Pete Found A Good Line Tuesday To Describe The Shame Of Today's GOP-- "Naked Racism"

Trump's mind by Chip Proser

In Tuesday night's debate, Mayo Pete mostly regurgitated his slick McKinsey-like, carefully-tested talking points. He didn't really have a memorable moment, but he did make a worthwhile point about Status Quo Joe: "We cannot have a vision that amounts to 'back to normal,' he said. "The only reason we got this president, is that 'normal' didn't work." But he suddenly pivoted to Trump and his enablers in the Republican Party-- very smooth, very well-done. "We have to be ready to take on this president and, by the way-- something that hasn't been talked about as much tonight-- take on his enablers in Congress. When David Duke ran for Governor, the Republican Party, 20 years ago, ran away from him. Today they are supporting naked racism in the White house or are, at best, silent about it. And if you are watching this at home, and you are a Republican member of Congress, consider the fact that when the sun sets on your career, and they are writing your story, of all the good and bad things you did in your life, the thing you will be remembered for, is whether in this moment, with this president, you found the courage to stand up to him or you continue to put party over country."

The naked racism line was a great one from Pete-- and several Democrats running for Congress agreed wholeheartedly in terms of their own contests. Kara Eastman is taking on reactionary Republican Don Bacon in Omaha again this cycle. "Donald J. Bacon has voted 95.7% of the time with Donald J. Trump," she reminded us. "Today a prominent community leader in Omaha, Preston Love Jr., made the comment that Bacon pays 'lip service' to the African-American community in Omaha. He says he does not agree with the President’s viewpoints, but then stands with him almost all of the time. Bacon’s refusal to stand up against racism, sexism, anti-semitism, homophobia, and anti-immigrant statements and policies that stem from the President shows his true character. He is not representing the district, but just a party that has clearly lost its way."

Kathy Ellis, is running for Congress in a red, red southeast Missouri district where Trump beat Hillary 75.4-21.0%. Her opponent, notorious anti-gay closet case, Jason Smith, adamantly opposes Trump being impeached (and himself being outed). "I couldn't agree more with Mayor Pete's comments on this topic," Kathy told us yesterday. "The blatant racism of our President is unacceptable, and it is the responsibility of Republican members of Congress to hold him accountable. However, my opponent, Rep. Jason Smith seems to have no comment about this or any other Trump policy that is harming the people in my District. The people in the 8th District and nationwide will not forget his silence."

Jon Hoadley is a Michigan state Rep. running for Congress in the southwest corner of the state. His opponent, Fred Upton, is a sly old Trump enabler. Hoadley told us that "We are at a generational moment. We need bold ideas that place people and communities at the center of decisions. The Fred Upton who folks voted for over 30 years ago is not the Congress Upton of today. When he said no to healthcare, no to equality, and no rising to the challenges of a climate crisis, it is clear voters are going to say no to his reelection. The Trump Republican Party has changed. Congressman Upton has changed. Is that the legacy he wants to leave for the history books?"

Teresa Tomlinson is running for the U.S. Senate. She wants to "remind everyone that Georgia Senator David Perdue was in the Oval Office when President Trump made his infamous 's-hole' countries statement. Perdue first said that didn’t happen, and then said he didn’t hear it. Denial is cowardice. We have seen the true colors of the current failed Republican leadership. They are cowards, for surely they do not condone or support the racism of the president’s tweets and rants, they are simply scared to say so. Or, do they? It is for them to tell us and tell us now. Do you stand with this President and his racist remarks, or are you cowardly enablers? Senator Perdue’s silence speaks volumes."

But, back to Pete; the line just wasn't enough to fish him out of the mayonnaise. In fact, two old buddies-- Ian Welsh and Pachacutec-- teamed up last night to take a swing at explaining who exactly Mayo Pete is... after his endorsement by former New Dem PAC head Patrick Murphy. Pachacutec started by introducing himself-- in contrast to Mayo Pete-- to Ian's readers:

Then he introduced Murphy via something I had once written about him, long, long ago, although my comment was about the other conservaDem Patrick Murphy, the guy from Florida, rather than the guy from Pennsylvania, which I'm 100% certain is the one who endorsed Mayo Pete:

"Pete," wrote Pach, "is getting a fair amount of recognition for being a gay candidate. People who know me know me know that I’m a big old homo. And now with my tiara firmly in place, I’m here to call out Mayor Pete."

Okay, I don’t actually wear a tiara. I’m actually very much like Pete in my gay origins, in that I am a light-skinned person, presumed to be white (though I’m half Latino) with a good education, cis gendered, and a beneficiary of all the presumptions of competence and intelligence that accrue to light-skinned, well educated men who are not effeminate in their conduct or manner.

Like Mayor Pete, I came out later in life, in my young 30s. That was a pretty traumatic time for me, actually. I made a fair mess of my life, and we won’t get into all that. But as Ian’s readers know, it’s what you do with your suffering that makes or breaks you. If you dive into it and learn from it, with the right support and process, you can turn it into your superpower.

Or you can become a preening, pompous, head up his ass climber who cashes in the cultural, social and political checks earned for work done by all the very homos, queers, transgender men and women, and people of color that you personally avoid engaging at all costs.

Everyone in the gay community knows these people. These are the white boys who stand and model, painfully preppy, in bars filled with other white boys, with a few token “ethnics” like black men, Asians or Latino men sprinkled in to provide a little variety, a little sexy “grit” and fetish fodder. Their Grindr profiles say things like “No offense, but I prefer white guys,” or “no fats or fems.”

These are cis gay white boys who might stay for the drag show and enjoy the bawdy jokes, but who feel painfully uncomfortable around effeminate men. As in my tweet, they don’t even see women, non-binary gender rebels, or black folk. Mayor Pete’s relationships with black folk in South Bend are a joke. Gay guys like Mayor Pete never go into a bar if the person of color ratio gets too high, say, higher than 15%, unless for example they really have a thing for Latin guys and it’s salsa night at the club. Some of these guys really fetishize some groups, be they Asians, black men or Latinos. It gets very creepy.

I don’t want to belabor the point. This guy has no claim to stand for gay politics when he is precisely the kind of guy who wouldn’t have been caught dead anywhere near the Stonewall Inn, and lacks the self-awareness to know it or understand why. I personally know the type, because, in the beginning of my coming out journey, I had to overcome the legacy cultural biases, blind spots and presumptions of privilege (I know Ian hates that word, sorry) that would have made me into one of those guys.

For some people, the experience of coming out, and the experience of being marginalized or oppressed in some fashion, leads to expanded empathy and curiosity for others who are downtrodden or outcast. That’s clearly not Mayor Pete. Pete fundamentally believes in his inherent superiority, and subsequently wants to have it both ways: he wants people to overlook his gayness because he’s not that gay, and then he wants credit for being some kind of LGBTQ pioneer. But whether you look at his policies, his politics or his presence in a room with real people, he is what he is: a conservative wannabe frat boy who happens to be gay. No wonder Patrick Murphy loves this guy.

Yeah-- it works for both Patrick Murphys. And-- just asking for a friend-- do gay frat boys still stick to that old "No Fats, No Femmes" thing? Someone should ask Mayo Pete at the next debate.

Why Doesn't Gwen Graham Just Switch Parties And Run As A "Moderate" Republican-- Which Is What She's Always Been?

Bipartisan love-- And #MeToo Graham

Gwen Graham is eating Patrick Murphy's lunch... again. When they served in Congress together, briefly thankfully, Murphy was always the second worst Florida Democrat-- in a delegation filled with garbage like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Alcee Hastings and Corrine Brown, currently serving in a federal penitentiary on basic corruption charges. Murphy (a New Dem) and Graham (a Blue Dog) never rose beyond their "F" ProgressivePunch ratings, not ever. Murphy came up with a superficial gimmick torun as a team with one of the MSNBC Republicans, former congressman David Jolly-- still a Republican with all that baggage-- and a week later Gwen Graham's floundering gubernatorial campaign doesn't just steal the concept, she steals Jolly as well. Murphy's left on the dock sucking his thumb-- or Nicholas Mastroianni's... thumbs... unless Graham picks him as her running mate! (Murphy, not Mastroianni.)

Graham's first reaction to Murphy's proposal-- before he vaulted thread of her among her conservative Democratic base-- was insist that a bipartisan ticket wasn't legal in Florida. Marc Caputo had the story early Monday morning.

