Fixing The Interest Rate Mess-- Bernie + AOC vs Biden + GOP

"Today’s loan sharks wear expensive suits and work on Wall Street, where they make hundreds of millions of dollars in total compensation by charging sky-high fees and usurious interest rates."
-Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez

This morning must have been horrible for Status Quo Joe. He had to bite his tongue as Bernie and AOC went on the offensive with their new consumer-protection proposal, the Loan Shark Prevention Act, that targets the people and industries that have underwritten Biden's entire slimy career as a devoted servant to the banksters. The AOC/Bernie bill would cap interest rates on all consumer loans at 15%, effectively eliminating the payday loan industry and save Americans significant money on their credit card debts. Biden is generally considered the credit card industry's #1 political ally and he's was serving their interests before AOC was born!

The usury cap has been introduced by Bernie for over a decade but Republicans, working with slimy corrupt Democrats like Biden, have managed to kill it each time. Remember, banks borrow from the Fed at a 2.5% rate and their credit cards charge as much as 23%, sometimes more when they are branded with department stores and airlines. Payday charge annual rates as high as 667%, so this would be curtains for them. Politicians like Biden and the GOP in general will squeal like stuck pigs that the effect of the proposal would be to reduce access to credit for low-income families, since they have to turn to the modern day loan sharks because of poor credit.

The hope is that revived postal banking (which ended in 1967)-- being pushed by Elizabeth Warren, Bernie and even a confused Wall Street ally like Kirsten Gillibrand-- will thrive in the space occupied by payday lenders.

Wednesday, Norman Solomon wrote what many low-info Democrats don't want to hear: Joe Biden Might as Well Be a Republican. Why? "Recent criticism of Joe Biden," he wrote, "for praising Dick Cheney as 'a decent man' and Mike Pence as 'a decent guy' merely scratches the surface of what’s wrong with the current frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. His compulsion to vouch for the decency of Republican leaders-- while calling Donald Trump an 'aberration'-- is consistent with Biden’s political record. It sheds light on why he’s probably the worst Democrat running for president."

After several decades of cutting corporate-friendly deals with GOP legislators-- often betraying the interests of core Democratic constituencies in the process-- Biden has a big psychological and political stake in denying that the entire GOP agenda is repugnant.

At the outset of his Senate career, Biden lost no time appealing to racism and running interference for huge corporate interests. He went on to play a historic role in helping to move the Supreme Court rightward and serving such predatory businesses as credit card companies, big banks and hedge funds.

Biden’s role as vice president included a near-miss at cutting a deal with Republican leaders on Capitol Hill to slash Medicare and Social Security. While his record on labor and trade has been mediocre, Biden has enjoyed tight mutual alliances with moneyed elites.

The nickname that corporate media have bestowed on him, “Lunch Bucket Joe,” is wide of the mark. A bull’s-eye is “Wall Street Joe.”

With avuncular style, Biden has reflexively used pleasant rhetoric to grease the shaft given to millions of vulnerable people, suffering the consequences of his conciliatory approach to right-wing forces. Campaigning in Iowa a few days ago, Biden declared that “the other side is not my enemy, it’s my opposition.” But his notable kinship with Republican politicians has made him more of an enabler than an opponent. Results have often been disastrous.

“In more than four decades of public service, Biden has enthusiastically championed policies favored by financial elites, forging alliances with Wall Street and the political right to notch legislative victories that ran counter to the populist ideas that now animate his party,” HuffPost senior reporter Zach Carter recounts. Biden often teamed up with Senate Republicans to pass bills at the top of corporate wish lists and to block measures for economic fairness.

...Opposing measures for racial equity and economic justice, Biden’s operational bonds with GOP leaders continued. Carter reports that “on domestic policy-- from school integration to tax policy-- he was functionally allied with the Reagan administration. He voted for a landmark Reagan tax bill that slashed the top income tax rate from 70 percent to 50 percent and exempted many wealthy families from the estate tax on unearned inheritances, a measure that cost the federal government an estimated $83 billion in annual revenue. He then called for a spending freeze on Social Security in order to reduce the deficits that tax law helped to create.”

Biden came through for corporate power again in November 1993 when he joined with 26 other Democrats and 34 Republicans to win Senate passage of NAFTA, the trade agreement strongly opposed by labor unions and environmental groups. In mid-1996, when Congress approved President Clinton’s “welfare reform” bill, Biden helped to vote the draconian measure into law. It predictably had devastating effects on women and children.

Throughout the 1990s-- from tax-rate changes that enriched the already-rich to deregulating banks with repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to loosening government curbs on credit default swaps-- Biden stood with the Senate’s Republicans and the most corporate-aligned Democrats. Carter sums up: “Biden was a steadfast supporter of an economic agenda that caused economic inequality to skyrocket during the Clinton years. . . . Biden voted for all of it.”

Biden led the successful push to pass the milestone 1994 crime bill, engaging in racist tropes on the Senate floor along the way. By then, he had become a powerful lawmaker on criminal-justice issues.

In 1991, midway through his eight years as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden ran the hearings for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas that excluded witnesses who were prepared to corroborate Anita Hill’s accusations of sexual harassment. “Much of what Democrats blame Republicans for was enabled, quite literally, by Biden: Justices whose confirmation to the Supreme Court he rubber-stamped worked to disembowel affirmative action, collective bargaining rights, reproductive rights, voting rights,” feminist author Rebecca Traister writes.

Early in the new century, Biden wielded another weighty gavel, with momentous results, as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 2002, congressional Democrats were closely divided on whether to greenlight the invasion of Iraq, while Republicans overwhelmingly backed President George W. Bush’s mendacious case for invading. Biden didn’t only vote for the Iraq invasion on the Senate floor in October 2002. Months earlier, he methodically excluded dissenting voices about the looming invasion at key hearings of the Foreign Relations Committee.

While his impact on foreign policy grew larger, Biden’s avid service to financial giants never flagged. One of his top priorities was a crusade for legislation to undermine bankruptcy protections. Biden was a mover and shaker behind the landmark 2005 bankruptcy bill. Before President Bush signed it into law, Biden was one of just 14 out of 45 Democratic senators to vote for the legislation.

The bankruptcy law was a monumental victory for credit-card firms — and a huge blow to consumers, including students saddled with debt. As happened so often during Biden’s 36 years in the Senate, he eagerly aligned himself with Republicans and a minority of Democrats to get the job done.

Now, running for president, Biden has no use for candor about his actual record. Instead, he keeps pretending that he has always been a champion of people he actually used his power to grievously harm.

In ideology and record on corporate power, the farthest from Biden among his competitors is Bernie Sanders. No wonder Biden has gone out of his way to distance himself from Sanders while voicing high regard for the wealthy. (I was a Sanders delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention and continue to actively support him.)

Biden’s ongoing zeal to defend and accommodate Republicans in Congress is undiminished, as though they should not be held accountable for President Trump even while they aid and abet him. Days ago on the campaign trail-- while referring to Trump-- Biden asserted: “This is not the Republican Party.” And he spoke warmly of “my Republican friends in the House and Senate.”

