Don’t think it’s not bipartisan, it is

A Washington Post headline today that speaks volumes: Obama still flush with cash from financial sector despite frosty relations:

…Obama has brought in more money from employees of banks, hedge funds and other financial service companies than all the other GOP candidates combined, according to a Washington Post analysis of contribution data.

…Obama’s ties to Wall Street donors could complicate Democratic plans to paint Republicans as puppets of the financial industry, particularly in light of the Occupy Wall Street protests that have gone global over the past week. In response to the protests, the Obama campaign and other Democrats have stepped up their attacks on Romney and other Republicans for their opposition to Wall Street regulations.

One top banking executive who raises money for Obama and who requested anonymity to discuss fundraising efforts said reports of disaffection with the president “are exaggerated and overblown.” He said a strong contingent of financiers in New York, Chicago and California remain supportive of Obama and his economic policies, even as some have turned on him.

Now, all is not as it seems, as the Democratic National Committee has the ability to raise $30,800 per donor per year, whereas direct contributions to candidates’ campaign funds are capped at $5,000 per donor for the entire campaign cycle.  Because Obama is the Democratic nominee for president in 2012, he is able to coordinate fundraising with the DNC, whereas because the Republican primary is still underway, the RNC is not yet coordinating with a specific candidate.

That all being said, we’re still talking about vast sums of money here, with the election over a year away.  Is there not something troubling about that?

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So yesterday I gave a bit of grief to Mitt Romney for being cold and calculating (or at least giving every impression that he is when it comes to the plight of homeowners) and I feel the need to point out that President Obama himself is certainly no stranger to financial industry largesse.  Wall Street gave more money to President Obama in 2008 than they did John McCain, and finance has remained a key part of the President’s fundraising arsenal since. 

Obama’s done an intricate dance with Big Finance since his inauguration, calling them “fat-cat bankers” and warning that his administration was “the only thing between you and the pitchforks” while appointing a very Wall Street-friendly Treasury Secretary in Tim Geithner, as well as a former VP of JP Morgan Chase as his latest Chief of Staff, Bill Daley, among other key players. 

It is true, on the other hand, that President Obama helped shepherd the Dodd-Frank financial regulations through to passage in Congress.  But the implementation process of such a complex bill has been met with delays in regulation writing and an apparent lack of gumption on the Administration’s part to support nominees to key oversight positions.  Why is Elizabeth Warren running for the US Senate in Massachusetts and not running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she effectively created whole cloth?  It’s due in major part to the Obama Administration’s not weighing in with more support for Warren against predictable Senate Republican intransigence in blocking her nomination.  The fight over securing Warren’s nomination would have been a titanic one, as the financial industry was as opposed to the creation of the CFPB as anything else in Dodd-Frank, and 44 Senate Republicans promised to block any nominee to the CFPB’s Directorship, not just Warren.  And yet, President Obama, despite what could have been a prime opportunity to highlight Republican tactics that negatively affect consumers, didn’t seem to have the fight in him on this one, for reasons still unknown.

A further area of concern has been the ongoing “50-state” Attorneys General housing settlement negotiations, which have sought to release the big banks from any liabilities for their criminal ways during the housing boom of the 00s in exchange for a paltry $20 billion or so in fines.  See the video below with Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden (son of Joe) giving a great overview of the major issues:

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Despite the appearance of massive fraud by every major bank, the Obama Administration has been pushing rather hard to have all 50 AGs sign on to the agreement, which is ostensibly narrowly related to the robosigning fraud unearthed last year, however the negotiated terms of the agreement attempt to release the banks from all sorts of liabilities unrelated to robosigning.  That a number of upright state AGs have stood up against such attempts to sweep illegal activities under the rug may not be terribly surprising, but that the Obama Administration would be aligning itself with the criminals in this case so blatantly certainly gives one pause.  Does Obama think promoting a less bank-friendly investigation might hurt his fundraising opportunities with Wall Street?  Such a consideration can’t be far from the top of his mind…When Obama’s reelection is going to be fought against a GOP that still considers wholesale deregulation to be a viable job creation strategy despite all evidence to the contrary, he has to give Big Finance some carrots to keep their contributions flowing to his coffers, no?

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And that’s the crux of the problem.  That’s what Occupy Wall Street is about – the failure of institutions to offer any alternative to the rampant corruption that is right before all of our eyes.  There is no alternative to the current system, and no viable way to use “democracy” to achieve the real change that people appear to seek, as the votes are rigged in favor of the winners.  Justice itself is being undercut systematically so that those who have won historically can keep right on winning, consequences be damned.  It’s no way to run a country.

