Ugly Little Details
By mistermix July 15th, 2010
I just can’t get upset about Members of Congress holding fundraisers with financial services company representatives during votes for financial reform legislation. House members who have competitive seats are fundraising all the time—they spend hours every week on the phone calling prospective donors.
I can’t find the exact quote, but Matt Taibbi once said that the surprising thing isn’t that they’re bought off, but that they’re bought off so cheaply. Investments of a few thousand dollars get millions or billions in special pleading.
The idea is not to be upset that they are doing it, but that our system allows it to happen.
Everything follows.
July 15th, 2010 at 7:55 am
A lot of good their bribes did. I know some people in the CDO/investment world who are furious beyond words about the financial reform bill because of how it will destroy the old order of shadow banking/swaps.
July 15th, 2010 at 7:56 am
@Chad S: Boo hoo. Maybe they can now go make an honest living by robbing liquor stores and widows.
July 15th, 2010 at 8:04 am
kthxbai.
July 15th, 2010 at 8:14 am
@Comrade Javamanphil: I have no sympathy for their career choice re: the bill. But for all the complaining about it being “watered down” I have yet to meet a CDO lawyer or someone in the industry who thinks that this bill is some sop to Wall Street(or is “watered down”).
July 15th, 2010 at 8:18 am
mistermix @ top:
That’s always amazed me too. As near as I can figure, the going rate for a Representative or Senator to earmark a contract, or vote for/grant other pecuniary corporate reward, seems to be between .1% and .01%.
.
July 15th, 2010 at 8:23 am
Earlier this week, former Vice President Richard B. Cheney underwent major heart surgery. The ex VP suffers from an aggressive and progressive form of congestive heart failure. Besides fluid build-up, cardiologists discovered 10 other causes for Mr. Cheney’s congestive condition. What were they?
July 15th, 2010 at 8:24 am
@Chad S: Actually, that’s good!
Yep, no reform without campaign finance reform. Otherwise, it’s just waiting for the Kwisatz Haderach.
July 15th, 2010 at 8:27 am
Happy St. Swithin’s Day, everyone! Here’s some Billy Bragg to celebrate.
.
July 15th, 2010 at 8:28 am
Fair.
Elections.
Now.
Act.
July 15th, 2010 at 8:28 am
Just for a change I fired up the Opera browser instead of Firefox with adblocker. Damn, John. The anti-gay ad at http://traditionalvalues.us/mo.....bAodujBVXg is too much, I know you have no control but Jeeze.
July 15th, 2010 at 8:32 am
@WereBear: I get the feeling from them that its the stealth clearinghouses for Swaps that is the outrage among them(the watered down “volker rule” pisses them off also, but boo hoo). They thought that they got that stripped out of the bill in conference, but someone snuck it into the final bill for non-commodity swaps(but commodity swaps have to be declared to investors, which effectively makes it public) without their lobbyists noticing.
July 15th, 2010 at 8:43 am
Why do people think that this sort of fundraising actually has any effect? Do you really think people are so easily bought?
I don’t.
I think ideology plays a part, especially on the far right. But in the middle and even the left? I don’t buy it.
It’s simple class background. Most politicians and big media people come from a upper middle class background, or even straight upper class. At the very least, virtually all politicians are currently at an upper middle class level. And they have certain interests. They want rising property values. They want rising investments. They want low inflation (meaning low wages for the pleabs) Those are truly important things to them. So progressive policy that could impact those things, are things that naturally they would oppose.
No corruption needed.
And because that’s the language they speak, those are the magical “swing voters”. Those are your soccer moms, your NASCAR dads, whatever. That is suburbia. They’re the target audience.
And that’s why things are so fucked up.
July 15th, 2010 at 8:44 am
@JGabriel: They don’t sell themselves that cheaply – you have to take into account congressional salaries and benefits (including lifetime Cadillac health care and pension), the sweetheart investment opportunities they get, and their life-after-Congress cushy lobbying and corporate board seats. If they need only relatively paltry campaign “contributions” in order to gain and keep access to all that, perhaps we should think of corporate contributions as a version of matching funds.
July 15th, 2010 at 8:49 am
@Karmakin:
In the ten years I’ve covered politics, they really don’t…a lot of these guys attended these fundraisers for reasons other than their own industry. Social issues, foriegn policy, etc.
Also many politicians hate fundraising…just hate it. They know the optics look bad, they know it’s not easy to defend. They would much rather not do this stuff.