All in all, it’s preposterous yet fitting for Joe Biden to claim that Republicans like Dick Cheney and Mike Pence are “decent.” He’s not only defending them. He’s also defending himself.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Has Plenty Of Allies When She Wants To Help The Banksters Steal Our Money-- And They're Not All Republicans

Banksters knew owning the GOP wasn't enough-- so they bought themselves some big name Dems as back-up

Everyone in California is either questioning the sobriety of our voting public or the whole concept of legislating via propositions, which really amounts to which special interest will spend the most money lying the mostly slickly and effectively on barrages of TV and radio ads. Millions and millions of dollars have been spent-- not eMeg dollars but, still, a lot of dollars-- to mislead the voters on down ballot measures that claim to be the exact opposite of what they are. It gets to where you can't even listen to the radio at all without being barraged with this Madison Avenue hucksterism. Is it any wonder that less than 20% of eligible voters even bothered to show up at the polls in L.A. Tuesday-- and that 20% includes the vote-by-mail folks!

In fact, on the way home from the polls I heard an attack ad directed against Maxine Waters by some shady sounding Ad-Hoc attack group purporting to stick up for consumers against the big banks... and Maxine? Not likely. I searched around for the ad online and couldn't find it. But what do you know, one of the most corrupt tools in Congress-- the female Rahm Emanuel-- was actually reciting it yesterday! Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the postergirl of smarmy politics, a bag lady for every rotten special interest looking to inject their filthy money into the political system. In Florida she was the go-to Democrat for right-wing Cuban elements and the notorious sugar lobby and she brought her repulsive criminal instincts to Washington where... of course, Emanuel immediately recognized a kindred soul and started boosting her up the leadership ranks. Next year she will be the head-- instead of the de facto head-- of the DCCC.

U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of the House majority’s leadership team, said a Senate proposal to limit fees banks collect with each swipe of a debit card will enrich merchants at the expense of consumers.

“I’m a liberal Democrat and the easiest thing for me to do is to be in favor of reducing fees and going after banks, but I just don’t think that’s responsible,” Wasserman Schultz, 43, of Florida, said in an interview yesterday. “The consumer will get lost in the shuffle.”

Her stance sets up a clash between Wasserman Schultz, the chief deputy whip and vice chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, the Illinois Democrat, over fees set by Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. He’s pushing a measure that would empower the Federal Reserve to limit the “swipe” fees, or interchange, that merchants pay on debit transactions.

Banks and card companies oppose Durbin’s proposal, citing the cost of running their networks and the benefits consumers and merchants get from debit cards, including convenience and guaranteed payment. The fees average about 1 percent per transaction and generate more than $10 billion a year for U.S. lenders, according to the National Retail Federation.

A 64-33 Senate vote on May 13 to approve the Durbin measure was a setback for San Francisco-based Visa and Purchase, New York-based MasterCard Inc., which set interchange rates and pass the fees along to client banks that issue their cards, including Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Wasserman Schultz, who opposed previous attempts to regulate interchange on credit cards, and Representative Kenny Marchant, Republican of Texas, plan to send a letter opposing the amendment to a bipartisan panel of lawmakers assigned to merge the House and Senate versions of the financial overhaul bill. Durbin’s measure is included in the overhaul.

“I am going to spend time talking to the conferees and the committee leadership and hopefully we’re going to be able to either get it taken out or craft something that isn’t as harmful to consumers,” Wasserman Schultz said.

And she'll find some very receptive ears since, aside from the Republican handmaidens of the banking industry, some of the most notorious corporate shills in Washington are on that conference committee. Aside from members like Maxine Waters, John Conyers, Barney Frank, Carolyn Maloney, Luis Gutierrez, Mel Watt, Mary Jo Kilroy, and Henry Waxman-- folks who tend to put working families and consumers first-- the conferees include Wasserman Schultz kinds of crooked insiders, pockets bulging with corporate bribes, from Paul Kanjorski, and Collin Peterson to Edolphus Towns, Heath Shuler and Wasserman Schultz' other kindred-spirit-in-corruption, Gregory Meeks. Meeks relationship with the bad actors in this are particularly troublesome because Barney Frank has given him a role in negotiating the language with Durbin, even after he took more than $90,000 from his bankster friends in recent months. Meeks and Wasserman Schultz are truly partners in a reprehensible kind of crime: carrying water for their disreputable Wall Street financiers while posing as good Democrats on the side of ordinary families. Yes, plenty of their kind of "liberals," looking for a steady flow of cash from corporate special interests.

Over on the Senate side, my old high school classmate, Chuck Schumer-- always looking out for the Big Financial Interests (who have put $16,708,236 into his already overflowing coffers over the years)-- worked his ass off to keep Durbin's formulation out of the Senate bill. He tried talking Durbin out of it, tried talking Reid into killing it with a parliamentary ruse but it wound up passing 61-35, even a few Republicans too embarrassed to vote against it. Now, like Wasserman Schultz and her poisonous allies, he's trying to strip it out of the bill in the House-Senate conference... when he isn't too busy congratulating Blanche Lincoln for her victory over the unions he has always loathed while kissing up to:

Lincoln was embraced by her colleagues on the Senate floor as a conquering general returning from war. Sen. Bob Menendez (N.J.), in charge of the Senate Democrats' campaign effort, gave her a hug and a kiss and said, "Now we just have to raise money." Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) held up two fists and said of her primary campaign: "Fighting Wall Street with one hand, unions with the other."

This is an issue that pits Main Street businesses like restaurants and cabbies and hardware stores against the Big Banks. It will be interesting to see which senators and congressmen stand with Main Street and consumers and which-- like Wasserman Schultz and Schumer-- fight for the Big Banks. Of course Wasserman Schultz and Schumer aren't the only Democrats eager to join the Republicans in sucking up to the big money interests. There were plenty of busy little shills running around Capitol Hill this week doing just that.

Senate Democrats Tuesday weakened efforts to end a controversial Wall Street tax break, watering down a bid to raise taxes on managers of hedge funds, private-equity funds, venture capital firms and other business partnerships.

The Senate action retreated from a step taken last month by the House of Representatives, where lawmakers voted to get tough with Wall Street financiers, an apparent bow to election-year pressure from constituents outraged that some captains of finance were taxed at lower rates than their secretaries are.

Currently, managers of these investment funds are compensated with a share of the fund's profits, referred to as "carried interest." This compensation is taxed as a capital gain, and the capital gains tax is now 15 percent.

Senators scaled back the House plan to tax as "ordinary income" some 75 percent of the fund-income these managers receive. Instead, the Senate would trim the tax hit to 65 percent, and 55 percent for assets held longer than seven years.

In real-world terms, the Senate change means that fund managers most likely would fall into the top tax bracket for 65 percent of their compensation. The top bracket stands at 35 percent now, but absent a change by Congress would revert to 39.6 percent next year.

Is The Senate Letting Wall Street Get Off Too Lightly? What A Silly Question!

If you notice things like this, you might have detected that we didn't run anything yesterday about the passage of the Senate's version of H.R.4173, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. That's because we've been trying to grapple with what it seems to be accomplishing and what is isn't even going to try to accomplish, how it differs from the House version and... well, what it all means. Obviously with the financial industry having spent more money than any other sector on lobbying ($4,052,217,962 since 1998), not to mention another $1,395,315,634 in the thinly-veiled bribes we conveniently refer to as "campaign contributions," the financial sector isn't allowing the boys and girls they own to get too wild, even if they did nearly bankrupt the country with their unregulated greed and avarice.