For his part, Obama has presided over a time that has been marked by major investigations and public exposures of unbelievably bad behavior and rampant greed among the elites who run the economy; a time where an average citizen can find any number of things to be unspeakably outraged about.  Obama’s time in office has coincided with a loss of trust in institutions that would have happened with or without his being President.  And yet, it behooves me to ask how much he himself has contributed to the loss of trust Americans feel in their government?  Sure he inherited a bad situation from his predecessor, but where has he exacerbated the structural problems in our society with his choices?  I’ve been attempting to map out some of the terrain where I feel there has been a governmental failure on this blog for some time now; not because I am opposed to our President, far from it.  It is because so much of the government’s response to issues of structural criminality have been to mask those issues, to sweep them under the rug, to choose not to act in the face of injustice in the hopes that the average low-information voter will not pick up on that act of collusion.  Obama or no, I won’t stand for that.

I believe in a better, stronger, more just and more free America – I have to believe in it; I’m a member of the generation that will be picking up the pieces when those in power today have long departed from the scorched earth they are rapidly creating in their wake.  I believe that we can have a government that works on behalf of the people, and I intend to do my part to make that happen.  But when the government is itself an impediment to the realization of those goals, when it uses its might and state secrets privileges and its power to regulate (or not) in the service of those who would bend government to their own nefarious ends, I feel the need to call attention to those acts as a lowly scribe/blogger. 

I have a proposal in the works that will present a more positive vision for the future, that will present some concrete actions individuals can take to change their own lives as well as their communities for the better, and I sincerely hope to present it on this blog soon.  This blog, in the attempt at chronicling so much wrongdoing, has taken on a terribly negative tone, and I hope to change that in the very near future.

Thanks for reading, as always, and stay tuned.

P.S. – Here’s a great read from Charles P. Pierce of Esquire, taking on Romney’s callous discussion of foreclosures and the curveball that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts threw his way today.  Great fun, or not.

Why all the fuss about social justice?

Above is an infamous clip from earlier this year of Glenn Beck arguing that “social justice” should not be a part of a church’s mission, and that if his listeners found that their churches promote “social justice” then they should leave that church:

"I'm begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them ... are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words.

Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"

Beck’s statement caused quite an uproar among Christian communities of faith around the country, as it is, on many levels, clearly antithetical to the teachings of Jesus, which call on Christians to aid those in need. 

And so we come on Thursday to Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, arguing against President Obama’s selection of Elizabeth Warren to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) which was originally her idea: (hat tip: Joan McCarter)

Gregg, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and a senior member of the Banking Committee, expressed dismay at President Obama's decision to tap Warren as a key "adviser" to help set up the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency established in the Wall Street reform bill.

"My concern is that she would use the agency for the purpose of promoting social justice," Gregg said on ABC's "Top Line" webcast. The agency, Gregg said, should promote improving access to credit, as well as other financial services.

As McCarter rightfully notes, it seems absurd that a new agency expressly designed to protect consumers from predatory lending and other ills of the financial system should not, in Gregg’s view, work at shielding consumers from unscrupulous lenders, but should rather aid consumers in getting access to more credit, and hence, debt.  It has been widely noted that easy access to credit was one of the primary drivers of the financial and economic crisis we are now in, with banks holding billions in toxic mortgages due to their overly-relaxed lending rules and marketing products such as “liar loans” to those who couldn’t afford them, and yet Gregg thinks consumers need more, not less debt?  Ridiculous.

However, the more interesting point to me is that in Sen. Gregg’s worldview, a government agency created to protect consumers (meaning predominantly middle-class folks who qualify for and use credit) should absolutely NOT “promote social justice.”  Why is it a negative in Gregg’s book that there is finally one solitary agency devoted to protecting consumers in the financial sector?  But furthermore, why is “social justice” assumed to be so clearly negative in the right’s modern political discourse? 

In thinking about this issue, it occurs to me that there is a common thread one can trace from Sarah Palin’s demonization of then-Presidential candidate Obama for working as a community organizer, to Glenn Beck’s call to boycott churches that ascribe to a vision of social justice, to Sen. Gregg’s misplaced concern that the CFPB might (horrors!) do its job and protect the middle and lower classes.  The common thread I see is that in all three instances, you have those who sit at the head of the American social, political and economic hierarchies casting efforts to aid the underclass in gaining its rightful power and generating wealth (or at least not to hemorrhage that power and wealth any further) as illegitimate and “anti-American.”  We are all supposed to be seeking the American Dream, however when groups of people who have been systematically shut out from that dream attempt to reduce their barriers to entry, that becomes a Problem for the powers-that-be, and those groups’ efforts must be marginalized.  For the true aim in ginning up fear of the underclasses fighting for their place at the table in the name of “social justice” is to divert attention from the much greater miscarriage of justice that has been taking place in our wallets for years.  One is allowed to strive for economic power on an individual level, but when a concerted effort is made to point out that the game is rigged against those on the bottom and to change that fact, those on the top scoff at and denigrate that push for equality. 