July 15th, 2010 at 8:58 am
Well, you might not mind, but I’d think that they could at least interrupt the corporate glad-handing during the debate and vote. Just as a minimal sign of respect for the actual voting public. Unreasonable of me, I suppose.
July 15th, 2010 at 9:29 am
@JGabriel: Love that song. Go Billy Bragg – a real, unreconstructed soc1alist folk singer!
July 15th, 2010 at 9:30 am
@Chad S:
I have been reading this elsewhere as well. Everyone thinks the watered-down bill made Wall Street happy. But it didn’t. They now have to find new ways to keep their looting away from the prying eyes of the public and the regulators.
Anything that makes that cas1no house sad is manifestly a good thing in my eyes.
July 15th, 2010 at 9:33 am
The leverage is so great because of campaign finance laws. But the contributions are signals of post-office employment opportunities, as with Daschle. Or Catfood Commissioner Erskine Bowles.
I have always believed that one reason the Blue Dogs are willing to throw their base under the bus is these opportunities.
July 15th, 2010 at 9:36 am
The scandal isn’t what’s illegal; the scandal is what’s legal.
July 15th, 2010 at 9:47 am
@arguingwithsignposts:
I’m reasonably sure that if the bill restricted the number of olives they could have in their martini they’d be complaining. They eat what they kill, after all, and they believe they are entitled to kill anything and everything.
July 15th, 2010 at 10:02 am
OT: the real reason to vote for Sharron Angle:
Angle says campaign to defeat Reid God’s ‘calling’.
July 15th, 2010 at 10:48 am
@JGabriel: Can’t remember whether it was Olbermann or Schultz last week who had a piece on how almost every Republican in the Senate is a multi-millionaire. They get paid alright albeit through labyrinth like route that no one can follow. Plus they get showered in cash as lobbyists once they leave office. See Daschle, Tom.
July 15th, 2010 at 11:29 am
@arguingwithsignposts: I’m sure they’ll find something, but the transparency rules now make it hard to create a bubble as big as OTC swaps were in 2008.
July 15th, 2010 at 11:34 am
@Comrade Javamanphil:
I’m reasonably sure that if Congress enacted a financial reform bill which didn’t require that bankers & investors be provided free martinis at any time delivered upon request by combined teams of Navy SEAL’s and Victoria’s Secret models, it would be like Nazi Germany all over again.
July 15th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
There was a piece in the Texas Observer long ago by a man named Arthur Vance who came to the Texas Legislature as a fairly idealistic liberal. Describing his feelings while taking office he said he wondered what he would do if somebody offered him thousands of dollars for his vote.
Upon leaving office he said in disgust that he was naive. Everybody sold cheap, he said. “A couple of tickets to the Astrodome would do the trick.”
July 15th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
@Chad N Freude:
I’ve always thought that it’s remarkably arrogant of the Sharron Angles of the world to be so positive that God is directing them to do this or that. They totally ignore what the Bible says about humility, probably the selective Bible reading syndrome. They definitely are not into any form of self examination, no questioning if they are giving themselves permission to do exactly what they want to do and using God as their justification.
July 15th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Yes, and also surprising that they aren’t bought off more often, and that they aren’t caught more often.
Show of hands: Anyone here think that when the rubber meets the road in DC, lobbyists and palm greasers don’t have our government by the gonads? Anyone?
To me, this kind of roundup is like the local sheriff showing off the carload of marijuana his boys just brought in. When you see that picture in the paper or on tv, you can be sure that local consumption of marijuana is going up like a rocket.
July 15th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
@Chad S:
Would that it were so.
July 15th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
@Karmakin:
IIRC Nate Silver made a very good case that they are bought. His example was HCR. I’m sure there’s lots of political science publications showing the same thing.
July 15th, 2010 at 3:00 pm
@Chad S:
Doubtful.
July 15th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
@blondie3:
Given the power and responsibility coming with the position, Congressional salaries are way too low.
July 15th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
@arguingwithsignposts:
So? That doesn’t mean anything. If the pampered sociopathic thugs on WS got 99.5% of what they wanted, they’d bitch up a storm.
Won’t make a difference without a much stronger reform. The past looting’s public now, isn’t it? Given the scale of the theft that’s been revealed, if the public understood these things, there’d be mass murder of bankers. And as for the regulators, I don’t think “prying” is a valid description.
July 15th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
@WereBear:
Won’t matter unless you first remove about half the USSC via impeachment first.
July 15th, 2010 at 3:09 pm