OK, so first the vote late Thursday evening, passing the bill 59-39, hot on the heels of the cloture vote shutting down the Republican Party filibuster earlier in the day, which passed 60-40. Democrats Russ Feingold and Maria Cantwell joined the GOP filibuster and voted against the bill (more on that below). Republicans Scott Brown (MA- not the 41st vote after all), Susan Collins (ME) and Olympia Snowe (ME) voted with the Democrats in the interests of consumers and Main Street and against the Wall Street banksters, whose interests Republicans had been seeking so assiduously to defend. Even fully-owned subsidiaries of the financial sector like Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln and Joe Lieberman voted with the Democrats, making me suspicious that there must be something really wrong with the bill. (Petrified that recent polls show him losing to Roxanne Conlin in Iowa in November, Chuck Grassley, stuck with his reactionary party's filibuster but at the last second crossed the aisle and voted for the final bill. More on that below too.)

Yesterday Paul Krugman said it could have been better and it surely could have been a lot worse, and thank the selfish and corrupt banksters, particularly Lloyd Blankfein, for providing "scandals at just the right time."

What’s good? Resolution authority, which was sorely lacking last year; consumer protection; derivatives traded through clearinghouses; ratings reform, thanks to Al Franken; tighter capital standards for big players, although with too much discretion to regulators.

What’s missing? Hard leverage limits; size caps; not much in the way of restoring Glass-Steagall. If you think that too big to fail is the core problem, it’s disappointing; if you think that shadow banking is the core, as I do, not too bad.

Feingold's excuse sounded a little thin and hollow to me, in case you've noticed that Blue America isn't raising contributions for him this year: "The bill," he said, "does not eliminate the risk to our economy posed by ‘too big to fail’ financial firms, nor does it restore the proven safeguards established after the Great Depression, which separated Main Street banks from big Wall Street firms and are essential to preventing another economic meltdown. The recent financial crisis triggered the nation’s worst recession since the Great Depression. The bill should have included reforms to prevent another such crisis. Regrettably, it did not.”

Is he right? Sure. Is he on the same planet the rest of us are on? Judge for yourself. One of his Wisconsin constituents, Dave Sherbula who sometimes writes for us about Paul Ryan, seems fit to be tied-- but doesn't disagree with Feingold's stand:

I am disgusted.

The whores in the Senate (not one Republican voted to end usury and 21 Democrats went along with them) did nothing to cap interest rates on credit cards. Think about that for a minute. The US Government bailed out a bunch of criminal bankers and gave them practically no interest loans. The bankers devastated of our economy. Yet we let them charge usury-as rates on credit cards. People are struggling. Credit cards can keep you afloat for while. 

It get's better. The credit rating agencies score you on the percentage of your credit line you use.  So they are lowering peoples credit ratings who have an unblemished record of payments because the banksters cut your credit line. Because the banksters trashed our economy by their incompetence. But the US Government opens the Fed window to criminal bankers who are insolvent and give practically no interest loans.

I used to be against the death penalty. I changed my mind. I think it has a place in financial crimes that destroy so many lives. Large banks are weapons of mass destruction.

Politicians who enable them need to be held to the same standard as someone who supported a terrorist organization.

ThinkProgress has a good side-by-side comparison of the House and Senate version, which will now have to be reconciled-- and where the bankster lobbyists are now trying to work their magic. Is the bill likely to get better in reconcilation? No chance. Is it likely to get worse? I'd bet on it-- and I'd bet big. Here's their chart on the major differences:


Yesterday Roxanne Conley addressed Grassley's confused role in this whole process and how her campaign has forced him to veer away from his own reactionary instincts and from those of his deranged party. "We have turned up the heat on Senator Grassley.  Because of our efforts Senator Grassley reversed his five previous votes to block debate on Wall Street reform and supported the final measure. I am so proud of our grassroots supporters who mobilized online and across the state and reached out to Senator Grassley to get him to switch his position.  While this does not make amends for Senator Grassley's $700 billion bailout of Wall Street or the fact that he created the atmosphere that allowed for recklessness and greed to wreak havoc on nation's economic system, I am pleased with his vote today."

North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall has had similar types of successes in getting Richard Burr to vote against the Republican Party line from time to time. But not that time. Last night she pointed out that his "vote against financial reform is a slap in the face to anyone who has lost a job, watched their savings shrink or been harmed in this recession. He has once again shown that his allegiance lies with Wall Street banks, not the people of North Carolina. It's time to send Richard Burr home."

I'd like to leave the discussion today with some remarks from the Senate's most trustworthy member on anything to do with the banking business, Bernie Sanders (I-VT):

“As a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of Wall Street, this country was plunged into a horrendous recession. While this bill does not go as far as I would like, it is a strong beginning in the effort to reregulate huge financial institutions and to bring transparency to their often nefarious activities.
 
“I am especially proud that in this bill there is a major provision I authored which, for the first time, will lift the veil of secrecy at the Federal Reserve and give the American people an understanding of where trillions of their tax dollars went in the Wall Street bailout.

“I am disappointed that we could not garner the necessary votes to lower interest rates on credit cards or to begin the process of breaking up the largest financial institutions in this country which are the cause of so many of our problems. I intend to continue that effort until we succeed.”

Thad Cochran Can Expect A Fat Bonus From The Banksters This Year As He Kills Chris Dodd's Bill To Stop Credit Card Companies Bilking Consumers

You wanna guess what side these two dour a-holes are on?

A friend of mine does policy work for Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) and right now they're working on something that doesn't sound very sex-- but that touches almost every single person in the country-- interchange rates. Those are the fees that Visa, Mastercard, etc charge merchants, large and small, for the privilege of being able to use their payment network. Needless to say, the merchants have no real choice but to pass those charges on to their customers. The U.S. has the highest interchange rates in the world currently costing U.S. consumers $48 billion a year. This isn't chump change and the banksters are fighting-- with lobbying efforts and outright bribes to members of Congress-- regulation of these fees. In the UK, Canada, Australia and many other nations the government regulates the fees in order to protect consumers. The banksters, of course, are an oligopoly and because of their ability to control an entire political party and the conservative wing of another-- basically the Blue Dogs and DLC Dems-- dictate the terms.

My friend did some calculations to bring it right home to DWT readers. ActBlue has raised over $111 million online through credit card contributions. By my calculations with the kind of regulations being proposed by Senator Dodd lowering interchange fees, over $600,000 of that wouldn't have been paid in fees. That's hard-earned contributors money that could have gone to campaigns.

These interchange fees are just another way that the banksters and their credit card companies siphon from people. It's a hidden cost that people don't realize impacts them everyday. Meanwhile Dodd himself took to the Senate floor seeking unanimous consent to prevent the credit card companies from continuing to bilk consumers by jacking up interest rates at will. As you can see in the very compelling video below, the bankster-owned senior senator from the Confederate state of Mississippi rose to object-- many of the angry white citizens of his state being too stupid to understand how he just screwed them-- on behalf of the GOP (and the financial sector, which has donated $660,234 to his electoral campaigns).

