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FOCUS: Republicans AND Democrats Are Gutting the Rules on Wall Street |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=7122"><span class="small">Elizabeth Warren, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Wednesday, 21 February 2018 13:38 |
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Warren writes: "Let's be clear: Banks of all sizes are making record profits right now. And if that wasn't enough, the Republican tax bill just gave away billions to the big banks. They are swimming in money. There is no reason at all to roll back the rules on these big banks so they can pad their pockets even more - and cut them loose to take on wild risks again."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren. (photo: Getty)
Republicans AND Democrats Are Gutting the Rules on Wall Street
By Elizabeth Warren, Reader Supported News
21 February 18
 n 2008, Wall Street’s reckless greed crashed our economy.
While millions of hard-working people lost their jobs, their homes, and their life savings, the big banks got a $700 billion no-strings-attached bailout from the American taxpayers. A bailout and nobody went to jail for causing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
After the crash, Congress passed legislation called Dodd-Frank, which put new rules in place for the biggest financial institutions to stop another crisis and taxpayer bailout.
But now, less than a decade later, Senate Republicans – and some Senate Democrats – are getting ready to gut a lot of those rules for some of the country’s biggest banks. The bank lobbyists have been hitting Capitol Hill hard, and they have a Dodd-Frank rollback bill lined up with the support of every Republican and twelve Democrats.
We need to make some noise about this big wet kiss to the big banks by reminding Senators as loudly as possible: they work for the American people, not for big bank lobbyists. Sign our urgent petition right now to tell the Senate not to weaken the rules on big banks.
Dodd-Frank said that every bank with more than $50 billion in assets – that’s roughly the 40 biggest banks, or the top 0.5% of all banks by size – would have tougher rules than smaller banks. That means mandatory stress tests to analyze how they would react to another financial crisis and plans for how they would break apart, sell off assets, and liquidate in bankruptcy if they started to fail.
There’s a reason for this common-sense oversight of big banks: They are so big that they could potentially bring down the whole economy again if they failed and taxpayers didn’t bail them out again.
The bill that could be up in the Senate in the next few weeks would let almost 30 of the 40 biggest banks in the country could go back to looser rules like the ones that let them run wild before the 2008 crisis.
What could possibly go wrong?!?
The big bank lobbyists want you to believe that this bill is protecting poor little mom and pop banks from getting buried under red tape. But this bill is aimed at helping the big guys. These 30 banks got nearly $50 billion in taxpayer bailouts during the 2008 crisis.
And remember Countrywide? It was at the heart of the financial crisis. At its peak, Countrywide was financing one out of every five mortgages in the country. It was a major player in blowing up the economy. You know how big Countrywide was when it was leading the toxic mortgages that blew up our economy? About $200 billion – smaller than some of the banks that would be turned loose by this bill.
Let’s be clear: Banks of all sizes are making record profits right now. And if that wasn’t enough, the Republican tax bill just gave away billions to the big banks. They are swimming in money. There is no reason at all to roll back the rules on these big banks so they can pad their pockets even more – and cut them loose to take on wild risks again.
The American people – Democrats, Republicans, and Independents – want tougher rules on big banks, not weaker ones. It’s time to hold Republican AND Democratic Senators who support this bill accountable for siding with their big bank donors instead of working families.
I get it: Wall Street has money and power. But there are a lot more of us than there are of them. The only way to slow down this Bank Lobbyist Act is if we speak out and fight back. Sign our petition to protect Dodd-Frank and make your voice heard – and ask your friends to sign as well.
The big banks will do anything they can to pass this dangerous bill into law. We need you out there giving everything you’ve got.
Thanks for being a part of this,
Elizabeth
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FOCUS: On Celebrating Gabby and Calling Bullshit |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=27921"><span class="small">Mort Rosenblum, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Wednesday, 21 February 2018 11:58 |
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Rosenblum writes: "Imagine where the world might be today if we had been paying more attention to Gabrielle Giffords."
