Wall Street isn't subtle about this one -- according to documents reviewed by the New York Times, the original bill that is being incorporated into the House's spending legislation today was literally written by Citigroup lobbyists, who "redrafted" the legislation, "striking out certain phrases and inserting others."
I know that House and Senate negotiators from both parties have worked long and hard to come to an agreement on the omnibus spending legislation. And Senate leaders deserve great credit for preventing the House from carrying out some of their more aggressive fantasies about dismantling even more pieces of financial reform.
But this provision goes too far. Citigroup is large, and it is powerful. But it is a single, private company. It shouldn't get to hold the entire government hostage -- to threaten a government shutdown -- in order to roll back important protections that keep our economy safe.
This is a democracy, and the American people didn't elect us to stand up for Citigroup. They elected us to stand up for all of the people.We all need to stand and fight this giveaway to the most powerful banks in the country. Join me in calling on Congress to withhold support of this package until this risky giveaway is removed from the legislation.
Thank you for being a part of this,
Elizabeth
Unfortunately, it is now a done deal in the House, and it now falls to the lame duck Senate to protect the country from the ravages of both the sycophant Republicans and the even more compromised president.
If Obama ever did grow a spine, there are many ways he could deal with a threat to shut down the Government, which is now the Republicans' favorite tool to get their way with virtually anything. I wrote about some of the possibilities here: Debt No More! How Obama can defeat Austerity Thugs by Using the Constitution and Debt-Free Money.
But clearly, Obama has no intention of being anything more than a sitting joke of a president, a lame duck in every sense. The Republicans measured him up years ago, and know they can walk all over him, with only the barest of opposition when it comes to judicial appointees and his signature but highly flawed Obamacare legislation (which may yet fall to the ruling of the Supreme Court over insurance subsidies that would not even be necessary if we had Medicare for All instead of this healthcare industry giveaway).
This is a portent of the future, when progressive legislation, past and present (forget about future), will fall in rapid succession, where we will lose our rights to the increasingly obscure and internationalized banker elites from the BIS to conglomerates nominally headquartered in the U.S.
Defeats which in normal times would have been rallying cries for the left - like the systemic defunding of the EPA, and the de facto gutting of the Endangered Species Act, will barely register a mention in the onslaught of bigger civil and human rights losses. Warmaking - the only truly bi-partisan issue both parties agree on - will accelerate, with thinly disguised policy creation by the military-industrial complex, in an endless loop of drone warfare...at least until other countries figure out how to drone-war us back, or the world becomes one big terrorist camp, uncontrollable even by the rabid and cowardly neocon zealots willing to spend any amount to kill people abroad, while merely letting them perish from poverty at home. It's one thing to strike out at weak Middle East regions, but what happens when Russia and China start objecting to destruction of their allies and infrastructure?
A Gresham's dynamic in which bad ethics chase out good has already become the norm, and the bar for acceptability is being lowered so fast it is already subterranean. We're actually debating torture, for crying-out-loud, which those who are tortured actually are doing. Elections barely matter, and are corrupted anyway. Protest has become either marginalized or criminalized, with mass arrests performed as if they were merely a civic favor to protestors, a sort of badge of participation, instead of a sign the establishment is under pressure.
It's going to be a very long and depressing 2 years, and the only bright spot may come as a result of such systematic gutting of American values and policies, that even the Tea Party will unite with Progressives to take back the power from the 1%...maybe. If it's not too late by the next election, and if the elections even work anymore.
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