When Dodd's bill originally passed, all but five of the very worst and most shameless Republicans were too embarrassed to vote against it and in the end it garnered 90 votes. Unfortunately, it included a grace period for the credit card companies to prepare for the changes that will take place February 1, 2010. But what we've been hearing is the giant sucking sound of credit card companies vacuuming up every dime they can get their criminal paws on before the law changes. Dodd pleaded with his colleagues to close the loophole in time for the holidays, when spending rises dramatically. "[T]he credit card industry as well has a responsibility to deal with their customers honorably. There is nothing honorable about what’s happened with these significant rate increases and fees. Most importantly, they don’t have a right to rip off American families, especially when the Congress has already gone on record opposing the very actions they’re engaging in. This will provide us a window of about 12 weeks between now and around the first of February, during this holiday season, to just put a stop to these outrageous rates and fees being charged to people. Ninety colleagues here voted for the bill this spring. Why wouldn’t you join us today? ... Unfortunately they’ve taken that window and used it as a way to jam in on consumers in this country. Particularly at a time when people are losing their jobs, their homes their health care, their retirement, and the holiday season is upon us." Cochran didn't bother saying way he was objecting, just that he was. And that ended that.

House Passes A Stinging Rebuke Of Crooked Credit Card Banksters-- Almost Half The Republicans Cross Aisle, Leave Boehner & Cantor Whistling Dixie

Yesterday the House overwhelmingly passed-- though not without some tough fights-- Carolyn Maloney's H.R. 3639, a much needed amendment to the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009. The idea was to establish an earlier effective date for the consumer protections inherent in the original bill. The credit card companies were none too keen to see that pass; let me come back to that in a moment. First, yesterday's vote. It started with some procedural votes in the late morning wherein the GOP and some of the Boehner Boys on the other side of the aisle wanted to make a point to the banksters about whose side they're on. Every single Republican voted against allowing the bill to come up for debate. They were joined by 6 Boehner Boys: Brian Baird (D-WA), Baron Hill (Blue Dog-IN), Frank Kratovil (Blue Dog-MD), Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID), Harry Mitchell (Blue Dog-AZ) and Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS).

Late in the afternoon, the Republicans tried to kill the bill with a motion to recommit. Two Boehner Boys (Charlie Menacon and Michael McMahon) and a Boehner Girl (credit card company shill Stephanie Herseth Sandlin) joined all but 6 Republicans. They failed and the final passage was 331-92, almost half the Republicans finally abandoning their corrupt, bankster-lovin' leadership to join every Democrat but Herseth Sandlin in passing a stinging rebuke to the bad-faith credit card companies who have been ripping off American consumers at an increased pace. Leading the charge against consumers were a dozen Republicans who have taken some of the biggest and most outrageously blatant thinly veiled bribes from the banking sector:

Spencer Bachus (R-AL- $4,028,424)
Eric Cantor (R-VA- $3,623,035)
John Boehner (R-OH- $3,333,409)
Pete Sessions (R-TX- $2,891,140)
Ed Royce (R-CA- $2,794,049)
Mike Castle (R-DE- $2,592,612)
Jeb Hensarling (R-TX- $2,392,300)
Geoff Davis (R-KY- $1,724,689)
Paul Ryan (R-WI- $1,703,845)
Jim Gerlach (R-PA- $1,673,752)
Judy Biggert (R-IL- $1,673,717)
Ron Paul (R-TX- $1,669,327)

OK, as promised above, here's what this is all about. When Congress passed legislation last April to put an end to abusive practices by credit card companies against consumers, the banksters begged for more time to implement the changes smoothly. Although progressives warned that the banksters had already proven themselves completely untrustworthy, Congress gave them a deadline of February 2010 before they would have to stop charging retroactive interest rates, excessive fees and penalties and all the kinds of skullduggery they have been using to commit legal highway robbery against hapless customers. Breaking their promises to Congress, many of these slimy banksters then started taking advantage of the implementation reprieve by significantly increasing rates on cardholders and systematically ripping off consumers.

Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, aware of the record of malfeasance of many of these bad-faith players, warned them when the bill originally passed that “if the banks, the credit card issuers, use the time between now and the effective date in a way that is abusive of customers, if they use the time not simply to get ready for the change which they say they need but if they use the interim period to raise rates on people retroactively and to do other things that are abusive, to me that will be a very strong argument for speeding up the date."

And they did. So yesterday he made good on his warning. The credit card companies, he railed on the House floor, "have retained the right unilaterally and retroactively to raise the interest rate on what you already owe them. It is the single unfairest economic transaction I can think of that doesn't involve a pistol. The fact is, they decide that they can make more money that way. And we are told they have to deal with risk management. What's the risk management on debt already incurred on the part of someone who has always made the payments? This isn't risk management, it is hostage taking."

Alan Grayson backed up the decision to end the grace period that the credit card companies used to further rip off consumers: "The credit card companies brought this on themselves. Instead of preparing to end all of their tricks, they used the time we gave them to accelerate their abusive practices.”

Another Blue America favorite, Michigan freshman Gary Peters-- also a member of the Financial Services Committee-- was equally outspoken about how untrustworthy the banksters have been in this matter.

“Credit Card companies were engaged in egregious practices, hiding fees and gouging families. Now, despite promising they wouldn’t, they’re gouging families again by trying to sneak rate hikes in before the law changes. Credit Card companies were given a grace period with the promise that if they violated their end of the deal, the grace period would be closed. Their deceit led to today’s action in the House.”

The provisions below are what paid-off shills like Eric Cantor, Mike Castle, Judy Biggert and Paul Ryan tried to prevent from taking immediate effect today:

• Prohibits arbitrary interest rate increases and universal default on existing balances;

• Prohibits issuers from charging over-limit fees unless the cardholder elects to allow the issuer to complete over-limit transactions, and also limits over-limit fees on electing cardholders;

• Requires payments in excess of the minimum to be applied first to the credit card balance with the highest rate of interest;

• Prohibits issuers from setting early morning deadlines for credit card payments;

• Prohibits interest charges on debt paid on time (double-cycle billing ban);

• Requires issuers extending credit to young consumers under the age of 21 to obtain an application that contains: the signature of a parent, guardian, or other individual 21 years or older who will take responsibility for the debt; or proof that the applicant has an independent means of repaying any credit extended;

• Requires penalty fees to be reasonable and proportional to the omission or violation;

• Requires that creditors periodically review all interest rate increases since January 2009 and reduce rates when a review indicates that a reduction is warranted.

Holding The Banksters Accountable-- Congress On The Way To Creating A Consumer Financial Protection Agency

Thursday a lot of us may have missed an historic vote in the House Financial Services Committee. I don't know if anyone is calling it "bipartisan" just because one Republican, Mike Castle, went along for the ride by Barney Frank's committee voted 39-29 to create a federal agency devoted to protecting consumers from predatory lending, abusive overdraft fees and unfair rate hikes. One of the strongest and clearest voices on the committee for consumer protection is Florida Congressman Alan Grayson, who sees this as one step in the right direction of establishing a more equitable balance between ordinary working families and powerful corporate entities. "The entire existing regulatory regime for the banks," he told us after the vote, "is concerned only with the wellbeing of the banks. It's about time that we did something to promote the wellbeing of their exploited, abused customers."

