His ProgressivePunch score is "A" and has always been "A" and his voting record is ranked-- and has always been ranked-- among the 20 most perfect progressive records in Congress. I don't think Nadler or his team ever thought he could be primaried from the left. His last primary was in 2016 when the far right Hassidics who run Borough Park recruited and supported a candidate, Mikhail Oliver Rosenberg, son of a millionaire, to run against Nadler when he voted for the Iran nuclear deal. It looked like if they could order their zombie followers to go out and vote against Nadler-- in what was predicted to be a low-turn-out election, they could pull off an upset. (They even persuaded racist former comedian Jackie Mason to cut a robocall for their candidate.) Instead it was the second highest turn-out primary in the state that year and Mason and the zombies were nowhere to be seen.

Rosenberg fancied himself the new generation (and a part of a strong LGBTQ community) up against an old and tired Nadler. (Nadler has been in the forefront of every pro-gay initiative in his career and gay organizations backed Nadler.) Rosenberg campaigned on a solid green energy platform, on legalizing marijuana, and as an advocate for Israel. 85% of his campaign expenditures ($366,852) came from his own bank account and, like Trump, he claimed he wouldn't be beholden to special interests. Nadler beat Rosenberg in a landslide-- 88.78% to 10.26%.

Goldmacher reports that next year "Nadler could face a primary from Lindsey Boylan, a former economic development adviser to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who appears to want to run on a platform of "I'm a woman and he's not."

She said she was considering a run after watching the 2018 midterms, as “these women decided not to wait their turn because it was never going to be their turn.”

“I just can’t justify having my daughter watch me sit on the sidelines,” she said.

A huge X-factor in any Nadler primary would be the billionaire activist Tom Steyer, who has pushed for the impeachment of Mr. Trump. Mr. Steyer has already polled the popularity of impeachment in the district and is launching a $200,000 direct mail, television and digital ad campaign this week urging Mr. Nadler to begin impeachment hearings in his committee.

Goldmacher identified Tom Suozzi, Eliot Engel, Yvette Clarke, José Serrano, Carolyn Maloney and Kathleen Rice as likely targets. Suozzi, Engel and Rice are New Dems with relatively conservative voting records. Serrano, Maloney and Clarke are members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Engel is rumored to be buying his way into the Progressive Caucus so he will be able to use that membership to claim he's progressive. These are the crucial vote scores for all 7 candidates identified in the piece.

• Yvette Clarke- 95.88- A
• Jerry Nadler- 94.98- A
• José Serrano- 93.71- A
• Carolyn Maloney- 86.47- C
• Eliot Engel- 85.30- C
• Kathleen Rice- 63.16- F
• Tom Suozzi- 54.05- F

"Not every challenge in New York," wrote Goldmacher, "will be run on ideological grounds. Some will be powered by more local disputes, longstanding grudges or just timely ambition. But for many progressives, the goal is to police the Democratic Party ideologically, much in the way the Tea Party pushed Republicans to the right."

“We are trying to elect more Alexandrias,” said Alexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats, the insurgent group devoted to recruiting progressive primary challengers nationally. “She is an example of what one victory can do. Imagine what we can do with more primary wins across the country.”

After Mr. Crowley’s defeat almost no one is seen as untouchable.

“They should be afraid,” Maria L. Svart, the national director of the Democratic Socialists of America, which backed Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, said of incumbent House Democrats.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez herself appeared in a promotional video for Justice Democrats and on an organizing call for the group last November during which Saikat Chakrabarti, now her chief of staff, declared, “We gotta primary folks.”

True, but targets should be carefully chosen. It amazes me, for example, that Justice Democrats and DSA have seemingly ignored, at least so far, corrupt New Dem Gregory Meeks. Nadler and Serrano may not be perfect-- but they certainly are in comparison to Meeks, who seems to exist in Congress primarily to collect bribes. A member of the House Financial Services Committee, he's taken $3,665,788 from the Finance Sector, including $564,100 in the last cycle. What's more, Meeks' likely challenger is the ideal candidate for the seat. Khaair Morrison is a 25 year old African-American attorney born and raised in the district, which, he told me yesterday "is ripe for a fresh leadership after having ineffective leadership for 20+ years. Working class neighborhoods like South East Queens, Nassau, Valley Stream, and Far Rockaway have had an up-close seat to the major issues of our time. After Hurricane Sandy, areas are still rebuilding as we see the effects of Global Warming. We were the epicenter for the foreclosure crisis and many have still not able to get their homes back. We see the brutality of broken windows and mass incarceration as our kids are constantly targeted for low-level offenses that ruin opportunities for black and brown lives to be productive members of our society. We have seen how poor infrastructure and lack of planning can ruin a neighborhood's vitality. We have seen the decrepit state of public housing and are still without creative ideas to make housing more equitable. It is time we do things differently and that we speak truth to power." True, that-- and time for a self-serving do-nothing congressman like Meeks to bow out and let a fresh can-do kind of guy like Morrison take the seat.

