Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

There are more than a few memes that make points similar to tonight's. There's one comparing Trumpanzee's admitted pussy grabbing to the now out of work, persona non-grata Harvey Weinstein. There are also Trump-Cosby memes but I chose this one just to illustrate that the difference in how the two parties deal with such issues go way back to a time before Señor Trumpanzee's brand of sleaze and slime coated the walls of the White House. House Republicans even started the impeachment of Bill Clinton rolling before they even knew anything about Monica's dress. And, of course, just this week, the state of New York's Democratic Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, was rightly gone a mere two and a half hours after allegations were made. If he'd been a Republican, say in Alabama, or any other state for that matter, his party would be endorsing him for Senator right about now. Hell, enough precedent exists to indicate that Republicans would consider Schneiderman presidential material.

Who Is Going To Protect America From Trump And Trumpism? Larry Krasner?

This morning, the NY Times asserted that Trump's Conspicuous Silence Leaves a Struggle Against Russia Without a Leader. OK, but who will protect our country from Trump? With shameless Trump enablers Paul Ryan and Miss McConnell in charge of Congress, there's exactly zero hope from either the Senate or House. Mueller seems like a serious guy but Trump can fire him when he feels like he needs to. So that leaves the states. And there's basically one state most people count on-- or, at least one state Attorney General: New York's Eric Schneiderman. He's suing the Trump Regime over DACA and over more bullshit EPA actions, Busy guy. Busy heroic guy. Where are the other blue state attorneys general. Eh... spinning their wheels mostly, I'm afraid. I hope I'm wrong.

That said, there was some very good news out of Philly Friday. Philly isn't a state but the population is about 1.6 million. That's more than 11 states (with attorneys general): Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming. Philly has a new District Attorney, which is not an Attorney General. Pennsylvania's AG, Josh Shapiro, is a garden variety politician, kind of a hack. He's not going to lead on anything except on his own p.r. He talks a good anti-Trump game, but not as good as my neighbor Cynthia. He writes protest letters but if we had to depend on Josh Shapiro to protect us from Trump, I would have probably moved back to Amsterdam by now. Larry Krasner, on the other hand... Last week his office announced it's suing 10 pharmaceutical companies in connection with the opioid epidemic and is dropping all outstanding marijuana possession charges.

That isn't the same as protecting us from Trump, but it's more what voters expect of chief law enforcement officers now than what most attorneys general are doing.

In just a little over a month since taking office, Krasner has already built on the progress that began under former mayor Michael Nutter’s administration by further reforming the city’s drug policy to the point where getting busted with pot now no longer means a court date is in your future. Krasner says citations are issued approximately 90 percent of the time someone is caught with marijuana.

“What we’re talking about is the 10 percent or so that are being charged as they used to be, as misdemeanors in court,” Krasner said during a press conference Thursday. From now on, the DA will advise his staff not to pursue criminal charges against anyone arrested for marijuana possession in the city. Citations currently range from $25 for possession to $100 for those caught toking up in public.

“I did it because I felt it was the right thing to do,” Krasner said when asked of his motivation. “We could use those resources to solve homicides.”

Additionally, the DA’s office said that it had filed a lawsuit on February 2nd against Big Pharma under Pennsylvania’s Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Laws for their alleged role in creating the city’s opioid epidemic. The defendants are Purdue Pharma, L.P.; Purdue Pharma, Inc.; The Purdue Frederick Company, Inc.; Allergan Finance, LLC; Cephalon, Inc.; Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc.; Endo Health Solutions, Inc.; Endo Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; and Johnson & Johnson.

“The City of Philadelphia has been hurt, more than any other city in the nation, by the scourge of opioids,” Krasner said in a release. “The time to act is now, which is why I’ve taken this unprecedented action, in parallel with the City of Philadelphia’s suit, to stop these companies from systematically distracting the public from knowing the true dangers of opioid use as they reap billions of dollars in profits.”

You Want Candidates Who Will Vote With Republicans Against The DREAMers? Vote For New Dems And Blue Dogs

Breitbart appears frightened that Señor Trumpanzee could abandon Stephen's racism and xenophobia for something more pragmatic. They were calling him "Amnesty Don" Thursday morning (above) but appear to have changed the headline slightly by afternoon (below). But they're still whining about the DREAMers, as you can see. This is what one of the Breitbart Nazis had to say "President Trump told mainstream media reporters on Wednesday that he was open to breaking his immigration commitment by giving a pathway to U.S. citizenship to nearly 800,000 illegal aliens shielded from deportation by the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. In statements outside the White House, Trump told the Associated Press (AP) that he would be open to giving U.S. citizenship to DACA illegal aliens, saying 'It’s going to happen.'" They fumed over AP's report that Señor Trumpanzee said "he’s open to a pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of young people who were brought to the country as children and are now here illegally. Trump told reporters, 'We’re going to morph into it. It’s going to happen, at some point in the future, over a period of 10 to 12 years.' Trump was talking about the young immigrants who had been protected from deportation and given the right to work legally in the country under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program."

DREAMers weren't overjoyed by Trump's announcement, basically because the Stephen Miller framework he got Trump to put on the table is so onerous. Greisa Martinez Rosas, Advocacy Director for United We Dream and potential beneficiary of the Dream Act, said:

“Let’s call this proposal for what it is: a white supremacist ransom note. Trump and Stephen Miller killed DACA and created the crisis that immigrant youth are facing. They have taken immigrant youth hostage, pitting us against our own parents, Black immigrants and our communities in exchange for our dignity.”

“To Miller and Trump’s white supremacist proposal, immigrant youth say: No.

“With each passing day, immigrant youth are losing their livelihoods and are at risk of deportation. People like Eric, Yuridia, and Damaris could soon face the same fate as Luis, who was kicked in the head by deportation agents and confined in a detention camp.

“But our fear, our pain, and our lives must not be used to shackle our parents and ban those seeking refuge; we must not be used to tear apart the moral fabric of this country. For months, we have organized and mobilized the country to demand a common sense solution that delivers protection without harming others: the Dream Act.”

“So let us be clear: any politician who backs up this ransom note is enabling Trump and Miller’s white supremacist agenda.

“Members of Congress of conscience must make the moral choice to reject this white supremacist proposal and pass legislation that protects us without harming others. Dream Act now.”