If you look at the raw CBO figures, they show that a full tenth of the national income has shifted since 1979 to the top 1% of the country. The bottom quintiles have each given up a bit more than two percentage points each, and that adds up to 10% of all earnings. That 10% has flowed almost entirely to very tippy top of the income ladder.

Is the middle class worse off because of this? Of course they are. Income matters even if plasma TVs are cheaper than they used to be or if CPI mismeasures middle class consumption or if average households now contain 2.6 members instead of 2.7. If this massive income shift hadn't happened, middle class earnings would be higher, they'd be able to buy more stuff, and they probably wouldn't be in debt as much. And the top 1% wouldn't have quite so much idle cash lying around to do stupid things with.

This income shift is real. We can debate its effects all day long, but it's real. The super rich have a much bigger piece of the pie than they used to, and that means a smaller piece of the pie for all the rest of us. You can decide for yourself if you think this is something we should just shrug our shoulders and accept. (emphasis mine)

I’ve grown up believing that America roots for the underdog, but the recent turn in rhetoric against those who would organize and advocate on behalf of justice, no matter what kind, speaks of a wide swath of the American public giving in to their meaner side – just as our puppeteers intended.  They keep us all divided on social issues while they sneak their billions out the back door with their carried-interest tax breaks and loopholes for overseas earnings - the better to distract us from the fact that class warfare is alive and well, and the moneyed side always wins.  Meanwhile, those of us in the bottom 90% are fighting the wrong wars against the wrong enemies: ourselves.  Look up the economic ladder for a major source of our country’s troubles – the speculative rich and the rich politicians who make up their constituency (yes, in that order) and don’t denigrate the efforts of the courageous ones on the bottom who strive to help their fellow humans out of their collective misery. 

To return to the theme that started off this post, if you want to see the true roots of social justice in a Western religious context, Jesus gives you all the context you need in the following parable:

"But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. Before him all the nations will be gathered, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the King will tell those on his right hand, 'Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry, and you gave me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in; naked, and you clothed me; I was sick, and you visited me; I was in prison, and you came to me.'

"Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry, and feed you; or thirsty, and give you a drink? When did we see you as a stranger, and take you in; or naked, and clothe you? When did we see you sick, or in prison, and come to you?'

"The King will answer them, 'Most certainly I tell you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.' Then he will say also to those on the left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you didn't give me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and you didn't take me in; naked, and you didn't clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn't visit me.'

"Then they will also answer, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and didn't help you?'

"Then he will answer them, saying, 'Most certainly I tell you, inasmuch as you didn't do it to one of the least of these, you didn't do it to me.' These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

Matthew 25:31-46 (emphases mine).

P.S. – Just to make it clear, politicians’ captivity to moneyed interests is most definitely a bipartisan and self-serving game, evidenced quite clearly when retiring Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana was interviewed by NBC’s Chuck Todd on Friday (hat-tip again to Joan McCarter):

TODD: Yesterday, the Census came out and said one in seven Americans are living below the poverty line. Do you look at that story today — you know, you open up your USA Today, right, and you see that story — and you see Washington is debating the tax rates for the wealthy, and you sit there and say, isn’t that a disconnect in America right now?

BAYH: It is a disconnect, Chuck. What we need to be focused on is growth, how do we create jobs, how do we expand businesses. That needs to be job one right now. And all these other issues involving, oh, fairness and things like that can wait. (emphasis in the original)

Ain’t gonna miss that guy in the Senate one bit.  He’ll be back soon enough as a lobbyist anyways, so really, his advocacy on behalf of extending the Bush tax cuts for his rich campaign donors and Wall Street buddies is ultimately a nice little deal to try and line his own pockets with more money that could have gone towards his pet  interest of deficit reduction.

America's Endangered Middle Class

I just wanted to share this very powerful piece by Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel that is overseeing the banking bailouts (TARP). In it, she argues (with graphs, no less, a rarity in the blogosphere) that the middle class is, and has been, getting an extremely unfair deal in American society. Meanwhile, the bankers whom we bailed out from having to face the consequences of their own greed, are earning record profits this year and are on track to hand out massive bonuses, all in the name of "employee retention." To protest against this condition, this blatant unfairness at the intersection of American finance and government policy, is to be labeled a populist. Screw that, I'd rather be a populist standing up for the values of fair play that this country was founded upon than a Wall Street sycophant masquerading in elected office any day.

Thank you, Elizabeth Warren, for daring to speak truth to the powers-that-be in the Washington-Wall Street nexus.