Of course, Grayson was hardly the only person pushing for these basic consumer protections. Obama had asked Congress to address these things and Barney Frank has been adamant. He seemed elated after the vote as well: "This is a much stronger bill than people predicted months ago and it will only get better going forward." He recommended we take a look at remarks that Elizabeth Warren and Travis Plunkett made after the vote. We all know who Warren is, of course (Matt Taibbi's candidate for president) but Travis Plunkett is with the Consumer Federation of America-- an organization that looks to protect consumers, sort of a good version of the violently anti-consumer U.S. Chamber of Commerce. First Warren: "I just want to say, when I first came to Washington with the idea of this agency, everyone told me: 'The banks always win. Quit now, because the banks always win.' They didn’t win today. Chairman Frank has done something that is historic here... I never thought I would see this day, so I am delighted." Plunkett was as enthused as Warren and as overjoyed as the Chamber was bummed. "We think it's very significant that the first major hurdle has been cleared for this legislation. We are on the brink of a monumental achievement for consumers."

The Chamber called it "a step backward." For them indentured servitude would be a step in the right direction. The Chamber lobbyists were able to hold all the Republicans but Castle in line and they peeled off two of the most reactionary Democrats on the panel, Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS) and Walt Minnick (Blue Dog-ID), two who can always be counted on to vote against the best interests of ordinary working families when those interests are in conflict with banksters. Even Republicans in serious electoral difficulties because of anti-family voting records-- like Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Lynn Jenkins (R-KS), Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), Judy Biggert (R-IL), Jim Gerlach (R-PA), and Scott Garrett (R-NJ)-- voted against their own constituents. Lobbyist money was just too tempting for them. Opposite of these sleazy characters are members of Congress who really want to take the opportunity to make the lives of ordinary citizens better through government action. Brad Miller (D-NC) is a good example:

“The Committee vote today is a rifle shot at abusive financial practices, not a shotgun blast that would hit community banks making an honest living from fair lending practices. It’s no surprise that the lenders with the worst practices are still fighting tooth and nail against this bill. The last thing they want is to have to make an honest living."

And not all the Blue Dogs on the committee joined Minnick and Childers in their lobbyist-inspired sprint across the aisle. Dennis Moore (D-KS) was more Democrat and less Blue Dog Thursday:

“Protecting consumers is a must in any new financial regulatory system, and the Consumer Financial Protection Agency will help make that happen. I commend Chairman Frank for his leadership on these issues, and I look forward to working with him and other Members as we move forward in the process to improve not only CFPA, but the rest of the financial regulatory reform package so we can strengthen protections for all consumers, investors and taxpayers."

Let's Hope The U.S. Economy Is Also Too Big To Fail-- Greedy, Selfish Banksters Are Surely Testing It

God only knows what evil lurks in the unconscious of Wall Street

Sometimes days-- even weeks-- go by without the economic and financial horror stories that have disrupted so many lives and plunged the U.S. into the worst economy since Bush's presidential antecedents-- Harding, Coolidge and Hoover-- ushered this country into the Great Depression. The media hasn't just failed to investigate why Bush chose to follow their model but has frequently just cut out coverage of the examples altogether. Today's NY Times, though, has two, Julie Cresell's front page story on how vulture capitalists and other financial predators profited from the Bush economic model and a very similar piece by David Carr in the Media and Advertising section, Of Layoffs, Bankruptcy and Bonuses. Yesterday on NPR I listened to a former financial sector worker telling the radio audience that he never believed warnings that people on Wall Street were inherently evil-- until he saw it himself. That fact that inherently evil-- at least if overarching greed and avarice are to be considered components of Evil-- people control the U.S. Senate, having purchased its members with over $2.2 billion in "contributions" since 1990 (not to mention another $3.7 billion in "lobbying" since 1998).

In a backdrop of conservative ideology run amuck-- income disparity between the top 1% and the "bottom" 90% is staggering and the banksters are off and running as if Bush were still in the White House, re-remics being their latest ploy to shear the unsuspecting sheep-- populists and progressives in the House want to look at their initial failure in reining in the banksters since Bush and his venal regime were supposedly flushed down history's toilet. (Yesterday Alan Greenspan, king of the Golden Age of private-- unregulated-- equity-- oozed up to the surface again, babbling on ABC's This Week about how things could have been worse.)

On Thursday the House will begin debating credit card rip-offs again. A friendly congressman on the House Financial Services Committee spoke with me off the record yesterday and told me that by giving the credit card companies a 6-month grace period as part of the last batch of legislation they passed, they gave them license to steal for half a year and that the companies were-- and are-- for the most part, playing a very bad faith game, doing everything Congress asked them not to do, from raising rates on customers with perfect credit to raising rates retroactively. I know if he could, this friendly congressman would have the CEOs all arrested Thursday and on trial soon after. If he were a judge...

Anyway, there's no congressional mandate for the kinds of legislation the friendly congressman would like to see passed. The Financial Sector has spread around far too many bribes for that. Last week former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, someone who as Attorney General of that state learned a little about how Wall Street operates before they were able to deep-six his political career, asked a crucial question the House should be looking into: Why don't any of the Obama administration's financial reforms help middle-class Americans?

Could it be because they're still following the advice of Wall Street itself-- not just Greenspan but equally inherently evil Wall Street characters like Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Rahm Emanuel-- and wasting all our resources bailing out banksters instead of throwing them in prison? Spitzer points out 2 of Obama's biggest mistakes in sticking with the Bush economic agenda:

First, the administration failed to go to the mat to give judges the power to reform mortgages in the bankruptcy context. The administration barely winced as the Senate caved to the banks on this critical issue, risking no political capital to protect one of the few reforms that could have totally transformed the mortgage crisis. As the foreclosure wave continues, and as adjustable-rate mortgages hit reset points that are going to cause havoc for millions of additional families, this failure of political leadership by the administration stands as one of the early warning signs that things were amiss.

The second act is the recent-- equally difficult to understand-- concession to the banks, allowing them not to be required to offer what are called "plain vanilla" mortgages and other products to consumers. These products are simpler, more understandable, less ridden with fees, and less prone to long-term risk than most of what banks try to sell consumers on a regular basis. These are the very products consumers need.

Trillions of dollars of taxpayer infusions-- direct cash, loan guarantees, capital purchases, policies to keep banks' cost of capital at virtually zero-- have kept the banks afloat. It is amazing that the administration didn't leverage these infusions to negotiate these two simple policies that would have made banking more sensible for the middle-class Americans whose tax dollars have bailed out the banks.

The administration's failure on these two policies is symptomatic of its larger failure of vision when it comes to banking reform. The administration has spent more time worried about the musical chairs of regulatory jurisdiction than it has asking fundamental questions about what banks should be doing, what we should expect in return for the vast sums we have invested in the banks, and how discomforting it is that the banks-- in an effort to forestall these very questions-- are already trying to assert that things have reverted to normal. It's worth recalling that the greatest impact of the New Deal was not the money spent on particular programs but, rather, the fundamental restructuring of the banking and securities sector that President Roosevelt imposed over the objections of business leaders.

