The need to update our old, leaking, dangerous & polluting natural gas pipelines is long overdue. Aging infrastructure is costing Massachusetts consumers money and putting our first responders and our climate at risk. Repairing these aging and leaking natural gas pipelines is a win for safety, a win for job creation, a win for consumers who have to pay for this lost gas and a win for the climate. This important legislation passed despite the strong objections of the American Petroleum Institute and other fossil fuel interests, and I will continue to fight to make it law this year. http://bit.ly/Markey-Amdts-Pass-Senate
"The United States of America is a democratic country. Over the past few decades, however, important questions about policy and budgets have been decided overwhelmingly against the interests and preferences of the middle and working classes. When the preferences of the rich and the middle class come into conflict, the rich tend to win.
Matt Grossmann, a political scientist and the director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University, is working on a project to expand upon the work of Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, whose bombshell paper last year revealed the impact of economic inequality on public opinion in the U.S."…
A SOLID piece with a couple of helpful Graphs.
— Sure, lots of people rebut with 'But we all Knew That already!', but there's nothing like credible analysis and evidence to turn "supposition" into "Fact".
— Sure, lots of people rebut with 'But we all Knew That already!', but there's nothing like credible analysis and evidence to turn "supposition" into "Fact".
*
In short, policy is biased toward the rich. Diagnosing how this bias occurs is the key to prescribing remedies. It’s clear that lack of effective mobilization - in terms of voting and other political activities - is at the core of disproportionate representation. The overwhelming power of the donor class further hampers equal representation.
There are many possible solutions. Automatic voter registration would reduce barriers to participation in election. This step is being implemented in Oregon, which has already added 10,000 voters since the beginning of the year. Other states are likely to follow. Stronger unions would be able to push more successfully for policies that benefit the working and middle class. Finally, public financing of elections would create a more diverse pool of donors.
All of these policies are favored by majorities of Americans.
— The problem is that this might not matter.
— The problem is that this might not matter.
On Christmas Eve in 2011, Hillary Clinton and her closest aides celebrated a $29.4 billion sale of over 80 F-15 fighter jets, manufactured by U.S.-based Boeing Corporation, to Saudi Arabia. In a chain of enthusiastic emails, an aide exclaimed that it was "not a bad Christmas present." A year later, at least 2,800 Yemeni civilians have been killed, mostly by airstrikes--and there is no end in sight.
These are the very fighter jets the Saudis have been using to intervene in the internal affairs of Yemen since March 2015.
During her tenure as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton made weapons transfers to the Saudi government a "top priority," according to a new report published in The Intercept. While Clinton's State Department was deeply invested in getting weapons to Saudi Arabia, the Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars in donations from both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the weapons manufacturer Boeing. Christmas presents were being gifted all around.
While the U.S. government continues to provide massive amounts of weapons to Saudi, on February 25 the European Union took the extraordinary step of voting for an EU-wide arms embargo to Saudi Arabia; while non-binding, it is a powerful statement that will put pressure on all European governments."
"The Subcommittee held a critically important hearing yesterday to review what progress the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the self-regulatory Wall Street watchdog, were making to rein in the abuses on Wall Street. Despite the lack of trust the public feels toward Wall Street and the abysmal 14 percent approval rating of Congress (according to the most recent Gallup poll), 73 percent of the Senators on this hearing panel couldn’t be bothered to show up for the hearing."
This One Photo Captures
Why Americans Can’t Win
Against Wall Street
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 4, 2016
There are 15 U.S. Senators who are members of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment that has been investigating the charges that the stock market is rigged by the stock exchanges along with dark pools run by large broker-dealers that are operated as opaque, unregulated quasi stock exchanges, high frequency traders at hedge funds, conflicted payment for order flow, and tricked-up order types – to mention just a few of the ways the public investor is getting fleeced.
The Subcommittee held a critically important hearing yesterday to review what progress the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the self-regulatory Wall Street watchdog, were making to rein in the abuses on Wall Street.