Earlier this week the whole Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- the Blue Dogs and New Dems-- abandoned the DREAMers and voted with the Republicans. In case you're wondering, the New Dems have endorsed 23 candidates so far this cycle:

• Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ)
• Greg Stanton (AZ)
• Dave Min (CA)
• Harley Rouda (CA)
• Hans Keirstead (CA)
• Lauren Baer (FL)
• Jason Crow (CO)
• Paul Davis (KS)
• Elissa Slotkin (MI)
• Angie Craig (MN)
• Dean Phillips (MN)
• Dan McCready (NC)
• Brad Ashford (NE)
• Mikie Sherrill (NJ)
• Max Rose (NY)
• Anthony Brindisi (NY)
• Susie Lee (NV)
• Chrissie Houlahan (PA)
• Jana Lynne Sanchez (TX)
• Jay Hulings (TX)
• Ben McAdams (UT)
• RD Huffstetler (VA)
• Dan Kohl (WI)

They didn't get a chance to vote but the organization they each sought and got an endorsement from sure did. If you help elect them, they will be on the wrong side of every vote in Congress that means anything. In the words of CREDO Political Director Murshed Zaheed, "Not surprisingly, a racist immigration fantasy masked as a proposal from a racist White House is a white supremacist’s wish list. It goes without saying that {President} Donald Trump’s Stephen Miller’s racist immigration proposal should be dead on arrival in Congress. The negotiators in Congress should work to enact a clean DREAM Act without a single compromise to Republicans’ nativist agenda. Time is up. Congress must pass the DREAM Act now."

Four candidates Blue America likes a lot Antoinette Sedillo Lopez in Albuquerque, Mary Matiela in Tucson, Nina Ahmad in Philly and Ricardo Franco, the progressive running for the Devin Nunes seat in the Central Valley, both shared their perspectives with us. Antoinette: "The Trump/Stephen Miller proposal is a repudiation of some of the most important principles that this country holds dear. I don't believe  that the American people will sell out our values and accept the militarization of our country’s borders with an enormous ICE presence acting to remove immigrants and, of course, sowing fear and discord in our communities. I don't believe that Americans are willing to pay for a $25 billion wall that is simply a hateful symbol and will not have any tangible positive effect on our country. Family unification has been a bedrock principle of immigration law because families are foundational to building our society; eliminating this policy would betray our values. Poll after poll shows that most Americans support DREAMers, young people who do not belong to any other country but ours, where they have grown up and continue to contribute. Anything less than a clean Dream Act betrays our values of inclusion and compassion.  This proposal is an embarrassment, and it should be rejected by all who are willing to stand up to this President’s divisive agenda. We all should stand strong against this hateful proposal."

Mary Matiela, the best of the candidates running to replace Martha McSally in Tucson: "No doubt, Dreamers have contributed to this country-- they are doctors, nurses, soldiers, builders, painters, etc. Dreamers are our colleagues, our neighbors, and our family-- we cannot, must not abandon them. Trump's plan, where the pathway to citizenship evolves over 15 years, is deceitful and cruel; we must reject it! Legislators must urgently work on a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, i.e., not by February 8."

The most recent Blue America endorsee, Nina Ahmad, came to the U.S. from Bangladesh and has made her life into a stunning success story that has been a big boon for our country and for Philadelphia. Yesterday she said that "Once again, we see President Trump using DREAMers as a bargaining chip rather than treating them as the human beings they are. The DREAM Act is a popular piece of legislation that should have been passed years ago. As an immigrant, I hope Democrats reject the premise that this is a compromise and focus on the humanity of immigrants and their families. We can do better than what Trump has proposed."

And Ricardo Franco, who's starting to get some real traction against Nunes: "From my years in business I know that you don't bargain or argue over something that has consensus or unanimous support. More than 85% of the country believes our DACA recipients should stay.  Only Trump and career politicians disconnected from the lives of their constituents would ever think bargaining over something like this is reasonable. I have sat in the homes of people who are threatened by the loss of DACA and shared their fear. Passing a clean DREAM act is a matter of life and death to many of our constituents. How ignorant must a legislator be to not understand this?  We can no longer tolerate any members of Congress that don't take this and other issues with the respect and seriousness that humanity commands."

And New York state's Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, said that since Trumpanzee "abruptly ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program last September, DREAMers have been left in fear and uncertainty. Every day, an estimated 122 DACA recipients lose their protections from deportation, resulting in thousands of young people facing threat of separation from their families and friends since Trump’s devastating decision. Over 40,000 DREAMers are New Yorkers, and I’m keeping up the legal fight to protect them from this administration’s harmful and unlawful actions against them. But leaders in Washington, D.C. have the opportunity to solve this problem and prevent additional young people from losing their protections right now by passing the bipartisan DREAM Act. While I’m fighting in the courts... Each day that passes without a legislative, long-term solution for DREAMers leaves many to wonder if and when they’ll be forced back to a country they do not know, in many cases countries where their health and safety are at risk. President Trump promised to have 'heart' when it came to defending DREAMers, but so far he’s failed to deliver, instead choosing to blow up negotiations with Congressional leaders and hold DREAMers hostage while he demands billions of dollars in funding for his border wall... No matter what happens, I will continue to fight for DREAMers’ right to stay here in the country they call home."

Does Net Neutrality Mean Much To You?

If more congressional candidates did this, many of the country's problems would vanish

I was listening to NPR yesterday on a long drive and they were interviewing two dullard Beltway operatives, a dumb Dem and an even dumber Republican. The dumb Dem, when asked about Net Neutrality's salience as an issue said no one cared much about it. And the dumber Republican went one further to say no one even knows what it is. These two fools and the idiots they work for may be in for a big surprise. Spectrum seems to already be slowing down website loading and is running frequent TV cable ads hawking speedier service if you pay a monthly fee. Anyone who thinks there's no salience in that as an issue is just so, so clueless.

Lisa Brown, the Democrat running for Congress in eastern Washington state, has a a net neutrality video as her pinned tweet. It's an important issue for her. She told us that her opponent, "4th- ranked Republican leader, Rep. McMorris Rodgers, actually 'applauded' the FCC for taking on the reversal of net neutrality, demonstrating how out of touch she is with the real needs of most Americans, especially the rural parts of eastern Washington. Not only will 'pay to play' internet hurt all consumers in the wallet, it will widen the digital divide, as ISPs compete by investing in big city technology upgrades and marketing, letting the rest of us languish."

John Culberson is one of the only members of Congress left in office who voted against the Martin Luther King holiday. Hopefully this will be his last year in Congress, replaced one of the best successful cancer doctores and researcher Jason Westin. Unlike Culberson, Westin is a proponent of new neutrality. " John Culberson has many flaws, but the gift of gab isn't one. The quote often attributed to Mark Twain may apply to Mr. Culberson: 'Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.' On Net Neutrality, he couldn't stay silent. On March 25, 2017 Culberson held his most recent town hall. It was a raucous affair and one of the questions was about if he'd support Net Neutrality. He tried 4 times to answer, and it was clear he'd never heard of Net Neutrality. But when I reviewed his voting record, he voted AGAINST Net Neutrality on April 15, 2016 (H.R. 2666, 114th Congress). This is an excellent example of why we need new leadership-- to have representatives who actually know what they are voting on."