“I see my lieutenant governor selection as someone who’s going to be right by my side helping me get this state back on the right path,” Graham told the podcast’s host, Fernand Amandi. “And so Patrick would certainly fit that definition, as would David, as would all the other candidates for governor on the Democratic ticket at the moment. So it’s really going to be for me a thorough analysis of who can bring the most to help make the biggest difference in the state of Florida.”

Gillum’s campaign took note of Graham’s comments, pointing out that she’s now running as a progressive but had successfully run as a “very conservative Democrat” in a GOP-leaning Tallahassee-based House seat in 2014.

“It’s beyond frustrating that the self-described ‘very conservative’ Gwen Graham is already considering splitting the ticket to run with the GOP, especially with an energized Democratic base ready to vote Republicans out,” said one of Gillum’s top liberal surrogates, Orlando Democratic state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith. “This is exactly why we need Andrew Gillum-- the only unapologetic progressive running. Democrats will win by authentically standing up for our values-- not by becoming Republicans!”

Graham’s comments come as an outside group supporting African-American candidates, The Collective super PAC, announced it would spent as much as $782,000 on an ad campaign questioning Graham’s progressive bonafides. Graham has called the ad misleading and wants it taken down.

...While Graham’s centrist [Belwayspeak for "right-wing"] voting record might be a problem in a Democratic primary, her supporters say it makes her a better general election candidate in a swing state like Florida. And that’s where Jolly could be an advantage.

Being relatively well-known among Democratic political junkies because of his frequent appearances on MSNBC bashing President Donald Trump, Jolly’s addition to a centrist ticket could even be a plus in a primary, according to a recent survey conducted by Murphy’s pollster.

Almost as soon as the news broke that Murphy was considering a bid with Jolly, Graham’s campaign and her surrogates pushed back on the notion of a bipartisan ticket by claiming it wasn’t legal because of state laws requiring membership in a political party for a year before announcing a bid.

“They could not run as Democrats-- you have to be registered as a D for over year; Jolly is a Republican. They would have to run without a party-- not even sure that is legal. Do some work,” Don Hinkle, a Tallahassee attorney and Graham supporter, huffed on Twitter.

Hinkle noted that the statute concerning the pick of a gubernatorial candidate’s running mate mentions a “written statement of political party affiliation.” Graham’s campaign surrogates also spread the word that a bipartisan ticket wasn’t lawful.

But Florida election-law attorney Jason B. Blank, also a Democrat, said the law doesn’t specify that a gubernatorial candidate and his or her running mate have to be members of the same party.

“A bipartisan ticket is not expressly forbidden by Florida law,” Blank said. “I have found no prohibition in Florida statute or in the Florida constitution.”

And now that Graham has said Jolly could be a pick for her, she sees no prohibition either.

As the Democratic governor of another state told me this morning, laughing, "This is what candidates do when they don’t know what to do." Meanwhile Quentin James from the Collective SuperPAC, did an expose of Graham's hysterical slander against his organization for Monday night's Miami Herald Their ad, which is driving Graham bonkers, is below. "Instead of responding to the content of the advertisement," he points out, "Graham and establishment Democrats spent an entire week attacking my organization for highlighting her conservative voting record and her choice to stand with GOP leaders over President Obama."

Graham falsely labeled our organization a “dark” money group even though The Collective Super PAC reports its contributions and expenditures monthly to the Federal Elections Commission. All 13,000 individual contributions from more than 6,000 individuals can be found at FEC.gov. A host of groups of similar size and structure have worked on behalf of Gwen Graham throughout her career and were given a hospitable welcome. Now, because we’re simply seeking accountability, we’re being accused of doing something suspicious, illegal or unethical.


...And in true fashion-- and during the same week no less-- Graham has proven us right: She is considering standing with a Republican in 2018. Politico reports that, “Graham is considering Republican David Jolly as a Florida gubernatorial running mate.” It boggles the mind that she would even contemplate choosing a GOP running mate in the midst of a Democratic primary, but this is exactly what our advertisement points to-- Graham is not the progressive she claims to be.

Instead of launching baseless attacks on our organization, Graham and her allies should inform Floridians why she stood against President Obama 52 percent of the time, why she trashed Obamacare, why she voted with the big banks, why she voted to approve the Keystone XL pipeline-- twice-- and why she’s considering a Republican running mate?

Swamp Times A Billion: Michael Cohen + Nicholas Mastroianni, The Worst Of Long Island

Mastroianni

In 2016 DWT looked closely, over the months, at a vile character named Nicholas Mastroianni, a real crook. He was the biggest financier of Patrick Murphy's ill-fated campaign-- other than Murphy's own father-- for Senate. Mastroianni contributes hundreds of thousands of dollars to both parties, especially to the most corrupt politicians, Debbie Wasserman Schultz being one of his favorites-- as well as Charlie Crist, Chuck Schumer, Donald Trump... he always manages to find the worst of the worst. These corrupt politicians continued backing pay-for-play with him, even after Fortune exposed him in 2014 as a super-rich mini-Trump from Long Island with "a long history of legal problems, failed ventures, and unpaid debts-- which have continued even as his professional fortunes have turned sharply upward-- leaving a legacy of conflicts, judgments, and entanglements." And what did he want from all these corrupt politicians? EB-5 visa manipulations to make himself very, very rich.


It would be hard to find a figure who has risen faster in this burgeoning realm than Nicholas Mastroianni, II. In just four years, he has developed a lucrative role raising money for marquee projects such as Atlantic Yards, the giant Brooklyn development anchored by the Barclays Center, home of the NBA’s Nets. Forest City Ratner, which is developing Atlantic Yards, has also retained Mastroianni to raise EB-5 money for its renovation of the Nassau Coliseum, home of the NHL’s Islanders. Other Mastroianni clients include the developers of three large Manhattan projects: the Charles, a 31-story condominium tower on the Upper East Side where the penthouse reportedly sold for $38 million; Bryant Park, a 32-story midtown Manhattan building with a luxury hotel and condos developed by HFZ Capital Group; and 855 Avenue of the Americas, a 41-story mixed-use edifice being developed by the Durst Organization.


All told, Mastroianni’s website boasts of involvement with $5.5 billion in development projects over the years, funded with $1.4 billion in EB-5 money, resulting in “40,000 jobs created.” Those are massive sums given that the entire EB-5 system raised a total of about $1.8 billion last year. Forest City Ratner CEO MaryAnne Gilmartin calls Mastroianni the"'go-to' leader in the field of EB-5 funding."

His career was all about Patrick Murphy and his father, Donald Trump, Chuck Schumer, Debbie Wasserman Schultz... everyone with no sense of ethics who could help his endeavors. And Thursday the Wall Street Journal connected Mastroianni to-- no surprise to anyone paying attention lately-- Michael Cohen and Kushner-in-law. The Journal reported that Mastroianni paid Washington's sleaziest law firm and lobbyist outfit, Squire Patton Boggs $370,000 to lobby Congress and the Trump Regime on EB-5 matters. Cohen was paid $500,000 a year to bring clients to Squire Patton Boggs. The Miami Herald chastised me in 2016 for breaking this news then.



Now, in the national examination of what kind of a creep Michael Cohen has always been, let's move away from Mastroianni and Patrick Murphy (currently floating trial balloons about a run for governor of Florida as the No Labels candidate) and take a look at what Pam and Russ Martens have found for Wall Street on Parade, First Republic: Meet the Bank at the Center of the Michael Cohen Scandal. Trump and Cohen both do banking with First Republic, which caters almost exclusively to the super-wealthy.

According to Avenatti, $500,000 that came into Cohen’s First Republic Bank account is tied to the Russian oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, now on a U.S. sanctions list and closely tied to Russian president Vladimir Putin. The $500,000 came from a U.S.-based company, Columbus Nova, which has denied any corporate ties to Vekselberg. However, those clever folks at Think Progress, used the Wayback machine to access the Columbus Nova website as of January of 2017 where Columbus Nova is listed as a subsidiary of Renova Group, Vekselberg’s Russian company.

The people and businesses who have direct or indirect connections to Cohen’s account at First Republic are starting to mount up. They include AT&T, which has confirmed paying Cohen $600,000 for advice, and the giant Swiss pharmaceutical company, Novartis, which has admitted to transmitting $1.2 million to the Cohen account in order to seek “insights” on Trump. Both AT&T and Novartis confirmed to the New York Times that they had been contacted last November “by investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III….” According to a report by CNN yesterday, also questioned by Mueller’s team was Vekselberg-- the Russian oligarch tied to the $500,000 that found itself in Michael Cohen’s Essential Consultants LLC account at First Republic Bank.

Another connecting dot is Trump’s longtime personal friend, Tom Barrack, who served as Chair of Trump’s Inaugural Committee. According to the Associated Press, Barrack has also been interviewed by Mueller’s investigators. Barrack is the Founder of Colony Capital, LLC, now known as ColonyNorthstar, where he continues to serve as Executive Chairman. Barrack served on the Board of Directors of First Republic Bank from 2001 through 2007 and from 2010 to the present. The bank was previously owned by Merrill Lynch, which was absorbed into Bank of America during the financial crash in 2008. In 2010, Barrack’s Colony Capital was part of a buyout team that included General Atlantic LLC which put up “$1.86 billion in new equity capital” to purchase the bank according to a press release issued by First Republic Bank. On November 29, 2010, the bank sold shares to the public in an Initial Public Offering.

According to First Republic Bank’s 2018 annual proxy statement, Barrack owns 12,335 shares in the company. At this morning’s opening price of $97.06, that’s about $1.2 million – not a particularly large amount of money for a man that Forbes estimated to be worth $1 billion in 2013.

According to the Washington Post, “It was Barrack who persuaded Trump to hire political operative Paul Manafort-- whom Barrack first met in Beirut 40 years ago-- for the presidential campaign.” Manafort has been indicted by a grand jury convened in the Mueller probe.

Yesterday, it was widely reported that the U.S. Treasury’s Inspector General has opened an investigation into the leak of financial documents from First Republic Bank. Stormy Daniels’ attorney, Avenatti, has released information that would seem to have only come from Customer Account Cards inside the bank or documents seized in the raid on Cohen by the FBI in the Southern District of New York or from the Mueller investigation.

In a document released by Avenatti on his Twitter page, precise details from the Customer Account Card for Essential Consultants LLC at First Republic Bank appears to have been provided to him. Avenatti writes:

“In connection with the establishment of that account, Mr. Cohen was required to make certain representations to First Republic regarding Essential’s business as part of First Republic’s Know Your Customer (‘KYC’) anti-money laundering protocol.

“In order to establish the account, Mr. Cohen subsequently submitted information claiming, among other things, the following:

(a) Essential is a real estate consulting company that collects fees for investment consulting work;
(b) The company’s typical clients are U.S.-based high net worth individuals;
(c) The company’s primary source of funds will be derived from within the U.S. or a U.S.-based company;
(d) The company expected one (1) to twenty (20) incoming domestic only wires totaling $1,000 to $10,000 each month for consulting fees, and one (1) to twenty (20) ACH credits and electronic transfers totaling $1,000 to $10,000 each month;
(e) No outgoing wire transfers and debits related to ACH or electronic transfers were expected; and
(f) Receipts of the business would be internally transferred to Mr. Cohen’s personal account at First Republic Bank.

According to the Wall Street Journal, First Republic Bank filed a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) with the U.S. Treasury’s FinCen unit on the Cohen account. Avenatti has said at least three SARs have been filed with FinCen related to this matter. In early April, Avenatti wrote to U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin requesting that the SARs information be released to the public, citing numerous legal case precedents for doing so. Thus far, Mnuchin has not supplied the information.

So where did all this illicit money sloshing around between Cohen, Trump, various Mafias and corporate America wind up-- and who got what? This morning Robert Cruickshank of Demand Progress reminded us that the $600,000 that AT&T funneled to Trump through Cohen's phony shell consulting firm went "to influence Trump’s position on regulatory issues at the FCC-- including net neutrality." The U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote-- in just a few days-- on whether to overrule Trump's crooked FCC and save net neutrality. Perhaps we'll get a hint about who else got some of this illicit dough by watching which sleaze-bag senators vote against it. Jack Shafer this morning: Giuliani insists that Senor Trumpanzee had no idea Cohen was raking in influence bucks. Really? "Money always leaves a trail. Dirty money leaves a trail of slime that taints everybody it touches. One unanswered question this week is whether all the consultative moolah coursing through Cohen’s LLC and moving through his 'shadowy business empire' of real estate, New York City and Chicago taxi medallion holdings, and assorted investment is on the up and up. If proved dirty, will they contaminate his boss, Trump, who traditionally loves using other people’s money? And, if Cohen has committed the money crimes that some suspect of him, will special counsel Robert S. Mueller III convince him to flip on his one-time boss and testify against him? Mueller has already demonstrated his interest in the slosh of Cohen cash and deal-making on behalf of the Trump Organization to Georgia, Kazakhstan and Russia."

Patrick Murphy And David Jolly Want To Insert Third Way Into The Florida Governor's Race

Patrick Murphy's papa bought him a congressional seat in the West Palm area (FL-18) in 2012. It was incredibly close but Murphy had a perfect foil-- lunatic fringe neo-fascist Allen West. Even Murphy looked almost like a lesser of two evils. Murphy's father started a PAC, American Sunrise, and financed his ne'rer-do-well son with $118,578. Sensing thew kind of DINO they love, the DCCC put in another $548,517. The final score was 166,257 (50.3%) to 164,353 (49.7%). Murphy went on to be lazy, incompetent backbencher with no achievements at all except to raise Wall Street cash by backing the banksters (along with Republicans and his fellow corrupt New Dems) on the House Financial Services Committee. In 2016 Schumer and Reid picked him to run for the U.S. Senate and Rubio beat him 52-44%. He drew 4,122,088 votes while Hillary Clinton was getting 4,504,975 votes on the same day. Nearly 400,000 Democratic voters decided to not cast a ballot for Murphy. Maybe his "F" rating by Progressive Punch helps explain why.

There is a lively election to replace Rick Scott as governor now. And Murphy is back, rearing his ugly drunken heard again. Now he's the "bipartisan candidate," offering to run on a ticket with with former Congressman David Jolly, who was ousted in 2016 by flip-floppy conservative Charlie Crist from his Pinellas County seat.

There are already 4 serious Democrats in the race, a female version of Murphy, DINO Gwen Graham, plus two other wretched conservaDems, former Miami Beach mayor Philip Levine and random rich businessman Christopher King, and one progressive, Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum. (There are also a dozen of so Republicans running for their party's nomination, though the top two are mainstream establishment conservative Adam Putnam and neo-fascist Trumpist Ron DeSantis.)

Monday evening Alex Leary broke the news in the Tampa Bay Times that Murphy and Jolly had put together a DINO/RINO ruse to attract attention. Their theory of the race is that a "split ticket idea recognizes growing dissatisfaction with the polarization of both parties and a possible third way."

"Working across the aisle was a hallmark of my two terms in Congress, and the relationships I formed with members of both parties were invaluable," Murphy said at the outset of the town-hall tour last summer. "I look forward to joining my former colleague as we share our perspectives on ways we must work together to improve our broken political system."

Jolly added, "Even in times of great disagreement there are ways of finding common ground, there are opportunities for bipartisan leadership to solve some of our country's toughest issues."

Geoff Burgan, Gillum's communications director, had a riotous response: "We welcome anyone who wants to talk about Florida’s future. The contrast in vision and background between the three millionaires running against Andrew Gillum couldn’t be more clear." Meanwhile, one of Murphy's former congressional colleagues laughed and told me that "it's sad but true: being unprincipled and unscrupulous, zero accomplishments to your name, and standing for nothing except self-promotion, now qualifies as 'bipartisan.'" Another of his former colleagues (from the House Financial Services Committee) referred to him as "a smarmy jerk-boy" and that was really the only think I can repeat about what she had to say about Murphy.

A Culture Of Corruption At The FEC? You Bet!

Last week, I tried catching everyone up on the complaint DWT filed with the FEC last year against a cook of crooks, Nicholas Mastroianni and then-Congressman Patrick Murphy. Murphy, Upchuck Schumer's pick to run for the Florida Senate seat, was taking massive bribes from Mastroianni for help in getting wealthy Chinese "investors" into America on EB-5 visas-- same trick the Kushner-in-law family has been using to make some cash. Florida is a swingy purple state and the presidential election was very close last year. Trump edged Hillary 4,617,886 (49%) to 4,504,975 (84%). But Upchuck Schumer's Senate candidate fell flat on his ass, despite all the money Mastroianni poured into Murphy's pockets. Rubio outpolled Trump and Murphy underperformed Hillary. Rubio beat Murphy 4,835,191 (52%) to 4,122,088 (44.3%). Sorry for the tangent.

To reiterate what transpired last week with the FEC... they dismissed the case, which centered on how Mastroianni was paying Murphy off for his help in corruptly using the EB-5 visa program that Murphy has pushing in Congress. Basically, we were quite certain that Mastroianni had orchestrated a scheme to funnel more than $100,000 into Murphy’s political campaign efforts by using shell companies and straw entities to hide the source of the money, which were coming from Chinese nationals participating in Mastroianni’s EB-5 visa-for-sale program. Shell companies were already being broadly scrutinized for being possible illegal donor entities under the law. But more importantly in this case, Chinese nationals cannot legally make contributions in federal races. We complain about the help the Russians gave Republican Donald Trump... but what about this Chinese cash being funneled into Democrat (barely) Patrick Murphy?

In return for these donations to his campaign and his Super PAC, Murphy co-sponsored legislation for Mastroianni’s benefit. Namely, Murphy used his elected office to try to expand the EB-5 program and make it permanent. In return, Mastroianni has used LLC’s, businesses, family and associates to move money to Murphy, his EB-5 go-to boy.

So, as I said, last week we finally heard back from the FEC-- 36 pages of legalese claptrap. I finally got an attorney to help me put it into English. Remember, Mastroianni had been taking in foreign partners in the EB-5 program, and buying real estate. In one case, the real estate partnership made the contribution to Murphy’s campaign, not Mastroianni. Foreigners can’t contribute to political campaigns in America, though they have been doing it very regularly. When Mastroianni was challenged on it, he said, in essence, "you haven’t proved that my partner was foreign." The FEC didn’t bother to ask him whether his partner was, in fact, foreign. Instead, they just said, in sum, "the papers before us don’t prove that Mastroianni’s partner is foreign, we are not going to bother to ask, and therefore, we are dismissing the complaint."

Oddly enough, this happened right around the time that Mastroianni (or maybe his foreign friends) contributed $150,000 to Señor Trumpanzee’s Super PAC. Love that bipartisanship! You too?

Two of the three Democratic FEC Commissioners dissented, and basically said, “this is BS." I mean, this was an incredibly blatant case of corruption. This was the dissent:

But Thursday it got stranger. One of the dissenting commissioners, Ellen Weintraub, complained about the decision on Twitter, something I’ve never seen before:

Weintraub went right to the heart of the problem. In the Trumpian kakistocracy there is no such thing as Justice or even right and wrong-- just what works for the kakistocrats. I was surprised to see Bloomberg cover the story a couple days ago. They were also perplexed that the FEC dropped the case without investigating it. "Two Democratic FEC commissioners, Ellen Weintraub and Ann Ravel, said the allegations raised 'serious questions of misconduct' that should have been investigated," wrote Kenneth Doyle.

The case was among the first involving allegations of illegal foreign campaign money released by the FEC following the 2016 election cycle. Pending cases are kept secret until they’re resolved; FEC officials have indicated more than a dozen matters involving foreign money allegations still are pending.

A complaint filed with the FEC alleged that a $50,000 contribution to the pro-Murphy super PAC, called Floridians for a Strong Middle Class, came from money raised by real estate developer Nicholas Mastroianni. The money was collected from Chinese nationals seeking to participate in an immigration program known as EB-5, the complaint said, citing news reports.

The EB-5 visa program, which facilitates immigration by foreigners investing in U.S. projects, has been derided by critics as “cash for citizenship.”

The FEC complaint said foreign money from aspiring Chinese immigrants was funneled by Mastroianni into a limited liability company called 230 East 63rd -6 Trust LLC, which in turn contributed to the pro-Murphy super PAC.

The complaint also alleged two other LLC contributions to the super PAC, worth an additional $25,000, were made illegally with money that actually came from Mastroianni.

Floridians for a Strong Middle Class spent a total of nearly $2.5 million on ads supporting Murphy and opposing his opponent, Sen. Marco Rubio (R), who won the Florida Senate race. Overall, more than $90 million was spent on the 2016 Senate race in Florida, according to FEC reports analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics.

A “statement of reasons” was filed in February by Weintraub and Ravel, following a preliminary vote on the case-- designated Matter Under Review (MUR) 7081.

“For our democracy to work, the American public must have confidence that they-- and not some unknown foreign actors-- are financing our candidates for office,” their statement said.

UPDATE: The FEC Dropped My Complaint

You may remember that last year DWT formally complained to the FEC and the Office of Congressional Ethics about a crooked Patrick Murphy contributor named Nicholas Mastroianni II. In June of 2016 I wrote about the complaint and published the official complaint here. As I wrote at the time, our complaints centered on how Mastroianni was paying Murphy off for his help in corruptly using the EB-5 visa program that Murphy has pushing in Congress. Basically, we were quite certain that Mastroianni had orchestrated a scheme to funnel more than $100,000 into Murphy’s political campaign efforts by using shell companies and straw entities to hide the source of the money, which appears to be coming from Chinese nationals participating in Mastroianni’s EB-5 visa-for-sale program. Shell companies were already being broadly scrutinized for being possible illegal donor entities under the law. But more importantly in this case, Chinese nationals cannot legally make contributions in federal races. We complain about the help the Russians gave Republican Donald Trump... but what about this Chinese cash being funneled into Democrat (barely) Patrick Murphy?

In return for these donations to his campaign and his Super PAC, Murphy co-sponsored legislation for Mastroianni’s benefit. Namely, Murphy used his elected office to try to expand the EB-5 program and make it permanent. In return, Mastroianni has used LLC’s, businesses, family and associates to move money to Murphy, his EB-5 go-to boy.

This week we finally heard back from the FEC-- like 36 pages of legalese claptrap. I finally got an attorney to help me put it in English. So again, Mastroianni had been taking in foreign partners in the EB-5 program, and buying real estate. In one case, the real estate partnership made the contribution to Murphy’s campaign, not him. Foreigners can’t contribute. When Mastroianni was challenged on it, he said, in essence, "you haven’t proved that my partner was foreign." The FEC didn’t bother to ask him whether his partner was, in fact, foreign. Instead, they just said, in sum, "the papers before us don’t prove that Mastroianni’s partner is foreign, we are not going to bother to ask, and therefore, we are dismissing the complaint."

Oddly enough, this happened right around the time that Mastroianni (or maybe his foreign friends) contributed $150,000 to Señor Trumpanzee’s Super PAC. Love that bipartisanship! You too?

UPDATE

A member of Congress sent me a note about this post the day after I wrote it. It included these painfully honest lines: "That’s accurate. The last thing that either party wants right now is to focus attention on the illegal contributions that both take... with a smile."

Patrick Murphy-- Not Finished Destroying The Democratic Party Brand Yet?

Is there a contest at the DCCC recruiting committee-- headed by multimillionaire New Dem Denny Heck (WA) and Rahm Emanuel disciple Blue Dog Cheri Bustos-- to see who could come up with the worst possible candidate of the cycle, one that would guarantee the loss of a deep blue seat that almost can't be lost? Bustos generally comes up with more losers than anyone else and has the worst recruitment record of anyone in history. But no one is taking credit for the still secret loser-of-the-cycle, Patrick Murphy.

Murphy, a brainless, spoiled drunken party boy whose daddy bought him a seat in the West Palm area, was one of the worst members of Congress ever. A lifelong Republican who pretended to be a Democrat-- or at least a New Dem-- had an abysmal voting record that was basically all that Wall Street could ever ask for. He was their #1 pick for the U.S. Senate last cycle and the banksters pumped $2,380,989 into his pathetic dead-on-arrival campaign. His haul from the Financial Sector while he was in Congress was $4,014,637,which he repaid them many times over by voting for their reactionary agenda in the House Financial Services Committee. The banksters-- and Chuck Schumer-- just wanted to make sure Alan Grayson wasn't the Democratic nominee. As soon as Murphy-- with an assist from Obama-in-need-of-library-contributions-- defeated Grayson, the DSCC and their allies abandoned Murphy to his dismal fate. Rubio defeated him. Although Trump beat Hillary in Florida 4,617,886 (49.%) to 4,504,975 (48%), Rubio pulverized Murphy 4,835,191 (52%) to 4,122,088 (43%).

When Ileana Ros Lehtinen announced she wouldn't run for reelection next year, her seat instantly became a major Democratic target. After all, although-- at the insistence of Debbie Wasserman Schultz-- they had NEVER contested it before, Obama won the seat 53-47% against Romney and Hillary beat Trump there massively-- 58.6% to 38.9%. This is the bluest seat in the country held by a Republican but the DCCC pretended they never heard of it. Until now. Now it's a top priority.

One of the best possible recruits they could hope for, a Latina in a 73% Hispanic district, who had already won races for other offices in the district, went to the DCCC and said she wanted to run. Instead of kissing her feet and thanking her, they told her to fuck off because they had already given the nomination to... wait for it-- Patrick Murphy. His old district-- which he's too scared to run in again-- is an hour and 45 minutes from Miami up the I-95. You would drive through Frederica Wilson's, Wasserman Schultz's, Lois Frankel's, Alcee Hasting's and Ted Deutch's before hitting Port St. Lucie in the heart of Murphy's old district. And He's about the least Hispanic person you'll ever meet. His connection to the district is that his father docked his yacht there and young Patrick used to go clubbing and drinking (and fighting with police) in the district.

Yesterday Alex Leary from the Tampa Bay Times ran that screen shot of "Congressman" Patrick Murphy's letter asking for contributions-- part of an article entitled Who is Congressman Patrick Murphy?

The former lawmaker, who left the House to run for Senate, has been sending out similar emails that give the impression he's in office.

So what is he up to?

“I want to stay involved to do what I can to stay involved and help like-minded Democrats,” he recently told Politico. “I miss public service, but I don’t miss the House much, especially with Trump and all.”

Murphy said he's interested in running for office again but isn't sure what.

I asked a DCCC staffer. He said it was probably Bustos up to her old tricks but that they hadn't told the staff yet. "He'd be a really bad fit for the district. Bustos is an idiot and no one pays any attention to her anymore... This would be exactly how to lose FL-27. No one around here is that stupid." Uh huh... we'll see. The DCCC can't resist self-funders, conservatives, Wall Street whores and "ex"-Republicans. As far as Murphy goes that's check, check, check, check.

Is there a good candidate running? We hear great stuff about Michael Hepburn but we haven't talked to him yet.

Once Again: The Democrats' Very Worst Senate Candidate-- Erin Patrick Murphy, AKA- Privileged Patrick

There are 5 Senate races that are really close and that will determine which party controls that body for the next two years-- but neither swingy Ohio nor Florida, where Chuck Schumer picked his own candidates, Ted Strickland and Patrick Murphy, and rammed them through the primary process-- are among them. Both Schumer's candidates were seen as duds before Schumer insisted on them and both have proven the point after they were given the Democratic nominations on silver platters.

Way back in May, months before Obama put his finger (and toes and whole torso) on the scale for Murphy, we warned that Murphy would eventually face prison for a series of illegal straw donor conspiracies like the one that landed Ami Bera's father behind bars, in particular for one involving one of Saudi Arabia's richest and most powerful families, the notorious al-Rashids. Now the FBI is actively investigating the links between the al-Rashid family and Murphy, the shadiest member of the House Intelligence Committee. Murphy has a long and sordid history with straw donors and the al-Rashids involvement is just the latest to come to light. The story in The Hill barely brushes the surface-- literally... they reveal but a small fraction of the facts on the ground.

Tuesday, Alan Grayson, the progressive icon who was smeared by Schumer and Reid and then crushed and left for dead by Obama, spoke up about what really happened in the Florida Democratic primary that is virtually handing Marco Rubio back his Senate seat. As we;ve been saying here at DWT regularly and as Florida reporter Marc Caputo parroted on WPLG 2 weeks ago, "Washington, DC wanted to defeat Alan Grayson as the Democratic candidate for the Senate, and now they’re happy to allow Marco Rubio to resuscitate his political career." Grayson:

As many readers of this missive may be aware, I ran against Patrick Murphy in the August 30 Florida Senate Democratic Primary. A few months earlier, a Murphy political operative had an interesting conversation with someone working on my campaign. The operative said that Murphy’s father, Tom Murphy, had promised to give the Democrats’ Super PAC (Senate Majority PAC) and Patrick Murphy’s captive Super PAC (Floridians for a Strong Middle Class) $5 million if Patrick won the nomination, and that Tom Murphy would round up another $5 million from his friends and colleagues. So the Democratic Party could expect to see $10 million if it delivered the nomination to Murphy.

Very interesting, I thought. This explained to me why Sen. Harry Reid, head of the Senate Democrats, had been interfering in my primary and belligerently attacking me personally for months, and why the DSCC had been trying to plant “hit pieces” against me with its inside-the-Beltway pet reporters in the media.

I can’t say that I was surprised by this. Patrick Murphy’s father Tom, a Republican, already had passed around more than $1.5 million to Democratic candidates and organizations to grease the skids for Patrick, including the purchase of several key endorsements by elected officials. I asked one of them why he had endorsed Patrick. He told me, “Alan, if you gave me $20,000, then I’d be your best friend for life, too.”

In fact, without Daddy’s promise of $10 million, it would be very hard to explain why Senate Democrats would give a fig for Patrick Murphy. Murphy won his seat by less than one-half of one percent of the vote, while the Democrat running four years earlier in the same district had won by ten points. Murphy is a second-term Congressman who has accomplished so little that he was named the least effective Member of the House. Completely bereft of any legislative accomplishments, he is forced to point to a GOP bill for which he takes credit, because the GOP author said something nice about him on the Floor of the House. Murphy’s main goal in Congress seems to have been to try to set some kind of record for party disloyalty, by voting for more than 60 times for bills that were so odious than President Obama threatened in advance to veto them, voting seven times to force the President to license the Keystone Pipeline, voting to “condemn” the President over the Bowe Bergdahl swap, and voting (with only six other House Democrats) in favor of the GOP’s Benghazi witch-hunt committee. Murphy also voted (alone among 188 House Democrats) to vote to kill high-speed rail in Florida, even though it passes through his district, after his father’s construction company withdrew its effort to win the bid on the project. And Salon magazine points out that Patrick Murphy was a lifelong Republican who switched parties the month he declared for Congress and then, after election as a Democrat, asked Speaker John Boehner if he could switch back. (Boehner wasn’t interested.)

And me? I’m the only House Democrat to represent downtown Orlando in the past 42 years. I won my 2008 race by just four points. I lost in both 2006 and in 2010. House Democrats have a system for Member of Congress in shaky districts like mine, called “the pass.” If such a Member wants to vote against the party for political reasons, you are supposed to tell the Democratic Leadership ahead of time, “I need to take a pass.”

I have never taken a pass. Ne-ver. And I’ve passed 100 bills and amendments through the House in the last four years, all solid progressive legislation. And I won my last two House campaigns by double digits.

So, if the question is why the Democratic Party would endorse Patrick Murphy in a contested Senate primary, the answer has got to be Daddy’s $10 million. What else could it be?

Now, some might say, “OK, I’m not too thrilled with the idea that $10 million buys a Senate nomination, complete with full support from the party bosses, but we have to fight back against the Koch Brothers’ billions somehow, right?” I’m sorry, but that’s not what that $10 million is really all about. Media commissions are 15%. When the party’s Super PAC spends $10 million, then someone who is on very friendly terms with the party bosses makes a quick and easy (and legal!) $1.5 million.

That’s what that $10 million is really all about. Payola.

Still, that conversation that was conveyed to me is just a story, right? Just one politico talking to another.

No. Because when the Democrat’s Senate Majority PAC actually reserved TV time for that ten-week period between the primary and the general election, the amount of Florida TV time that it reserved was... $10 million. Precisely the amount that Tom Murphy promised to deliver.

It’s worth considering how utterly implausible it is that the Senate Majority PAC and the DSCC each would reserve $10 million for the last ten weeks of the Florida Senate race, without Tom Murphy’s promised cash. Last time I looked, the Senate Majority PAC had a grand total of $6 million in the bank. So it reserved almost twice the amount of TV time-- in just one race-- as it had cash on hand.

What is wrong with this picture?

And the DSCC? It had $31 million in the bank-- for 34 different Senate races, ten of which have been characterized as competitive. And in the polls for the Democrat in those ten races, Patrick Murphy is... tenth. Why would the DSCC plan to spend one-third of all of its cash on hand on its weakest competitive candidate?

In mid-July, I was up by eight points in my primary. On July 15, the Senate Majority PAC announced a $1 million buy for a TV spot endorsing Patrick Murphy-- almost unprecedented Democratic Party interference in a Senate Primary. By August 1, the TV spot had had its intended effect, with Murphy support zooming upward. The average Tampa voter saw that spot almost thirty times, in barely two weeks.

What happened next? Did Tom Murphy deliver on his $10 million to Senate Majority PAC? Did the DSCC then match Tom’s $10 million, buying young Patrick a Senate seat?

No and no. Tom Murphy kicked in a rather pitiful $250,000 to the Murphy Super PAC “Floridians for a Strong Middle Class” on Sept. 27, which has been dutifully trundling its cash over to the Senate Majority PAC. And after that earlier $1 million purchase of the party endorsement ad on Aug. 13, Tom Murphy has given nothing to the Senate Majority PAC directly. Zilch.

So the Senate Majority PAC pulled the last of its $10 million Florida Senate TV reservations three weeks ago, and the DSCC followed suit a week later.

FWIW, at that time, Patrick Murphy had trailed Marco Rubio in 28 out of the last 28 Florida Senate polls posted at Real Clear Politics. Apparently, Florida voters are not as stupid as the Murphy clan thinks they are.

Did Tom Murphy ever intend to come up with $10 million for Patrick’s campaign? I don’t know, but I doubt it. Did the Democratic Party ever intend to match Tom Murphy’s $10 million? I don’t know, but I doubt it.

l All I know is that just getting a whiff of $10 million of Tom Murphy’s money, just a glance at that mirage, was enough to turn my party against me-- in favor of someone contemptuous of my party and its principles.

I once told a national TV audience, “you have only three friends in life: God, your mama, and the Democratic Party.”

Cross that last one off the list.

The topic of a thoroughly corrupted right-wing, out-of-control FBI interfering in elections by announcing investigations is a separate topic that will have to be dealt with. But last night Hillary had some great news out of Florida. Early voting is way up and 28% of Republicans who have already voted, have voted for her, not for Trump! Overwhelmingly, though, those Republicans didn't then cast their ballots for Murphy but for Marco Rubio, an atrocious Republican every bit as undeserving of a place in the Senate as Murphy. The RealCleatPolitics polling average gives Rubio a healthy 5.6 point lead. The most recent poll, from the NY Times by Siena, shows Rubio beating Murphy 51-42%. Thank Chuck Schumer and, if you get a chance, tell him to stop interfering with Democratic primaries.

Leaked Document (Not From Russia): What Does Patrick Murphy Think The Weakest Parts Of His Record Are?

Trump didn't, but most serious political campaigns do an opposition research look at their own candidate in order to be ready for likely attacks. At the end of 2013, as his campaign was preparing for re-election, they took a look at Patrick Murphy from how they thought his opponents might see him. The report leaked-- and, if you know anyone as stupid as Rachel Maddow yelling about saving the seat for Team Blue, please make sure they see it. Keep in mind, it was primarily written from the point of view of defending against an attack from the right, not much from the left, which is where Murphy is most vulnerable, since he's far more conservative (and corrupt) than should be acceptable to informed voters. For example, the paper accuses him of voting against offshore drilling, although he eventually wound up voting right along with the Republicans for offshore drilling. Similarly, the paper accuses Murphy of voting to approve Keystone XL when in reality he voted with the Republicans to back it and even voted with them to unconstitutionally take Obama out of the decision-making process.

Same Old Story: Outsider To Insider Quickly

Patrick Murphy’s story is a familiar one: a political outsider was elected on promises of cleaning up Washington’s finances and working together in practical ways to find commonsense solutions. However, as soon as he took office, and particularly as soon as he took his seat on a powerful House committee and the money started flowing in, he began to look like any other politician, quietly doing the bidding of rich and powerful corporations behind the scenes at the expense of the people who elected him, while raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from PACs and party bosses.

Millions of Dollars from Outside Liberal PACs Elected A Wealthy Carpetbagger

The PAC contributions were nothing new, however, as Murphy owes his slim margin of victory in 2012 to the millions of dollars in outside super PAC money that funded his ad campaigns and lent boots on the ground and logistical support, even as he campaigned on getting the “gross” super PACs and their millions out of elections (and thanking the liberal House Majority PAC for its $2.4 million in assistance in a January 2013 testimonial video). Those outside millions, including more than half a million given to them by Murphy’s own wealthy father, elected an outside candidate, a carpetbagger who did not live in the district until the year he was elected.

...And It’s Starting Again

Given that Murphy has been targeted by the DCCC for priority support in 2014 and is already taking tens of thousands of dollars from them and from party bosses such as Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Steny Hoyer, and Democratic budget author Chris van Hollen, and that his seat is considered vulnerable, voters in the 18th District can expect another flood of outside liberal PAC money and additional appearances by top Democrats such as Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, who stumped and raised money for him last time.

Token Bipartisanism

The millions of dollars from liberal PACs and party bosses speaks for itself, but Murphy’s campaign promise of bipartisanship also begins to look like typical candidate lip service given that it does not extend to the big ticket items that must be addressed to rescue the nation’s finances and pay down the debt. His colleagues across the aisle have noted that his bipartisan votes have been only “soft votes,” not “bellwether votes.”

Typical Liberal Tax-And-Spender

Murphy said on the campaign trail that he would have voted for President Obama’s 2009 stimulus, and that posture has extended to his votes and calls for all of the typical kinds of tax-and-spend liberal big ticket items such as tax hikes to Clinton-era levels, an endlessly-rising debt ceiling, a trillion dollar farm bill, billions for food stamps, disregarding sequester spending limits, and ever-increasing Medicare benefits and votes against reforming it. He has also embraced other heavy handed liberal standards such as co-sponsoring a gun control bill with over 100 other Democrats. He also voted to let the government keep collecting the phone records of every American even when they’re not under suspicion or investigation.

Team Obama: Obamacare

Additionally Murphy has sung the praises of Obamacare for its alleged savings and efficiencies and has defended it since before taking office, making only minor critiques while endorsing it overall. On multiple occasions he waived the opportunity to reach across the aisle to repeal or defund it, even as the rollout went off the rails and even as the president’s lie about letting covered Americans keep their preferred plans under Obamacare was revealed, even when bipartisan compromise on the matter could have ended the harmful government shutdown. As a fan of food stamps and other chronic forms of government handouts and entitlements, his vote to allow Obama’s plan to hand out Obamacare subsidies to plan applicants claiming low-income status without verifying their income can be seen as consistent.

Team Obama: Death by EPA and the War on Affordable Energy

Murphy has also walked in lockstep with Obama on his extreme environmental agenda and has waved the flag of global warming. By voting against offshore drilling, he voted to block the country from finding and tapping its own vast oil resources to achieve energy independence. He sponsored legislation to rescind the price supports in the oil & gas industry that allow his constituents to pay reasonable prices at the pump, among the cheapest in the world, and has attempted to redirect that money to renewable energy technologies that can’t yet meet a fraction of the nation’s energy needs.

He has voted to use the blunt instrument of the EPA to attempt to regulate the coal industry and others out of business with a stream of punishing billion-dollar rules that kill jobs. He has rejected proposals to route EPA and other government agency regulations through Congress for commonsense impact analysis on jobs and the economy before dropping them on industry. And he has voted not to make use of the nation’s vast forest reserves to rob forest fires of extra fuel and provide benefit to local communities, and to block mining for minerals of strategic importance to the country.

Got Nothing Done in Washington

District 18 voters should compare what Candidate Murphy said he was going to do in Washington and what Congressman Murphy’s record to date actually shows to see if they got someone who has made any difference. He has sponsored only six bills to date and not one has made it to the House floor for a vote. Of the 160 bills he had co-sponsored by the middle of November, only 13 passed the House, and only four of those became law. Three of those were commemorative gestures and one has to do with people lying about combat medals. Nothing on the deficit and nothing on any of the other problems he pledged to solve in Washington. Should the 18th District return a junior Congressman in the minority party to Washington? Or would they be better served by sending a Republican who can actually get things passed in a Republican-controlled House?

Too Generous to Fail

Perhaps the most alarming thing about Murphy’s brief tenure in office is the way he has quietly sold out regular working Americans to the same financial industries whose irresponsible and predatory behavior sparked the global financial collapse of the late 2000s. He has raked in piles of money from financial sector in the first three quarters of 2013 and it shows in his systematic attempts to undermine the reforms that were put in place to prevent the industry from doing it to us again.

