Daily Kos protesters hold Democrats accountable for their Wall Street reform gutting votes
From longtime Kos blogger McJoan...Joan McCarter at Daily Kos today. I love this.
Daily Kos holds Democrats accountable for Wall Street reform gutting votes
In case you missed it, Paul Hogarth from our actions team wrote about the one encouraging data point in the defections of House Democrats who voted with Republicans to gut the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms. When Republicans tried to pass the bill last week under a suspension of the rules (a move that limited debate and amendments, but required a two-thirds majority) 35 Democrats voted with them.
In response, the actions team set up a petition to those 35 members, blasting them for their votes. More than 118,000 people signed that petition, and thousands of you who lived in the districts of these 35 emailed them directly to register your disapproval of their votes. So when the bill came back up this week, 29 Democrats defected (you can see the list in Paul's story).
Four Democrats switched their votes from yes to no (Bobby Rush of Chicago, Hank Johnson from the Atlanta suburbs, Elizabeth Etsy of Connecticut and Suzan DelBene of Washington), three more did not vote, and one Democrat—Brian Higgins of New York—flipped the other way.
So our work clearly had an impact, but not enough. Every time a Democrat abandons the Party to shill for corporations at the expense of their constituents, we must let them know we are watching and won’t forget when it comes time for re-election.
The fact that a handful of these Democrats did the right thing doesn't mean we're letting any of the 29 who didn't off the hook. We want you to let them know that you'll be watching, as will the whole, large Daily Kos community.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Hmmm...thanks. 
paying Very close attention...they are Not "dumb" they just prefer it if we Dismiss them as being "dumb/stupid" etc...and then They can plow forward with their plans/agendas without much objection from "the people". Both sides play this game.
I'm a "people" not a "game piece"...how about you? 
A neighbor was griping about the congress wanting to cut disabled on Soc Sec. Since he votes mostly teaparty I reminded him who was controlling both houses now.
I said that's what people voted for, that may be what they get. I was assured he did not want to vote for people like that. 
thanks for clarifying for both me and your neighbor 
He's my congressman and I can't stand it. He's such a tool of financial interests. 
Thank you for contacting me regarding HR 37, the Promoting Job Creation and Reducing Small Business Burdens Act. I appreciate hearing from you about this important issue.
As you may know, I supported HR 37, which combined a number of bipartisan legislative proposals to refine and clarify technical requirements of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. I also supported the Dodd-Frank law. I have stood with my constituents and the small businesses in Oregon as they struggled to recover after the great recession of 2008 and 2009, and I know the important role Dodd-Frank plays in protecting consumers and controlling the excess of Wall Street bankers. I can tell you that I support both Dodd-Frank and HR 37 because, contrary to what you may have read; HR 37 will not "gut" any of the very important consumer protections of the Dodd-Frank law.
Last year, virtually every provision in HR 37 received broad, bipartisan support. The only exception is HR 4571, which addressed financial disclosures companies make to their employees; that provision is wholly separate from Dodd-Frank. Below, I have copied a list of the bills from last year included in HR 37, and the votes they received in the 113th Congress.
· HR 634: Passed out of the House 411-12
· HR 677: Passed out of Committee 50-10
· HR 801: Passed out of the House 417-4
· HR 2274: Passed out of the House 422-0
· HR 742: Passed out of the House 420-2
· HR 3623: Passed out of Committee 56-0
· HR 4164: Passed out of Committee 51-5
· HR 4200: Passed out of Committee 56-0
· HR 4569: Passed out of Committee 59-0
· HR 4571: Passed out of Committee 36-23
· HR 4167: Passed out of House by unanimous voice vote
As you can see, of the eleven bills rolled up in HR 37, four have passed out of the House or out of committee unanimously. The remainder of the bills amending Dodd-Frank received overwhelming bipartisan support. For example, one provision, HR 801, would ensure that Savings and Loan Holding Companies (S&Ls) and Bank Holding Companies are held to the same standard when determining whether companies must register with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the previous Congress, Democrats joined Republicans to pass that provision by an overwhelming 417-4 margin. Another bipartisan provision, HR 4164, would allow small businesses to continue to file financial statements through traditional means, rather than through a complicated and expensive computerized format. The Financial Services Committee previously voted in favor of that provision with a bipartisan majority of 51-5. Should these provisions become law, they would not pose a systemic threat to our economy and will not harm consumers.
While I am steadfast in my support of major provisions of Dodd-Frank which will prevent a major financial system collapse and protect consumers, I voted in favor of this legislation because these common-sense fixes will allow for economic growth and job creation, and in some cases, make Oregonians even safer.
