The Incredible Santelli-- And Why Republicans Think American Working Families Are "Losers"

Wall Street is mad as hell and they refuse to be abused by what the Republicans refer to as "the losers." In their parlance "the losers" are not the failed banksters and insurance companies and CEOs but their victims, ordinary working families. Last night John Stewart took a look at how Santelli's network, CNBC, mislead its viewers so badly than anyone who would have taken them seriously and followed their advice would absolutely be in need of a bailout. It's an eight-and-half minute study on how the business press acted as cheerleaders while the financial system melted down. It is completely worth watching.

And it dovetails nicely with a disturbing report in this morning's NY Times:

More than a dozen Wall Street trading firms systematically cheated their customers of millions of dollars by improperly slicing bits of profit from countless trades, federal regulators said on Wednesday.

In China they would have been sentenced to death for this kind of fraud-- and then pardoned-- but here they got a $69 million fine-- without even having to admit guilt! This could never have happened had not Bush, the Republicans and the Blue Dog type Democrats they are allied with not systematically wrecked the regulatory system meant to protect society from greed-obsessed amoral predators. (I hope you read our report on the nexus between Wall Street and Washington earlier today.) Anyway, John Stewart... take it away:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

*****UPDATE: BARNEY WANTS JUSTICE-- BANKSTERS SHOULD GO TO PRISON

They stole far more than millions of dollars. They robbed the whole country blind-- enabled by the Bush Family, the Republican Party and crooked Blue Dogs. Barney Frank called for legal authorities to start looking into bringing criminal indictments against banksters who helped cause the current crisis. "Rules don't work if people have no fear of them."

To Republicans Still In Office We're All Losers

Rep. Mike Castle could lose his seat over mortgage crisis

I know that there aren't very many people who watch CNN, Fox and C-Span, so even though all 3 cable networks carried Rush Limbaugh's keynote speech at CPAC Saturday (commercial free, as though he were something other than a Hate Talk Radio clown), unfortunately it wasn't as widely viewed as it would need to be for it to drive another nail into the Republican Party's coffin. On the other hand something that just may drive a spike into the corpse's heart is the vote this week that the House will take on H.R. 1106, the mortgage relief bill, that pits the ever-popular banksters and their lobbyists against folks who are in danger of losing their homes, primarily due to institutionalized lender malfeasance.

This weekend Kagro X took a data projection of home foreclosures created by the Center for Responsible Lending that broke down estimated foreclosures by congressional district and examined who represents each district. Almost all the most heavily foreclosed upon districts are represented by a Republican congressman. And almost all of those congressmen are opposed to H.R. 1106, agreeing, in essence, with Koch shill Rick Santelli that the families who are being forced out of their homes are "losers" and don't deserve any help. I'm sure there are some solidly red districts where this kind of selfish posturing makes complete sense-- but not all of them.

The congressional district with the most foreclosures, OK-01 (Tulsa) is solidly red and happy enough with its uber-reactionary congressman, John Sullivan. Obama only won 36% of the district's vote in November (while Sullivan was re-elected with a hearty 66%). If the bill passes and court-modified terms of loans go into effect, it is estimated that 5,595 of Sullivan's constituents' homes will be saved. My guess is that Sullivan wouldn't change his vote even if all 56,651 homes that are projected to be foreclosed on in the next 4 years could be saved. Republicans bail out banksters and corporate campaign contributors, not their constituents and not average working families. His constituents don't care. Others just may.

Mike Castle (R-DE) wanted to vote for the Stimulus Bill but party discipline prevented him from doing so. I am fairly certain he'd like to vote for H.R. 1106 too and that he will unless Boehner and Cantor force him not to. For Castle it could be political suicide. He's very popular in Delaware but it's a Democratic state (PVI is D+7) and Obama won a 62% landslide over McCain just 4 months ago. The state (which is also his district) will have 12,457 foreclosures in 2009 (and 41,473 over the next 4 years). The legislation would save over 4,000 families from foreclosure this year. What complicates this further for Castle is that he is mulling over a Senate run.