Gabrielle Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman who was shot and wounded in a 2011 shooting rampage is seen here with her husband Mark Kelly. (photo: Getty)
On Celebrating Gabby and Calling Bullshit
By Mort Rosenblum, Reader Supported News
21 February 18
 nfinished reports on faraway places litter my desk - ocean plunder, abandoned refugees, Cape Town running dry - but I'm fixated on those pools of blood, indelible in memory, at the Safeway just up the road. For sheer human folly and hypocrisy these days, America is first.
Imagine where the world might be today if we had been paying more attention to Gabrielle Giffords.
In January 2011, as I changed planes headed to Tucson from Paris, my phone went bananas. A homegrown lunatic had shot my congresswoman in the head and murdered six people, including a much-loved 9-year-old girl and a federal judge.
Hundreds kept an all-night vigil at the hospital. Beyond the usual “thoughts and prayers” deluge and politicians’ promises, two ex-presidents were named honorary chairmen of a National Institute for Civic Discourse in Tucson, which reportedly raised a million dollars. Barack Obama flew in for the memorial service.
Today, after seven years of increasingly uncivil national discourse, the institute is all but unnoticed in a suite on East Speedway. Gabby and her astronaut husband, Mark Kelly, still plead with limited success for sensible gun control. Mass shootings are so common we can barely keep track of them.
This time may be different. “I don't want your condolences you fucking piece of shit,” a Florida high school sophomore tweeted to Donald Trump, “my friends and teachers were shot.” The message, beyond viral, resonates across America: enough bullshit.
No one needs a recap of what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School or callous blame shifting by NRA-funded sellouts in Washington. But reflect a moment on what we can learn in the aftermath of that Safeway slaughter.
I met Gabby when she first ran for Congress and profiled her in a book titled Escaping Plato's Cave. My subtitle then was a figurative stretch: How America's Blindness to the Rest of the World Threatens Our Survival. Now that is literal.
We often elect crusading yet clueless zealots as freshmen to Congress. Think of Tom Cotton of Arkansas, reminiscent of the Puritan preacher Cotton Mather. He sideswiped the White House in 2015, getting 47 Republicans to sign an open letter to Iran disavowing that vital nuclear accord.
Gabby was the opposite. She was a Democrat who always remembered she also represented Republicans. She listened before she spoke, drew her own conclusions and read the stacks of paper her party whip told her to sign.
After her trip to Baghdad in 2007, I asked what she thought of Iraq. “I didn't see it,” she said. “I saw the Green Zone.” Unlike many on congressional delegations, she asked hard questions and refused to take flimflam at face value.
Gabby is from an old Tucson family whose El Campo Tire and Auto Service kept my old Chevy in retreads. Like many of us Arizonans, she grew up with hunting rifles. Venison, we all know, is not too tasty when blasted by an anti-sniper cannon.
In Congress, she understood the Second Amendment was to let people keep muzzle-loading muskets handy in case the British came back. It still gives us the right to own guns. But, like cars, they should not be weapons of mass murder.
Guns were only part of it.
Having grown up near the border, she saw firsthand that the United States and Mexico thrive by symbiosis. Each needs the other. Mexicans who can come and go legally do our dirty work, pay taxes, and support families back home. A wall doesn't stop drugs or criminals. Mostly, it fences us in.
She believed in taking in a reasonable amount of refugees, after screening, because it was the right thing do. Also, she saw no wisdom in condemning desperate people to squalid camps where, inevitably, many would grow to hate us.
As a Jew, Gabby defended Israel, but she saw why a hard-line Zionist policy of subjugating Palestine put Israel's future in peril. She fought for smart, even-handed diplomacy and human rights across the board.
A small-d Democrat, she compromised with colleagues across the aisle. She took her oath of office seriously. That Safeway massacre was the price she paid for listening to constituents at events she called “Congress On Your Corner.”
Martha McSally, a former fighter pilot and lockstep Republican, now holds her seat. In one defining moment, McSally rallied partisans intent on gutting the Affordable Health Care Act: “Let's get this fucking thing done.”