The collapse exposed systemic weaknesses and reckless standards in the financial industry that left banks and other financial institutions large and small unable to cope with the backlash from the housing crash and credit crisis and the toxic assets, evaporated equity, and unmet obligations it left behind. Regular Americans and small businesses were left to bail out the financial industry while themselves having to endure skyrocketing unemployment, plunging home values, decimated retirement funds, shuttered banks, frozen capital, and an economy on life support.

Politicians were on the hook to explain how they and the nation’s laws could have let this happen, and particularly why banks and other financial institutions that were able to reap such immense profits during the bubble were somehow too big to fail and had to be paid even more money out of Main Street’s pocketbook, including $140 billion in bonuses. In response, legislators put forward numerous reforms, primarily the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform And Consumer Protection Act. Many of the regulations stemming from the Act are still being finalized in federal regulatory agencies, yet they have been under attack by legislators, lobbyists, and paid Congressional allies of the financial industry since before the reform bill even passed.

Campaign Cash for Watering Down Dodd-Frank Reforms

Regrettably, Murphy has proven to be one of those paid attackers, and more acutely so from his perch on the powerful House Financial Services Committee. In addition to taking more money from the banking and investment industry than any other freshman Member of Congress, at least $77,000 in the first three quarters of 2013, and at least $135,000 from the financial sector as a whole, he has repeatedly voted to water down the Dodd-Frank reforms by exempting one group or industry or financial instrument after another from regulations designed to fix the specific things that allowed the financial collapse to happen in the first place. These industries will not rest until they have exempted themselves entirely from as many of the new regulations as possible. Murphy appears to be an eager partner in this regard as his sponsorships, co-sponsorships, votes, and committee votes demonstrate.

Helping Citibank Write Laws for Itself

Murphy voted, for example, both in committee and on the House floor, for a bill known to have been written by Citigroup to exempt broad swaths of swap derivatives from Dodd-Frank regulations, allowing bailed-out banking giants to hedge their risk with derivatives at the same levels as before the collapse. And since they are not any smaller than they were before, they will need to be bailed out by regular taxpayers once again if the same practices leave them exposed to some future economic shock equivalent to the credit crisis and burst housing bubble. He also voted to exempt foreign branches of banks from swap regulation, allowing them to shift their riskier investments to less regulated countries, but with all the same risks to the parent company and the economy as if the branches were domestic.

Helping Securities Brokers Masquerade as Impartial Investment Advisers

Murphy has also co-sponsored, voted in committee and voted in the full House for a bill to hamstring proposed requirements emerging from Dodd-Frank that securities broker- dealers be regulated as fiduciaries-- that is, as people legally bound to give their clients financial advice based on the client’ best interests and ahead of their own or any others’. Currently brokers and dealers operate as salespeople. Their job is to push investment products that make them and their companies the most money possible, even if those products have high costs and poor performance relative to better performing products. So there is a conflict of interest in regard to giving impartial investment advice, yet most regular Americans of middle income are not financially savvy enough realize that people calling themselves “financial advisers” would give them advice pursuant to anything other than their best interests. It has been estimated that this conflict of interest costs retirement investors $1 billion per month.

Putting the Nation’s Retirement Savings at Risk

At stake in the broker-dealer fiduciary debate is the $10.5 trillion in IRA and 401(k) retirement funds that these securities brokers control, and from which they extract their fees. This is the nation’s retirement savings and it has a steady leak. The industry has issued ominous warnings that the requirements and expenses of maintaining fiduciary status (for example carrying fiduciary insurance) will cost so much that it will cause companies to exit the individual advice market, leaving Americans stranded with little access to personalized investment advice. Then again, they have a similar story for every other regulation. Always these stories make the claim that the industry is only acting in the best interest of their clients, which is ironic given the particular nature of the regulation they’re trying to avoid in this case.

No Fiduciary Requirement for Private Equity Funds Either

Murphy also co-sponsored legislation to exempt private equity fund advisers from this fiduciary standard for the same reasons and with possibly even greater risks given that their entire business model is based on leverage...

Allowing Same Overleveraging & Undercapitalization as in the Financial Collapse

Leverage is important because it was not only one of the key culprits in the financial collapse, and one of the key targets of reform afterwards, but is another of the areas of reform and regulation Murphy is taking money from the financial industry to hamstring and undermine. Prior to and during the financial collapse, banks and other financial institutions were so highly leveraged and so undercapitalized that they were unable to absorb the shock of the credit crisis when the chickens of the housing bubble came home to roost. Many of the bad subprime mortgages lenders made irresponsibly to people who could never pay them back, many of the collateralized debt obligations built on those toxic assets and on good mortgages gone underwater, and many of the opaque, under collateralized credit default swap derivatives insuring them went south, leaving overleveraged, undercapitalized banks unable to cover the defaults, and unable to lend to anyone else in the economy who depended on them for capital. When credit froze in this manner and money couldn’t move, the country and world entered financial crisis.

The Dodd-Frank reforms and other global voluntary standards such as the Basel Accords targeted this problem of leverage thresholds, capital adequacy, and market liquidity risk, creating safer thresholds for financial institutions, more ability to withstand financial shock, and better monitoring capability so that collectively these institutions and industries would present less risk to clients and investors and less risk of systemwide collapse as they had done before.

Murphy has co-sponsored multiple bills to exempt industries from these new regulations and thresholds designed to protect ordinary individuals, the institutions themselves, and the entire economy. He co-sponsored a bill that would let more and larger financial institution holding companies carry higher levels of debt and maintain less capital than Dodd-Frank and other reforms had set. He co-sponsored two bills that would bog down federal regulators’ attempts to implement Basel III capital requirements and rules concerning liquidity, risk management, governance, transparency, and disclosure.

Allowing Riskier Mortgages By Degrees

Other tweaks to Dodd-Frank are smaller but the issue is always the same. Financial industries do not want to be regulated because it interferes with their ability to reap maximum profit. Murphy co-sponsored a bill to “not count” escrowed home insurance payments when calculating points and fees on a mortgage for the purposes of disclosing points and fees to the customer and staying under the maximum 3% point- and-fee threshold to qualify as a “Qualified Mortgage” under the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Qualified Mortgage Rule.

This rule aligns with the Ability-to-Repay rule in the Dodd-Frank reforms. Its purpose is to avoid one of the major causes of both the housing bubble and its bursting, namely the reckless extension of mortgage credit to people who were in poor position to ever pay it back, often with predatory terms that came back to bite the borrower. The Qualified Mortgage rule prohibits high-risk products and features such as balloon payments and higher points and fees in exchange for a degree of protection against borrower lawsuits. By “not counting” escrowed home insurance payments when calculating points and fees, it is like the opposite of placing one’s thumb on the scale-- it misrepresents the true cost of the mortgage, meaning that mortgages with higher effective points and fees than intended can still qualify.

Allowing Cozy Relationships Between Big Public Companies And Their Auditors

Murphy also co-sponsored a bill to preemptively block the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board from ever issuing a rule that would require that audits for a particular public company be conducted by a specific auditing firm or that public companies must rotate auditing firms. The average relationship between an auditing firm and a top 100 US public company is 28 years. Some have lasted much longer, such as KPMG’s engagement as GE’s auditing firm.

Regulators are concerned that such lucrative long term relationships may compromise auditing firms’ willingness to issue anything other than a clean audit opinion, as major collapses and associated accounting scandals in the new century have suggested. For example, PricewaterhouseCoopers gave MF Global a clean audit opinion in 2011 five months before the company entered the eighth largest bankruptcy in US history after segregating hundreds of millions of dollars of its customers’ assets.

Major accounting firms have been similarly exposed as compromised and as complicit in other major financial scandals, such as the former Arthur Andersen in the 2001 Enron scandal, and other scandals involving Tyco International, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems, and WorldCom. These abuses prompted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 that Murphy voted to weaken in this case to ensure continued cover for major public corporations and major accounting firms like his former employer and current campaign benefactor, Deloitte, which contributed to his nearly $45,000 haul from the accounting firms and other financial industry corporations who lobbied on this bill.

This might be less of an issue except that the companies concerned are public. And when accounting trickery, rubber stamped by complicit auditors, gives a false impression of the health of a public company to boost share value, and then leads to share price collapse once exposed, it is the shareholders - the public - that gets hurt, such as when Enron’s stock dropped from $90 to nearly nothing over the course of its scandal. The Sarbanes-Oxley reforms were put in place for those and other reasons and Murphy voted to weaken them as he has voted to weaken other regulations that chafe large corporations but protect average Americans.

