Money Talks

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  • #13789
    sdram
    Participant

    http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/10/politics/policy-riders-spending-bill/index.html?hpt=po_c1

    Washington (CNN) — The Congress that has done virtually nothing for two years is wrapping up 2014 with a bang.

    Dozens of policy provisions are tucked into a 1,603-page bill that will keep the government open through next September. The provisions affect everything from campaign finance laws to financial regulations, marijuana possession and even the government’s purchase of white potatoes.

    The bill, which was negotiated between Democrats and Republicans over several weeks, is expected to get a vote in the House on Thursday — right as Washington faces a deadline to avert another government shutdown.
    Scramble to avoid government shutdown
    We have a deal (or do we?)

    The provisions are notable because House Republican leaders frequently tout a transparent process. But some of the items added at the last minute to this massive funding bill were never discussed in any committee hearing, or voted on as part of any of the nearly dozen spending bills that were rolled into one package to result in the 1,603-page legislation.

    House Speaker John Boehner defended including all these so-called “policy riders” in the spending bill on Wednesday.

    “Understand all these provisions in the bill were worked out in a bi-partisan, bi-cameral fashion or they wouldn’t be in the bill,” Boehner said.

    Here is a quick list of some of the changes:

    Blocking new marijuana legalization bill in Washington, D.C.: Voters in D.C. approved a measure to decriminalize recreational marijuana use last month. But Congress has authority over the city’s finances, so the bill bars the District from using any of its own money or federal funds to regulate the use of pot.

    Wealthy donors allowed to give more to political parties: The bill increases the individual limits that donors can give to national parties to help fund conventions, building funds and legal proceedings, such as recounts. The change would effectively allow rich donors to give ten times more than they can today to support political parties. Republicans who pushed for the change say they are substituting more private money for the taxpayer money that was collected for national political campaign committees, but instead used to fund a pediatric cancer bill that passed earlier this year.

    More wheat bread for school lunches: Republicans wanted to block new nutritional requirements for school lunches under a program championed by First Lady Michelle Obama. But instead of wiping out the rule, Republicans and Democrats agreed to give local schools more flexibility on how they decided to include whole grain items on school menus.

    The sage grouse faces uncertain future: The Fish and Wildlife Service wanted to add the sage grouse – a type of bird found in some western states – to the endangered species list, but Republicans argued that would have a negative economic fallout for energy companies developing resources in those states.

    No more taxpayer money for expensive portraits: Committee chairs and other high ranking government officials in Washington often commission large, often very pricey portraits of themselves to hang in hearing rooms. Under the bill they would need to use private money to pay for any new portraits.

    Old fashioned light bulbs still allowed: The bill blocks new energy efficient standards that would have made incandescent light bulbs obsolete. Consumers had complained about the new requirements.

    White potatoes get top billing: A new provision was added requiring that the Women, Infants and Children program that provides food assistance to low income families include fresh vegetables, and includes an explicit requirement for white potatoes.

    Truckers won’t be required to get more sleep: Safety advocates wanted to require truck drivers to get a full two night’s sleep before beginning their new shift on the road, but the bill blocks that requirement.

    Farmers get a reprieve from some clean water rules: The deal prevents the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing some of its clean water act rules in some agricultural regions.

    Gitmo prisoners can’t come to the United States: The bill bars money for transferring any detainees held at the facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to any prisons in the U.S.

    Banks allowed to use taxpayer money to engage in potentially risky trades: The bill rolls back a provision that was part of financial reforms for Wall Street banks. It reverses a rule that was enacted in 2010 that barred banks from using taxpayer backed funds from trading in derivatives. Democrats argue these often risky trades helped contribute to the financial collapse in 2008.

    Blocks IRS from targeting certain groups: The bill prevents any federal money to be used by the Internal Revenue Service to target any advocacy group based on their ideological leanings. This practice is already not allowed, but Republicans wanted to underline it after internal documents showed that some IRS employees targeted some groups when investigating their tax-exempt status.

    New sexual harassment training for Hill staffers: The measure requires the Chief Administrative Officer, the office that oversees the thousands of aides working on Capitol Hill, to develop an online training program focused on sexual harassment. Earlier this year, Louisiana GOP Rep Vance McAllister was caught kissing a member of his own staff.

    What the bill doesn’t do:

    The bill doesn’t block the president’s executive action on immigration. Conservatives wanted to use the spending bill to strip away money for any agencies tasked with implementing the president’s new policy. But the legislation continues funding for the Department of Homeland Security through the end of February.

    The deal doesn’t roll back any major portions of Obamacare – it allows for continued funding at the current levels. Last fall the GOP’s effort to defund the health care law as part of the spending bill resulted in a government shutdown, a move leaders pledged they didn’t want to repeat this year.

    #13819
    PA Ram
    Participant

    Our government is a joke.

    They don’t represent “the people” anymore–they represent the wealthy. That’s the bottom line. Everything else is just song and dance.

    They continue to tear apart Dodd-Frank which was put in place to help prevent another economic bailout and meltdown. Well–guess what? The casino tables are open and they can play with taxpayer money. Great job, congress. there is no reason to allow this at all–but Jamie Dimon wanted it so Jamie Dimon got it.

    Corporate welfare at its finest.

    And yet–in my Facebook or in emails I’ll still get how us poor taxpayers are on the hook for all the food stamp fraud and how these deadbeats should be tossed aside…maybe even eliminate these social programs. It’s not a drop of water in the river of money that flows to the top but most people will shrug and say–that’s how the system works when it comes to wealth giveaways.

    But some poor bastard on medicaid? Horrible. Spending to fix infrastructure? Why we’d be robbing from our children for such a terrible debt.

    Social security? Just eliminate it or raise the retirement age past death. Too expensive.

    They are all a bunch of jackassess taking care of themselves and the corporations that own them.

    That’s what they do.

    That’s their function.

    • This reply was modified 10 years ago by PA Ram.

    "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. " Philip K. Dick

    #13839
    sdram
    Participant

    I agree PA – almost all of them are basically shameless.

    The SD delegation lambasted Obama and the Democrats the past 8 years for over spending and both bailouts and then the first, second, and third chances they get they pass these turds so the tax payers can potentially go through it again in 6 or 8 years. Then, when it actually happens again they’ll just all blame the other guy. On the other side, Obama should have insisted this be modified or removed. But, in the spirit of “let’s all get along”, their turd is still floating.

    That said, I’m gonna start lobbying my congressional delegation to pick up my losses in Deadwood the next time I decide to go piss money away gambling. The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward right. Maybe I better make a “donation” to them first. I think that’s the prerequisite for something like this.

    #13847
    PA Ram
    Participant

    sdram, you need know nothing else but the fact that the new nominee–Antonio Weiss, is another Wall Street man.

    That’s the game–and they don’t even care anymore who knows it.

    By the way–where is former secretary Timothy Geithner today? Wall Street.

    It’s a revolving door of corruption.

    Few people pay attention or care, really.

    Bill Moyers had an interesting interview with the editor of Harper’s and he asked what can people do? How can an Elizabeth Warren win against so much money for the Clinton’s or other Wall Street servants(my word)? He said the only real way was the Howard Dean model–ordinary people giving a hundred dollars here and there. And both parties pretty much conspired to destroy Dean anyway.

    But the alternative was revolt in the streets or–and this is depressing–acceptance.

    People adjust and accept after awhile. You see it in 3rd world countries where the wealthy have everything. That could happen here–and I’m thinking it probably will. Occupy Wall Street lasted a little while and now it’s pretty much gone. As more and more wealth is stolen people will rise from time to time and then accept and be done with it. They will adjust.

    That’s just the way it is and the road we’re on.

    The Sanders and Warrens of the world have little chance in reality.

    It’s depressing but it’s what I feel like I’m watching.

    No answers, really.

    "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. " Philip K. Dick

    #13851
    sdram
    Participant

    Yes, it’s over but here’s the bit…

    Dodd-Frank Budget Fight Proves Democrats Are a Bunch of Stuffed Suits

    Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/dodd-frank-budget-fight-proves-democrats-are-a-bunch-of-stuffed-suits-20141213#ixzz3LtIgVb3t
    Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

    By Matt Taibbi | December 13, 2014

    Gosh, the Democrats are really pushing hard to save a key portion of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill, aren’t they? Like tigers, or Siamese fighting fish they battle! Thrilling to watch!

    Oh, wait, that’s what they aren’t doing. Actually what we’re watching in the “Cromnibus” budget fight, is a stage-managed surrender that was inevitable pretty much from the moment the ink began to dry on the so-called sweeping reform of Wall Street the Democrats passed years ago.

    The dominant media narrative this past week has been that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, firmly saddled in her high horse, is trying to hold up the passage of the budget over a trifle. In reality, the so-called “Citigroup” provision to kill a rule designed to prevent future bailouts (so named because it was allegedly written by Citigroup lobbyists) is potentially quite an evil and destructive little thing. But the nitpicking counter-spin is already coming hot and heavy.

    Related Elizabeth Warren
    Elizabeth Warren’s Bold Plan to Reduce Student Debt

    “It’s a marginal regulation,” said Patrick Brennan of the National Review, about the Dodd-Frank rule Warren wants to keep. Brennan bro-ishly dismissed “Liz” as an “indefatigable academic” who is “picking a fight that really can’t be said to help or hurt the economy,” a political fight that is “hardly a hill to die on.”

    Republicans like South Carolina Senator Linsey Graham derided Warren’s gambit as an immature squabble and blasted Democrats in the House who followed her line of thinking. “Don’t follow her lead,” he said. “She’s the problem.”

    Making the budget fight a news story not about bailouts, but about the ambitions of Elizabeth Warren, is part of the game. And the Beltway hacks have succeeded there. Media on all sides have described last week’s episode as Warren’s political coming-out party. Former Obama aides sent a letter urging her to run for president, and Fox news said the rebellion showed Warren has the “clout” to “disrupt the best plans of the establishment.”

    The Atlantic saw the budget fight as an episode that secretly thrilled the Republicans, who came away with a powerful new talking point: Warren’s “star is rising,” and she’s pushing the Dems leftward, to a platform that wouldn’t carry a general election.

    “Every leading Democrat,” said RNC spokescreep Sean Spicer, “feels like Elizabeth Warren is looking over their shoulder to go further to the left.”

    All of this is infuriating on multiple levels, but mainly because Warren’s opposition to the Citi provision wasn’t a left-leaning move at all. It was very much a conservative position. Ayn Rand herself, dragged from the grave and lashed to a chair on the floor of the Senate, would have argued the same thing.

    All the Dodd-Frank rule says is that if you’re a federally-insured depository institution – if you’re an FDIC-guaranteed bank, where real people have real bank accounts that are guaranteed by the federal government – you can’t also be gambling with swaps and other dangerous derivative instruments.

    Think of it in terms of a workman’s compensation law. If you’re going to be insured against injury by the state, the state should get to demand that you don’t engage in fire-eating or base-jumping during work hours.

    There’s no logical argument against the provision. The banks only want it because they want to use your bank accounts as a human shield to protect their dangerous gambling activities.

    Thus it was no surprise when JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon started personally calling lawmakers this week to make sure the Citigroup provision passed. Dimon’s bank is the poster child for this rule, since the infamous London Whale episode of a few years ago is exhibit A of what this rule is designed to prevent: a trillion-dollar federally-insured depository bank engaging in tons of unsafe financial sex with risky derivatives, leading to spiraling losses in the billions that imperiled the savings of millions of ordinary people.

    Both parties are moving against their ideological reputations in this fight. On one side, we have “conservatives” in the House and Senate who want to put taxpayers on the hook for massive future welfare payments. We had to have Senate hearings last year after the London Whale episode, which by itself ought to have infuriated conservatives everywhere. After all, why should the government have to get involved if Jamie Dimon feels like losing $6 billion at the blackjack table? Why is that our business?

    Well, we had to have those hearings because the offending gambler, JPM, was and is a company whose bank deposits were federally insured. All Chase has to do is untether its consumer bank from its lunatic hedge fund, as both Warren and genuine conservatives like David Vitter want, and the state wouldn’t have to so much as blink when these rich dweebs rack up big gambling losses.

    Meanwhile, on the other side, we have “liberals” in the White House and in the lame-duck Senate leadership who are nakedly whoring for big business in this affair, unashamedly doing favors for banks like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase that in recent years have racked up tens of billions of dollars in penalties for a smorgasbord of corrupt practices. Establishment Democrats like Harry Reid almost certain to cave and wave through the Citigroup provision, foregoing a filibuster-type standoff.

    Why? As Warren has cannily pointed out, veterans of Citigroup have dominated the Democratic Party establishment for quite a long time now, through figures like current Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and former Clinton Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin.

    Conservatives for welfare, and liberals for big business. It doesn’t make sense unless we’re not really dealing with any divided collection of conservatives or liberals, and are instead talking about one nebulous mass of influence, money and interests. I think of it as a single furiously-money-collecting/favor-churning oligarchical Beltway party, a thing that former Senate staffer and author Jeff Connaughton calls “The Blob.”

    What’s happening here is that The Blob, which includes supposed enemies like Reid and Graham, wants to give donation-factory banks like Citi and Chase a handout. But a coalition of heretics, including the liberal Warren, the genuinely conservative Vitter and (surprisingly to me) the usually party-orthodox Nancy Pelosi is saying no to the naked giveaway.

    Is killing the Citigroup provision really worth the trouble? Is it a “Hill to die on”? Maybe not in itself. But the key here is that a victory on the swaps issue will provide the Beltway hacks with a playbook for killing the rest of the few meaningful things in Dodd-Frank, probably beginning with the similar Volcker Rule, designed to prevent other types of gambling by federally-insured banks. Once they cave on the swaps issue, it won’t be long before the whole bill vanishes, and we can go all the way back to our pre-2008 regulatory Nirvana.

    If the Democrats actually stood for anything other than sounding as progressive as possible without offending their financial backers, then they would do what Republicans always do in these situations: force a shutdown to save their legislation. How many times did Republicans hold the budget hostage to rescue the Bush tax cuts?

    But the Democrats won’t do that here, because they’re not a real party. They’re a marketing phenomenon, a big chunk of oligarchical Blob cleverly sold to voters as the more reasonable and less nakedly corrupt wing of a two-headed political establishment.

    So they’ll punt on this issue in the name of “maturity” or “bipartisanship,” Wall Street will get a nice win, and Hillary Clinton or whoever else is being set up as the Blob candidate on the Democratic side will receive an avalanche of Financial Services donations to stave off Warren (who will begin appearing in the press as an unhinged combination of Lev Trotsky and Spartacus). A neat little piece of business all around. I don’t know whether to applaud or throw up.

    Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/dodd-frank-budget-fight-proves-democrats-are-a-bunch-of-stuffed-suits-20141213#ixzz3LtI5VoSu
    Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

    #13856
    PA Ram
    Participant

    But the Democrats won’t do that here, because they’re not a real party. They’re a marketing phenomenon, a big chunk of oligarchical Blob cleverly sold to voters as the more reasonable and less nakedly corrupt wing of a two-headed political establishment.

    Yep.

    "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. " Philip K. Dick

    #14250
    Mackeyser
    Moderator

    Still not sure how Taibbi hasn’t been hit by a bus…

    Seriously… he cuts to the bone. I’ve yet to read anything that’s just and impeachable piece of garbage. He’s just been right on.

    Guys have been disappeared for a lot less.

    I guess it’s because he’s not technically a whistleblower…

    but man, if somehow he ever gets the megaphone for a minute… he’d better be inside the Popemobile when he starts talkin’…

    sorta like that scene from Green Mile when Andy Dufresne puts on the Aria over the loudspeaker from the Warden’s office. He has to lock himself inside and there’s hell to pay in a minute…but for a minute… glorious truth blankets the inmates in the form of a woman’s song…

    difference is I’m pretty sure Taibbi wouldn’t survive the encounter. That was the movies after all…

    Sports is the crucible of human virtue. The distillate remains are human vice.

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