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Ha-Joon Chang
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Flickr / World Economic Forum (CC-BY-SA)
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Want to get a quick read on another American’s politics? Say the words Barney Frank. The Massachusetts congressman has become a distinctive presence in the House of Representatives over the last 32 years, becoming a lightning rod for condemnation and celebration, depending on where you sit. On Monday ... (more) Updated
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AP / Mark Lennihan
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By Robert Scheer — Face it. We live in two nations, sharply divided by an enormous economic chasm between the super-rich and everyone else. This should be an obvious fact of life for most Americans.
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dodd.senate.gov
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Plans to create an independent agency to provide consumer financial protection have probably been scrapped. According to a leaked document, Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd is proposing that the protection office be within the Treasury Department instead of being independent, a clear capitulation to the Republicans.
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Congressional fundraising numbers are in, and the Political Wire has teased out some interesting performances. Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut managed to raise just 0.7 percent of his funds from contributors in his own state—all five of them. Roland Burris, the man appointed by Rod Blagojevich to replace Barack Obama in the Senate, pulled in a whopping $845. He’s $111,032 in debt.
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Flickr / respres
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After pumping hundreds of billions into the banking system with not much to show for it, Fed chief Ben Bernanke says he will try to reduce the number of foreclosures. As he put it to Rep. Barney Frank: “The goal of the policy is to avoid preventable foreclosures on residential mortgage assets that are held, owned or controlled by a Federal Reserve Bank.”
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Flickr / Franco Folini
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As congressional leaders, the White House and President-elect Obama came to terms with a $15-billion loan package for the auto industry, Sen. Chris Dodd suggested Sunday that not all executives should stick around to spend that money. GM CEO Rick Wagoner “has to move on,” the senator declared on “Face the Nation.”
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Collage: commons.wikimedia.org / senate.gov
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“This meeting is an attempt to move the process forward,” President Bush declared Thursday, but it seems the White House gathering of congressional leaders and presidential candidates might have achieved the opposite effect. Lawmakers had agreed to a bailout outline earlier in the day, but the afternoon’s “political theater,” as Christopher Dodd put it, has raised doubts about the deal.
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White House / Joyce N. Boghosian
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How’s this for not mincing words? “I believe if the credit markets are not functioning, that jobs will be lost, that our credit rate will rise, more houses will be foreclosed upon, GDP will contract, that the economy will just not be able to recover in a normal, healthy way.” So sayeth Ben Bernanke on Tuesday, in a dire warning to Congress.
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AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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It seems that some key officials involved in the negotiations with the Bush administration over the terms of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s $700-billion bailout proposal for Wall Street aren’t about to make a deal unless it includes specific plans for congressional oversight and help for homeowners on the brink of foreclosure.
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AP photo / Lauren Victoria Burke
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Just when it seemed they wouldn’t have enough votes to pass a key Medicare bill, Democratic senators staged a dramatic coup by secretly whisking Sen. Edward Kennedy into the Capitol on Wednesday to cast his vote and make his first congressional appearance since he was diagnosed with brain cancer in May.
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nationalsecurity.org
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This might be a moment when Democratic supporters wonder what all the “changing of the guard” fuss was about when Dems took control of Congress in 2006: On Tuesday, the Senate effectively voted in favor of granting telecommunication companies retroactive immunity for their cooperation in the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program.
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American presidential contenders from both sides of the aisle sounded off on Thursday about the suicide attack that claimed the life of erstwhile Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto as she was campaigning for a comeback following years of self-imposed exile from her homeland.
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AP photo / Charlie Niebergall
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By Bill Boyarsky — In these final days before the Iowa caucuses, John Edwards’ chance for the presidency comes down to people like Jim Clifford, trudging up an icy driveway to persuade Leo Oswald, a shipping clerk at the Georgia Pacific plant in Dubuque, to turn out and support Edwards.
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Sen. Chris Dodd just put his money where his mouth has been in the presidential campaign, filibustering a nasty bit of legislation the Senate tried to push through before the Christmas break. Here he tells MSNBC why giving retroactive immunity to the telecom companies for spying on Americans is a bad thing.
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hoinews.com
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Sen. Chris Dodd is preparing to take to the Senate floor with a filibuster to thwart the legislative advancement of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act if it doesn’t include his proposed amendment, co-sponsored with Sen. Russ Feingold, that would prevent the Bush administration from retroactively letting big telecom companies off the hook for allowing the government to conduct warrantless surveillance on their networks.
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Images: senate.gov
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Potential White House suitors Chris Dodd, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Evan Bayh all refused to join Sens. Kerry and Feingold in demanding a timetable for pullout of allied troops from Iraq.
Sens. McCain and Brownback, however, want the troops to stay as long as necessary.
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