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Ear to the Ground

Senate Rejects Another Top Candidate for Consumer Panel

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Posted on Dec 8, 2011
Flickr / Matti Mattila

Those dastardly Republicans have done it again. First they blocked President Obama’s original choice, the esteemed Elizabeth Warren, to head up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and now Senate Republicans have shot down another stellar candidate, Richard Cordray.

Cordray’s already part of the agency as its top enforcer; plus, he’s been tough on the foreclosure issue in ways Wall Street-friendly Republicans would not embrace. Fun facts: He also served as Ohio’s attorney general and is a five-time Jeopardy champ!

Thursday, Senate Democrats could muster only 53 of the required 60 votes to send Cordray’s nomination to a straight up-or-down vote. Only one Republican voted in favor of moving the nomination forward.

Senate Republicans say it’s not Cordray’s credentials they contest, but the whole idea of the bureau in the first place. Meanwhile, the Democrats are up for another round.  —KA

The New York Times:

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said his party had made clear for months that it would not approve a leader for the watchdog consumer agency until the law that established it was amended.

Until three changes are made, he said, “We won’t support a nominee for this bureau—regardless of who the president is.”

One of those changes would put a board of directors in charge of overseeing the bureau instead of the director, abolishing the post. Others would subject the agency to the Congressional appropriations process—thereby giving lawmakers more sway over its policies—and give other financial regulatory agencies a check on its rules.

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a Democrat, said that opponents’ “first loyalty is to Wall Street banks.”

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Shenonymous's avatar

By Shenonymous, December 11, 2011 at 12:24 pm Link to this comment

”...but she should avoid getting in small airplanes.”  Aye, but big
airplanes would be a target as well.  I wouldn’t put anything past
the Republican gargoyles.

After Elizabeth Warren, Richard Cordray is without a tinge of doubt
the next best friend of The People who would direct the Bureau that
would hold both the financial industrial complex, the Corporatocrats,
and corrupt Congressmen responsible for the plunder and mutilation
of America’s economy and defrauding the American People.  The
Republicans in Congress are once again goosestepping to the
marching tune of benefactors from the financial world.

The economic atrocities committed by these three social machines
(finance industry, corporations, and Congressmen, such as Newt
Gingrich, David Vitter, Jack Abramahoff (who admitted guilt), and
too numerous others, in the pockets of money predators are escaping
consequences of their corruption.  This is not to ignore that some
Democrat politicians owe fealty to the world of money.  They will
need to be dealt with separately as they occasionally defect from the
true liberal spirit of a government by and for The People.  They too
must be replaced.  For the present moment, though, the topic is the
chronic egregious acts of Republicans against The People. who get
away with their treachery.  But… only because in the final analysis, we
let them.  It is up to us to stop them to get them prosecuted.  Grass
roots is where it starts, from the bottom up, removal of the ulcerous
political mercenaries.  OWS and their advocates are acting on behalf of
those who are cursory in their responsibility or who are otherwise unable
due to some physical disability to act on their own.

It cannot not be brazenly and outrageously clear that the Republican
Party has a master plan to destroy the ethnically and in other ways
diverse middle America, to narrow the gap even more between poor and
rich, where their berth in the 1% is secured.  Starkly clear as it is, those
not in that 1% must muster the energy and wherewithal to remove the
Republicans from their coercive explosive strength.  That means
removing them from the power of political office.

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PatrickHenry's avatar

By PatrickHenry, December 10, 2011 at 11:06 am Link to this comment

The senate dumping on a proponet of the people, say it isn’t so.

The history of the Senate and the 17th amendment and the way it coincided with the Federal reserve act of 1913 is scary and proves to me the collusion of the banks and federal government since that date.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

Warren is popular, an advocate of the people and even diebold can’t prevent her election but she should avoid getting in small airplanes.

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Blueokie's avatar

By Blueokie, December 9, 2011 at 9:57 am Link to this comment

Sandy Berman - Yes it was.  My previous post was a veiled reference to its sabotage into impotence to manufacture crisis and emergency that could only be “solved” by totalitarianism.

By the way, nice post on the Sirota article.  I have friends who are teachers and am beginning to suspect that you are one of “them”.

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prisnersdilema's avatar

By prisnersdilema, December 9, 2011 at 9:16 am Link to this comment

Of course if you ask criminals to vote on whether or not they should go to jail, they will
vote no…..

The Republican party at this point is little more than a gang of organized criminals,
there may be one or two exeptions. They will do anything to abett the crimes of those
that own them.

