Drums of Reform

Hear the voice of the people now moving to a different beat. “Reform, damnit! Reform or else!” Bernie Sanders is the man with the cause and Donald Trump is the man with the mood. The exploited natives are restless, and the establishment ignores them at its peril. Here is a shout out to Isaiah J. Poole for his ourfuture.org article, “Whistleblowers Challenge Candidates To Stand Against Wall Street Fraud.” Although he does not put it this way, Mr. Poole draws our attention to what could become a major headache for Hillary Clinton:

“Four people who have been at the center of some of the nation’s biggest Wall Street scandals have come together to send a message to the 2016 presidential candidates: Pledge to stand against Wall Street fraud and corruption – not just with words, but with the kind of actions that Americans have long expected but have yet to see.

The four veterans of battles with banksters – Gary J. Aguirre, William K. Black, Richard M. Bowen III and Michael Winston – on Thursday called on the candidates to not take contributions from financial companies or officers that have been charged with fraud, particularly related to the 2008 financial meltdown. They have also outlined a set of actions that they say will “restore the rule of law” on Wall Street. They have formed a new organization, Bank Whistleblowers United, to move that agenda forward.”

In the announcement of Whistleblowers Group's Initial Proposals Mr. William Black said:

“We [ Gary J. Aguirre, William K. Black, Richard M. Bowen III and Michael Winston] are all from the general field of finance and we are all whistleblowers who are unemployable in finance and financial regulation because we spoke truth to power and committed the one unforgivable sin in finance and in Washington, D.C. – being repeatedly proved correct when the powerful are repeatedly proved wrong.”

The price each of those gentlemen paid for reporting fraud and abuse adds a sense of urgency to their discussion of the fraud and abuse they found, their challenge to Presidential candidates, and their proposed remedies. The truth must not be buried and the abuses and frauds most not go unpunished. As the Whistleblowers point out:

“Not a single one of those elite bankers who led the fraud epidemics has been prosecuted and only one, a woman who was only moderately senior, has been held personally accountable in any meaningful way through a civil suit (made possible by a whistleblower). This is the greatest strategic failure of the DOJ in recent history.
• The SEC has also proven ineffective in holding the elite Wall Street bankers who led these fraud epidemics personally accountable. As with DOJ, one of the fundamental problems that has gotten worse is the “revolving door.” We propose a practical means of reducing that problem.
• Dodd-Frank has not fixed the gaping problems endemic to finance that will cause future epidemics of elite financial fraud and resultant global crises.
• We know how to identify developing fraud epidemics before they hyper-inflate financial bubbles, how to prevent or at least greatly reduce such epidemics, and how to prosecute effectively the elite banksters. Our group includes former regulators who demonstrated each of these abilities. What we need is the political will to make the vital changes in the face of fierce opposition from the elite banksters. That will is sapped by the revolving door.”
  
  
What makes the Whistleblowers announcement so valuable are the remedies the group proposes in its 60 day plan. I urge you to click on Whistleblowers to see the plan, and to join the whistleblowers in asking:


“...each presidential candidate – which portions of the Whistleblowers’ 60-Day plan will you pledge to implement? We hope the candidates will commit to breaking Wall Street’s power over our economy and democracy. The Whistleblowers’ 60-Day plan provides any candidate with the practical steps necessary to make real the twin goals of restoring the rule of law to Wall Street and ending crony capitalism.”


As Mr. Poole points out Bernie Sanders has already refused contributions from Wall Street, whereas Hillary Clinton is still accepting contributions from Wall Street. Being challenged to endorse or reject the recommendations of the Whistleblowers is bound to increase Hillary's headaches, but she is either with us or with the system that permits the fraud and abuse. She cannot have it both ways. I am also urging Bernie to reply to the Whistleblowers! His endorsement of many of those recommendations and the Whistleblowers recommendation of him would be good.

Do not even bother with the Republicans; their candidates are hopeless, including that bloviating bundle of inflated ego called Trump!  Trump will give the world the finger for you, but he will not lend you a hand; well maybe he will if you agree to usurious interest fees.