Meeks is one of the New York congressmembers who Goldmacher was no doubt referring to when he wrote that they "have sought to establish personal or professional bonds with Ocasio-Cortez, signing onto her Green New Deal, for instance-- recognizing the power of her megaphone. In an interview in January, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said she had 'put zero energy' into the question of primarying colleagues. She said the freshman class had 'already changed the opinions and commitments of a lot of incumbent members already. And I think that is something we should absolutely consider.' Whether or not Ms. Ocasio-Cortez gets personally involved, insurgent groups are plowing ahead."

Let me jump to Carolyn Maloney, a difficult target ideologically put perfect for a reformist challenger to take on based on ethics. Her corruption is just mind-boggling, even if her voting record is pretty good. She's not just a member of the House Financial Services Committee, she's the chair of the Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship, and Capital Markets-- and exploits that to the max in her fundraising efforts. Among current members of the House, only 3 have been bigger Finance Sector money pigs than Maloney. A case can-- and should-- be made that these are the half dozen most corrupt members of Congress, at least in regard to Wall Street banksters, and that they should all be carted off to jail holding tanks before their trials:

• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $8,086,692
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- $6,865,814
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)- $6,376,379
• Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)- $6,309,318
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $5,627,242
• Steve Stivers (R-OH)- $5,620,077

Suraj Patel ran against Maloney in 2018 and may do it again next year. He ought to. NY-12 is a solidly blue district (D+31) that spans Manhattan (Yorkville, the Upper East Side, Midtown, Kips Bay, Gramercy Park, Alphabet City and the Lower East Side), Queens (Astoria, Long Island City, Sunnyside) and Brooklyn (Greenpoint and north Williamsburg). Interstate 278 separates Maloney's district from Ocasio's in Queens. Of the 251,604 people who voted in 2018, 190,771 were in Manhattan, 35,728 in Queens and 25,105 in Brooklyn. The district has changed-- and rapidly, as Ocasio's had-- and in similar ways. First of all, though not most important per se, the D+27 PVI in 2017 jumped to D+31 in 2019. That's a big jump and it's the other changes that account for it. The white population is smaller but still dominant, though the fastest growing demos are Asians, Latinos, Arabs and-- very significantly-- highly educated and politicized millennials. Patel: "The status quo isn’t good enough. Our values are under attack by leaders that don’t share or understand our lived experiences, and it’s going to take new ideas and louder voices to make real change... We deserve a congressperson who isn’t recklessly indifferent to the less privileged."

Patel ended up with a bit over 40% of the vote, a great accomplishment against a forever incumbent on a first try. Goldmacher interviewed Sean McElwee, who has been involved in finding primary challengers in New York and who was a co-founder of the progressive think tank Data for Progress. McElwee told him that "in deep blue states, Republicans increasingly don’t exist. We spend a lot of time thinking about why we have right-wing corporate Democrats selling out our interests." McElwee told him the push to recruit a challenger to Engel, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee and has been in Congress for three decades (and who represents the Likud Party of Israel and their lobbyists, AIPAC, far more than he does the folks who live in the 16th district (including Riverdale, Fieldston and Eastchester in the Bronx, abutting Ocasio's district, and New Rochelle, Yonkers, Mount Vernon, Mamaroneck, Scarsdale and up to Rye and Hastings-on-Hudson in Westchester.

Blue America has been trying to find a local elected official to take Engel on for years, but with not a nibble. McElwee calls finding a primary opponent for him a "top priority" and recently commissioned a poll there. The district used to be overwhelming white but now whites only make up 39% of the population. Blacks, Latinos and Asians make it a minority-majority district. McElwee is eager to find "a younger candidate of color in 2020; only about a half-dozen white Democratic men represent a more diverse district in Congress than Mr. Engel," wrote Goldmacher.

One potential challenger mulling a run is Andom Ghebreghiorgis, a Yale graduate and 33-year-old educator in Mount Vernon, who said that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez "showed there’s a hunger, especially here in New York, for representatives who reflect the changing progressive politics of their communities."

In a statement, Mr. Engel praised the party’s "new energy" and said the fact that anyone can run "is the beauty of our electoral system." But, he added, "think we’re doing the people we represent and the country a disservice by focusing on 2020 primaries when we have so much to do right now in Washington."

