"Words that make actions speak louder."
There are two consumer protection amendments getting serious attention on the Senate floor this week, one of them positive, one of them incredibly destructive. Both revolve around the concept of “preemption”—the ability of federal regulators to block states from enforcing laws aginst banks that operate within their borders. Over the past decade, state regulators tried […]
The trade association for payday lenders objected to what they called my “name calling” in their blog yesterday … then called me a “pig.”Why? Because I quoted Aristotle and told a story about Jesus. Well, to be fair, I did suggest their industry might be “evil” according to traditional definitions of the term. But that […]
The commute between Baltimore and DC is the 4th-most congested route in the country. But a high-speed rail line would make this trip an 18-minute breeze (and also free up some of that congestion). They have been talking about building this rail line since 1994. Meanwhile other countries have been doing. Japan, Europe and now […]
Last week I livestreamed the first closed door meeting of the president’s fiscal commission. I did this out of frustration that we received no response to a letter that we sent from 81 organizations representing over 61 million Americans, asking that all the work of the commission be done in the open. Letters were also […]
The governors of the Gulf Coast states, all Republicans, asked the federal government for help dealing with the BP oil spill — yeah, the government, the very organization that their hero and mentor Ronald Reagan described as “the problem,” not the solution. “The problem” must deal with our oil problem, those Republicans told President Obama. […]
240 former legislators, bank committee staffers, and Treasury officials deployed to lobby. $600 million spent in lobbying, trade association activity and political contributions since March 2008. And that is just from the six biggest banks. The entire financial industry is spending an estimated $1.4 million a day, hiring 70 former members of Congress to make […]
People care about jobs. They still care about jobs. And politicians who don’t care about jobs will lose their jobs, because that is what motivates voters. Polling at Pollingreport.com proves that people are much more concerned about jobs than deficits. (Note there are some polls that show equal concern, no polls that show deficit with […]
The Senate approved an amendment from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., that would subject the Federal Reserve’s bailout operations to a one-time audit. The vote was 96 – 0 in favor of the measure. A stronger audit, sponsored by Reps. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., and Ron Paul, R-Texas, cleared the House in December. The Grayson-Paul bill would […]
In 2010 America, schools, students, and teachers share the budget-cutting pain. The heirs to our mega rich, meanwhile, don’t have to share anything. For the first time in nearly a century, we have no federal estate tax. A moment of silence, please, for Dan Duncan. The 77-year-old Duncan, a Houston resident, passed away the end […]
While it is doubtful that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan shares Chief Justice John Roberts’ conservative judicial activist approach to the Constitution, their backgrounds upon nomination are similar. Both are accomplished lawyers who graduated from Harvard to serve Presidents, widely seen among legal professionals as exceptionally bright, even though both wrote little about controversial constitutional […]