But on Thursday the House Financial Services Committee isn't taking up anything quite so grand and definitive. Instead they'll start looking at a bill introduced by progressives Peter Welch (D-VT) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) that would limit fees credit card companies exact on transactions at retail stores-- "interchange fees." This looks like a battle between the Wall Street lobbyists and the Main Street lobbyists-- Bank of America vs 7-Eleven. Neither is especially looking out for the interests of consumers. Let's hope Welch and Lofgren and their congressional colleagues are. It's important work, although I think the country is getting kind of anxious waiting for them to deal with some of the really big issues that are continuing to drag down the economy-- like propping up the banks that are too big to fail.

Amid all the talk about systemic risk regulators, consumer protection and other fixes to our fractured financial system, there is a troubling silence on what may be the single most important reform: how to rid ourselves of banks that are so big and interconnected that their very existence threatens the world.

Too big to fail is too hard to kill, it seems.

During the credit bust, our leaders embraced the too-big-to-fail policy, reluctantly bailing out large institutions to save the system from collapse, they said. Yet even as the crisis has abated, these policy makers have shown little interest in cutting financial monsters down to size. This is especially disturbing given that some institutions have grown even larger as a result of the mess.

It is perverse, of course, to reward big banks’ mistakes with bailouts financed by beleaguered taxpayers. But the too-big-to-fail doctrine benefits the banks in other ways as well: the implication that an institution will not be allowed to fall gives it significant cost advantages over smaller, perhaps more responsible competitors.

Updating my report on my friend Peter's descent into Chase's version of Bankster Hell

by Ken

My friends Peter and Gail, you may recall, received a post card from Chase notifying them that the minimum payment on their credit card balances, which they locked in at low promotional rates as part of their way of getting their son through college, from 2 to 5 percent.

Yesterday WNBC-TV reporter Lynda Baquero also interviewed Peter, and her report includes this piece of information, bits of which may already be unfortunately known to you:

Turns out, he's not alone. According to Credit.com, 19% of credit card holders have seen their interest rates go up in the last couple of months. About 14% have had their credit limits lowered, and 12% have been told their minimum payments are rising.

John Ulzheimer, of Credit.com, says for one thing: credit card issuers are "hemorrhaging money" and feel the need to bring in more cash. But these changes are also in advance of the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights, which will restrict future policy changes by credit card issuers. That law won't take effect though, until February 2010

#

UPDATE: Howie Gets Pissed Off At Ken's Report On Our Friend Peter's Descent Into Chase's Version Of Bankster Hell-- And Suggests A Solution Society Should Consider

You know all those hundreds of billions of dollars of ours that Bush and then Obama decided to give the failed banksters-- who finance both political parties-- that they then went and used in every way, including bonuses for themselves, except how it was meant (loosening consumer and business credit)? I'm sure you do. And in that case, it wouldn't have surprised you to have read in today's Washington Post that they are also skirting the law by raising interest rates and fees 7 months before the new regulations they fought go into effect.

Chase, for instance, will raise the minimum payment required of some of its customers from 2 percent to 5 percent of the statement balance starting in August. Chase and Discover have increased the maximum fee charged for transferring a balance to the card to 5 percent of the amount, up from 3 and 4 percent, respectively. Bank of America last month raised the transaction fee for balance transfers and cash advances from 3 to 4 percent. Card issuers including Bank of America and Citi also continue to cut limits and hike up rates, which they have been doing with more frequency since January.

I just finished reading Dave Neiwert's incredible new book The Eliminationists, which talks about how so very American it has been to talk about-- and act upon-- eliminating American Indians, African-Americans, Jewish-Americans, gay and lesbian Americans, liberal-Americanss, communist-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans... How come it would sound so very, very un-American to talk about eliminating bankster-Americans?

The flurry of activity, which the banks say is necessary to shore up their revenue losses, has irked members of Congress, who passed a new credit card law, which was signed by President Obama in May. The law, among other things, would prevent card companies from raising rates on existing balances unless the borrower was at least 60 days late and would require the original rate to be restored if payments are received on time for six months. The law would also require banks to get customers' permission before allowing them to go over their limits, for which they would have to pay a fee.

Yesterday, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) once again requested that the Federal Reserve invoke its emergency powers to place a limit on interest rate hikes.

"This is what many of us feared about a law that didn't take effect right away," Schumer said. "It was never going to take this long for the credit card companies to get ready for the new reforms. Instead, issuers are using the delay in the effective date to wring more dollars out of their customers. It is against the spirit of the law, and it is just plain wrong."

Credit Card Companies Actually Believe They Have The Right To Rip Off Their Customers

If credit card companies can't rip off their least reliable customers, they'll rip off their most reliable customers. That's the message they're trying to get out now as Congress prepares to pass far too mild legislation reining in a few-- though certainly not all-- of the more egregious of the industry's predatory practices. The NY Times reported that with Congress moving in to protect "riskier borrowers," from whom the credit card companies were stealing billions of dollars annually, the companies will try to make up the lost revenue by pillaging their best customers.

[T]o make up for lost income, the card companies are going after those people with sterling credit.

Banks are expected to look at reviving annual fees, curtailing cash-back and other rewards programs and charging interest immediately on a purchase instead of allowing a grace period of weeks, according to bank officials and trade groups.

“It will be a different business,” said Edward L. Yingling, the chief executive of the American Bankers Association, which has been lobbying Congress for more lenient legislation on behalf of the nation’s biggest banks. “Those that manage their credit well will in some degree subsidize those that have credit problems.”

As they thin their ranks of risky cardholders to deal with an economic downturn, major banks including American Express, Citigroup, Bank of America and a long list of others have already begun to raise interest rates, and some have set their sights on consumers who pay their bills on time. The legislation scheduled for a Senate vote [today] does not cap interest rates, so banks can continue to lift them, albeit at a slower pace and with greater disclosure.

Personally, I've never paid a nickel in interest to any of these filthy satanic usurers. My blood boils when a crooked bankster, who probably belongs in prison, blithely tells the Times that people with sterling credit have gotten a free ride: “Despite all the terrible things that have been said, you’re making out like a bandit.” You want to talk "bandit?" Think of how much a better place the world would be if every stinking money-grubbing bankster was lined up against a wall, given a blind fold and a last cigarette.

Keep in mind that these threats are coming from a batch of slimy incompetent characters who ran their businesses into the ground and were bailed out with billions of taxpayer dollars. Now they want to turn around and steal from the very taxpayers who saved their worthless hides!

Banks used to give credit cards only to the best consumers and charge them a flat interest rate of about 20 percent and an annual fee. But with the relaxing of usury laws in some states, and the ready availability of credit scores in the late 1980s, banks began offering cards with a variety of different interest rates and fees, tying the pricing to the credit risk of the cardholder.

That helped push interest rates down for many consumers, but they soared for riskier cardholders, who became a significant source of revenue for the industry. The recent economic downturn challenged that formula, and banks started dumping the riskiest customers and lowering their credit limits in earnest as the recession accelerated. Now, consumers who pay their bills off every month are issuing a rising chorus of complaints about shortened grace periods, new hidden fees and higher interest rates.

The industry says that the proposals will force banks to issue fewer credit cards at greater cost to the current cardholders.

