Author Archives: cassandra_m

About cassandra_m

"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas." -Shirley Chisholm

Weakening Dodd-Frank — John Carney Edition

According to this Saturday’s NJ, John Carney is lending some bi-partisan credibility to one of (there’s a package of bills out there trying to weaken an already weak legislation) the bills meant to loosen restrictions on banks who are trading in derivatives from their foreign operations:

Under Dodd-Frank, U.S. and foreign firms must comply with new rules affecting derivatives known as “swaps” in their dealings with U.S. customers.

Guidance from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, scheduled to take effect in July, would require that foreign branches and subsidiaries of U.S. financial firms also submit information to U.S. regulators on any foreign swaps transactions.

The commission would defer to a host country’s rules in some instances, on a case-by-case basis.

The financial industry is fighting the swaps rule, saying it could force them to comply with redundant sets of foreign and domestic regulations and would deter foreign firms from dealing with U.S.-based firms.

“They’re concerned they could get pulled into U.S. regulations and they’re inclined not to trade with those U.S.-registered firms,” said Kenneth Bentsen, head of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. “The U.S. firms are concerned that they could be at a distinct disadvantage.”

Notice anything here?  It is the US regulations that might be redundant and the problem.  Not the multiple foreign sets of trading rules that already exist that these firms are living with.  Dodd-Frank already provides for living with foreign rules that are truly comparable to the US ones:

The proposed Dodd-Frank rule on international swaps already says that countries with truly comparable regulations are exempt from US regs. This bill weakens that by presuming that international rules are comparable and making it hard for the SEC and CFTC to decide otherwise.

The NJ makes that point too. But Carney says in the Press Release sent out by Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) back in March (couldn’t find a press release from Carney on his site about this, though):

“For the last two years, I’ve been working with my colleagues to make the financial system stronger and help our economy recover and grow,” said Carney. “As we work to implement the provisions of Dodd-Frank, Congress and regulators must ensure that we’re protecting American consumers, ending future bailouts, and maintaining American competitiveness in an increasingly global economy. This legislation will give U.S. companies the certainty they need to compete overseas, while maintaining important provisions from Dodd-Frank that will increase transparency in the U.S. derivatives market.”

Somehow this weakening is supposed to be good for everybody and is one of the more insulting examples of regulatory talking points. If this bill passes, banks do not have to live with the strongest of the derivative regulations — the ones in Dodd-Frank — if they are doing business overseas. Weakening this provision makes it easier for these banks to misbehave in other markets, meaning that taxpayers are at greater risk from TBTF — not less.

Dodd-Frank is already much too imperfect a solution to trying to avoid another crash. And John Carney coming down on the side of the banks instead of taxpayers is all to a familiar scene. What’s especially tough about this is that Carney can be for cuts in Social Security while he is placing Social Security at further risk with letting banks get away with more foolishness. If you’re willing to let the banks play Russian Roulette with taxpayer funds, Rep. Carney, why not support getting at least Social Security funds out of harms way? At least *that* would represent genuinely centrist policy — not the craven calculation here that responding to the needs of banks is more important than the needs of the people you represent.

So far, President Obama, the Treasury Department and Elizabeth Warren are opposed to the complete set of these bills that are meant to weaken Dodd-Frank. Unfortunately, since these are bank bills and the banks have bought a very great many legislators, these will likely show up in the Senate at some point.

Sunday Open Thread [5.19.13]

BREAKING: I didn’t win the Powerball yesterday!

In the evolving story of the “doctored” emails that ABC’s Jon Karl breathlessly injected into the Benghazi stupidity, it looks as though Karl has some right-wing bias issues. He’s not as bad as James O’Keefe, but one wonders where this man’s editors were.