Senate Democrats seem to understand how much net neutrality resonates and they're trying to force McConnell to allow a vote. Cecilia Kang reported yesterday in the NY Times that even if the Democrats win in the Senate-- and they're close-- the Republican-controlled House is unlikely to go along and Trump would veto it anyway.

Senate Democrats said on Tuesday that all 49 members of their caucus had agreed to sign on to a resolution that would overturn the F.C.C. repeal of net neutrality rules. They are using a tool of the Senate, the Congressional Review Act, which requires a simple majority to overturn a recent order by a federal agency.

The Democrats also have the support of at least one Republican, Senator Susan Collins of Maine. So that leaves them searching for one more Republican to join their effort to get the necessary 51 votes.

...Many Democrats would like to turn net neutrality into a bigger political issue ahead of the 2018 midterms. The efforts to overturn the F.C.C. order are aimed to raise awareness about an issue that has broad interest, particularly among younger voters, Democratic lawmakers have said. Consumer advocacy groups like Free Press, Demand Progress and Fight for the Future, have been singling out lawmakers who have either supported the F.C.C. order or have not spoken up in favor of restoring rules.

“There will be a political price to pay for those on the wrong side of history. Momentum is on our side,” Mr. Markey has said.

Ryan, of course, will protect the swamp so it will take 218 signatures on a discharge petition to get around him. Mike Doyle (D-PA) introduced a Congressional Review Act resolution to reverse the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality protections and immediately got 81 co-sponsors. Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH) was one. "We can’t stand by," she said, "as the FCC and big corporations steal our right to equal access to the Internet. I am cosponsoring this resolution because we need to reverse the FCC’s shameful repeal of net neutrality protections. The FCC’s decision will allow Internet service providers to favor big businesses over startups, hurting New Hampshire innovators; it needs to be stopped.”

Last month, Shea-Porter sent a letter with the New Hampshire congressional delegation to New Hampshire Attorney General Gordon MacDonald and Governor Chris Sununu, urging them to take action to protect Granite State consumers and small businesses from the negative impacts of the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality protections. Shea-Porter and 118 colleagues also sent a letter asking FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to delay the scheduled net neutrality vote due to public comment irregularities.

Yesterday New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman led 22 states in a suit against the FCC over its plan to rollback net neutrality, alleging that the FCC decision violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act as well as a number of state and local laws. And it isn't just the blue states. Kentucky joined as well. Attorney General Andy Beshear: "I’m opposing the repeal of net neutrality because of the destructive nature it will have on every Kentuckian from farmers to college students who use free and open internet to thrive and prosper. As a state and as a nation, we cannot turn our backs on the hard working people of this country by letting the federal government walk all over them and take away their level playing field."

Aside from New York and Kentucky, the other states who have joined the suit are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and the District of Columbia. Democrats would love to get Republicans opposing net neutrality on the record.

I reached out to Austin Frerick, a former Obama Treasury Department economist who is biding much of his Iowa congressional campaign on an analysis of corporate power and how it harms ordinary working families and how to rein it in. He told me that "Only 50% of rural Americans have Internet that meets the government standard of adequate serviced compared with 94% in urban area. The repeal of Net Neutrality will exacerbate the issue of unreliable broadband in rural areas. On March 31st last year, David Young received a $5,000 check from Comcast. I support Net Neutrality. He doesn't. This is probably why. Here's just another example of David Young putting corporate America's needs heads of everyday Iowans."

Derrick Crowe, like Frerick, is one of those forward-looking big thinker candidates-- he's running in TX-21 (super-literate and techie Austin/San Antonio)-- who understands very well how crucially important net neutrality is. Today he told us that "Net Neutrality is about stopping another massive corporate attack on our freedom. It's repeal lets huge corporations act as the gatekeepers of information, giving them enormous power to shape political debates and extort funds from subscribers. This is an issue that young voters and people about to be old enough to vote are intensely attuned to, and if our party doesn't vociferously defend true Title II Net Neutrality, we risk alienating an entire generation-- for good reason. We subsidize corporations like Verizon and Comcast to the tune of billions of dollars each year, and this move by them and their political enablers to restrict our freedoms in return is outrageous." You can contribute to their campaigns, and Jared Golden's, by clicking on the thermometer on the right.

Lewiston's Jared Golden is the majority whip of the Maine House of Representatives and is now running for the congressional seat held by Wall Street-oriented Republican Bruce Poliquin. Like Frerick and Crowe, he gets how important this issue is for Mainers-- even if his opponent doesn't. "Once again," he told us, "Bruce Poliquin is the only member of Maine’s delegation that’s failed to protect his constituents. Senators Susan Collins and Angus King and Congresswoman Pingree all support restoring Net Neutrality but Poliquin supported getting rid of it. The network companies have local monopolies in Maine and they are making their own rules while consumers have little or no alternatives to choose from. The FCC is giving these monopolies free rein over consumers and small businesses and Maine’s economy is pretty much driven by small businesses. Not only should it bring back Net Neutrality but Congress should act to break up the monopolies and ensure fair competition instead of allowing these internet providers to operate like 21st Century Barons."

Katie Hill is the committed progressive in a race to replace GOP reactionary Steve Knight in a district that has been trending blue. She told us that "Without net neutrality, news is less available, citizens are less knowledgeable, and marginalized groups are even less powerful. Our discussions and democratic deliberations are weakened when telecom companies and internet service providers get to decide who is allowed to speak, whose speech will be taken seriously, and what issues are considered debatable. The free and open exchange of information is one of our last defenses against the political influence of big businesses and special interests; the fight to #SaveNetNeutrality is not one that we can afford to lose."

Verizon and the Death of the Internet

In Portugal, with no net neutrality, internet providers are starting to split the Internet into "packages" — so much for email service, so much for social media, and so on. You don't buy the service, you don't get access (source; click to enlarge)

by Gaius Publius

There are two stories here, one about net neutrality — which Trump's FCC is about to terminate — and one about a corruption of the process by which the FCC arrives that decision.

About net neutrality itself, consider an analogy. Should companies that control the telephone wires control (a) who gets to use them, and (b) what is allowed to be talked about? In the U.S. a long time ago, the answer was no. Telephone wires were declared "common carriers" in the same way that roads are common carriers — a resource that should be open and available to all.

The same with the transmission lines and pathways that carry the Internet, or so the thinking goes. For most of its life, the Internet was treated like a utility, and Internet "wiring" was treated like a common carrier. That made sense and happened almost automatically, since early Internet traffic was carried by phone wires (via modems and DSL), to which established common carrier rules already applied.