Other Republican incumbents who could be vulnerable if they vote against their constituents and for the banksters are Dan Lungren (CA-03), an extremist who was nearly defeated in November in an increasingly purple district (Obama tied McCain there); freshman Tom Rooney (FL-16) who will be facing a real Democrat in 2010, Dave Lutrin, and where over 10,000 families are facing eviction in 2009 and over 34,000 over the next 4 years; Mike Rogers (MI-08); Henry Brown (SC-01); Buck McKeon (CA-25): David Dreier (CA-26); Ken Calvert (CA-44); Mary Bono-Mack (CA-45); Brian Bilbray (CA-50); Bill Young (FL-10); Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18), who I think will be too scared to vote "no," in a district with a projection of over 22,000 foreclosures in the next 4 years-- and where Obama beat McCain; Tom Latham (IA-04); Ahn Cao (LA-02), a district where Obama took 74% of the vote and where another 2,000 families are looking at eviction this year; Vernon Ehlers (MI-03); Fred Upton (MI-06); Thaddeus McCotter (MI-11); Erik Paulsen (MN-03); Michele Bachmann (MN-06); Lee Terry (NE-02); Frank LoBiondo (NJ-02); Leonard Lance (NJ-07); Dean Heller (NV-02); Pat Tiberi (OH-12); Steve LaTourette (OH-14); Jim Gerlach (PA-06); Charlie Dent (PA-15); Mike McCaul (TX-10); Randy Forbes (VA-04); Frank Wolf (VA-10); Dave Reichert (WA-08); and Paul Ryan (WI-01). While you watch this new film clip on why real people-- not "losers"-- get foreclosed on, try thinking about how much better Congress would be without that list of actual losers above.



Jane at FDL has done some digging to figure who was behind the hold up in the bill last week-- and why. And the culprit wasn't one of the ideologically reactionary Democrats opposing the bill in the procedural votes, marginalized kooks like John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA), Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN), Baron Hill (Blue Dog-IN), Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS), Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL), Brad Ellsworth (Blue Dog-IN), Gabby Giffords (Blue Dog-AZ), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Frank Kratovil (Blue Dog-MD), Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), Walt Minnick (ID), or Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), who love crossing the aisle every chance they get. It was the very corrupt shill for bankster interests, Ellen Tauscher (D-CA). Jane wants to know "why is Ellen Tauscher, head of the New Democrat Coalition, working so hard on behalf of bank and mortgage industry lobbyists to stop it from happening" even though "President Obama says that allowing bankruptcy judges to write down mortgages to reflect fair market housing values is an important part of his plan to arrest the downward spiral of the mortgage crisis." This morning Politico got into the back story behind Tauscher's perfidy. Bragging that she was able to force Pelosi to postpone the vote and rework the bill to make it less family friendly and more friendly to the bankster interests served by Republicans and by Democrats-- like Tauscher and the Blue Dogs-- who vote with Republicans.

“It shows we have bench strength, and it shows we can flex,” said California Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher, who chairs the New Democrat Coalition and played a central role in negotiations over the bankruptcy bill.

...Tauscher’s New Democrat Coalition teamed with their natural allies in the Blue Dog Coalition to impose 10 significant changes, including requirements that bankruptcy judges use federal guidelines to determine the fair market value of a home and that modified loans must be “unaffordable and not just underwater” to prevent wealthy homeowners from taking advantage of the process, according to a widely distributed e-mail from Adam Pase, executive director of the New Democrat Coalition.

This, of course, angered some liberals. “The New Dems’ position is the banks’ position,” a senior Democratic aide involved in the bankruptcy negotiations complained on Friday. “New Democrats are shills for the banks.”

Are You Feelin' Sorry For The Poor Banksters Yet?