In the same vein, Jay Rosen has written in some detail on how Jon Karl got played by his confidential source, and now he’s made ABC a problem too:

10. When a confidential source burns a reporter, a reporter is within his rights to burn–that is, “out”–that source. But it almost never happens because reporters are concerned that potential sources will take it as a sign that the reporter cannot be trusted to keep their names secret. That’s bad enough. But this is worse. Karl had a chance to limit the damage to ABC News from his faulty reporting when he first responded to Jake Tapper’s report. He blew that. Inexplicably, an ABC News spokesperson then doubled down on Karl’s original reporting: strike two. They had a chance to recover by asking Karl to explain how he got misled on This Week. They blew that when they chickened out and asked Jeff Zeleny to appear instead. #

Burning a source for setting you up would send a message to sources that you’d better be on the up and up, I would think. I don’t know how confidentiality of sources got to be more important than your sources not playing you.

The Guardian takes a good look at the first of America’s climate refugees. Newtok, Alaska is in the Western part of Alaska and is being destroyed by erosion and flooding. The town is rapidly sinking and Corps of Engineers thinks the town will be underwater in 4 years. This is the future of our coasts — perhaps not as fast or drastic as the disappearance of Newtok — but rising water will have some impacts. And even if you aren’t living right at the coast — you’ll be paying for whatever solutions there are to move/harden coastal areas.

And the NJ covers the latest adventures in family values by the local GOP — the lawsuit charging Vance Phillips with sexual assault.

What interests you today?

Saturday Open Thread [5.18.13]

Usually, you can tell when the GOP has reached its overreach point on the scandal machine when they start screaming about something dumber than dirt. In this instance, they are apparently unhappy that a U.S. Marine held an umbrella over President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan as it began to rain over the press conference they had earlier this week. Something about violating the U.S Marine protocol about not carrying umbrellas. Which I’m sure has nothing to do with doing what your Commander-In-Chief asks you to do. And, there’s this:

Before it’s all done, they’ll be blaming Obama for the Global Warming they don’t “believe” in. Of course, we have the reminder why someone holding the President’s umbrella might be a good idea:

A good visual metaphor for the Bush years, I’m thinking.

What interests you today?

QOTD — Star Trek Into Darkness

So will you see it this weekend? Or will you wait until the crazy crowds die down? Or are you a Star Trek hater? Tell us in the comments.

As for me, I’ll definitely see it, but certainly not this weekend. I hate blockbuster movie crowds. But I am psyched to see this movie.

The Real IRS Scandal

Michael Hiltzik at the LA Times has written what I think is the definitive piece on the IRS problems — making the case that the real scandal in all of this is that the IRS isn’t functional enough to have stopped the bastardizing of the C(4) organizations in the first place. As usual, you have to go read the whole thing:

Here are the genuine scandals in this affair: Political organizations are being allowed to masquerade as charities to avoid taxes and keep their donors secret, and the IRS has allowed them to do this for years.

The bottom line first: The IRS hasn’t done nearly enough over the years to rein in the subversion of the tax law by political groups claiming a tax exemption that is not legally permitted for campaign activity. Nor has it enforced rules requiring that donors to those groups pay gift tax on their donations.

Our lunatic campaign finance system is what turned the typical C4 from a volunteer fire department into a conduit of anonymous political cash. Big donors were given the green light to spend freely on elections by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. That wasn’t good enough for some; they wanted to distribute their largess secretly.

It’s about time the IRS subjected all of these outfits to scrutiny. The agency’s inaction has served the purposes of donors and political organizations on both sides of the aisle, and contributed to the explosive infection of the electoral process by big money from individuals and corporations.

Nor is Congress innocent. The lawmakers have dodged their responsibility to make the rules crystal clear. On the rare occasions when the IRS has tried gingerly to impose regulatory order, members of Congress have forced the agency to back off. There should be a rule in Washington that if you give regulators deliberately vague guidelines, you’re not allowed to protest when they try to figure out where the lines are.

Tuesday Open Thread [5.14.13]

SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS TODAY! Polls are open 10 – 8. Please try to get to your polling place and vote today. Feel free to advocate for candidates in the comments of this thread. For more info:
Red Clay
Christina
Brandywine
Appoquinimink

Are you kidding me? The NYPost reports this crazy bit of business:

Some wealthy Manhattan moms have figured out a way to cut the long lines at Disney World — by hiring disabled people to pose as family members so they and their kids can jump to the front, The Post has learned.