Yeah-- but not in NY-16. There are 4 congressmembers who represent parts of the Bronx, Ocasio, Engel, Adriano Espaillat-- a relatively new member, a progressive and a very good fit for the district-- and José Serrano (NY-15) in the center of the borough, in some ways the furthest left district in New York. The PVI is D+44, the bluest in the state and Trump only managed to win 4.9% of the vote in 2016 (slightly better than Romney did, but still Trump's worst performance anywhere in America. Only 2% of the population is white. The last Republican who won this district was Calvin Coolidge in 1924. The Bronx Machine has been eager to take Serrano out for some time but no one wants to run against him. In 2014 his primary opponent, Sam Sloan won 9% of the vote. His 2016 primary opponent, Leonel Baez won 10.8% and in 2018 there was no primary opponent. In the 2018 general election, the Republican candidate was Jason Gonzalez and Serrano beat him 124,469 (96%) to 5,205 (4%). City Councilman Ritchie Torres, a 30-year-old often described as a rising star, is weighing a run based on the whole "it's my turn, you're too old" thing.

Yvette Clarke, who won with only 53%, is facing a rematch with Adem Bunkeddeko, the Harvard-educated son of war Ugandan refugees who had been endorsed by the New York Times. "We’re at a moment of reckoning. Some people get it and some people don’t. Maybe someone’s seventh term is the charm? But most of us aren’t holding our breath." Goldmacher spoke with her and she told him that "she had reorganized her district office following the 2018 close call and is aggressively selling her progressive credentials in the more gentrified and liberal parts of the district, such as Park Slope. 'I definitely will not be caught by surprise.' She has among the dozen most progressive voting records in Congress. Bunkeddeko's point is that she's basically just a backbencher who votes well and doesn't do much for the district.

The last two likely primary races are on Long Island-- Tom Suozzi and Kathleen Rice, both New Dems who are going to be challenged from the left. I'm going to do a separate post on these two races because both are swingy districts that could, at least in theory, flip red if the incumbents are beaten.


UPDATE: Democratic Primary In Arizona

At dawn today, the Arizona Republic reported that Eva Putzova, a former Flagstaff city councilwoman, is running for the AZ-01 seat currently held by reactionary Blue Dog Tom O'Halleran.

Putzova, who announced her candidacy in January, said her top priority in Congress would be to address the process immigrants have to go through to become citizens. She said the current system takes too long and leaves people at the mercy of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers for far too long.

She also wants ICE restructured.

“Nobody is saying that enforcement in immigration is not important, but ICE as an agency is rogue,” she said. “It needs to be completely restructured.”

..."A #GreenNewDeal should be every candidates priority in 2020," she tweeted Feb. 10 in support of the "Green New Deal" environmental plan championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

Her campaign website lists other top issues: universal health care, tuition-free college, indigenous peoples' rights, "meaningful climate action," "no more wars," women's reproductive health and workers' rights.

...O’Halleran, the two-term incumbent, appears to have the support of national Democrats.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently added him to its "Frontline" program.

The DCCC's Frontline program is designed to help provide Democratic members of Congress with the support they need to win re-election. O’Halleran is now one of 44 members of Congress in the program.

“Tom O’Halleran wins tough races because he understands the concerns of hard-working Arizonans, and because he never forgot where he came from,” Rep. Cheri Bustos, the 2020 cycle's DCCC chairwoman, said in a written statement.

“We’re proud to stand with Tom as a member of our Frontline program to ensure he has the support he needs to win and keep working for Arizona,” Bustos (Blue Dog-IL) added.

Blue America has already endorsed Eva Putzova and if you'd like to see another member of Congress who supports Bernie's platform replace an "ex"-Republican Blue Dog, please click on the ActBlue Primary A Blue Dog thermometer on the right and contribute what you can.

Congress Should Change The Name Of The House Financial Services Committee To The Neoliberalism Committee

This is propaganda

Members of Congress mostly sign up for the Financial Services Committee because it's the easiest committee in Congress to sell your vote for big bucks. There are a lot of really corrupt committees, but Financial Services is numero uno. Every now and then a Democrat or two will manage to get on the committee with the express purpose of reforming it. They rarely last long. The out-going chair, Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) is leaving Congress just in time to see control of the committee which from Republicans to Democrats. His legacy is having taken immense amounts of money from the banksters in return for destroying as many regulations on their behavior as he could. These are the bribes he earned-- and how the amount stacked up to other members of the House who were busy taking bribes last year:

• Financial Sector as a whole- $7,905,748 (2nd most)
• Stock brokers and the Investment Industry- $1,536,111 (12th most)
• Finance/Credit companies- $738,104 (#1)
• Hedge Funds- $107,350
• Mortgage Banking- $251,555 (2nd most)
• Payday Lenders- $202,000 (2nd most)
• Commercial Banking- $1,459,388 (the most)
• Savings and Loans- $85,903 (2nd most)

