When you find someone that says it better than you can say it, I think it is appropriate to pass their words along. Here is an editorial that appeared in the Lexington (Kentucky) Hearld-Leader about Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and the financial reform legislation. I hope a few million people would take the time to read it. I think it sums up what I would have liked to have said, only better, so here it is.
McConnell to big bank's rescue (editorial)
FOXBusiness reported on Monday that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell recently called on about 25 Wall Street executives, many of them hedge fund managers, to hear their complaints about proposals for regulating the financial industry.
With him was Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which raises campaign money for Republican candidates for Senate.
"The undercurrent of the gathering," FOX reports, "was undeniably political. ... McConnell and Cornyn made it clear they need Wall Street's help" to defeat the reforms by electing more Republicans in November.
On Tuesday and again Wednesday, McConnell took to the Senate floor to denounce a bill sponsored by Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate banking committee.
Interestingly, McConnell is disparaging the proposed reforms in words recommended by a pollster.
"If the outline of his speech sounds familiar," wrote Adam Sorensen on Time's political blog, "it's because it is the exact argument pollster Frank Luntz urged Republicans to make earlier this year in a widely publicized memo."
(Comparisons of McConnell's statements and the Luntz memo can be found at http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/04/13/a-gop-financial-reform-bellwether/.)
McConnell's statements are perfectly calibrated to inflame the public. He insists the bill would "allow endless taxpayer-funded bailouts for big Wall Street banks."
Their resemblance to the truth is another matter.
The provision that McConnell claims would allow endless bailouts emerged from a bipartisan collaboration by Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn.
Warner, who learned a thing or two about capitalism as a successful dot.com entrepreneur before becoming Virginia's governor, told The Washington Post: "It appears that the Republican leader either doesn't understand or chooses not to understand the basic underlying premise of what this bill puts in place."
The provision to which McConnell particularly objects creates an orderly process for letting "too big to fail" banks fail, at the industry's expense, without taking down the entire economy.
The losers would be the management and shareholders, not the taxpayers. So onerous would this process be for failing financial institutions, says Warner, that it would serve as a deterrent to reckless decision-making.
McConnell, it should be remembered, voted for the bailout of the big investment banks in the fall of 2008, when it was the only alternative to global economic meltdown.
We have read that the Republicans have a plan for financial reform, but McConnell isn't talking up any solutions, just trashing the other side's ideas with no respect for the truth.
While the intricacies of financial regulation are complicated, McConnell's calculus is pretty obvious.
The high-stakes gamblers on Wall Street, luxuriating again in big bonuses, don't want any new oversight or regulation. Why would they, knowing that the government would have to bail them out again if their trading of worthless financial instruments goes bust and threatens to bring on the next Great Depression?
McConnell, unabashedly courting Wall Street bankers for political money, is happy to scratch their backs if they'll scratch his.
Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2010/04/15/1224749/mcconnell-to-big-banks-rescue.html#ixzz0lGS7UZB6
I think, whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, you should try and understand the deceit that is taking place and who has who's back, and who is looking out for the majority of the American people. You do not have to be all that knowledgeable about the banking and investment industry to be able to tell who is protecting a stream of campaign contributors and who is looking out for the good of all the American people.
Stay tuned.
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4 comments:
Maybe, just maybe one of these days these politicians and wannabe politicos will have a day in court. They are doing exactly what the heads of some businesses have done or are doing in trying to extract money or votes along with political violence in what they say.
J.T. Battenburg and Alan Dawes along with some others not even in the company are on trial for their promotions of the Delphi Stock in order to make it worth more. I don't see a difference in the lies. A lie is that, a lie. When you spread a lie in the form of anger like some of the Tea Partiers are or like McConnell then you need to go to trial. You need to be publically scrutinized. You need to really be on record as to what you meant to say, not given the chance of 'oh, that was taken out of context' crap. Maybe it's the Bars and Wolves in Alaska and the Bars in them there hills of Kentucky that keep getting these people in trouble in what they say.
Again, I say, hold these people in judgement of what they say the same as holding someone in judgement of what they do or say in business.
Just stirring the pot for descention is not adult.
I am appalled at McConnell. At some point, he MUST say to himself, "People are stupid." The proof in the pudding will come when it comes time for him to run again. If he gets re-elected, we can truly look at the people of Kentucky and ask them, "What the fuck have you been drinkin'?"
That is what I mean when I talk about the "genius" of the Republican Party. To get away with telling people a big lie and go right on acting like it never happened. The press and TV have called him out on this, but he feels so secure that the people of KY will vote him back in that he will go right along as if nothing ever happened. The people in KY are good people; however, like millions of their neighbors around the country, they do not have the expertise to know who is lying and who is telling the truth. I wish I could help them, but with that Creationist Museum as their Einstein, I have little hope for them ever seeing the light.
Lceel, they drink stupidshine or dumb lightening. Still the same color as regular moonshine, clear. That way they look beyond the truth.
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