Seriously, people, the lines are what you pay for. It is one of the biggest reasons why I don’t go to amusement parks.

Will Harry Reid invoke the “nuclear option” to rein in the obstructionist GOP? The Hill reports that it is back on the table and may have more Democratic support this time.

“Leader Reid over the last two weeks has talked about this and many other Democrats like Sen. Sanders who have been advocates for reforming the Senate rules,” said Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, which strongly supports reform.
Cohen said he does not expect Reid to act before the beginning of July, when the Senate is likely to be finished debating comprehensive immigration reform legislation.
“I think the frustration is mounting among members [of the Senate],” said Jamal Raad, a spokesman for Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). “If we continue to see the obstruction we’re seeing on nominees, we may have to address the rules of the Senate again.”

I’m not getting my hopes up, but it is plenty stupid to let the GOP continue to obstruct because you want the opportunity to obstruct yourself. Figure out a better way to work, Senate, that makes the business of governing a priority and not feeding Fox News.

The “War on Terror” Surveillance State Hits Journalists

Yesterday, the AP disclosed that the DOJ obtained lists of “incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery.” Apparently this is in the service of an investigation of a leak — one that revealed an Al-Queda affiliate plot to blow up an airliner on the anniversary of the killing of Bin Laden. Except that it wasn’t a real plot –it was one cooked up by a CIA plant to try to discover the elements of this affiliate. The Obama Administration has been pursuing this leak — they seem to pursue them all — but there is a little extra impetus in this one:

In the months since those revelations, the Justice Department pushed hard to uncover the source of the leak, driven in part by demands from Republican lawmakers it had endangered national security. The DOJ’s campaign was heavily criticized by members of the media, who warned that it would have a chilling effect on the source-reporter relationship, and by civil liberties groups, who viewed it as an infringement on First Amendment rights.

The DOJ isn’t talking about why it got that subpeona for these records and that is important to know. Which means that I have no idea if the DOJ is using provisions of the overly broad Patriot Act to get to the APs info. But I do know that pretty much all of the politicians and pundits who are rending their garments over this today have been supporters of not just the Patriot Act, but much of the expansion of the surveillance state that makes checking in on what US citizens are doing incredibly easy. And that includes the Editorial Boards of many of the news organizations who are howling today.

So I guess all of this surveillance was AOK as long as you couldn’t imagine that you’d ever be a target of it. The government should not have all of the advantages of surveilling its citizens. I don’t care what the danger is. But today journalists found out that they are subject to the same surveillance that the rest of us are subject to. They weren’t quite so upset about this when all of this was put in place, but perhaps now that they are clear targets of the surveillance state, perhaps some changes will finally be made.

Of course, there is more info to be had on this, so I may change my mind. But for now, while I’m mad at the DOJ for this, I’m way more angry that I’m as mad at the Patriot Act police state as when it was implemented and everyone expected me to believe the BS of “if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you won’t care about what the government knows about you”. And I’m mad that the now targeted media repeated this BS rather then report on what all of this surveillance meant to the rest of us who were targets of it.

Monday Open Thread [5.13.13]

On Friday afternoon, Marcos at dKos posted up a great analysis of how the new gun safety groups — Mayor Bloomberg’s and the one headed up by Gabby Giffords — are changing the state of play over gun safety legislation. Kos’ piece focuses entirely on the money in the game, not on any of the organizing that might be done by either group, but if Bloomberg can keep this up, I’m hopeful:

The Michael Bloomberg-backed gun control group is spending $500,000 to attack Ayotte’s vote against expanded background checks on Boston TV and another $150,000 on WMUR in Manchester, N.H. Ayotte has emerged as a top target for gun control groups after she declined to support expanded background checks. It comes on the heels of a $25,000 ad buy in defense of Ayotte by the National Rifle Association.