Well now he's gone and the new chair, Maxine Waters (D-CA), doesn't spend her life gobbling up bribes on a level Hensarling did. Hensarling isn't the only Republican who is leaving Congress from the committee. No more payoffs will be flowing to these criminals, in order of seniority and including how much they've taken from the Finance Sector:

• Ed Royce (R-CA)- $7,593,842
• Stevan Pearce (R-NM)- $2,015,512
• Randy Hultgren (R-IL)- $2,368,537
• Dennis Ross (R-FL)- $1,983,567

• Robert Pittenger (R-NC)- $1,367,745
• Keith Rothfus (R-PA)- $2,252,763
• Luke Messer (R-IN)- $1,828,341
• Bruce Poliquin (R-ME)- $2,357,049
• Mia Love (R-UT)- $1,812,806
• Dave Trott (R-MI)- $577,765
• Tom MacArthur (R-NJ)- $1,308,469
• Claudia Tenney (R-NY)- $984,180

• Mike Capuano (D-MA)- $2,686,760
• Keith Ellison (D-MN)- $914,294
• John Delaney (New Dem-MD)- $2,537,077
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- $4,208,505

I don't know who McCarthy has decided to anoint as the GOP ranking member this year but the three with the most seniority on the committee are Peter King (R-NY- $3,092,721) Frank Lucas (R-OK- $2,483,427) and Patrick McHenry (R-NC- $5,586,542) and it will presumably one of them. McHenry is the most corrupt and I'd bet hell get the job.

OK, while I was researching this I noticed something else. If you want to power-goose the bribes, the subcommittee to be on is Capital Markets, Securities and Investment. OMG! Do these crooks just roll in the cash-- more than anyone else, short of leadership positions. I can't wait to watch which crooked freshmen gravitate towards this one, The chairman was Bill Huizenga (R-MI) and he managed to grab $2,801,450 and the new chair is an incredibly corrupt NYC Democrat, Carolyn Maloney who has taken a startling $6,327,421 from the Finance sector. The Democrats should be ashamed to appoint this crook to chair the subcommittee. But they're not.

These are the Capital Markets, Securities and Investment subcommittee members, the ones who aren't leaving the House (so I won't mention that Kyrsten Sinema, who's going to the Senate accepted $4,208,505 in bribes while serving on this subcommittee) who have taken over a million bucks each from the Finance Sector:

• Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)- $6,327,421

• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)- $6,279,357
• Steve Stivers (R-OH)- $5,598,776
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $5,586,542
• Brad Sherman (New Dem- CA)- $3,823,403
• Sean Duffy (R-WI)- $3,679,647
• Gregory Meeks (New Dem-NY)- $3,661,288
• David Scott (New Dem-GA)- $3,260,344
• Peter King (R-NY)- $3,092,721
• Ann Wagner (R-MO)- $3,041,599
• Josh Gottheimer (New Dem-NJ)- $2,967,427
• Bill Huizenga (R-MI)- $2,801,450
• Bill Foster (New Dem-IL)- $2,780,919
• French Hill (R-AR)- $2,386,049
• Stephen Lynch (D-MA)- $2,084,356
• Juan Vargas (New Dem-TX)- $1,706,965
• Tom Emmer (R-MN)- $1,333,623

So that leaves us with the freshmen who took the most money from the banksters-- over $700,000-- while they were running. I've never seen a freshman class entering Congress with this kind of a debt to the banksters. And notice-- not one of them is a Republican! These are the ones the banksters are counting on to allow them to go on cheating their customers and ripping off the country:

• Mikie Sherrill (New Dem-NJ)- $1,356,124
• Elissa Slotkin (New Dem-MI)- $1,079,022
• Antonio Delgado (D-NY)- $1,077,633
• Dan McCready (New Dem-NC)- $1,006,825
• Tom Malinowski (New Dem-NJ)- $949,192
• Josh Harder (New Dem-CA)- $946,554
• Susie Lee (New Dem-NV)- $907,303
• Jason Crow (New Dem-CO)- $894,376
• Abigail Spanberger (New Dem-VA)- $793,472
• Elaine Luria (New Dem-VA)- $775,938
• Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (New Dem-FL)- $756,569
• Max Rose (New Dem)- $746,093
• Kim Schrier (New Dem-WA)- $732,502
• Colin Allred (New Dem-TX)- $729,600
• Angie Craig (New Dem-MN)- $710,436
• Mike Levin (D-CA)- $710,273
• Katie Hill (New Dem-CA)- $710,109

17 freshmen who have already taken over $700K from the Finance Sector-- unheard of! And notice that 15 out of the 17 are New Dems, the caucus invented to sell their votes to Wall Street. Lookin' pretty miserable already. And that brings us to an interesting essay that Rainer Shea published on Sunday at the Ghion Journal-- Neoliberalism Is The Rationalization For Corporate Tyranny. It helps to explain the ideology behind the New Dems that even many of them don't fully grok themselves. "To understand the pathologies behind our paradigm of militarism, institutional racism, and extreme inequality," he began, "we should focus not so much on the attitudes of the elites but on the ideology that they use to advance their agendas."