The banksters have used our bailout funds to lobby Congress and to bribe individual members. What they and their lobbyist are crying about is how-- in a society that has been engineered to make it nearly impossible to function without credit cards-- the Federal Reserve put a stop to the practice of arbitrary interest rate hikes based on tricking unwary customers, practices that make them over $12 billion a year in unjustifiable fees that amount to a combination of usury and outright theft.

Consumer advocates say they have little sympathy for credit card issuers, arguing that they have made billions in recent years with unfair and sometimes deceptive practices.
“The business model will change because the business model doesn’t work for the public,” said Gail Hillebrand, a senior lawyer at Consumers Union.

“In order to do business under the new rules, they’ll actually have to tell you how much it’s going to cost,” she said.

With many consumers mired in debt and angry at what they consider gouging by credit card companies, the issue of credit card reform has broad populist appeal. Members of Congress and the Obama administration have seized on the discontent to push reforms that the industry succeeded in tamping down when the economy was flying high.

Austan Goolsbee, an economic adviser to President Obama, said that while the credit card industry had the right to make a reasonable profit as long as its contracts were in plain language and rule-breakers were held accountable, its current practices were akin to “a series of carjackings.”

So who are the whores of the Senate who have worked the hardest for the bribes they have gotten from the banksters? The banksters know their bribes have always kept the following dozen crooks in their camp, regardless of how badly it hurts their constituents (from bad to worse):

Johnny Isakson (R-GA- $3,341,524)
Jon Kyl (R-AZ- $3,708,608)
Evan Bayh (D-IN- $3,987,896)
John Cornyn (R-TX- $4,314,592)
Richard Shelby (R-AL- $4,384,492)
Max Baucus (D-MT- $4,633,243)
Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX- $4,685,238)
Lamar Alexander (R-TN- $4,847,225)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY- $5,013,778)
Arlen Specter (D-PA- $5,753,310)
Joe Lieberman (I-CT- $9,981,924)
John McCain (R-AZ- $32,423,813)

UPDATE: Badly Watered Down Version Of Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act Passes

And it passed 90-5 with only 5 credit card industry shills voting "no," the two lame asses from Credit Card Rip-Off Central, Tim Johnson (D) and John Thune (R) plus three richly bribed Republicans, Lamar Alexander (TN), Robert Bennett (UT) and Jon Kyl (AZ). But you can tell who really had their hearts in protecting the banksters and screwing their constituents. Only Kyl and Thune voted against cloture. Always remember what Dick Durbin said as part of this debate-- the banksters own the Senate. They have plenty to be cheerful about today, although they will feign martyrdom.

Jeff Merkley, who worked hard to get something to pass, is more optimistic than I am about the bill and sounds like he's making the best out of a less than perfect situation. "Today’s vote in favor of credit card reform is a huge victory for American consumers. The CARD Act will end deceptive practices and hidden fees that are stripping wealth from Oregon families. I hope we’ll soon have a bill on the President’s desk to ensure that these reforms are in place and helping consumers. I have heard from families across Oregon who have been hit with fees and arbitrary rate increases even though they paid their bills on time and did everything right. It’s time to diffuse the ticking time bomb of credit card debt that resides in the pockets of every American.”

Elizabeth Warren Explains Why The Economy Is Screwed And How To Fix It

Elizabeth Warren is Congress' TARP Overseer; damn I wish she was in charge of the whole economic recovery program. Unlike Geithner and Summers she doesn't come off like some kind of a character straddling the Dark Side. She doesn't apologize for thinking that government's job is to assist citizens rather than enrich banksters and other campaign "donors."

Friday night she sat down with Bill Maher for ten minutes and put up with his pointless interruptions while she explained how the banksters and their bought-off politicians systematically went about gaming the economy for their own benefit. After FDR and the New Dealers of the 1930s succeeded in reigning in the greed and selfishness driven sociopaths, who are often celebrated as "captains of industry" by the media outlets they own, with rational regulation that created a reasonable balance to protect consumers and society at large from powerful corporate predators. That wasn't just about lifting us out of the Depression. It protected the country from the boundless greed of a class of people who think they are entitled to own the rest of us.

Warren explains that the unraveling of FDR's regulatory protections started step by step in the early 1980s when Reagan got to Washington and then accelerated under Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. The collapse of the savings and loan industry saw over 700 savings and loans fail at a cost of $160 billion, almost all of it a transfer of wealth from the taxpayers to the banksters (and their political puppets). Ideological Republican deregulatory mania-- primarily a pseudo-intellectual justification of a return to right-wing Law of the Jungle economics-- in the middle of Reagan's terms was only just beginning. Deregulation was fast-tracked.

Warren tried her best to avoid Maher's desire for a psychobabble session by sticking to history and economics. She pointed out the strong usury laws that the U.S. had in place until 1979 when the Burger Court "quietly" changed the interpretation of a law "and the whole game came unraveled from that point." She explains how the model for the credit card industry changed to a method to trick people and trap them in order to boost unconscionable profits. Over the last few weeks we watched as so many of our elected representatives took the side of the banksters against the rest of us. Last week when Bernie Sanders offered an amendment in the Senate to get usury under control only 32 Democrats plus one Republican voted in favor. Every Republican besides Chuck Grassley (IA) and a shocking number of corrupt, bribed Democrats-- led by Max Baucus (D-MT- $4,633,243), Evan Bayh (D-IN- $3,987,896), Arlen Specter (D-PA- $5,753,310), Tom Carper (D-DE- $2,160,628), Ben Nelson (D-NE- $2,667,406), Mary Landrieu (D-LA- $2,399,134), and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR- $1,671,292)-- voted for usury. Rank and file Republicans in the House-- as well as the corrupt Blue Dogs-- were too frightened to vote against credit card reform and a bill passed 357-70, with more than half the Republican members abandoning their corrupt leadership, leaving the worst of the bankster pawns in Congress-- Spencer Bachus (R-AL- $3,789,474), Eric Cantor (R-VA- $3,121,188), John Boehner (R-OH- $3,045,809), Pete Sessions (R-TX- $2,730,126), David Dreier (R-CA- $2,118,538), Jeb Hensarling (R-TX- $2,111,371), Paul Ryan (R-WI- $1,555,321), Randy Neugebauer (R-TX- $1,253,775) and Scott Garrett (R-NJ- $1,156,599)-- exposed for what they are.

Like so much that is wrong with our political system, the roots can be traced directly to the cash. Listen to this lecture by Change Congress co-founder Lawrence Lessig and you'll have an ever clearer understanding about what has to happen to revitalize American democracy:



Warren got to the political root problem while Maher was trying to lead her down some airy-fairy pop-psychology path. "Every game," she patiently explained to him, "has rules... The role of government is to write those rules. This is really about if we have a government that just recedes and says, in effect, 'the strong can take from everybody; they can write these [rules] any way they want.' ...We can have a totally broken market that makes a few people very rich and robs the rest of them." The alternative, she says, is for the government to write rules that keeps the playing field level. We need the same kinds of basic safety regulations for consumer credit products that we have for food, air, water, everything we consume.

Voting Against Truth In Lending Means You Favor Untruth In Lending? Loan Sharking? You Hate Jesus?