And while we live through the IRS giving tea-party groups extra scrutiny, Balloon Juice reminds us of Bush-era genuine targeting of liberal groups by the IRS put together by David Waldman:

And I remember President Obama’s then church being investigated by the IRS when he was running for President in 2008. Anyone remember when the wingnuts were upset about this? Right, I thought so. Personally, I think that the IRS should be looking pretty closely at all 501(c)4s. All of them.

Lots of amendments are being filed to attach to the Immigration Bill, but have you heard about the “Downton Abbey Amendment”? This one is being offered by Rep. Mike Lee (R-UT) in order to:

exempt “cooks, waiters, butlers, housekeepers, governessess, maids, valets, baby sitters, janitors, laundresses, furnacemen, caretakers, handymen, gardeners, footmen, grooms, and chauffeurs of automobiles for family use” from E-Verify

.

Right? You need to check potential employees in E-Verify if you are hiring a busboy in your restaurant, but not if you are hiring a housekeeper for your manse.

What interests you today?

Mother’s Day Open Thread [5.12.13]

Happy Mother’s Day! Hope you are lavishing attention and gifts on your Mom today. The adorable Kid President has a message to all of the Moms out there (not the least of which is that the secret to changing the world is Moms):

Then there’s the Mother’s Day Wish List posted by one of my friends with a couple of little ones:

The Rolling Stone has a long piece on Vice President Biden by Douglas Brinkley. Brinkley thinks that Our Joe is running for Preidsent in 2016:

My takeaway from my one-hour White House interview with Joe Biden is that he must be considering a presidential run. There will be too much Obama-era unfinished business – implementing the Affordable Care Act, fighting for climate-change initiatives, for example – for Biden to throw in the towel. His strengths as a candidate are his blue-collar persona, family values, lifetime support of labor unions and farmers, foreign-policy expertise and stouthearted belief that the Obama administration’s record of accomplishment – from the economic recovery to the killing of Osama bin Laden – has been historic. With Air Force Two at his disposal and his two superbright sons, Hunter and Beau, probably working as his chief advisers, Biden can give Hillary Clinton a run for her money. Although she will have an unquestioned advantage among women, it’s not inconceivable to think that labor unions, environmentalists, African-Americans, LGBT voters and small-business owners will prefer the hypercaffeinated, hard-charging vice president. Like Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a presumed Republican candidate, Biden has learned to turn the sound-bite culture on its head by speaking from the gut. Though he’s been a major political player since the Nixon years, Biden has pulled off the trick of not seeming like politics-as-usual. It could be a mistake to underestimate his populist appeal. And it’s hard to imagine that this highly ambitious man will choose not to pursue the office he’s wanted all his life.

What interests you today?

Saturday Open Thread [5.11.13]

Today’s NJ has a piece by Adam Taylor explaining the stakes in the upcoming meeting regarding rezoning several areas of the Beaver Valley holdings of the Woodlawn Trustees. I’ve seen alot of Facebook energy on this, but this is the first I’ve seen the issues spelled out.

In all, the plans call for 200,000 square feet of commercial space that would be housed in several buildings and residential developments with a total of 432 houses and townhomes, Green said.

The commercial development would be called Concord Commons, an age-restricted community would be called The Mews at Concord and the other residential development would be called The Preserve at Concord.

Nothing about this seems like conservation. And conservation is about more than preserving recreational options. And certainly this is one more opportunity to increase traffic and congestion on roads that were not built for their current capacity.

These ladies are not letting Swarthmore off of the hook for dealing with sexual harassment. Mothers of daughters — this Mother’s Day weekend, please show this to your kids and tell them it is OK to raise hell when you are mistreated. And if they need any help here, I’m always in for raising hell. Just call me.

The new Baz Luhrmann movie — an adaptation of The Great Gatsby — opened yesterday to mostly not-so-good reviews. Has anyone seen it? One thing to check out is this hysterical book report on The Great Gatsby by someone who only saw the movie. “Because of the shirts”, FTW.

What interests you today?