When was the last time we had someone in Congress willing to say anything like this?

He makes the point that neoliberalism-- the extreme version of capitalism-- is the ideology "that the ruling class has made into conventional political thought. And neoliberalism is an exceptionally useful worldview for a power elite to propagate because it gives those who share their ideology the same mindset that the elites themselves have."

Like every dominant class throughout history, the plutocrats see those in the lower rungs of society as inferior. But neoliberalism causes this hostility towards the poor to spread among the broader population. Following in the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and propagated by right-wing pundits like Rush Limbaugh, an attitude has developed among many people that one’s economic position is always their own fault. Resentment towards perceived freeloaders is widespread, with even lower-class people often being suspicious that their economic peers are siphoning off society’s resources through welfare.

When this impulse to blame the country’s decay on laziness and “degeneracy” is fed by the dominant political forces, the ruling elite’s belief in the supreme moral value of wealth and the need for a corporate capitalist “free market” becomes the worldview of much of the rest of society. The super-rich believe that “freedom” means the ability to gain unlimited amounts of wealth without accountability, and this is essentially how most conventional political thinkers also view freedom. The domination of the neoliberal consensus applies to both the mainstream “conservative” and “liberal” sides since the Democratic Party reliably helps Wall Street and large corporations while marginalizing potential progressive reformers.

In reality, our political system is controlled by neither conservatives nor liberals. Electoral politics, government agencies, the courts, the universities, and the media have been bought out by corporations and billionaires. America’s economy is tied in with permanent wars, which are waged to sustain the demands of a global corporate-controlled empire. Our politics and our culture have been subverted by a tiny ruling circle, whose agenda isn’t to advance the traditional definitions of conservatism or liberalism but to protect their own wealth and power. And these elites have gotten many people to rationalize their tyrannical rule-or to even be unaware that a dominating class exists-by branding the accumulation of wealth as a personal freedom that shouldn’t be limited.

This economically centered concept of “freedom” is popularized by giving Americans-- especially white Americans-- the sense that they have the opportunity to succeed in the game of capitalism. Of course, the vast majority of white working class people never become part of the capitalist class. But the promise that they can theoretically become the commanders of the capitalist apparatus is rooted in the Western mentality of individualism, which is psychologically compelling for someone who’s told that the masters of business are society’s deserving “winners.” And the fact that becoming part of the capitalist class would entail domination over society’s “losers” is justified by the darker part of Western culture that glorifies conquest. This aspect of our culture derives from the mentalities behind colonialism and slavery, and it’s now being used to justify our current period of exploitation.

The shallow culture of consumerism enforces this lack of concern for the common good, as well as the regimentation and lack of community that our modern suburban paradigm has created. America’s culture is in a crisis of empathy, where people are encouraged to only think of their own interests while ignoring the circumstances of those who are different from them. Anthropologically, it makes sense for a population in these circumstances to largely be cynical, suspicious of outsiders, and loyal to authority.

...As the clinical psychologist John F. Schumaker recently wrote about the empathy deficit that modern consumerist capitalism has created:

Only the odd diehard biophile or flower child still preaches love as the revolutionary force that could awaken a higher humanity and reverse our death march. People have become less loveable, both in terms of their loveableness and, more crucially, their ability to love.

The lesson is that if we want to make things better, we need to spread compassion and generosity throughout our daily lives. Even more important is the creation of a mass movement that seeks to overthrow corporate capitalism, and then creates a society which protects the planet while ensuring that every person has a safe and comfortable life.

Democratic Primaries-- The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Perfect primary target

This cycle there are, literally, 7 fake Democrats in the House who have voting records worse than at least one Republican. This is the bottom of the barrel among Democrats (with their 2017-'18 ProgressivePunch crucial vote scores)-- along with the Republicans who vote more frequently along progressive lines:

• Brad Schneider (Blue Dog-IL)- 44.90
• Walter Jones (R-NC)- 44.83
• Justin Amash (R-MI)- 41.84
• Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL)- 39.18
• Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ)- 39.18
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- 37.76
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)- 32.97
• Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA)- 30.93
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- 30.93
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- 29.90
• Thomas Massie (R-KY)- 26.32
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- 25.51
• Jimmy Duncan (R-TN)- 24.74
• Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ)- 24.74

Note that former Democrat Walter Jones, for example, is nearly twice as likely to have voted with progressives than Collin Peterson, who the DCCC has spent millions of dollars to keep in Congress. All that said, Alex Seitz-Wald's report for NBC, that the anti-Trump wave may wash out some Democrats is either foolishness or wishful thinking. If Marie Newman couldn't beat Dan Lipinski Seitz-Wald's list of liberals is not going to beat beaten by candidates slightly more liberal. He's simply created some idiotic click-bait based on... thin air.