Payday Lender Payday

Murphy also took money from the payday lending industry and co-sponsored a bill to regulate online payday lenders separately and less rigorously than brick and mortar payday lenders. On the other side of the lobbying table were groups that advocate for consumers and underserved populations that are often the target of predatory payday lenders.

A Little Sugar From Big Sugar Goes A Long Way

Another industry that has given Murphy money is the sugar industry. The sugar industry’s role in the restorations efforts in the Everglades has been a complicating one. Sugar is farmed in the agricultural area south of Lake Okeechobee, where water used to flow south naturally. Since it can no longer do that, excess water from the lake must drain somewhere else when high volumes threaten the integrity of the dike around the lake, since failure would put area homeowners at risk (think New Orleans). So the water is released to the west and to the east via canals. The C-44 canal drains east into District 18 and empties into the south fork of the St. Lucie River, which then flows into its estuary, which flows into the Indian River Lagoon, which stretches 156 miles north along the coast.

Water in Lake Okeechobee and the surrounding area is polluted with septic tank seepage, fertilizer runoff, and pesticides. When this dirty water is released into the St. Lucie river, it not only brings its pollutants, but also its nitrogen-rich nutrients and low salinity. The combination kills everything in the river, the estuary, and beyond, either due to the salinity, the toxic algae blooms it fosters, or the poisons. Tens of thousands of acres of sea grass have been lost, oyster beds have been destroyed, massive fish kills have occurred, dolphins and manatees have died in large numbers, and the water has become so polluted with visible and invisible pollutants and bacteria that residents were warned to keep away from it.

Murphy has been working with local, state and federal officials to find funding to better manage the releases and clean up the pollution. But while environmentalists and activists continue to point the finger at Big Sugar for its role in this ongoing problem, not only to the east, but farther south into the Everglades where the industry adds pollutants of its own to the Everglades system, Murphy has been what one journalist described as “wishy washy” in taking the industry on.

When given the opportunity to get rid of the Depression-era price supports for the sugar industry, for example, something he campaigned on doing across all industries, he balked. He voted for the 2013 farm bill, which left the subsidies in place and which the CBO said would cost American consumers an extra $374 million over the next decade. All told, because the price support program artificially sets the price higher than the actual market price, the program costs Americans $3.5 billion per year. He also voted against an amendment to that same farm bill that would have specifically cut the sugar price supports. Murphy said of his support for sugar, "I don't want to single out one crop, especially one that is in my district.”

And when the DSCC forces this kind of garbage candidate on Democrats, this is what the Republicans can run against him

All Talk, No Action On Passing A Budget

From his first month in office in January 2013 through to the October government shutdown, Murphy issued repeated calls for solutions to the budget crisis and shutdown, pleading for bipartisan cooperation, even attaching the consequence of shutting off Congressional pay if Congress did not pass a budget. Yet when it came time to vote on budgets, he voted against every one that was proposed. He voted against two Republican budgets that would save trillions, bring entitlements under control, and cut and simplify taxes. And he voted against three Democratic budgets that would invest in infrastructure, replace the harmful sequester with smarter cuts, reduce the deficit, grow jobs, and protect society’s most vulnerable. Additionally when Murphy’s ostensible partners across the aisle proposed a bipartisan and bicameral fiscal working group to negotiate an end to the shutdown, he voted against it.

Bad for Business (from the right)

Murphy campaigned as a pro-business moderate, and a businessman himself, who would work across the aisle to create jobs to get the economy moving. But in his third month in office, he voted to raise the minimum wage almost three dollars, which any business owner would say would cost jobs. When given the opportunity to freeze the National Labor Relations Board until it could fill enough seats to form a quorum, and to overturn decisions it has made without a quorum, he stayed firmly on his side of the aisle and voted with every Democrat not to. He also campaigned as someone who would attack the deficit by finding and eliminating duplicative and wasteful programs. Yet when a bill came up to streamline Workforce Investment efforts by eliminating and consolidating 35 programs, including 26 that the GAO had found to be ineffective or duplicative, he again stood with Democrats to vote against it.

Bad For Workers (from the left)

Murphy has twice targeted overtime pay, part of 75 year-old protections in the Fair Labor Standards act. First he wrote to the OMB to protest the Department of Labor’s attempt to apply the maximum weekly hours protections (overtime) in the FLSA to caregivers who provide home care to the elderly and disabled. Then he co-sponsored legislation to exempt from FLSA overtime protections for two years any insurance adjuster who evaluates claims resulting from or relating to a major disaster.

Republicans have a special hatred for federal employees, many of whom belong to public sector unions that support Democrats, and have effectively declared war on them, targeting them with bill after bill to erode their job quality and job security. Despite having promised federal workers on the campaign trail that he would not demonize them in that way or freeze or cap their pay or benefits, Murphy joined Republicans in several of these bills in the first three quarters of 2013. He voted keep their pay frozen, to limit bonuses due during sequestration, allow citizens to record their phone calls with them, putting confidential information at risk, to allow them to be terminated immediately for misconduct instead of allowing them their right to due process, and to bar the hiring or continued federal employment of anyone who had a seriously delinquent tax lien.

Bad For Workers (from the right)

Murphy voted against the Working Families Flexibility Act, which would have given workers the option of paid time off in lieu of overtime pay for hours worked in excess of 40 per week.

Billions More For Wealthy Farmers, Billions Cut For The Poor And Hungry

Murphy voted for the nearly $1 trillion 2013 farm bill, which among many other provisions would pour billions into subsidized insurance programs and other giveaways to wealthy farmers and milk processors (and also voted specifically to retain those insurance programs), while cutting $20.5 million from funding for food stamps for people who can’t otherwise get enough to eat. It also replaced a dairy safety net with an insurance program that gives milk processors cheap, subsidized milk at the expense of dairies with no drop in prices on store shelves.

Preserving His Congressional Perks

Murphy also voted to hold on to his own perks. By hanging his party out to dry by voting with only 27 other Democrats against the House Democratic alternative budget for FY2014, Murphy also voted to retain the many special perks that members of Congress are afforded, including the House gym and spa, the House barber shop, the House salon, the House dining room, and authorization to use taxpayer dollars to buy first class air travel and to lease corporate jets. He also voted to retain a special perk for Congress and its staff that no other American will get. Irrespective of income levels, the federal government will subsidize the cost of Obamacare health insurance for members of Congress and their staff. In a vote in which could either hold on to this subsidy and to Obamacare or end the government shutdown, he chose Obamacare and his Obamacare subsidy.

Broken Promises: Keystone, Medicare, DREAM, Abortion, Overtime, Workers

Murphy said on the campaign trail that he did not support the Keystone XL pipeline but then voted to bypass the president and approve it.

Murphy said on the campaign trail that he would leave Medicare untouched, but once elected, he said it was on the table to negotiate in exchange for tax concessions from Republicans.

Murphy said on the campaign trail that he supported a path to citizenship DREAMers, but voted instead to start deporting them again.

Murphy said on the campaign trail numerous times that he firmly supported a woman’s right to choose but then voted to block funding for abortions for detained immigrant women.

Murphy said on the campaign trail that he would work to protect overtime pay but instead went out of his way to try to exempt home care workers from FLSA overtime/maximum hours protections and also to exempt insurance adjusters working on disaster areas for two years after the disaster.

Murphy said on the campaign trail that he would not demonize federal workers or try to manage them by capping or freezing their wages and benefits. But then he voted to freeze and cap their wages, erode their rights to due process, and target ones that were having financial problems.

Consultant Jailed For 2012 Election Fraud Worked For Murphy’s 2012 Campaign

Murphy’s 2012 campaign hired consultant Jeffrey Garcia, who pled guilty, was convicted, and was jailed for election fraud involving submitting phony and illegal absentee ballot requests for another campaign in 2012. He is also under investigation for possibly having funded a fake Tea Party candidate in 2010 to siphon conservative voters away from his client’s opponent.

Working To Keep Carcinogens Unregulated

Murphy co-sponsored an amendment to exempt premium cigars from FDA regulation. Cigars are as harmful as any other form of tobacco. The lobbying picture for this bill was the tobacco industry on one side and doctors and major public health and cancer organizations on the other.

Don't vote for Murphy and don't vote for Rubio-- just say no