Thom Hartmann: Is it time for a new Church Committee?

[thomhartmann]

President Gerald Ford once said that the Nixon presidency and Watergate scandal
were part of America's "long national nightmare.” What's America's new national
nightmare - and what can we do to wake up from it?

The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann on RT TV & FSTV "live" 9pm and 11pm check www.thomhartmann.com/tv for local listings

[PSPS]

1. No. It's time for a new Pecora Commission.

The last time Washington enacted sweeping financial reform, more than 75 years ago, the catalyst was a cigar-smoking, Sicilian-born immigrant named Ferdinand Pecora.

A former New York prosecutor, Pecora was the last in a series of investigators hired to examine the causes that led to the stock market crash of 1929 for the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency. In early 1933, the newly-elected Democratic president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, gave the bulldog lawyer his blessing to dig deep into the excesses that had plunged the nation into the Great Depression.

The result was a relentless investigation, 12,000 pages of transcripts that laid bare abuses on Wall Street and failures of Washington to adequately regulate the nation's financial system. Pecora's efforts provided a basis for reforms that would alter Wall Street and maintain relative stability in the banking industry until the recent crisis. These included legislation that for the first time regulated the sale of securities and helped establish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/15/AR2009091501936.html

[JDPriestly]

3. We need both a Pecora Commission and a Church Committee.

[JDPriestly]

2. K&R.

[MinM]

4. NSA was wiretapping [Senator] Frank Church

RUSSELL TICE: We now know that NSA was wiretapping [Senator] Frank Church and another Senator. [That has been confirmed.]

And that got out by accident. All the information the NSA had back then – and probably many other senators and important people too, back in the 70s – they shredded and they destroyed all of that evidence. As much as they could find, they destroyed it all. By accident, something popped up 40 years later.

And, in fact, they were asked 40 years ago whether NSA had bugged Congress. And, of course, they lied. They lied through their teeth...

https://twitter.com/onekade/status/475999206562623488