Many of the challengers he talks about seem really good. Some have called me to make their case for Blue America endorsements. But while Blue America was the very first national PAC to back Newman, none of the Seitz-Wald challengers has gotten our endorsement. He doesn't give due credit to Mike Capuano (D-MA), an excellent and hard-working progressive-- and makes him seem like a slug. It's Seitz-Wald who seems more like a slug in his attempt to build a mountain out of a molehill. After Trump's election, he asserted, "the liberal base began to demand more from its leaders than a party-line voting record."

OK, that's true but not in the way Seitz-Wald claims. The worst and most high profile Democratic Party leaders-- Pelosi, Hoyer and Crowley-- all have primary opponents. The only one making a case persuasive enough to attract any attention is Alexandria Ocasio's run against Crowley, which Seitz-Wald doesn't even mention. Instead he writes that "Capuano is facing his first primary challenge-- and he’s not alone, with a small but growing number of entrenched Democrats watching as insurgents out-fundraise them with a sense of urgency fueled by President Donald Trump and an unwillingness to follow the old rules of deference to party elders."

“I understand that this is uncomfortable for many people,” said Ayanna Pressley, Capuano’s challenger. “These are different times and it requires our being disruptive.”

Pressley, the first woman of color elected to the Boston City Council, has been dubbed the future of politics and fêted by Emily’s List, the Democratic women’s group, with a prestigious “Rising Star” award.

Even though she’s upsetting the applecart, Pressley has won support from major unions and a tacit nod from members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation, who made the unusual decision not to support their colleague and sit out the race.

Unlike a recent Illinois primary fought over abortion rights, or the 2016 presidential primary, Pressley and Capuano hold virtually the same political views.

What sets them apart is volume, not pitch, with Pressley saying these times require “activist-leadership" from people with a wider ranger of life experiences.

“We have an opportunity here,” she said of the Trump era. “It can be a moment where we grow and build the most progressive movement of our times.”

Democrats are no stranger to messy primaries in open seats or ones held by Republicans. But they almost always defer to their congressmen once elected.

Since the tea party wave uncorked the bottle in 2010, Republicans have been significantly more likely to face primaries than Democrats, according to the Brookings Institution. Only two House Democrats lost their seats to friendly fire in the last election.

“Beating an incumbent of your own party is one of the hardest thing to do,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) who defeated an eight-term incumbent on his second attempt two years ago.

Khanna went after a progressive old-time, Mike Honda, who had lost the ability to campaign vigorously. But the first time Khanna ran against him Honda survived. Two years later, with Honda refusing to do so, Khanna backed Bernie in the primary and that made the difference. Another one of Seitz-Wald's make believe races is between Adem Bunkeddeko and Rep. Yvette Clarke, one of the dozen most progressive members of Congress, first elected in 2006. Her ProgressivePunch score is closet to Keith Ellison (who also has two primary opponents, Jamal Abdulahi and Peggy Flanagan, who even Seitz-Wald knows better than two stick into his silly story). Bunkeddeko case is that Clarke "has done not enough to promote affordable housing in her rapidly gentrifying district. At the end of the day, it’s about getting things done." Tell it to Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and Trumpanzee.

Eliot Engel is a random New Dem in the Bronx and Westchester and he's not going anywhere but, yeah, there's a primary opponent, Jonathan Lewis. Basically a vanity candidate, like many of Seitz-Wald's challengers, he said, "If I told you there are nations in the world where people are running for election after election completely unopposed, you might wonder what country that is." Heavy. As for outraising Engel, he put $510,500 of his own into his campaign warchest, 81.38% of what he reported "raising." Bunkeddeko did better, raising $200,949 to Clarke's $606,274. And Cpauano's opponent, Pressley has raised a respectable $363,526 to his $838,222. Saira Rao is running a primary from the left against centrist Democrat Diane DeGette in Denver. Rao raised $255,329 to DeGette's $667,672. Rao is one of the challengers who has reason to hope "the super-charged Democratic base and widespread frustration with elected officials will let them catch incumbents sleeping."

“We have a big split in the party. I don’t know that the party establishment has fully wrapped its mind around it,” said Saira Rao, who is challenging Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO).

In hipsterifying Denver, the first-time candidate outraised DeGette, a member of Democratic leadership and a 23-year incumbent.

Rao volunteered for Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016, but grew frustrated with the Democratic Party for taking the votes of women of color like her for granted.

So she wrote an essay on Breaking Up With the Democratic Party that went viral, and the overwhelming response compelled her to run for office.

