Dr. Robert Reich at has an excellent piece today (Feb. 5) on the Congressional hypocrisy involved in its subservience to Wall Street. He calls it as it is, bought and paid fors.
Call me old fashioned, but I thought Congress was in charge of passing legislation, not Wall Street.
Dodd left out the most telling detail, of course. Wall Street is where the campaign money is. Dodd of all people knows that. He's been on the receiving end of lots of it over the years.
Wall Street firms and their executives have been uniquely generous to both political parties, emerging recently as one of the largest benefactors of the Democratic Party. Between November 2008 and November 2009, Wall Street firms and executives handed out $42 million to lawmakers, mostly to members of the House and Senate banking committees and House and Senate leaders. During the 2008 elections, Wall Street showered Democratic candidates with well over $88 million and Republicans with over $67 million, putting the Street right up there with the insurance industry as among the nation's largest equal-opportunity donors.
fixed
Firstly, Ray, you cannot reprint copyrighted content in it's entirety. Secondly, please do not write a post asking me to fix a post. You can email me that request but realize these posts are seen by at least 2000 people each day, so when you write a post, it should be for publication and (hopefully) on the level of an article in quality or close to it.
There is also a user guide in the right hand cover plus a FAQ and also an admin forum on how to write posts.
To copy an excerpt from an article one must know how to do copy and paste in addition to the above lessons on how to format a post. Do not post raw links, thank you.
Finally, the middle column has a host of RSS feeds, including Robert Reich's from where this article came from.
I mean frankly this is not that great or an article, we've been saying this for months and months. More Reich is jumping on the outrage me too bandwagon, which is always a good thing in this case, but this isn't new.
The question is more Dodd is retiring so why is he blocking and esp. Shelby now blocking any reforms at all.
Unless Dodd is going to get a nice cosy consulting job after the Senate.
But bottom line is most people know it's Wall Street having corrupted the Senate and that is why all reforms are blocked.
The absurdity of "tea party" vs. "netroots" is the real target of their angst should be those very corporate puppet masters and the corruption at this point.
Thank you for setting me straight....
....about procedures here.
Ray Joiner
bloggin' nomeclature
also don't forget to hit reply when you are replying. (everyone misses that, I know the reply link is too small).
Yes, the problem is this site is heavily cited, read and that is why the quality standards are on maximum high in terms of the posts. I'm sure you can tell the work involved in many of them.
But it's because the site is referenced, well read so the key is to keep the quality up to the highest standards we can type in.
I am working on an upgrade (been working on it forever, keep getting pulled away) and hopefully many of the features will be easier to use but generally, always read the rules, FAQ, user guide on any blog which allows user contributed content.
Comments are way more lax, with the idea for people to use them to have an online conservation, discussion on the topic at hand.