She speaks to constituents by phone, with vetted questions, or at small rallies packed with supporters. John McCain is ailing. Jeff Flake, after blasting Donald Trump and defending a free press, is walking away. So she is running for the Senate.
And so it goes in an uncivil state in an increasingly uncivil nation.
Now I'm a displaced Arizonan, living in Europe and returning for a few months a year to teach a fresh generation that has had me worried. Too many students seem oblivious to the world they are losing.
I was baffled by visceral distaste for Hillary Clinton. She was an effective two-term New York senator, reelected by a thumping majority. I've seen her in action abroad. She would have been a good president, certainly better than what we've got.
But those kids in Florida - articulate, reasoned in their outrage - are a lesson to us elders. The world is going to be theirs, and they are calling bullshit. Skilled as she is, Hillary represents an old order that seems atrophied beyond likely change.
Guns are a complicated issue. Too many people want to give yet more power to police to spy on citizens and commit suspects to a mental gulag for what they might be planning. That is the road to Animal Farm. But guns are an urgent issue, and a good place to start.
We need fresh energy and ideals. New people are stepping forward, of both genders and all hues, getting angry and intent on getting elected. But young voters can't do it alone. Our electoral obstacle course requires a president to spend two billion dollars for a job that pays half the salary of a middling college football coach.
In the end, voting comes down to a choice of two imperfect people, whether for the White House, or Congress, or state legislatures. Enough of them, like Gabby Giffords who put the citizenry above themselves, can effect change over time.
At least for now, the Constitution and the courts still function more or less as designed. Fixing a rigged system is possible if it is no more than a Herculean task. But without enough pushing, our democracy is crushed under a Sisyphean stone.
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Roma and African Americans Share a Common Struggle |
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Wednesday, 21 February 2018 09:53 |
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Excerpt: "On 20 February, we mark the abolition of Roma slavery on the territories of today's Romania. Much has changed across continents but the enslavement of people in both Romania and the US has converted into new forms of exploitation and control."
Roma migrants from Romania demonstrating in Oslo in 2015. (photo: Alamy)
Roma and African Americans Share a Common Struggle
By Cornel West and Margareta Matache, Guardian UK
21 February 18
Despite the abolition of Roma and African American slavery, criminalization and demonization continues
 n 20 February, we mark the abolition of Roma slavery on the territories of today’s Romania. Much has changed across continents but the enslavement of people in both Romania and the US has converted into new forms of exploitation and control.
The impetus to kill and chain Roma and African American bodies remains one of the appalling facets of how the criminalization and demonization of these peoples have historically translated into action. For example, in Romania, Levente, a 21-year-old Roma man, was recently shot dead by a police officer in front of two Romakids, aged 10 and 14.
According to Marian Mandache, the executive director of the Roma rights group Romani CRISS, the young man was unarmed. In the US, police killings of black Americans are common too, with Amadou Diallo to Manuel Loggins Jr, Ronald Madison, Kendra James, Sean Bell, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Alton Sterling just a handful of the victims.
From early on in their histories, Roma and African Americans have crossed similar paths, as white policymakers continued to employ similar tactics to maintain white normativity, social power, and privilege.
Since 1853, Mihail Kog?lniceanu, one of the most progressive Romanian intellectuals of all time, has pointed out the comparable struggles of African Americans in bondage and enslaved Roma people.
His preface about Roma slavery and the translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin – the first American novel to be published in Romanian – increased a consciousness of shame about the brutality of slavery across a few strands of Romanian society. Kog?lniceanu was one white intellectual among many in both Europe and the Americas who, along with fellow abolitionists, denounced slavery and advocated for its eradication.
But the moral responsibility and paideia of some intellectuals did not concur with the decisions and actions of governing institutions. Along with a litany of unfulfilled promises – for example the 40 acres and a mule promised in the US by former masters – the losses of African Americans and Roma people have not been restored.
If in the US there is some level of acceptance of this atrocious legacy, Romania still lacks acknowledgement and a break with its own past, starting with public apologies from state institutions and the Orthodox Church, both of which enslaved Roma.
The widening adoption of international human rights instruments over the past 70 years might suggest that the end of humanity’s dark heritage of state-sponsored atrocity was in sight, and that a consciousness of shame, discomfort, or even compassion would prompt immediate and effective condemnation. Yet many atrocities continue unnoticed, and most of those who stand up for the minority, the poor, and the weak are still perceived as radicals.
Whiteness, gadjo-ness, or the supremacy of the dominant still resides at the heart of the world’s dogmas and practices, without being challenged much. New policies, laws, and discourses in place do not seek to dismantle the system that discriminates and devalues the descendants of enslaved people but rather conserve in many a belief in their own inferiority.
Essentially, whiteness and gadjo-ness, are still perceived by many African Americans and Roma people as a naturally superior state of being. More broadly, those that do not belong to the dominant group, be they Roma, African Americans, Dalits, migrants and many others, are still more valuable to the supremacist when they fail.
Overt structural discrimination is as harsh a reality for many minority and marginalized groups across the world. Paradoxically, most seem intrinsically equipped with the hope that they will find the humanity in the very societies that have dehumanized and traumatized them for centuries. In resistance, they have found within themselves the grace to embrace the oppressor with forgiveness, and in fear, to respond with obedience and compliance to white normativity. Yet, global solidarity among the oppressed fails to materialize.
One would also expect that in times of global communication and social media, social movements and social justice intellectuals across continents would be better able to harness their collective resources in the face of similar structures of domination and subordination.
Even among those who actively fight injustice, many fail to speak up when it does not affect their own group. They even fail, for instance, to claim reparations for the comparable histories of enslaved people, as social movements in the US, Romania, or the Caribbean islands remain divided by identity-defined silos.
And yet, the issue of global solidarity must find the momentum and build on it to work toward a unified movement against injustice across historical and geographical spheres.
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What's Different Now? Parkland Students Won't Let Us Get Away With No Action on Guns |
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Wednesday, 21 February 2018 09:51 |
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Parkland Shooting, students, activism, gun control, GOP, Reader Supported News, RSN, politics, alternative news, news, opinion, Fabiola Santiago, The Miami Herald
Rep. Bobby DuBose of Fort Lauderdale, far center, meets with survivors from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and other students from Broward County schools in Tallahassee on Tuesday. (photo: Mark Wallheiser/AP)
What's Different Now? Parkland Students Won't Let Us Get Away With No Action on Guns
By Fabiola Santiago, The Miami Herald
21 February 18
n their first day in Tallahassee, grieving Parkland students took another blow.
As they watched in disbelief from the gallery, the Florida House —– aided and abetted by the same despicable alliance of pro-gun legislators from Miami-Dade plus central and north Florida — voted down Tuesday an attempt take up a ban on assault weapons. Wouldn’t even consider allowing the issue to be discussed.
Reaction from the students was swift, poignant.
“How could they do that to us? Are you Kidding me??? #NeverAgain We are not forgetting this come Midterm Elections — the Anger that I feel right now is indescribable,” tweeted Emma González.
If nothing was done after Sandy Hook, you ask, why think anything will change now?
Because the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student survivors won’t let us get away with forgetting the geography teacher, the athletic director and the football coach who died trying to protect them from bullets.
Because they won’t let us forget the 14 friends killed and many more injured — some heroes too, shot while saving others. They paid with their lives for decades of inaction, one mass killing after another.
Change won’t come easy, as they learned, but these students are the fierce voice of a generation on gun control. And they’re a ray of hope in an apathetic, gun-happy nation desensitized to violence.
We, the horrified adults, want to grab our kids and run from the gun madness. The students, armed with their fresh grief and outrage, are fighting for what they need from Tallahassee and Washington.
They were in elementary school themselves, or barely into the middle grades, in 2012 when 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut were slaughtered — and they know what happened before (more deaths) and after the tears dried: Nothing. Only hundreds of more deaths at the hands of criminals, terrorists, and madmen wielding weapons of war in our schools, our streets, our theaters, our concert venues, and our workplaces and houses of worship.
And each time, nothing was done to stop the running tally.
“Adults have failed us and kids are dying because of it,” said Adolfo Calderon, one of the hundreds of Parkland students who turned despair into instant activism right after surviving the carnage former student Nikolas Cruz unleashed on the school on Valentine’s Day.
Their classmates’ bodies were still being carried and they were already speaking out against assault weapons like the AR-15 rifle Cruz used. Bless them. Hear them. Honor them. Our police chiefs have, calling for a ban on assault weapons.
The bodies of these children are still being buried today. These students are attending funerals, grieving — and speaking out, no breaks. Hear them. Honor them. This is their most precious right.
The Stoneman Douglas High students are something to behold.
Not satisfied with politicians’ visit to Parkland to offer condolences but no solutions, they descended — two buses full — on the gun-happy Florida Legislature on Tuesday, where the usual pro-gun lot of lawmakers was scurrying to consider age limits and waiting periods on assault weapons.
Tweeted student Sarah Chadwick: “‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’ That quote is plastered high on a staircase in Douglas. I read it every day while walking to class, and now I’m here truly trying to be a change in the world.”
Gov. Rick Scott, blessed with an A+ rating from the NRA for putting the pro-gun agenda first, is running as fast as he can from the students. He won’t be able to hide all the time. Schools all over Florida are following Douglas’ lead and staging anti-gun walk outs and rallies.
What’s different now?
These kids are smart, brave, committed — the most formidable force I’ve seen on the issue of gun control, because they’re natural-born communicators in the age of the Internet. They don’t need handlers. They speak from experience, grief and anger at an America that failed them horribly. They’re intellectually eloquent, yet not bound by adult rules of propriety. They’ve called out thoughts and prayers for what they are, a hypocritical washing of the hands.
They won’t be silenced nor intimidated by trolls, bots, pundits and politicians who act like trolls and bots, including the president.
Watch Chadwick take down former congressman and CNN commentator Jack Kingston, a Trump mouthpiece who tried to discredit the student movement, tweeting: “O really? ‘Students’ are planning a nationwide rally? Not left wing gun control activists using 17yr kids in the wake of a horrible tragedy?”
Chadwick: “Hey Jack! Just wanted to let you know that, yes! Us 17yrs really are planning a nationwide rally! It’s crazy what determination, and a strong work ethic can lead to! But I mean you have neither of those things so I wouldn’t expect you to understand. #NEVERAGAIN”
The score: 484 liked Kingston, 73,000 were on Chadwick’s corner.
People are seeing these teens — and supporting them.
George and Amal Clooney made a $500,000 donation Tuesday to help make the students’ “March for Our Lives” in Washington a reality.
“Our family will be there on March 24 to stand side by side by this generation of incredible young people from all over the country,” Clooney said in a statement.
These students own the moral high ground and the facts — and they’ve made the national conversation about guns their business now. They’ve put Washington and Tallahassee to shame by calling out NRA-beholden politicians and are forcing lawmakers to address issues, to work on gun-safety measures now, not later.
They see right through the Republican obstructionism that has kept all meaningful reform from even being tackled by Congress, much less voted into law. They see right through the Florida Legislature’s commitment to the advancement of the business interests of the NRA versus theirs. And they see right through President Donald Trump’s efforts to blame the school shootings on the FBI mishandling of the tips about Cruz, which fits right into his agenda of discrediting the Russia investigation.
What’s different now?
The Sandy Hook parents raised their voices — they still do. But this cowardly nation, so afraid of the potential external boogeyman but never the real one inside the gates, only upped the ante and stock-piled even more assault rifles. People bought into NRA scare campaigns alleging that President Barack Obama was going to disarm Americans.
Congress showed no sympathy for their grief.
This time, the students won’t let you get away with forgetting the victims.
You. Will. Listen.
They’re a movement and, soon, they’ll be old enough to vote.
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