In short, in the early days, the Internet was treated the same way the phone system was treated — like a public utility whose transmission lines were mandated to remain open to anyone who wants to use them.

The Internet, Big Money and Political Speech

Then three things happened. First, "ecommerce" grew, becoming a sizeable percentage of both Internet traffic and company profit. The Internet wasn't just about communication, it was about Money, not just for large existing companies. Dedicated ecommerce giants were created — Amazon, for example, and Netflix. The people who love money more than anything now had a stake in how the Internet was treated under the law. Meaning, they had a stake in making sure their Internet traffic was special, privileged.

Second, Internet traffic spread from phone lines to wired coax and fiber optic cable networks (Comcast, Time Warner) and wireless channels like satellite transmission (DirecTV). Were cable and satellite systems considered "common carriers" under the law? No, and it made no original sense to consider them so, since traffic on those channels was typically one-way, from the company to the customer, and never in the other direction. Internet traffic, of course, changed all that, turning cable lines and satellite transmissions into virtual common carriers, even though they weren't considered as such under FCC regulations.

Finally, the Internet became an organizing tool for opponents, not just of Big Money, but of what I would broadly call "rule by the rich" — which includes, among other things, the establishments of both political parties. It's the Internet that allows dissidents all around the world to organize resistance to powerful elites, from Cairo to Beijing to Washington D.C. The world of power hates the Internet, and works in every way it can to subvert it.

All three of these changes made the Internet vulnerable to perversion no matter which party was in power, and open Internet, or net neutrality, advocates have been fighting ever since to keep the Internet as we now understand it open and free, which was always its developers' original intention.

The FCC and the Open Internet

President Obama's FCC looked for a while like it would write rules that benefited the wealthy, since his choice for FCC chair, Tom Wheeler, had ties strong to the industry. Surprisingly, though, the Wheeler-led FCC preserved net neutrality — the open Internet as we know it today.

Trump's FCC chair is also an industry insider, Ajit Pai, and this time the threat to net neutrality is almost certain to be realized.

The Federal Communications Commission took aim at a signature Obama-era regulation Tuesday, unveiling a plan that would give Internet providers broad powers to determine what websites and online services their customers see and use.

Under the agency’s proposal, providers of high-speed Internet services, such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T, would be able to block websites they do not like and charge Web companies for speedier delivery of their content.

The FCC’s effort would roll back its net neutrality regulation which was passed by the agency’s Democrats in 2015 and attempted to make sure all Web content, whether from big or small companies, would be treated equally by Internet providers.

According to Free Press, the new FCC order would:

• End Title II protections and erase the three Net Neutrality rules passed at the FCC in 2015 and upheld in court last year.
• Legalize internet blocking and discrimination by Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, no questions asked.
• Permit throttling back the speeds of different kinds of websites and apps.
• Encourage paid prioritization — sticking most sites and apps in the slow lane and reserving the fast lane for the few wealthy companies that can afford special treatment.

Ajit Pai is a former general council at Verizon, and most recently a partner in a lobbying firm specializing in "communications practice." He also has strong anti-government views. If you consider him an industry advocate (or shill), you wouldn't be wrong.

From a Trump administration perspective, Ajit Pai is to the FCC what Scott Pruitt is to the EPA — a destroyer. His "new rules" are set to be decided in December.

Ajit Pai's FCC Is Stone-Walling NY AG Schneiderman

The second story here involves the corruption of the process by which the FCC will make its decision — in particular, the "public comment" process.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, in an open letter to Pai posted at Medium, writes (my emphasis):

In April 2017, the FCC announced that it would issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking concerning repeal of its existing net neutrality rules. Federal law requires the FCC and all federal agencies to take public comments on proposed rules into account — so it is important that the public comment process actually enable the voices of the millions of individuals and businesses who will be affected to be heard. That’s important no matter one’s position on net neutrality, environmental rules, and so many other areas in which federal agencies regulate.

In May 2017, researchers and reporters discovered that the FCC’s public comment process was being corrupted by the submission of enormous numbers of fake comments concerning the possible repeal of net neutrality rules. In doing so, the perpetrator or perpetrators attacked what is supposed to be an open public process by attempting to drown out and negate the views of the real people, businesses, and others who honestly commented on this important issue. Worse, while some of these fake comments used made up names and addresses, many misused the real names and addresses of actual people as part of the effort to undermine the integrity of the comment process. That’s akin to identity theft, and it happened on a massive scale.

My office analyzed the fake comments and found that tens of thousands of New Yorkers may have had their identities misused in this way. (Indeed, analysis showed that, in all, hundreds of thousands of Americans likely were victimized in the same way, including tens of thousands per state in California, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and possibly others.) Impersonation and other misuse of a person’s identity violates New York law, so my office launched an investigation.

Successfully investigating this sort of illegal conduct requires the participation of the agency whose system was attacked. So in June 2017, we contacted the FCC to request certain records related to its public comment system that were necessary to investigate which bad actor or actors were behind the misconduct. We made our request for logs and other records at least 9 times over 5 months: in June, July, August, September, October (three times), and November.

We reached out for assistance to multiple top FCC officials, including you, three successive acting FCC General Counsels, and the FCC’s Inspector General. We offered to keep the requested records confidential, as we had done when my office and the FCC shared information and documents as part of past investigative work.

Yet we have received no substantive response to our investigative requests. None.

Ajit Pai and Trump's FCC are stone-walling the New York Attorney General, who is investigating an apparent scheme to grossly pervert the FCC public comment process so that it produces a result Agit Pai strongly favors. Whoever is behind the scheme, Ajit Pai is protecting them.

Are big-money "friends of Ajit Pai," or big-money "friends of Verizon," engaged in such a scheme? Agit Pai is acting like they are.

For all we know, he or a subordinate could be behind the scheme, or the author of it. 

The Death of the Internet — Mourned or Avenged?

I'll make one tenuous prediction. If Pai and Verizon's plan goes through, it's possible the tired and harried masses will accommodate themselves to it. After all, betting on the willingness of most Americans to surrender their liberties was an easy call, ever since 9/11 "changed everything."

But look at the graphic at the top. Note that social media content is blocked in Portugal unless you pay extra. Same with video, music, messaging and email. Will people really stand for that?

In addition, without net neutrality, some content — for example, political discussion groups and websites — may never be accessible, no matter what you may want to pay, turning the U.S. into China in that regard. Will people really stand for that?

So this prediction: I could be wrong, but it may just be that this shocks Americans so much that they won't stand for it. And in this case, "won't stand for it" happens to have a convenient and effective target for expression — and punishment.

Verizon.

Ajit Pai's former employer, and one of the key companies pushing for this change.

Are you a Verizon customer? A paying customer? Time to change that perhaps.