Supreme Idiocy

The Republican Party is a ship of demagogic fools who have been so successful at selling fear and loathing that the suckers who bought it now fear and loath those very demagogues! The suckers have turned to a new champion, the ultimate huckster, Donald Trump who is selling views of the greatest middle finger the world has ever seen, and his display of that finger is going to make everything all right again. How's Your Lula! You do not even have to pray for it! The Donald has you covered; he has a special affection for that bible gathering dust on a shelf next to the little crackers. He will tell you all of the answers are in that bible. He knows because he has absorbed all of the answers through the same sort of great man osmoses that allows him to ignore those answers whenever he absorbs more convenient truths. He is absolutely fearless. He never worries about being wrong. He can always declare intellectual bankruptcy and foist the consequences of his folly off on some poor, dumb bastards. He will tell you not to worry about that, but do check the retroactive marital status of your parents. It is just business if you get stuck with the consequences of his folly, and it is your own damn fault for not being as good at business as he is. He is the Great Profit, don't you know? Just look at what he owns.

I would like to say “meanwhile back on planet earth.” But unfortunately Trump and the suckers supporting his candidacy are on planet earth, at least physically, and the base Republicans have made it impossible for our earth bound government to function. That is what happens when you sell the absurd notion that government is the source of all the problems. It becomes a self fulfilling prophesy, and once the fools have bought that notion “except for me” ain't going to cut it. Like it or not, anyone who gets elected to a public office is a part of the government even when that person refuses to govern. It is little wonder that the Republican power brokers are now uttering a collective and heart felt, “Oh, Shit!” Even they who have been so blinded by greed eventually realize it is a mistake to give the keys to your house to the vandals you have been encouraging to destroy things. That realization usually comes after the vandals have smashed almost everything in your house that worked. One of the things smashed by the base Republican vandals is anything that creates even an appearance of cooperation with President Obama on anything. And those nihilistic lunatics do not care how much harm that obstruction does to the country or to their own party because they are not bright enough to think about it.

The evidence is already beginning to indicate that the refusal of Republican Senators to even hold hearings to vet anyone President Obama nominates to replace Scalia on the Supreme Court is going to bite the Republicans in the ass! In her article in Daily Kos “Endangered Republican Senators Face Added Danger From Supreme Court Obstruction” Laura Clawson indicates that Kelly Ayotte, R. New Hampshire, and Ron Johnson, R. Wisconsin, have good reason to fear what the Republican obstruction is doing to their chances for re-election. Ms. Clawson points to a New Poll showing that:

“-Strong majorities of voters in both states think that the vacant seat on the Supreme Court should be filled this year. It’s a 62/35 spread in favor of doing so in Wisconsin, and 59/36 in New Hampshire. One thing that really stands out in both states is what a strong mandate there is from independents for filling the seat- it’s 67/30 in Wisconsin and 60/33 in New Hampshire. Those are the voters who will end up determining whether Johnson and Ayotte get reelected this fall, and they disagree with them on this issue. [...]”

All Republican Senators from purple states are going to be facing the same problem that Senators Ayotte and Johnson are facing, and the Democrats have not even started hitting them with it yet. But wait! It gets even better! Another gem posted on Daily Kos is “The Scotus Time Bomb That The GOP Are Freaked Out About,” by Nailbender:

“It’s been under the radar for the most part, but an upcoming docudrama on HBO is going to blow the lid off the Capitol Dome this coming Spring, unintentionally timed, as it is for release in mid April, just as the Senate will be forced to confront what was only a few weeks ago unthinkable: another Obama Supreme Court nomination as the current, already-off-the-charts election season is fully underway.

The film is “Confirmation,” a dramatic retelling of the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by then-Senator Joe Biden.”

More specifically the subject of the film is Anita Hill's testimony about the sexual harassment she suffered at the hands of Clarence Thomas, and his appointment to the Supreme Court in spite of her testimony. Add this scandal to the numerous breaches of judicial ethics by Injustice Thomas and his role in so many outrageous and unpopular Supreme Court decisions and what you have is a giant shit bomb about to explode in the face of the demented elephant! This is exacerbated by the fact the Justice Scalia was also guilty of breaches of judicial ethics and played a major role in the worst decisions by the worst Supreme Court since the Civil War! This Documentary will make the Robert's Court as well as the Republican Party's effort to prevent filling the vacancy on that court serious issues in the upcoming general elections! If the voters display an IQ of one hundred or above during the general elections future historians will undoubtedly call the current Republican strategy “supreme idiocy!”