“We have a window (to save the country). It’s closing pretty soon. We don’t have until 2020 and I have zero faith that the corporate Democrats in Congress will do a damn thing about it,” Rao said. “Thank you for your service Nancy Pelosi, but we need new leadership.”

The odds are stacked against upstarts, and what few polls exist have shown them behind. Voters in safe districts don’t typically pay attention to congressional primaries, with some big city districts posting single-digit turnout in the past.

That’s a shame, says Suraj Patel, a 34-year-old Obama campaign alum and New York University professor challenging Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., an institution in Manhattan politics.

“No party should be satisfied with 6 percent turnout,” said Patel. “We don't just need to elect Democrats, which we do, we need to elect better Democrats.”

Patel has raised nearly $1.1 million, outpacing Maloney two quarters in a row, and built a massive campaign team for a congressional race, with 25 staffers and 49 interns.

As he sees it, Democrats should be using the safety of deep blue seats in progressive major cities to take risks on new policy ideas and champion a bold agenda.

“We're really wasting an incredible opportunity to lead from districts like this,” he said.

Maloney is a Wall Street shill and she should be a reasonable target for Patel and his progressive message. But does that message ring genuine for most East Side (from Yorkville to Alphabet City) and Astoria/Long Island City/Greenpoint voters? And, by the way... we're still vetting some of these candidates for Blue America endorsements even if the hill is too steep to get to the top of in one cycle. Saira Rao may is probably the most likely exception and we're probably going to be endorsing her. Blue America very much likes helping good candidates build brands for a long-terms strategic future runs as we did for Donna Edwards and Alan Grayson, first time losers and eventual winners who went on to be among the best members of Congress in decades. (And Blue America is far more likely to put effort into defeating bad Democrats-- like Joe Crowley-- than "pretty good" Democrats.)

Conservatives Working For Big Business Want To Dismantle Regulations For Their Predator Allies... What Else Is New?

The whole GOP clown car claiming to be running for president vows to end regulations near and far. So do Boehner, Cantor, Issa, Ryan and the rest of the Ayn Rand acolytes in the House. Tomorrow they'll even waste part of the day voting against a regulation that doesn't exist!

“Now, here comes my favorite of the crazy regulatory acts. The EPA is now proposing rules to regulate dust,” Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, said on the House floor. He said Texas was full of dusty roads: “The EPA is now saying you can be fined for driving home every night on your gravel road.”

There was just one flaw in this argument. It was not true.

The EPA’s new dust rule did not exist. It never did.

Still, the specter of this rule has spurred three bills to prevent it, one of which will be voted on Thursday in a House subcommittee. It sparked a late-night battle on the Senate floor. GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain cited it in a debate as a reason to eliminate the EPA.

The hubbub over this phantom rule, surely one of the most controversial regulations that never was, involved a slow-moving federal agency and a Republican Party with the EPA in its crosshairs.

“I do believe that the EPA does have the ability to change its mind,” said Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., sponsor of the bill to be voted on Thursday. The EPA has now confirmed that it does not intend to strengthen standards on farm dust. But Noem is still pushing a bill to go further and weaken the EPA’s power to set these rules in the future.

“This EPA has been very hard on business in this country, and this EPA has been very hard on agriculture,” Noem said. “I think it’s time we pushed back.”

...For Republicans the EPA’s new dust rule was an ideal talking point for this agenda. Even though the EPA had still not proposed any new EPA dust rule.

“We’ll stop excessive federal regulations that inhibit jobs in areas as varied as cement and farm dust,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told the Economic Club of Washington in September. Boehner’s deputy, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post decrying “EPA’s proposed regulations” on subjects including farm dust.

On the House floor, other legislators sketched out an even more detailed picture.

“Say Bessie the cow kicks up too much dust running over to your pickup truck at feeding time,” warned Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas. “The EPA is going to fine you for Bessie’s misconduct.”

We pay these people. Did you read William Golding's 1954 classic, Lord of the Flies? Here's a 10 minute cartoon version, that makes the point. Notice this line about the Republican Party:

Now we see another problem on the island. At least one of the boys is a sociopath by nature. And since there are no adults to enforce rules, it's only a matter of time, or circumstances, before Roger realizes he can kill.

Boehner weeps too. (See above) And the Republican mania to destroy regulations on behalf of their wealthy donors is as sociopathic as it gets... and can (and does) kill. I've been re-reading Vance Packard's classic from 1960, The Waste Makers and last night I came across a chapter-full of descriptions of what happens when Big Business corrupts politicians into weakened or abolishing regulations that protect consumers. There were dozens of great examples but I pulled out one to share is related to a face legal battle Cheff v Mathes, a seminal 1964 corporate law case. Four years before the case, Packard, writing about the entire concept of "planned obsolescence," set the stage:

The most flagrant attempt to promote a throwaway mood was that of the Holland Furnace Company of Holland, Michigan. This company is the largest seller of replacement furnaces in the nation, with five hundred retail branches. In 1958, the Federal Trade Commission ordered Holland to stop the strategy that had been used by some of its salesmen to frighten furnace owners into replacing existing furnaces with new Holland equipment. What follows in the next two paragraphs is taken from reports of the commission.

The salesmen involved, according to the Federal Trade Commission, sometimes posed as government or utility inspectors in order to get into the homes. And some misrepresented themselves as "heating engineers." A householder in the St. Louis area testified that two young men came to her house and said, "We are from the government inspecting furnaces," and asked for admission to the house. She refused them permission and called the police. When the men were picked up by the police and questioned, they identified themselves as Holland salesmen. They denied telling her they were government officers but admitted they had told her they were working with the "government fuel-inspection program."

Once the Holland canvassers gained access to a house-- either by pretext or in response to invitations resulting from company advertisements offering cleaning service or free inspections-- "in many instances" they dismantled furnaces without the owners' permission. In some cases, the Federal Trade Commission asserted, "they then refuse to reassemble them when requested, misrepresenting that this would involve grave danger of fire, gas, and explosion." In other cases, it said, they declared that the existing furnaces were beyond economical repair or that companies making them were out of business. "Some of the furnaces condemned by these agents," the Federal Trade Commission order 4 asserted, "were to be either in safe condition or safely repairable."

The Federal Trade Commission order upheld its examiner's ruling that Holland's "false claims and improper business methods had caused many owners to discard competitive furnaces prematurely in fear of grave danger from continued use of this 'condemned' equipment." The company denied or minimized the various accusations and turned to the federal courts for relief. At this writing-- two years and three court decisions later-- the matter is still under litigation.

In light of the trillions pillaged by Wall Street fighting over furnaces seems almost quaint. So let's go right to a hot off the presses report from Pat Garofalo at Think Progress. And, as so often is the case, it's not just a slimy Republican undermining public safety, but an equally slimy Democrat. That there are no Republicans slimier or more corrupt that New Jersey far right fanatic Scott Garrett says something very scary-- something that must be dealt with-- about New York Democrat Carolyn Maloney.

For months, Republicans have been trying to undermine the Dodd-Frank financial reform law-- passed in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis-- by cutting budgets for market regulators, obstructing nominees, and advancing bills that would weaken the law’s key provisions. But sometimes efforts to dismantle the law take on a more bipartisan flavor.

One of the key sections of the Dodd-Frank law has to do with swaps, the complex financial instruments that felled, among others, insurance giant American International Group. Before the 2008 financial crisis, the swaps market was totally opaque, giving neither customers nor regulators any sense of what the instruments actually cost or how much risk was building up in the financial system.

Dodd-Frank brings transparency to this market by forcing swap trades onto open exchanges-- where they can be seen by everyone-- rather than allowing backroom wheeling and dealing in the instruments to continue. But a bill authored by Reps. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), as the New York Times’ Gretchen Morgensen explained, would take these bits of the bill out at the knees:

Representative Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican, has teamed up with Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat, to introduce the Swap Execution Facility Clarification Act. It would bar the Securities and Exchange Commission and the C.F.T.C. from requiring swap execution facilities to have a minimum number of participants or mandating displays of prices. Both mechanisms promote transparency.

Mr. Garrett said the bill directed regulators “to provide market participants with the flexibility” they need to obtain price discovery. This means maintaining the old system that can keep prices in the shadows.

On Nov. 15, a House subcommittee approved the bill by a voice vote.

As Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler-- whose agency is charged with regulating swaps under Dodd-Frank-- explained, “economists for decades have shown that transparency lowers margins, leads to greater liquidity and more competition in the marketplace.” “Transparent pricing is also a critical feature of lowering the risk at the banks, and at the derivatives clearinghouses as well,” he said.

As David Min and I explained back in April, 2010, opacity in the swaps market “means that no one-- regulators, investors, or even the dealers themselves-- has a good handle on the systemic risk these instruments pose, or who is bearing the risk. This prevents regulators from being able to take steps to reduce systemic risk and creates the conditions for financial panics.” Dodd-Frank did a lot to deal with this problem, but Congress now seems to be aiming to undo that progress.

It's not just that Maloney doesn't want another scare from a Wall Street whore like hedge fund attorney Resma Saujani, she would like to knock Maxine Waters out of contention and become top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. That must never happen. And, by the way, since arriving in Congress, Maloney has taken $3,717,221 in legalistic bribes from the financial industry she's supposed to be helping to regulate. Let's find a progressive to take her on this time. Know anyone who lives here?