Is there a Verizon office near you? Care to make a little visit? I hear they welcome the public with open arms.

Maybe you could bring your friends, or organize a group excursion via social media ... while you still can.

GP
 

"Everyone Would Be Tied for Last"

Nina Turner, Ro Khanna and Rick Santorum debating Sen. Kamala Harris' potential presidential candidacy

by Gaius Publius

Much is being written these days about newly minted Sen. Kamala Harris, former Attorney General of California and in the eyes of many, one of the more likely candidates for president in 2020, at least so far. (See here, here and the video above.)

The questions being asked include, "How progressive is she?" and "Can she be moved more to the left than other prospective candidates"? Also, "If she gave Steve Mnuchin's OneWest Bank a pass for fraud as a prosecutor, can she be trusted at all?" The go-to piece about Harris, Mnuchin and his bank was written by David Dayen, also author of the excellent Chain of Title, a look at the mortgage fraud story in its broadest context.

Dayen has written a follow-up to his first Kamala Harris story that, in effect, says that there's nothing special about Harris in her treatment of mortgage fraud, since no one in that era, or even today, treats mortgage fraud with anything like what it deserves. His bottom line:

In other words, if you were to rank the performance of law enforcement officials during this period, everyone would be tied for last.

One of the most striking aspects of his latest piece is not his seeming defense of Kamala Harris — in fact, he's not defending her at all — but his indictment of a system of fraud-protection that's as wide and deep in scope as it is damaging in effect.

The Crime of the Century

Dayen rightly calls the 2008 mortgage crisis "the crime of the century." He writes:

Let’s recognize that no public official in this country, from Barack Obama on down, covered themselves in glory during the foreclosure crisis; to say that Harris failed to prosecute bankers is simply to say that she was a public official with authority over financial services fraud in the Obama era.

From the late Bush years through most of Obama’s presidency, at least 9.3 million American families lost their properties, whether to foreclosure or forced sale. The original sin of faulty loan originations, inflated appraisals, doctored underwriting, and improper placement into subprime loans led to fraudulent misconduct in securitization, loan servicing, loan modifications, and foreclosures, with millions of faked and forged documents used as evidence for the final indignity of eviction. There’s not a single step of the mortgage process that wasn’t suffused with illegal fraud during the housing bubble and its collapse.

The crisis resulted in a punishing recession and countless destroyed lives, not to mention what has been credibly described as an “extinction event” for the black and Latino middle class. Yet from New York to California, Arizona to Florida, Washington state to Washington, D.C., the political class and law enforcement elite responded largely with indifference. Powerful bankers with armies of lawyers were allowed to get away with the crime of the century (thus far).

The individual actors in this drama — U.S. AG Eric Holder, NY state AG Eric Schneiderman, and so many others — are none of them covered glory, but smeared with its opposite:

Though he was OneWest’s chairman, Mnuchin was never at risk of indictment or conviction. At best, California would have extracted a decent-sized fine from the company—paid for by shareholders—and guarantees meant to deter further law-breaking; it’s possible that Mnuchin, his reputation sullied, would not have ended up in charge of federal banking policy. This watered-down version of public accountability was seen as the best possible outcome, and Harris didn’t even go for that.

This doesn’t make her particularly special. Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer took hiatuses from their careers as corporate lawyers to join Obama’s Justice Department and ensure light punishment for financial abuses. Tom Miller, the attorney general of Iowa, ran the 50-state investigation of foreclosure fraud, which investigated nothing and moved directly to a weak settlement that delivered 90 percent less relief for homeowners than promised. Eric Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general, sold out supporters by agreeing to that settlement, saving it from the brink of collapse. He co-chaired a so-called “task force” on bank crimes that did nothing but ink more toothless settlements and proudly proclaim fake headline numbers about fines from behind a podium.

In other words, if you were to rank the performance of law enforcement officials during this period, everyone would be tied for last.

Read Dayen's piece to see how this heartbreaking tale is still going on. It's horrifying in its destruction of lives, and Dayen is right to highlight it.

"Not Particularly Special"

But back to Kamala Harris. It's true, as Dayen says, that within this group — where everyone is tied for last — Kamala Harris is not particularly special. But if "not particularly special" and "tied for last" is leading the field in the early race for the 2020 nomination, Democrats may be in bigger trouble than any of them realizes.

GP
 

Trump's Collapsing Presidency

Señor Trumpanzee's very shady modeling agency, Trump Model Management, is under investigation again. One guy Trumpanzee can't fire is New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman-- but I bet he wishes he could. One of his investigations, coordinated under both the Financial Crimes Bureau and the Organized Crime Task Force, involves the beleaguered modeling agency as part of a possible future Enterprise Corruption indictment.

There is some speculation that Preet Bharara's office was investigating the Trump Organization under federal RICO statutes and that after Trump fired him without cause, Schneiderman took over the investigation with a state-level version of RICO: Enterprise Corruption.

Trump himself-- and his rapidly expanding legal defense team-- are more focused on the Putin-Gate scandal than the "petty" crime that has marked Trump's entire sleazy career. This tweet is just pathetic: his whiny attempt tp guilt congressional Republicans into coming to his aid even more overtly than many of them already have.

"Carried over the line on my back?" The man is delusional. Most Republican incumbents did better-- many much better-- than Trump, who, after all, did lose to Clinton by nearly 3 million votes-- 65,853,516 to 62,984,825. In most constituencies Trump wasn't carrying anyone on his back. He was an anchor. He certainly helped defeat Republican Senate incumbents Mark Kirk (IL) and Kelly Ayotte (NH), each of whom outpolled him, Kirk 2,184,692 to 2,146,015 and Ayotte 353,632 to 345,790. In fact, in New Hampshire, he also dragged incumbent Tea Party congressman Frank Guinta to a career-ending debacle. Nor was Guinta the only Republican who lost his seat because of Trump. The voters in Mark Kirk's old House district in Illinois also threw out Bob Dold while they were defeating Trump and Kirk. Florida voters ousted GOP incumbents John Mica and David Jolly and in Nevada, where Trump lost to Hillary, he dragged down the Republicans' Senate candidate, Joe Heck, and two House candidates, incumbent Cresent Hardy and challenger Danny Tarkanian.

Not even an utterly fact-free imbecile like Trump is likely to claim he carried Utah Senator Mike Lee over the finish like on his back. Lee took 760,241 votes to Trump's very sad 515,231. Trump has been bitching a lot about Kansas Senator Jerry Moran not supporting his proposals or defending him from attack. But if anyone carried anyone on their back, it was Moran, who got 732,376 votes, carrying Trump, who only won 671,018 votes, to a win in Kansas. Trump may grouse that Chuck Grassely's efforts to protect him aren't enough but Grassley is doing way too much already and certainly won way more votes that Trump did in Iowa-- 926,007 to Trump's relatively weak 800,983. Other Republican Senate incumbents who outpolled Trump last year include McCain (AZ), Rubio (FL), Rob Portman (OH), Johnny Isakson (GA), Mike Crapo (ID), Richard Burr (NC) and Ron Johnson (WI).