Despite the lack of trust the public feels toward Wall Street and the abysmal 14 percent approval rating of Congress (according to the most recent Gallup poll), 73 percent of the Senators on this hearing panel couldn’t be bothered to show up for the hearing. Outside of the Republican Chair of the hearing, Senator Mike Crapo, not one other Republican out of a total of eight on the Subcommittee attended. Out of the seven Democratic Senators on the panel, three showed up: Senator Mark Warner, the Ranking Member, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Senator Joe Donnelly.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat from New York, whom one might think would have an interest in restoring trust in Wall Street, was noticeably absent. Schumer derives substantial campaign financing sums from Wall Street and what Wall Street wants is business as usual.
Adding to the apathy that prevents any meaningful reform of Wall Street’s serial crimes against the public, major media were no-shows as well. We could not find one major newspaper that covered what transpired in the hearing yesterday. The New York Times gave it one sentence that seriously failed to capture the essence of the hearing. The Times wrote: “A Senate hearing today will examine how the pricing structure of the computer-driven U.S. stock market became so convoluted.”
The wire service, Reuters, did write about the hearing but covered only one of the many topics, the maker-taker model, a fancy name for a rebate kickback scheme to attract order flow at competing exchanges.
Those few Senators that did attend came exceptionally well prepared. Mainstream media should have shown the respect and due diligence to allow the public to hear what these hardworking Senators had to say.
Senator Mark Warner Shows Up Well Prepared for the March 3, 2016 Hearing But Only Two of His Democratic Colleagues Show Up
Senator Warner raised two critical alarm bells, stating:
“Last week, I saw a stunning graphic from RBC Capital Markets that charted 839 different fee schedules that are composed of 3,729 separate fee variables. When one examines these variables in detail, it appears that exchanges are using their ‘fee engineers’ to put together bespoke’pricing terms for one or a small handful of customers in order to attract and retain order flow. Given this incredible complexity, it [is] likely very difficult for market participants to know whether they are getting best execution and the benefit of a ‘fair and orderly’ market.”
(Does this look “fair and orderly” to you?)
Warner also called attention to the inexcusable foot-dragging by the SEC on launching the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) that would allow market regulators to quickly spot market rigging tactics by the Wall Street firms that presently have the SEC outgunned and outsmarted on essentially every technological front. Warner stated:
“…we must have the regulatory tools necessary to conduct adequate market oversight. This means establishing the Consolidated Audit Trail so the SEC can have near real-time insight into the mechanics of the stock market. It is beyond frustrating that, nearly 6 years after the Flash Crash, we still haven’t built the CAT. Both of our witnesses today have a critical role in its approval, so I look forward to hearing their explanations on its timely completion.”
It is now the perceived wisdom that you will never see a Consolidated Audit Trail, or at least one that works capably, on SEC Chair Mary Jo White’s watch. White represented the biggest Wall Street banks prior to coming to the SEC from the law firm Debevoise and Plimpton. White’s husband, John W. White, is a partner at another big Wall Street law firm, Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP.
It is also the perceived wisdom that President Obama took his marching orders from Wall Street in appointing his deeply-conflicted regulators to oversee Wall Street reforms as a thank you for its generous campaign financing. Hillary Clinton’s refusal to say she won’t enshrine the same revolving door if elected President, after receiving tens of millions of dollars from Wall Street, is a major wind beneath the wings of Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign for President. Sanders is an arch opponent of how Wall Street operates.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, As Usual, Buries the Crony Regulators With Her Line of Questioning at the March 3, 2016 Senate Hearing on Stock Market Structure
Always at the top of her game when it comes to Wall Street, Senator Elizabeth Warren made the two witnesses from the SEC and FINRA squirm in their seats with her line of questioning. First, she clarified that FINRA is not a Federal regulator but rather an industry-funded self regulator. Warren cited a recent study by Mark Egan of the University of Minnesota and Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago which demonstrated that stockbrokers (a/k/a financial advisers) with serial records of misconduct are routinely rehired by Wall Street firms, particularly those that cater to unsophisticated investors.
Warren lectured Richard Ketchum, Chairman and CEO of FINRA, telling him he was obviously not getting the bad brokers out of the industry. “They’re still there,” said Warren. “They’re there in big numbers and they’re concentrated in places where they’re most likely to encounter unsophisticated consumers.”
FINRA and its predecessor self-regulator, the NASD, have repeatedly come under fire by the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association (PIABA) for their deeply conflicted private justice system for hearing claims from both employees and customers. Yesterday, Senator Warren alerted her colleagues that in addition to these private hearing panels having a lousy record of not ruling in the claimant’s favor against a Wall Street firm, a new PIABA study found that over $60 million in FINRA arbitration awards to customers were never paid. Ketchum did not offer any reassuring comments on how this was going to be remedied but did note during the hearing that he’s retiring this year — in other words, this can will be kicked down the road along with the Consolidated Audit Trail.
Another thing that sets FINRA apart from a Federal government agency is the eye-popping pay lavished on its regulators. According to a 2013 report in the Bond Buyer, Ketchum made $3.17 million in total compensation in 2011 at FINRA, with base compensation of $979,962. In contrast, in 2013, according to the Bond Buyer, Mary Jo White, as head of the SEC, a Federal agency, was making $165,300.
The other witness yesterday was Stephen Luparello, Director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the SEC. Exactly why Luparello would leave FINRA, where he had worked for 16 years (including his term at its predecessor, the NASD) is curious. According to the same Bond Buyer article, Luparello had made $1.38 million in total compensation at FINRA, with a base of $590,030. FederalPay.org says Luparello was making $200,000 at the SEC in 2014.
Other than not getting the Consolidated Audit Trail system up and running, Luparello has effectively injected the discredited self-regulatory model of FINRA into the SEC. The body that has been set up by the SEC to study how to un-rig Wall Street and restore the public’s confidence is called the Equity Market Structure Advisory Committee. Wall Street trading firms dominate on this Committee with scant meaningful public interest participation.
As Senator Bernie Sanders likes to say, it will take a political revolution to short-circuit Wall Street’s business model of fraud and the campaign financing quid pro quo model – and, we would add, the rigged regulatory structure that enshrines and embellishes the serial looting of the public.
Acronyms sometimes make sense:
Clinton News Network (CNN)
MSNBClinton (MSNBC)
Clinton Blather Society (CBS)
Neo-Con Bullshit Cabal (NBC)
Against Bernie Company (ABC)
MSNBClinton (MSNBC)
Clinton Blather Society (CBS)
Neo-Con Bullshit Cabal (NBC)
Against Bernie Company (ABC)
HOLLY HOBBY LOBBY MOCKERY PAGE.
Trump does not tolerate dissidence at his hate rallies.
Let me try to get this straight...
Please tell me, all of you partisan lily-livered milquetoasts who insist on hedging your bets and would even THINK of giving this pathologically sociopathic woman your serious consideration to ever be the president of the United States for one day, let alone four years…
Please tell me, all of you partisan lily-livered milquetoasts who insist on hedging your bets and would even THINK of giving this pathologically sociopathic woman your serious consideration to ever be the president of the United States for one day, let alone four years…
Are you REALLY saying right now, today, that you could support a serial liar who has once again been caught with her hand in the cookie jar?
Are you TRULY thinking it's okay for our government to be run by an out-and-out THIEF (who has also demonstrated a horrific track record of foreign policy misjudgments), and who would be readily destroyed by any GOP candidate by the time they got done with her after July?
Are you TRULY thinking it's okay for our government to be run by an out-and-out THIEF (who has also demonstrated a horrific track record of foreign policy misjudgments), and who would be readily destroyed by any GOP candidate by the time they got done with her after July?