The first post I saw when I got back from San Miguel today was one John Amato did over at Crooks and Liars about what a doofus Rick Santelli is. He sounds angry that Santelli and the shiftless Wall Street crowd is trying to shift blame for the Depression away from their own greed, avarice and colossal self-entitlement and onto the backs on their victims: the rest of us. John's got 3 serious videos up to back up his point. Watch 'em (at the link above) but I want to show you another one that was sent to me by my friend Elliott. By way of set-up, keep in mind that uncountable billions of taxpayer money have gone into the pockets of these crooks who have not used it to unfreeze the credit markets, the supposed reason we held our collective noses and let Congress give it to them.

I'm guessin' John and Elliott would both agree with me that most Americans-- not counting deranged neo-Nazis, obviously-- with an annual income under 7 figures are sick and tired of the crooked Wall Street/bankster crowd sucking the system dry and then crying about how they're suffering. When Wall Street scum are headed towards their version of the gutter and when Bush Regimistas can't find respectable work, it's the natural order's way of beginning the process of righting itself... a little. The corporate media lapdogs for this crew, though, would prefer to paint them as victims themselves, if not martyrs. If a few hundred Wall Street banksters were rounded up, quickly tried and then garroted... well, I might see a reason or two for some misgivings. But when banksters "everywhere fear layoffs [and]... even those who keep their jobs may face a far different future than they had imagined-- one without the big payouts that have long made Wall Street a beacon for the ambitious and the acquisitive," no tears come to my eyes.

Those finance industry workers still standing after the brutal banking collapses of the past year had to contend with a major slash in bonus pay-- with many losing as much as one-third of their total compensation. Then the Obama administration imposed a pay cap of $500,000 on certain senior executives whose companies received substantial bailout money.

Now, analysts anticipate pay will sink even further, and some question whether the shift could permanently downsize the high-flying culture of Wall Street.

Not garroted but being forced to live only 100 times better than the average Americans instead of 500 times better. Let me rend my clothes. Recent MBAs will see their compensation sliced from $150,000/year to a mere $105,000. Imagine having to live that way! And "Vice presidents, who in flush years have made $300,000 to $500,000, saw a drop of $90,000 to $150,000... Morale is terrible right now... A number of firms have seen a jump in the employee hours spent at the company gym, as people try to cope with declining opportunity and rising stress" Is there no justice!

Have you met anyone who thinks shoveling more billions of dollars to these dead-asses is actually a good idea? And now we hear that aside from taking the money meant to unfreeze the credit markets and dividing it up among themselves as "performance bonuses" and golden parachutes, they're also using the money to hire lobbyists to further corrupt the political system, to get lawmakers' minds off nationalizing banks on life-support, and to further disadvantage the very taxpayers whose money they are being given. When is enough enough? Here's when:



KTLK's most outspoken and riveting host, Johnny Wendell, is no fan of Rick Santelli either and I have a feeling from some e-mails he sent me today that he thinks the justice rendered in the clip above doesn't go even nearly as far as we need to. He asked me to read a story date-lined Dublin about 120,000 Irish protestors who seem to understand the root causes of the recession-- and what to do about it-- far, far better than Rick Santelli ever will.

The demonstration came a day after the global economic crisis led to another political casualty elsewhere in Europe, with Latvia's prime minister quitting as his country grapples with deepening recession.

Organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) and featuring teachers, police, civil servants and others, the Irish protest was the "first step in a rolling campaign of action," ICTU general secretary David Begg said.

Police put the number of protesters at up to 120,000.

Marchers are particularly opposed to a pension levy on some 350,000 public servants which is designed to save about 1.4 billion euros (1.8 billion dollars) this year.

According to IMPACT, Ireland's biggest public sector trade union, the levy will cost low to middle-income earners between 1,500 euros and 2,800 euros a year.

The union's general secretary Peter McLoone has said his members were angered by the way in which public servants were singled out by the levy for "a harsh and inequitable penalty."