And in the House, the Republicans who came closest to losing their seats were all dragged down by Trump. A good example was in CA-49, the San Diego/Orange County district where Hillary beat Trump 50.7% to 43.2% dragging Darrell Issa to his worst result ever and nearly costing him his seat. In the end Issa eked out a miserable 155,888 (50.3%) to 154,267 (49.7%) win over newcomer Doug Applegate, even though Issa outspent Applegate $6,275,754 to $2,041,091. Or take TX-07, the Houston district represented by John Culberson. Hillary won 48.5% to 47.1% and Culberson, despite running against a Democrat with virtually no support suffered his worst election result ever and, like Issa, is likely it be defeated in 2018.

Meanwhile, Trump is still tweeted veiled threats to Republicans in Congress growing increasingly sick of him and his childish, vindictive behavior. Is this one a threat? The real repercussions will be to the 20 to 30 million Americans who lose their healthcare if TrumpCare in ever enacted. And if that isn't enough of a repercussion for the self-absorbed, Adderall-fueled Trump, how about the fact that voters have consistently said-- by huge margins-- that they will be much less likely to vote for their own members of Congress if they back TrumpCare?

Trump Will Pay $25 Million To Avoid A Trump University Fraud Trial

On the Morning Joe video from early March above, Trump said he wouldn't settle the Trump University lawsuit "because it's an easy case to win in court... How do you lose a case where people suing you have signed letters and affidavits saying that the school is terrific?... We have a 98% approval rating? How do you settle a case like that?... I could have settled the case a number of times. I could settle the case now if I wanted to settle the case. I don't settle cases... You know what happens? When you settle cases, everbody sues you. At least with me, I don't settle cases very often."

But Trumpy-the-Clown nemesis Judge Curiel has always wanted a settlement and Friday reports of an imminent settlement broke in the NY Daily News. In the future, Trump will be able to pretend he was never found guilty of anything, the same way he can technically claim he's not a serial bankrupt. He's settling both remaining Trump University cases, the one in New York and the one in San Diego. And, worse yet, as one wag on Twitter put it yesterday, "Trump to pay out to people who expected him not to con them so he can focus on conning the nation."

Even before election day, Trump had tentatively agreed to settle but, always the cheapskate, tried bullying his victims again by saying he'd only;y agree to go forward if the amount was $3 or $4 million and never anything above $10 million.

Under the emerging deal being negotiated by Trump's lawyers, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and the law firm that brought a class action lawsuit regarding Trump University in California, the president-elect will agree to pay between $20 million and $25 million to settle the matter, a source with knowledge of the situation said.

Trump will not admit to any wrongdoing in the final agreement, which could be announced as soon as Friday, the source said.

During the presidential campaign, Trump had threatened to have his executives reopen the school once the cases were done. It's not clear if that was bluster or if the settlement will bar that from happening even if he was serious.

The settlement comes just days before a class action lawsuit in California was set to begin. With the trial date approaching-- and Trump getting ready to take office-- the judge in the case pushed for aggressive settlement talks among all the parties, the source said.

Before being elected President earlier this month Trump had publicly vowed not to settle the matter.

...Schneiderman in 2013 brought a fraud lawsuit against Trump University claiming that the school was nothing but a scam designed to make money for Trump by falsely promising wannabe real estate developers they would learn the tricks of the trade from Trump and his hand-picked teachers.

Instead, those who enrolled were pressured to take more expensive programs from people not selected by Trump. The closest they got to Trump himself was when they were able to take a picture with a cardboard cutout of him, Schneiderman alleged.

Schneiderman initially sought $40 million from Trump, saying he swindled more than 5,000 students through the school. The final $20 million to $25 million settlement will cover students from both the New York and California cases, though there had been some overlap, the source said.

In the end, about 800 people from the New York case who enrolled in Trump University and who have been waiting for compensation since 2012 will now receive it, the source said.

Schneiderman has slammed Trump University, which closed in 2010, as a "fraud from beginning to end" and has suggested that "the initial estimates are that (Trump) personally pocketed $5 million from" his school.

"Using false promises to prey on desperate people has long been a hallmark of 'snake-oil salesmen,’" Schneiderman said this past July. "A lawsuit by my office alleges that Donald Trump was basically doing the same thing with Trump University."

Trump has denied the allegations of fraud, saying 98% of the people who signed up for the programs expressed satisfaction, and blistered Schneiderman as a "lightweight."

Schneiderman is likely to run for governor of New York in 2018. The unpopular Andrew Cuomo is seeking a third term. The Trumpist candidate is like to be deranged Buffalo psychopath Carl Paladino.

And this morning, showing once again he doesn't have a shred of dignity, the idiot is back tweeting about his fraud case...

With His Experience As A University Founder, Would Trump Be America's Education President?

Wonder when more voters will start seeing Trump as the con man he is? If the widely mistrusted and disliked Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Party nominee, her only shot to win is if enough voters are more repulsed by Trump than by her. We've been covering the slow-boiling Trump University scandal for several years-- long before he came down the escalator to announce he is running for president by branding Mexican immigrants rapists. Trump's scam-- which he started in 2005-- began unravelling in 2010 when dozens of students started complaining to the authorities in New York, California, Texas and Illinois that the net reprise was a scam and that they had been hustled out of substantial money. Trump was defiant and asserted that the law suit in New York was politically-motivated because his attempted bribe to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman ($12,500) wasn't enough and that Schneiderman wanted more.

Today, the New York Daily News, probably the newspaper that knows Trump best of any publication in the world, labeled Trump a ripoff artist. They reported that "Federal court documents unsealed Tuesday by Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the Indiana-born judge called a 'Mexican' by Trump, revealed a 'playbook' that made marks out would-be real estate investors lured by the Trump name... [starting with a] sales force’s revolting practice of requiring registrants to reveal their incomes, savings and debts so that sellers could rate their likely prospects and leverage the information for later use." The playbook reveals that Trump's employees were instructed to "Collect personalized information that you can utilize during closing time. (For example: are they a single parent of three children that may need money for food?)... Every single company goes into debt when they are first starting out, EVERY SINGLE BUSINESS! The profits pay off the debt and before you know it, your new real-estate business will start making amazing returns."

