January 9, 2015

A New Progressive Era? Meet The LIBERALS FIGHTING For Control Of The Democratic Party (And Winning)

Just like the Grinch was shocked to hear that he hadn’t ruined Christmas by stealing all of the presents, Republicans seem livid that their midterm election victories haven’t given way to the broken spirit of the Democratic Party. Just the opposite, in fact. In a way, the midterms are being hailed by many in the progressive movement as a wake up call. After years of running to the center, the Democrats seem poised to finally turn left. No serious discussion about a more liberal liberal party can take place without first mentioning the astonishing work Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has done. Her populist, anti-big business message resonates with everyone (I suspect even many conservatives) in the wake of the financial collapse. At a time when big banks and megacorporations were begging to be allowed to start doing the same risky business that led to trillions of dollars in losses before, Warren is the voice of reason. A lighthouse warning those same ships away from the craggy rocks. Meanwhile, liberal outsiders are pushing at the Democrats to get their acts together. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is showing them what an unapolegetic liberal looks like. Watching interviews with him is like seeing the progressive Id take human form and say all the things that lesser Democrats wouldn’t dream of speaking out loud.


The “proud liberal” seems almost extinct in modern politics, and that’s an absolute embarrassment. After all, considering how incredibly successful President Obama’s first six years in office have been, the notion that the majority of Democrats running for office during the 2014 midterms would shy away from his record is baffling. It’s no surprise that almost all of the ones who tried to hide from the president ended up losing by wide margins. They may have appeased some moderate Republicans by not posing for a photo with the president, but forgot to give liberals any reason to come out to the polls on Election Day. In a counter example, one Michigan politician bucked the trend and embraced Obama and defended his record. He won by a massive margin. But if the Democratic ship is adrift, then there is opportunity to let someone else lead it. Somebody different. Progressives are hoping to seize just such an opportunity. In a recent article by Sahil Kapur for Talking Points Memo, he notes how hard progressives have been fighting for a shot to get their voices heard:




Of course, despite the optimism, Democrats will have to struggle with an American voter who is at best apathetic towards politics in general and at worse, as we’ve seen in the midterms, bafflingly right-leaning. But within that frustration there are signs that even the American public is warming up to the idea of a new Progressive Era. The ink is still drying on a new Gallup poll that found that an astonishing 24 percent of Americans say they identify as “liberal.” It’s a record high and one that further supports the notion that liberals are coming out from the shadows and seizing the spotlight. To use the vernacular of the times, liberals might just be “having a moment.” Now is the time for Democratic politicians to recognize it, and like their liberal forebearers, use it to make a lasting, positive change on the nation.





cont'

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/01/09/a-new-progressive-era-meet-the-liberals-fighting-for-control-of-the-democratic-party-and-winning-video/

January 9, 2015

Senator Elizabeth Warren on the KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE

January 9, 2015

Moderate Dems ANGRY That Warren Liberals Are RAINING ON THEIR PRO-BIZ PARADE

This is cute. The New Democrat Coalition—a "pro-growth, fiscally responsible" group of Democratic lawmakers—thinks the Democrats' "lack of pro-business messaging" is what hurt them in 2014:



Okay, back to the story from Politico. Warring factions of congressional Democrats have emerged in the wake of the GOP's failed effort this week to delay certain provisions of Dodd-Frank (you know, the law that's meant to protect consumers from abuse by behemoth financial institutions).


Moderate Democrats—who suddenly feel under siege after Sen. Elizabeth Warren put the klieg lights on the dark corners of efforts to empower business at the expense of taxpayers—are arguing that Democrats will be confined to minority status forever if they don't, well, moderate their efforts to protect consumers.


This week, just 35 Democrats voted with Republicans to undermine Dodd-Frank, but it wasn't enough for passage. Rep. Capuano is not impressed with the moderates:


This story is still developing—at least in the sense that it will play out over and over straight through 2016 and then in perpetuity. The question isn't whether there will be warring factions—it's who has the momentum? Warren's efforts have clearly helped empower liberals who don't buy into the idea that winning elections means favoring business interests over those of regular folks. Nor does it represent good governance. Democrats lost the midterms because they failed to make the case to the American people that they had discernibly improved their lives. Wall Street handouts do nothing to help that case.



http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/09/1356628/-Moderate-Dems-angry-that-Warren-liberals-are-raining-on-their-pro-biz-parade?showAll=yes

January 9, 2015

Which 28 OILY DEMOCRATS Just JOINED THE GOP to Vote for Keystone XL?

January 9, 2015

How To DESTROY The Republican Party--Legally

January 9, 2015

Sen. Warren’s Main Street CRUSADE To PRESSURE CLINTON

Should lightning strike and Hillary Clinton forgoes a presidential run, Democrats have a nominee in waiting. Elizabeth Warren’s shadow campaign is taking shape on Capitol Hill as Clinton moves closer to a decision that will highlight the divide in their party between Main Street and Wall Street. Warren may never formally enter the race. She doesn’t want to be a spoiler, and Clinton’s commanding lead in surveys of Democrats (66 percent) suggests a better way to influence the debate and move Clinton as the nominee to a more populist left, is for Warren to use her power within the party as a freshman senator to inflame or blow up issues to advance her agenda. Warren never shrinks from a fight where she believes she’s on the side of the little guy. She’s been known to say, “I love throwing rocks,” sometimes even when she’s cautioned against repercussions. Her stand against the nomination of investment banker Antonio Weiss to a top position at the Treasury Department stalled the appointment and created bad blood with the White House, forcing President Obama to re-nominate him in the new Congress.



“They believe in Weiss, and they don’t want to be pushed around on this,” says Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, a centrist Democratic group. Weiss is likely to get confirmed even as Warren and a handful of other progressive Democrats vote no. But Warren’s very public fight against the influence of Wall Street within the administration bloodied the White House, and key aides are less likely to cut her out of the loop again on key appointments, having just experienced how much grief she can cause for Obama with his Democratic base. The fight over Weiss teed up a nomination more to Warren’s liking when Obama announced on Tuesday that Allan Landon, the former CEO of Bank of Hawaii, would fill one of two vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Landon led a bank with under $10 billion assets, a far cry from the too-big-to-fail investment behemoths that populate Wall Street. Camden Fine, president and CEO of the Independent Community Banks of America, lauded the choice of Landon, noting that because of the backlash on Weiss, “The White House is worried enough on the Federal Reserve they’ve called me three times in the last few days vetting the nomination.”



Fine says his opposition to Weiss is nothing personal; it’s just that “community banks are pretty much fed up with every single senior post at the Treasury Department going to people right out of Wall Street.” Out of 16 assistant secretaries, 15 were former partners or senior executives of investment firms during the bailout years in 2008 and 2009. According to a Treasury spokesman, however, there are now no "prominent Wall Street figures currently serving at the Treasury Department. Treasury's senior staff represents a wide range of public and private sector experience, including those who have spent the vast majority of their careers in public service at places like the Federal Reserve, on Capitol Hill and in state financial regulation." It’s cultural, Fine says, a pattern that goes back to the Clinton era of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, and it’s been the accepted practice since, with few voices challenging Wall Street orthodoxy. There are a lot more community banks, 6,500 in all. Their assets are small compared to the top 20 Wall Street firms, but they are everywhere, they are Main Street, and they didn’t leverage the debt that caused the global meltdown. The Big Five banks dubbed too big to fail, are 35 percent bigger than they were when the meltdown was triggered.






cont'


http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/08/sen-warren-s-main-street-crusade-to-pressure-clinton.html

January 9, 2015

House Democrats SUCCESSFULLY BLOCK Republican EFFORT TO DELAY Wall Street Reforms

Despite the fact that 35 House Democrats voted with Republicans to gut the Volcker Rule and other key parts of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, the bill failed. That's in large part thanks to Republican arrogance in assuming they could pass the bill quickly as a suspension. That would have prevented the bill from being open to amendments, but it also required a two-thirds majority vote. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi managed to deny that by rallying enough Democrats to defeat it.





Pelosi got 80 percent of the Democratic caucus to oppose the bill and stop it—an impressive feat when pro-Wall-Street bills regularly get 100 more Democratic votes. But this Republican Congress shouldn't be getting any Democratic votes, ever. And Democrats should not be voting with Wall Street and against Main Street, ever. It's encouraging that Pelosi—along with opposition from President Obama—stopped this one, but Republicans will be back with it, and it will likely pass. But it shouldn't do so with any Democratic help.



http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/08/1356391/-House-Democrats-successfully-block-Republican-effort-to-delay-Wall-Street-nbsp-reforms

January 8, 2015

Huckabee 2016: BEND OVER And TAKE IT Like a Prisoner!

Great American leaders have long contributed profound thoughts of tremendous consequence to the public discourse.




Earlier this week, Huckabee ended his Fox News talk show so he could spend time mulling another bid for the Republican nomination. If the contents of Huckabee's latest book - due out January 20th - are any indication, the overarching message of that campaign will be that the government is, um, having its way with the American public in a method that Huckabee, a Christian conservative, finds rather repulsive. "Bend Over and Take it Like a Prisoner!" is the title of the 10th chapter of Huckabee's 12th book, God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy - which, as a whole, is an achievement in the genre of poorly written pandering. The chapter, ostensibly about the TSA and IRS, is a soaring crescendo of latent homosexuality homoeroticism cloaked in almost libertarian – but not libertine! – conservatism.


It opens with Huckabee's dramatic recollection of going through security at the airport. "Where else would I be ordered to stand still, put up my hands, and have my personal belongings taken and searched without a warrant or probable cause?" He asks. "After years of this indignity, much of the flying public thinks little of it, and they usually don't complain. They just dutifully stand there, bend over, and take it like a prisoner." Clickbait title notwithstanding, Bend Over and Take It Like a Prisoner! is not devoid of substance. Although Huckabee's condescending tone - like that of an elementary school history teacher - makes it difficult to take seriously. He takes aim at the Department of Homeland Security and the USA Patriot Act: "…did anyone anticipate that not many terrorists would really get punished as a result of this act, but that American citizens would?" He then quotes Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."


"What would Ben say today?" Huckabee wonders. "Would he cheerfully go through a full-body scanner that electronically strip-searched him and then allow a federal agent to put his blue-gloved hands inside his pants and over his thighs, crotch, and upper body for the sake of domestic travel on a privately owned commercial carrier? I'll bet you a Benjamin that he most certainly would not. (Come to think of it, though, kite flying Ben would definitely be in awe of this and every other use of…electricity! Also airplane flight, but I digress.)" Huckabee then basically reprints - in full - a few Politico Magazine articles by former TSA agent Jason Edward Harrington, because he has space to fill (later in the book, he writes out the lyrics to Simple Life by Lynyrd Skynyrd,). He then provides some insight into his psyche - complete with Animal House reference. While excoriating the IRS, Huckabee brings his readers along on a flashback to his youth.







cont'


http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/08/huckabee-2016-bend-over-and-take-it-like-a-prisoner.html

January 8, 2015

HALL OF SHAME: 35 Dems Voted Yesterday To ROLL BACK DODD-FRANK Provisions

UPDATE: It was 35 Dems. List has been updated.


From Crew of 42, Lauren Victoria Burke points out that the Congressional Black Caucus, whose members were accused last year of selling out to Wall Street -- had only five defectors on this bill. Meanwhile, there were plenty of white Members who voted to gut Dodd-Frank:






http://crooksandliars.com/2015/01/hall-shame-30-dems-voted-yesterday-roll

January 8, 2015

Elizabeth Warren TAKES AIM At Bill And Hillary Clinton

Sen. Elizabeth Warren called Wednesday for Democrats to adopt a muscular form of liberalism in a speech that included thinly veiled jabs at Bill and Hillary Clinton as examples of economic stewardship gone wrong. Ms. Warren repeated assertions in a speech to an enthusiastic labor audience in Washington that the U.S. political system is “rigged’’ in favor of wealthy corporations at the expense of everyday families, an argument that has made her a darling of the left and the subject of efforts to draft her as a presidential candidate. But her use of Clinton-era policies as a foil was notable, coming as liberals look for an alternative to Mrs. Clinton, whom they view as too friendly to business. It also marks a challenge to conventional Democratic thinking that Mr. Clinton presided over a boom that stands as a model of economic leadership. One person firmly in this camp is Mrs. Clinton, who is expected to announce her presidential candidacy in the coming months. In public appearances last year, Mrs. Clinton would often tout her husband’s job-creation record. While Ms. Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, has said she isn’t running for president, the speech suggested she sees a role for herself in the campaign, even if mostly as a voice calling for a greater focus on income inequality and tougher Wall Street regulation. Without mentioning him by name, Ms. Warren made an allusion to Mr. Clinton’s famous disavowal of “big government” and his decision in 1999 to sign a bill that deregulated parts of the financial sector, lifting constraints on banks and other institutions.





Ms. Warren also made a reference to a part of Mrs. Clinton’s past. As first lady of Arkansas, Mrs. Clinton spent six years on the board of directors of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Ms. Warren described company workers earning wages too low to feed their families. While corporate profits are rising, store employees “still need food stamps to put groceries on the table,” she said. Dick Harpootlian, former Democratic Party chairman in South Carolina, said: “What she’s doing is putting a stake in the ground and saying the policies during the Clinton years were good for the economy in general but not good for average Americans.” A Clinton spokesman declined to comment, as did the Democratic National Committee. A Republican National Committee spokeswoman called Ms. Warren’s speech to the AFL-CIO “an awkward address,” because she opposes building the Keystone XL pipeline, while the labor group favors constructing it. Ms. Warren didn’t address the proposed pipeline in her remarks. A representative for the Chamber of Commerce said: “Obviously Sen. Warren continues to believe that the government is the source of all prosperity and economic growth in this country. As an organization who represents America’s actual job creators, we disagree with that.” Ms. Warren focused squarely on a theme that figures to be prominent in the 2016 race: disparities in wealth and the belief among many Americans that their children will face tougher economic struggles. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in November showed that 56% of Americans agreed with the statement that the political system “is stacked against people like me.”



cont'


http://www.wsj.com/articles/elizabeth-warren-takes-aim-at-democrats-republicans-1420642851