It I was Elizabeth Warren I would stay out of light planes, and watch her back. They are
capable of anything…

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Shenonymous's avatar

By Shenonymous, December 9, 2011 at 4:23 am Link to this comment

Naturally you regular TD Gargoyles who drag your pig knuckles on
the floor of these threads will say and do anything to keep Congress
in the feculent grasp of the Hoggish Republicans.  Interviewed last
evening Warren is happy as a clam.

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By Marian Griffith, December 9, 2011 at 3:29 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

@Sandie Berman
—-Blueokie..

Weimar Republic was a free society… Hitler despised it and created the 3rd Reich to replace it.—-

Yet the reason why he could take over with relative ease and with hiding from public sight most of his thugs and violence against socialists is because the Weimar Republic was totally incompetent in solving the problems that its citizens felt were the most pressing problems.

The Weimar Republic had to deal with the same economic crash that almost broke the USA and was totally incabaple of solving anything. The country suffered from hyperinflation, was politically torn between opposing factions, with violent radicals on either side battling it out on the street. Communists were still riding high on the Russian communist revolution and were openly aiming for a similar revolution in Germany. The rich and the conservative middle classes were scared and employed Hitler and his cohorts to stop the communists.

Seen in that light there is a remarkable similarity between today’s USA and the Weimar Republic. Diametrically opposed political views that stall all government actions. A conservative faction that is so scared of the threat of the other side making progress that it turns to radical shocktroops. It has not come to fighting in the streets, but if you move the streets of the 1930s to their 21st century equivalent you see on tv the same vicious (if verbal) fights already. And in many respects the needlessly violent way in which the occupy camps/protests were broken up are reminiscent to how the precursor to the SA broke up socialist demonstrations in Weimar’s Germany.

The similarity however does not mean that a move to an American ‘Third Reich’ is inevitable, or even likely. The Tea party lacks a leadership and is too scattered to develop something like that soon. Their hidden leaders and sponsors are not aiming for political prominence, prefering instead to hide behind front men. So far they are failing to find anything appealing that can unify the tea party into a coherent political group (it does not help that the typical tea party member is disinclined towards action unless it is grandstanding with guns and misquoting the constitution). The traditional recruiting ground for activists (disadvantaged young men) is more likely, still, to vote progressive than conservative.

There are two transitions that are dangerous. First is when a lot of soldiers are coming home to an economically destitude country. Unlike the current tea party membership they are used to translate perceived threats into action and may prove to be the recruiting ground for a militant conservative movement.

The other moment when things may turn ugly is if and when the progressive opposition manages to unity behind a movement that is not the democrat party (which is after all safely embedded in Washington and can be counted on to protect the interests of wealth of conservatism).
Such a progressive movement may be seen as an imminent threat to the interests of the 1pct and spur them into more definite action to counter it.

If these two events happen out of sequence or too far apart then it is unlikely that enough momentum is gained to spur further radicalisation. But even if they do happen in the worst possible way it is still more likely that the rich chose to physically separate themselves by creating walled communities and forbidden palaces, while further separating democracy from the actual halls of power.

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By Michael Cavlan RN, December 8, 2011 at 11:50 pm Link to this comment

Robespierre

That is exactly how it happened. Obama threw Elizabeth Warren under the bus. But don’t tell the kiddies. They are still drinking the hopey-changey Kool Aid.

Freakin’ Amazing. What is even funnier is just how many Obama/Dem apologists articles get ink at truthdig.

Not much truthdigging here or indeed speaking truth to power. The only one allowed seems to be Chris Hedges, who is opposed to voting at all apparently.

Sad and transparent.

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Sandy Berman's avatar

By Sandy Berman, December 8, 2011 at 7:01 pm Link to this comment

Blueokie..

Weimar Republic was a free society… Hitler despised it and created the 3rd Reich
to replace it.

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Shenonymous's avatar

By Shenonymous, December 8, 2011 at 6:16 pm Link to this comment

Warren will do more for this country as the Senator from
Massachusetts.  She was getting a lot of Republicans taking their
usual dump on anyone Obama nominates.  So it was better the
Bureau that she created, crafted is the better word, be directed by
a colleague.  But the guillotining by the Republicans that is
happening to them is what was going to happen to Elizabeth Warren. 
Better she did not have to suffer the typical raping Republicans.  As a
Senator, she will become material for the future as a winnable POTUS
candidate.  She will earn her stripes finding out just how Congress
works and be more than ready to deal with the gargoyles.

There is only one thing we can do.  Defeat every Republican in every
election in which they run.

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Blueokie's avatar

By Blueokie, December 8, 2011 at 5:55 pm Link to this comment

Is anyone sure that this is the actual U.S. Senate and not a group of historical re-enactors specializing in the Weimar Republic?

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Robespierre115's avatar

By Robespierre115, December 8, 2011 at 2:18 pm Link to this comment

As if Obama didn’t basically dump Warren first…

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