I guess what I'm trying to understand is -
Have you stooped so low in your OWN ethics that you would even deign to give a wink and a nod to a woman who is the epitome of unethical behavior and who would assuredly LOSE us the presidential election to one of the crazies like Donald Trump come November???
Have you stooped so low in your OWN ethics that you would even deign to give a wink and a nod to a woman who is the epitome of unethical behavior and who would assuredly LOSE us the presidential election to one of the crazies like Donald Trump come November???
Really? You're really saying this? All I can beg of you is to please stop your nonsense thinking before it's too late for the sake of this country, for you and everything you hold dear, and for all of us. Thank you.
Clinton Surrogate David Brock Writes Embarrassing Open Letter to Bernie Sanders
Published on Mar 3, 2016
David Brock, Clinton surrogate and head of multiple Pro-Clinton Super PACs penned an open letter to Bernie Sanders asking him to stop attacking Hillary Clinton.
Why nearly 100,000 people are calling for Bill Clinton’s arrest
Nearly 100,000 people have signed an online petition calling for Bill Clinton’s arrest for violating Massachusetts election law on Super Tuesday by campaigning close to — and even inside — polling places.
The drive was launched by supporters of Bernie Sanders, who accused Bubba of stumping for his wife, Hillary, within 150 feet of a polling location in New Bedford and inside others in Newton and Boston’s West Roxbury neighborhood.
“This is a call for the immediate arrest of President Bill Clinton for clear, knowing and egregious violation of the campaign laws to swing an election in a significant way. It could not be any clearer in the Massachusetts General Laws,” the petition states.
Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin’s website says, “On Election Day, certain activities are prohibited within the polling location and within 150 feet of the polling place,” including the “solicitation of votes for or against, or any other form of promotion or opposition of, any person or political party.”
The Sanders supporters said photos prove the ex-prez violated the law by attending a rally outside a polling place in New Bedford and entering polling stations in the other two communities.
“Although the spokesperson for Bill Clinton denies that he was ever inside a polling place, photos and video show him clearly greeting and talking up election workers inside,” the petition reads.
Galvin, a Democrat, downplayed the controversy.
“He had the right to go into the polling locations, and say ‘Hello’ to workers who were there. The issue is, you can’t go inside and say, ‘Vote for my wife,’ or ‘Vote for Hillary,’ ” Galvin told the Boston Globe.
The Globe reported that’s precisely what Clinton did.
“Pull the lever for Hillary,” he told one voter at the Boston polling place, the paper reported.
In New Bedford, he thanked his wife’s supporters with a bullhorn just outside a polling place.
“Thank you all for participating. I especially thank those of you who are supporting Hillary,” he shouted, the Globe reported.
Petitioners fired back at Galvin’s dismissal of the complaints.
“Bill Clinton does not vote in Massachusetts, and would have no other business in a polling station on election day besides campaigning for his wife,” the petition on Change.org states.
Veronica Wolski of Chicago, who started the petition, slammed the Clintons’ flouting of election laws.
“This malfeasance, on the part of the Clinton campaign, will not go unchallenged,” she said.
Many Sanders supporters posted angry comments on the website.
“I am 100 percent done with the cheating Clintons,” wrote Patty Jane of Ypsilanti, Mich.
“A former president should not be above the law,” added Eric Wimer of New York City.
Hillary Clinton narrowly beat Sanders in Massachusetts on Tuesday, 50 to 49 percent.
What have we become to allow this creep to speak anymore. Now he's talking about the size of his penis. This is outrageous. This man wants to be president. He's disgusting!
Hillary Clinton is by far the worst candidate I've seen in my lifetime. TheThe New York Times did an excellent job of showing how much of a warmonger she is. But this Salon article explains why Tulsi Gabbard resigned her DNC role
to endorse and support It is also tone reason Alan Grayson is supporting Bernie Sanders
to endorse and support It is also tone reason Alan Grayson is supporting Bernie Sanders
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