GOP is the party of usury-- Why do they hate Jesus?

Last night the Senate continued debating H.R. 627, Carolyn Maloney's Truth In Lending Act, which already overwhelmingly passed the House and is being stalled in the Senate by a gaggle of corrupt senators who have been bought-off by the heavy spending banksters. First up today was an idiotic amendment the banking industry wrote for David Diapers Vitter (R-LA) to present which only managed to draw 28 votes, all of them from corrupt banking industry shills like Mitch McConnell (R-KY- $5,013,778), Dick Shelby (R-AL- $4,384,492), John Cornyn (R-TX- $4,314,592), John McCain (R-AZ- $32,423,813), Richard Burr (R-NC- $2,447,672), Jon Kyl (R-AZ- $3,708,608), Chuck Grassley (R-IA- $2,223,630), Jim DeMint (R-SC- $2,073,034), and Johnny Isakson (R-GA- $3,341,524).

That was followed by an amendment offered by Bernie Sanders (I-VT)-- with the backing of co-sponsors Tom Harkin (D-IA), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Carl Levin (D-MI) and Jesus Christ-- opposing usury. The banksters have way too much power in the Senate, as Durbin pointed out last week when he actually said they "own this place," and the amendment failed 60-33, every single Republican (except Grassley) voting for usury and against God. They were joined by loathsome Jesus-hating/bankster loving Democrats like Max Baucus (D-MT- $4,633,243), Evan Bayh (D-IN- $3,987,896), Arlen Specter (D-PA- $5,753,310), Tom Carper (D-DE- $2,160,628), Kay Hagan (D-NC- $537,145), Mark Warner (D-VA- $2,431,066), Mary Landrieu (D-LA- $2,399,134), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR- $1,671,292), Ben Nelson (D-NE- $2,667,406), and Mark Pryor (D-AR- $1,321,948), who only got as far as the talking snake part of the Bible. Needless to say, the corrupt Democrats were joined by the corrupt independent, Joe Lieberman (CT- $9,981,924) who is completely owned by the banksters.

Carl Hulse put it another way in the NY Times, pointing out that consumers are increasingly pissed off how the credit card companies are gouging customers with impunity. Sanders bill sought to cap rates at 15% and even that modest reform failed.

Sanders said the card companies and banks were engaged in conduct that could get others hauled into court. He said one-third of all credit card holders are paying interest above 20 percent and as high as 41 percent.

“When banks are charging 30 percent interest rates, they are not making credit available,” said Mr. Sanders, who noted credit unions are limited to 15 percent. “They are engaged in loan-sharking.”

After the effort failed, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the Democratic chairman of the banking committee, proposed that the Federal Reserve be asked to provide an analysis of how Congress could rein in interest rates.

Senators said they hoped to finish up the credit card bill as early as Thursday, coinciding with a town hall meeting by President Obama on credit card issues in New Mexico.

UPDATE: Which Senators Got The Gold Stars Yesterday?

With banksters getting billions and billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts and using significant portions of that to bribe and lobby members of Congress to allow them to continue their policies of usury these were the 33 members of the Senate willing to vote against them. If your senator isn't on this list, you should demand to know why.

Mark Begich (D-AK)
Michael Bennet (D-CO)
Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
Roland Burris (D-IL)
Ben Cardin (D-MD)
Bob Casey (D-PA)
Kent Conrad (D-ND)
Chris Dodd (D-CT)
Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
Dick Durbin (D-IL)
Russ Feingold (D-WI)
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
Tom Harkin (D-IA)
Daniel Inouye (D-HI)
John Kerry (D-MA)
Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
Herb Kohl (D-WI)
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Carl Levin (D-MI)
Claire McCaskill (D-MO)
Bob Menendez (D-NJ)
Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
Jack Reed (D-RI)
Harry Reid (D-NV)
Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
Mark Udall (D-CO)
Tom Udall (D-NM)
Jim Webb (D-VA)
Ron Wyden (D-OR)

Coburn Adds Poison Pill To Law Meant To Protect Consumers From Credit Card Predators-- Will Reid Lose His License To Lead?

I know that dozens of senators-- all the Republicans and most of the reactionary Democrats from Evan Bayh's anti-Obama Bloc-- are trying to help out the credit card companies by killing the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights Act of 2009, which is similar to a bill passed in the House April 30. That one was Carolyn Maloney's attempt to amend the Truth in Lending Act to "establish fair and transparent practices relating to the extension of credit under an open end consumer credit plan." It passed the House 357-70, with 105 Republicans revolting against their corrupt leadership to cross the aisle and vote with all the Democrats but one a mangy Blue Dog, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, who is completely owned by South Dakota's powerful credit card industry.

Most Democrats got behind the Senate version of the bill, the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, advertised as a way of preventing credit card companies from taking advantage of cash-strapped consumers with abusive and predatory lending practices. Specifically, what the bill is supposed to accomplish is this:

Protect consumers from arbitrary interest rate, fee and finance charge increases and prohibit universal default on existing balances
 
• Require fairness in application and timing of card payments, such as applying payments to the balance with the highest interest rate first
 
• Protect the rights of financially responsible credit card users by prohibiting interest charges on debt paid on time
 
• Provide enhanced disclosure of card terms and conditions and strengthen oversight of credit card industry practices
 
• Ensure adequate safeguards for young people targeted by credit card companies
 
• Require tougher penalties for companies that violate the Truth in Lending Act
 
• Protect recipients of gift cards by requiring all gift cards have at least a five-year life span, and eliminate the practice of declining values and hidden fees for cards not used within a reasonable period of time
 
• Encourage transparency in credit card pricing by requiring a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study on the impact of interchange fees on consumers and merchants

So what happened today? One of the banking industry's most contemptible anti-consumer shills, Tom Coburn (R-OK), who has taken $900,422 in legalized bribes from the banksters in the Finance/Insurance/Real Estate sector, offered a poison pill amendment that would allow people to carry automatic weapons in National Parks. Among the Democratic lemmings who voted for this idiocy are all the anti-working families shills, like Bayh, Baucus, Specter, of course, Begich, Casey, both Nelsons, the two idiots from Arkansas and the two idiots from Colorado, Landrieu, Hagan... the whole sickening right-wing of the Senate Democratic caucus. But they were joined by a gaggle of real Democrats too scared of the gun lobby to stand up and act for the good of their own constituents-- Feingold, Reid, Klobuchar, Leahy, even Merkley! Only 28 Democrats (+ Lamar Alexander) voted against this idiotic ploy.

I was already getting wary yesterday when I noticed that Dodd, the author of the bill (and a recipient of more bankster money-- $13,238,806-- than anyone else in Congress other than McCain) was negotiating with the ranking Republican/bankster shill Dick Shelby to water down the bill and make it more acceptable to a tiny segment of society who should all be lined up against a wall and, after speedy trials, shot.

Dodd, in a statement, said that the agreement reached with Shelby probably marked the final compromise he would be willing to make on the legislation he has been pushing hard this year.

“While I expect some battles in the coming days from credit card companies and their allies in an effort to diminish these strict new rules,” Dodd said, “I stand ready to fight against any attempt to weaken the strong consumer protections in this bill.”

He didn't do a very good job of it today.