Last night, Michael Barbaro and Steve Eder, reporting on newly released testimony for the New York Times wrote that it wasn't just the students exposing Trump's scheme, but even high level employees of the enterprise, who portrayed it as "an unscrupulous business that relied on high-pressure sales tactics, employed unqualified instructors, made deceptive claims and exploited vulnerable students willing to pay tens of thousands for Mr. Trump’s insights." Does it sound worse than how the media has presented Hillary for the last couple of decades?

One sales manager for Trump University, Ronald Schnackenberg, recounted how he was reprimanded for not pushing a financially struggling couple hard enough to sign up for a $35,000 real estate class, despite his conclusion that it would endanger their economic future. He watched with disgust, he said, as a fellow Trump University salesman persuaded the couple to purchase the class anyway.

“I believe that Trump University was a fraudulent scheme,” Mr. Schnackenberg wrote in his testimony, “and that it preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money.”

For Mr. Trump, whose presidential campaign hinges on his reputation as a businessman, the newly unsealed documents offer an unflattering snapshot of his career since branching out, over the past decade, from building skyscrapers into endeavors that cashed in on his name to sell everything from water and steaks to ties and education.

...The most striking documents were written testimony from former employees of Trump University who said they had become disenchanted with the university’s tactics and culture. Corrine Sommer, an event manager, recounted how colleagues encouraged students to open up as many credit cards as possible to pay for classes that many of them could not afford.

“It’s O.K., just max out your credit card,” Ms. Sommer recalled their saying.

Jason Nicholas, a sales executive at Trump University, recalled a deceptive pitch used to lure students-- that Mr. Trump would be “actively involved” in their education. “This was not true,” Mr. Nicholas testified, saying Mr. Trump was hardly involved at all. Trump University, Mr. Nicholas concluded, was “a facade, a total lie.”



...Trump had fought Tuesday’s release of previously sealed documents in the case. In an apparent attempt to discredit the judge in the case, Gonzalo P. Curiel, Mr. Trump called him [at a campaign event, no less] biased and a “hater of Donald Trump,” and he sought to draw attention to the judge’s ethnic background-- “we believe Mexican,” Mr. Trump said. (Mr. Curiel was born in Indiana; he is of Mexican descent.)

If he becomes president, maybe he could open up the "school" again and teach all kinds of courses. Statistics might be a popular class, using videos like this one:



Will all this be enough to persuade skeptical voters that Trump really is worse than Clinton? They're hardly typical voters but Fortune 500 CEOs are convinced. 58% favor Clinton to 42% for Trump. The survey didn't ask about Bernie, but this probably isn't his demo anyway.

Big company CEOs tend to lean heavily Republican. But most of the 500 operate on a global scale, and many disagree with Trump’s proposals for raising trade barriers. Some also have been rattled by his stance on immigration, or by his comments showing little understanding of public finance. For instance, Trump told CNBC that if interest rates rose significantly, “we can buy back government debt at a discount”-- a statement that ignores the fact that the government would have to borrow money at higher interest rates to buy back old debt, making any such transaction a wash for the government.

NY AG Schneiderman Issues Subpoenas, Launches Probe Into Exxon

Which would you rather see go over the cliff, Exxon's stock price or your grandchildren's future? Sometimes you have to clear out the old to make room for the new.

by Gaius Publius

Short and simple. There have been multiple calls for RICO investigations and/or lawsuit filings against Exxon and the rest of the fossil fuel industry thanks to the investigative work by Inside Climate News and separately, the LA Times.

There have also been calls for the SEC to investigate Exxon, using, I think, Sarbanes-Oxley, which provides for criminal penalties and jail time for corporate executives who sign off on knowingly false annual and quarterly statements.

That's two methods of approach, RICO and Sarbanes-Oxley. A third approach is the little-known Martin Act, a New York state statute that gives prosecutors very broad powers of subpoena and discovery.

What's the news? New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is using the Martin Act (at least) to subpoena documents from Exxon, looking for evidence of investor fraud (at least). This comes from two sources. Let's start with the New York Times (my emphasis everywhere):

Exxon Mobil Investigated for Possible Climate Change Lies by New York Attorney General

The New York attorney general has begun a sweeping investigation of Exxon Mobil to determine whether the company lied to the public about the risks of climate change or to investors about how those risks might hurt the oil business.

According to people with knowledge of the investigation, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman issued a subpoena Wednesday evening to Exxon Mobil, demanding extensive financial records, emails and other documents.

The investigation focuses on whether statements the company made to investors about climate risks as recently as this year were consistent with the company’s own long-running scientific research.

The sources said the scrutiny would include a period of at least a decade when Exxon Mobil funded outside groups that sought to undermine climate science, even as its in-house scientists were outlining the potential consequences — and uncertainties — to company executives.

Kenneth P. Cohen, vice president for public affairs at Exxon Mobil, said on Thursday that the company had received the subpoena and was still deciding how to respond. [...]

Now from Inside Climate News:

New York Attorney General Subpoenas Exxon on Climate Research

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office demanded that ExxonMobil Corporation give investigators documents spanning four decades of research findings and communications about climate change, according to a person familiar with the year-long probe.

An 18-page subpoena issued to the oil giant late Wednesday seeks documents from Exxon (NYSE:XOM) related to its research into the causes and effects of climate change, to the integration of climate change findings into business decisions, to communications with the board of directors and to marketing and advertising materials on climate change, the person said.

Investigators have been looking closely into the company’s disclosures to shareholders and the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the subpoena also sought documents related to those communications. The probe is based on New York’s powerful shareholder-protection statute, the Martin Act, as well as the state’s consumer protection and general business laws. [...]

This is already broader than many people realize. Looks like Exxon's not alone (via the Times article):

The people with knowledge of the New York case also said on Thursday that, in a separate inquiry, Peabody Energy, the nation’s largest coal producer, had been under investigation by the attorney general for two years over whether it properly disclosed financial risks related to climate change. That investigation has not been previously reported, and has not resulted in any charges or other legal action against Peabody.

Peabody deserves whatever it gets. This could get big quickly:

Mr. Schneiderman’s decision to scrutinize the fossil fuel companies may well open a new legal front in the battle over climate change. To date, lawsuits trying to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for the damage they are causing to the climate have been failing in the courts, but most of those have been pursued by private plaintiffs.

Attorneys general for other states could join in Mr. Schneiderman’s efforts, bringing far greater investigative and legal resources to bear on the issue. Some experts see the potential for a legal assault on fossil fuel companies similar to the lawsuits against the tobacco companies in recent decades, which cost them tens of billions of dollars in penalties.

“This could open up years of litigation and settlements in the same way that tobacco litigation did, also spearheaded by attorneys general,” said Brandon L. Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia law school. “In some ways, the theory is similar — that the public was misled about something dangerous to health. Whether the same smoking guns will emerge, we don’t know yet.”