Many of the provisions in HR 37 actually implement the original intent of the Dodd-Frank law. I served on the House Agriculture Committee, which drafted the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and derivatives portions of Dodd-Frank. Since passing the law, federal regulators have looped small businesses, small banks, and rural energy into the Dodd-Frank rules-something Congress never intended. I will continue to work to bring Democrats and Republicans together on reforms that strengthen working families' financial security and our community's small businesses while supporting a prosperous economy.
Thank you again for contacting me, and I hope you will continue to keep me informed of your views on important issues so I can better represent you in Congress.
Sincerely,
A
Kurt Schrader
Member of Congress
P.S. Please contact my office with further questions or concerns by calling (202) 225-5711 or (877) 301-KURT. You can also sign up for my e-newsletter by visiting my website at schrader.house.gov.
KS/SH
Sincerely,
(signed) Kurt Schrader
Member of Congress
P.S. Please contact my office with further questions or concerns by calling (202) 225-5711 or (877) 301-KURT or by sending me a message through my website. You can also sign up for my e-newsletter by visiting my website at schrader.house.gov.
Please do not reply to this email. The mailbox is unattended.
KS/SH
Such spin! 
This is the first response I've had in a long while. Check out his love for Simpson-Bowles.
http://schrader.house.gov/reducing-federal-deficit/simpsonbowlesbudgetamendment.htm
http://schrader.house.gov/reducing-federal-deficit/avertfiscalcliff.htm
Appreciated.
Penny really has gone places, not having to answer any of those questions. Someone, somewhere should have turned to someone who knows her...
An Interview with Tim Anderson on Obama's Commerce Nominee, Penny Pritzker, the Sub-Prime Queen
The Privilege of the Pritzkers
by DENNIS BERNSTEIN
CounterPunch, May 3-5, 2013
EXCERPT...
TA: $38 billion. One publication listed eight casinos, another listed 13, with each license worth a half a million dollars. There is another $5-7 billion in casinos. When you own 13 casinos for 5-7 billion, you are a player in the casino business. That’s just the hotels and casinos. There are many other companies they own such as the second largest chewing tobacco company, which they sold for 3.5 billion dollars. They actually owned the second and third largest chewing tobacco company, but have since off-loaded those for billions of dollars. Many of their assets are not what society considers clean assets, but hey don’t care. As far as money goes, they want it. When it comes to casinos or chewing tobacco companies, they don’t care. Their wealth is almost incalculable, because according to Forbes magazine, they are the only family in America to have off shore tax-free trusts because they were grandfathered in. Their off shore trust can ship money back to their family tax-free. It was grandfathered in because their grandfather got it through Congress – he was smart to see the future and got it done. Congress closed the loophole and grandfathered him in. Forbesmagazine wrote about the Pritzker’s off shore trust, they emphasized that there are over 1000 separate trusts. Many families have two or three different savings accounts to keep track of what money belongs to who, but when you have over 1000 different trusts to handle the family estate it’s very hard to comprehend how much wealth there is and how many businesses they control. A few years ago, Penny sold TransUnion, the largest credit reporting agency in America, but there’s a question about whether she sold it to herself by selling it to various hedge funds which her family has a large interest in. Until she sold it, you could say that Penny Pritzker had more files on every citizen in America than the CIA and FBI combined, because everybody has a credit score and credit report. Penny Pritzker had the credit scores and report on every single citizen in America.
SNIP...
TA: She had TransUnion while she had Superior Bank, so she controlled the credit scores of everybody who was getting a subprime loan. You pay a higher interest on your subprime loan based on your credit score. Whether or not it was ever brokered between the credit bureau and the bank, we don’t know, but we know the same people control both entities.
SNIP...
TA: Superior Bank was acquired back in 1989 as part of the original savings and loan giveaway by M, D and E Wall. As I wrote a in a paper for an economic conference in Denver, Superior Bank was sold to the Pritzkers for 42.5 million dollars. They changed the name from Lion Savings and Loan to Superior Bank after they acquired it. Lion Savings and Loan was sold to the Pritzkers just to put up money for the capital. But as government reports show, they only put up a million dollars cash and pledged their assets as the difference, the capital. That’s not supposed to be done, but they are privileged people so they get privileged deals. After they acquired this for $1 million they also got $640 million in tax credits.
SNIP...
TA: The tax credits were designed so they could use it in any entity they wanted. They didn’t have to use it on what they bought. It could be sold on the open market for value, the credits could be used to file back taxes or warehouse them for future taxes. So for a million dollars, they got 640 million dollars for agreeing to take over Superior Bank, which they then looted for years then gave it back to the government with an enormous loss to the uninsured depositors and the whole subprime industry.
CONTINUED...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/03/the-privilege-of-the-pritzkers/
Thank you for the heads-up, madfloridian. Like they're doing to the USPS, public schools without unions is their aim.
