Print this post.Dodd Frank Financial Reform Legislation– Watered Down, Diluted, Loaded with Loopholes-
The bill is another sham reform, a gift to the finance industry, just like the health care reform bill was a gift to insurers, hospitals and big pharma. I assure you that built into this new “reform bill” will be new, expanded protections and extensions of privileges for finance companies.
By Rob Kall June 27, 2010 [print_link]
We’ve been stabbed in the back again.
We’re screwed again. Obama and the democratic congress did it again– created legislation that is labeled reform, but is so diluted it is worthless and won’t prevent another financial meltdown.
On Monday, the mainstream media will congratulate Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank and Barack Obama for passing landmark financial reform legislation.
But the real truth of how effective the legislation is was shown by investors, who bid up stocks three percent on friday, celebrating the financial industry’s escape from serious regulation. We the people of the US lost.
The Wall Street Journal expects that the legislation will be called the Dodd Frank bill.
Good!! Put their names on the bill. Make it clear who created the better-than-nothing, highly diluted, watered down, full of loopholes legislation. PHOTO: Chris Dodd (left), one of the main “sheperds” for this phoney financial reform.).
Dodd and Frank are sellouts who betrayed US consumers, betrayed the majority of their own constituents.
I spent at least an hour yesterday, reading article after article in the Wall Street Journal that breathed sighs of relief that the legislation was not as bad as the financial industry feared. The tough reforms– Volcker, Lincoln– were all gutted and watered down, with loopholes added.
There’s only one conclusion. The bill is another sham reform, a gift to the finance industry, just like the health care reform bill was a gift to insurers, hospitals and big pharma. I assure you that built into this new “reform bill” will be new, expanded protections and extensions of privileges for finance companies. There may be some small changes that could have been passed in a far less extensive bill– some minor tweaks– but this bill is no great achievement.
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The bill is another chimera of real change, guided by the faux change president, Barack Obama.
We now know that Obama is a staunch defender of big corporations, of lobbyist interests– not of consumers, not of the people who worked so hard, with such hope and faith to elect him.
Personally, I’m going to do all I can to denounce as many of the perpetrators of the Finance and health reform legislation as I can.
I’m going to work to make sure that Obama is a one term president.
We’ll be seeing energy legislation soon. We can be certain it will be weak, diluted, watered down, with loads of loopholes.
Legislation for Unions? expect the same trademark Obama/Democratic congress trademark profile– diluted, watered down, loaded with loopholes.
Improving regulation of Oil drilling? Expect the same.
Obama is a failure as a leader– his response to the Gulf oil disaster demonstrated this. PHOTO: The overrated and unreliable liberal Barney Frank. That besides being an insufferable blabbermouth..
Obama has betrayed the tens of millions who voted for him. His sell-outs in favor of the biggest industries have become routine and predictable.
The Democratic congress does more of the same. They use good cop/bad cop games to pretend that there are some good legislators, but the way the progressive caucus folded in the face of pressure from Obama showed us that we the people are not represented in congress. We the people do not have anyone fighting for us.
When democracy fails, when it is sabotaged by a supreme court that is the most aggressive at changing the rules [in favor of the rich] in recent history, when elected officials are owned and operated by lobbyists and big corporations, it is time for a revolution.
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The tea partiers (don’t call them tea-baggers– they’re fighting back just as progressives should be doing.) are on the right track. It is time for progressives to stand up resolutely and say no more. Dodd read the writing on the wall and realized he’d sold out his constituents so badly they wouldn’t re-elect him again. Barney Frank should receive the same treatment from the constituents he’s stabbed in the back and betrayed.
A good place to start is with the the disaster in Afghanistan.
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The war there is immoral and insane. It is bleeding America dry finanancially. I’m telling my congressman that I won’t vote for him if he supports any more funding legislation that does not include a firm withdrawal schedule.
We have an emergency here in the US, in the Gulf, that requires all of our emergency resources. We can no longer afford an endless war. We can no longer afford a congress or White House that have written off the interests of the American middle class.
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It is time for more action than any seen since the sixties. It is time for us to rise up and speak out. It is time for us to throw out ALL the legislators who have sold us out. The tea partiers are going for purer ideological candidates. We on the left need to do the same. We need to stop supporting bluedogs and even “progressives” who fold when it really matters. It is time. We are facing a world that I don’t want my children to live in.
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Author’s Bio
Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and site architect of OpEdNews.com, Host of the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show (WNJC 1360 AM), and President of Futurehealth, Inc.
2 comments
Yes, progressives and the true left should absolutely rise up against the Dems. We should have started this process long ago, so that we could have hopefully built up at least the start of an alternative slate of candidates by 2010. Now pretty much all we can do is abstain – and the election will undoubtedly veer from tweedledee to tweedledum yet again, or not. As the recent election in Colombia shows, when most of the population has given up on elections and only the elites vote to decide which elitist gets to rule, that will be considered as a model for all nations and community to follow – the perfect oligarchy, where the majority have lost hope and the minority live a pig’s life.
But if we progressives and real lefties are serious about challenging the stranglehold of the Fascists and Fauxgressives, one place we can start is by agreeing to stop calling Obama’s reforms “diluted” and “watered down”. Yes, whatever may seem good in the legislation is watered down, but the core of the legislation is invariably absolutely radical and earthshaking. THESE ARE RADICAL CORPORATIST REFORMS, NOT DILUTED PROGRESSIVE REFORMS.
As I understand it, one of the key provisions of the Financial Reform basically puts pro-consumer watchdogging in the purview of the Fed. This is a RADICAL reform, which establishes the Fox firmly as overlord of the Henhouse. It’s radical and incredibly, monumentally perverse. And by now, we should see the pattern. When we call these reforms ‘diluted’ we make it harder for people to see the truth, which is that they are radical reforms, historic, and terribly perverse.
Rob Kall is the perfect example of a ‘political commentator’ who simply doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. Who is naïve and so short sighted he can’t see the end of his own nose…a dupe of the dialectical right/left paradigm.
The real problem with he and his ilk is they keep falling for the same bullshit time after time, and when shown real, rational, down to earth sensible political analysis, that PREDICTS exactly what it takes him a newly reamed ass to finally get—he rejects it as if one is speaking Martian.
I was a commentator on his OpEd News site for some time. I really twisted his diapers with my commentary—which told him exactly what was going to happen—precisely what he harangues against above.