This should strike a huge blow to the whole industry, but especially to Exxon. And not soon enough, considering the cliff we may be about to go over — as a species. Watch that stock price (NYSE:XOM). Would you buy Exxon stock tomorrow morning? If you owned it, would you sell it? Collapses often happen quickly.

Sometimes You Have to Clear Out the Old to Make Room for the New

And finally, which would you rather see go over the edge into the canyon, Exxon's corporate valuation or your grandchildren's odds of living in something like civilization? Don't weep for Exxon. Sometimes you have to clear out the old to make room for the new. Think of it as emptying the closet so you can buy new clothes.

GP

How To Tell A Real Democrat From A Poseur

Above is a video of New York Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman talking about the real issues real Democrats should be talking with voters about. I don't want to offend him-- nor do I think he would be offended-- but he is an Elizabeth Warren Democrat. Blue America endorsed him for reelection today and you can contribute to his reelection here. Just over a year ago, Howard Meyerson, writing for the American Prospect, called Eric The Man the Banks Fear Most. Until Schneiderman had been elected Attorney General, Wall Street had gone completely unpunished for its starring role in wrecking the economy. Schneiderman has gone after the sociopaths and predators-- and, more often than not, DC has been an impediment, not an ally.

Schneiderman set out to rally public support for his position. This, in fact, had been his hallmark during his years in the New York Senate, where he had consistently spurred progressive organizations to mount grassroots campaigns in support of legislation. Arguing that his fight against a premature settlement opened the door to the kind of investigation into the banks that liberals had long sought, Schneiderman met in early summer with the leaders of the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union, MoveOn.org, financial-reform groups, and community-housing advocates. They, in turn, urged other key attorneys general to withhold their support for a settlement until the deal was sweetened and Schneiderman’s conditions met.

Six months later, Schneiderman prevailed. In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama announced that he was establishing a joint working group to investigate the banks. The members would be drawn from the federal agencies Schneiderman had requested and the staffs of U.S. prosecutors and state attorneys general. The president designated Schneiderman as one of the five co-chairs of the group. Obama also made clear that the settlement would not include releases for bank misconduct in originating and securitizing mortgages. In February, the administration and the attorneys general announced that the deal-- which was increased from $20 billion to $26 billion to satisfy attorneys general from states with high rates of foreclosure-- had been completed.

Today, the staffing of the working group and the investigations themselves are under way. We don’t know, of course, what these inquiries will turn up, but depending on what they uncover, they could accomplish four goals that have so far eluded the Obama administration.

First, by offering a rigorous examination of Wall Street misconduct, they have the potential to do what the Pecora investigation of the early 1930s did for Depression-era America: provide an authoritative account of the role financial institutions played in plunging the nation into economic hell, a narrative that lays the groundwork for subsequent reforms.

Second, they could produce a settlement with a payout to homeowners and investors that dwarfs the $26 billion robo-signing payout-- a settlement sufficient to begin restoring both the housing market and the broader economy.

Third, they could result in criminal indictments of banking executives.

Fourth, should the banks’ liabilities and culpabilities exceed the banks’ capacities to make amends, they could even force some banks to restructure. This remains a remote possibility, but even the threat of breaking up a major bank could lead to a sounder and more equitable financial system.

I talk with candidates and their staffers all day. Some of them-- like Shenna Bellows in Maine and like Eric in New York-- are always inspiring. Others have their ups and downs and are filled with doubts and fears and confusion. (Shenna and Eric: no doubts, no fears, no confusion.) Right now I'm sopping up a lot of inspiration from Elizabeth Warren's new book, A Fighting Chance. If only all Democratic candidates could be like her!

When President Obama consigned her to work for Wall Street shill Tim Geithner, Geithner took her out to lunch on the first day on the job. "I have a present for you," he said. It was a cop's hat. "Perfect," she thought.

Much of the book looks behind the curtain to explain how financial reform and consumer protection was resisted, watered-down and passed in Congress. The Wall Street interests, their Republican handmaidens and ConservaDem shills never gave up and will never give up on trying to undermine reform and undermine any attempts that prevent them from raping and pillaging the economy and families that depend on the banks for financial services. Most Members of Congress take the side of Wall Street. Not Warren. And not Warren in a very big way-- a way we should pray more candidates feel inspired and encouraged to emulate. Here she is speaking about the establishment of the CFPB, so reviled by Wall Street and the GOP:

One thing about the agency's future was clear: It would be under attack from the get-go. The big banks had lost the fight over the CFPB, but they still had plenty of friends on Capitol Hill. If the agency was successful, it would put an end to tricks and traps that had produced some very fat profits. No one doubted that the big banks would try to cripple the agency if they could.

So the question was: What's the right way to set up an agency that will be under constant attack? The usual answer in Washington: Go slowly. Tread carefully. Don't offend anyone.

Not me. I thought the agency should go fast and fight hard right from the beginning. (Surprise, right?) The banks wouldn't hesitate to attack us aggressively in the battles to come, and I figured that nobody wins this sort of fight by worrying too much about stepping on toes. I believed that if people saw what the CFPB could do-- if millions of consumers were actually helped-- then people would keep fighting for it.

That's why so many progressives admire Alan Grayson and have no regard one way or the other for-- for example-- a powerful inside player like Steny Hoyer. And the key, of course, is when you can combine the most courageous with the most talented. Grayson, Sanders and Warren are the perfect examples. Only one of this year's Blue America-backed candidates is a former Harvard Law student of Elizabeth Warren, Stanley Chang, the Honolulu progressive in a very tough, crowded primary against a gaggle of better-financed hacks from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Stanley-- whose campaign you can help here on our ActBlue page-- does not come off as a confrontational kind of guy. He comes across as a man who listens to the other side and takes their concerns and arguments seriously. He's eager to use what he learned studying with Elizabeth Warren to advance the core progressive values he shares with Hawaii's working families. Will he be another Elizabeth Warren and another Alan Grayson if he gets to Congress in November? We asked him.

Elizabeth Warren is the key inspiration for my career in public service. Back when she was known as just Professor Warren, she taught my very first class in law school. She ran her classroom with the same directness and passion that she has shown throughout her life while fighting on behalf of working families. Alan Grayson is another personal role model, and it would be a great honor to join him in the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He gets right to the heart of every issue and knows how to shape the national conversation on behalf of just causes. In seeking to represent Hawaii, I am grounded in the strong progressive tradition and values of our islands, while drawing on what I have learned from these great legislators to get results in Congress.

I'm ready to join these progressive champions in fighting back for the middle class by cracking down on unscrupulous Wall Street gamblers and making college more affordable for families by offering low-interest loans for higher education. We've got a lot of work to do if we're going to be able to take on the Koch Brothers and their Tea Party employees in Congress-- but I'm ready for that fight.

So is Marianne Williamson: