The Unbearable Truth About Wall Street

Today's commentary may bite a bit more for some - and that may be a good thing for everyone.

In case you'd missed it, the big message that extremist political hack and well-known liar Karl Rove and his Crossroads SuperPAC is saturating the media airwaves with right now, is an ad filled to the brim with untruths and outright lies about President Obama, spending, and even Wall Street.

As Steve Benen and Jamelle Bouie both point out, the ad lies about all kinds of things - for example the Wall Street bailouts. Rove's smear blames the bailouts on Obama - when the bailouts really happened under George W. Bush.

The ad also talks about debt - but fails to mention that Mitt Romney's budget plans would increase the debt by several trillion over the next decade, while Obama's budget plans would decrease the debt by two trillion over the same period.

The ad tries to paint Obama as horrible for student loans, when the reality is that President Obama yanked out the expensive private company middlemen of the student loan industry - which made more money available for student loans. President Obama and the Democrats also have fought - and continue to fight - to keep the interest rate low on student loans, while Republicans in Congress filibustered against the Democrats, the President - and poor students.

Rove's ad lies on nearly every front - but it's easy to see why.

It's the same reason that Democratic Mayor of Newark, Cory Booker, has been tap-dancing around the issue of vulture capital firms (which are different than venture capital firms) - and the same reason Mitt Romney and the GOP keep saying we should go back to a less regulated era of Wall Street.

It is because the big-money backers of Wall Street are yanking the chains of so many politicians in our post-Citizens United era.

The problem, as President Obama recently pointed out, is that the legalized gambling that Wall Street firms like JP Morgan are still involved in, are still backstopped by U.S. taxpayer dollars - which means we pay for their losses, while they get to keep most of their winnings.

What's more, because Federal spending has in fact NOT gone up - as Karl Rove's ad also lies about - our Federal regulators are fiscally outmatched and outgunned by the modern day robber barons of Wall Street.

So what tricks do the bears on Wall Street want Congress to perform?

How about rolling over, and having the Wall Street regulators play dead? That's not hyperbole. There are nine bills before lawmakers right now designed to kill off the minor regulations that Obama, Democrats, and the Dodd-Frank bill put back in place after the disastrous market crash of 2008 - when George W. Bush was still President.

Some of the best economic experts today - including Paul Krugman and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich - have made it clear: President Obama, and frankly the Democratic Party in general, should not do any more favors for Wall Street. They agree, Obama and the Democrats should forge ahead with the fight against 'casino capitalism' - the kind of Wall Street activity that was responsible for most of the massive financial destruction around the world over the last decade.

Now, we're all well aware of the snarling and roaring (and crying and whining) that continues to come from the canyons of Wall Street any time the word "regulation" is mentioned. But the facts don't lie. Since "the market" was re-regulated, the stock indexes are doing better than ever, there's been 26 months of private sector job growth - even the economic confidence level has hit a new high.

When you get right down to it, even Republicans think we need to stand up to the casino capitalists on Wall Street. They made that plenty clear during the GOP Presidential primary, over the last year.

It's long past time for the wild animals of Wall Street to re-learn who the masters are, and who is supposed to be performing for the masses.

What All The Campaigns Are About

While some of the media is still buzzing about a gaffe made by Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker over the weekend, we're actually kind of glad Mayor Booker stepped in the deep end of politics like an amateur.

For one thing, as Ezra Klein noted, Booker's greater point - that America should be having a broad debate about the real issues of leadership, instead of having to watch distracting SuperPAC commercials about non-issues - is one we, and most people who actually care about this country, agree with.

Debates on real issues, between quality candidates that actually display the qualities that prove whether a candidate is truly ready for office, are exactly what we should be having.

In fact, at a press conference yesterday, President Obama echoed that exact sentiment when a reporter asked him about the TV and web ads attacking Mitt Romney's past tenure with vulture capital firm Bain Capital. The reporter attempted to depict the ads discussing Mitt's past as a job destroyer as a distraction - as one of those kinds of distractions like the proposed SuperPAC smear from last week.

The President responded directly, “This is not a distraction. This is what this campaign is going to be about.”

The President continued, "If the main basis for [Romney] suggesting he can do a better job [as President] is his track record as the head of a private equity firm, then both the upsides and the downsides are worth examining."

“When you’re president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot," said The President. “My job [The job of President] is to take into account everybody, not just some."

That kind of head-on debate of the details that make a good officeholder is exactly what honest voters from every political background desire. We should all demand that kind of debate, and we should definitely teach that kind of critical discussion to the next generation of voters.

In Nebraska, Democratic Senate candidate Bob Kerrey seems to have that will and energy to engage in both honest debate and teaching the next generation how such debates should work.

The Cornhusker Boys and Girls State summertime citizenship conferences for teenagers invited Mr. Kerrey and GOP Senate nominee Deb Fischer to have a debate at their annual convention in Nebraska's capitol city June 5, two weeks from today. Kerrey jumped at the chance, remarking that scheduling the first debate of the general election before an audience of high school aged kids, "sends just the right message" for the campaign.

However, after months of claiming she wanted "as many debates as possible," the inexperienced challenger Fischer, was muzzled by her campaign manager - who attempted to distract the media with an ad hominem swipe at Mr. Kerrey.

The problem is, if Fischer is really the independent-minded Republican she's already claiming she is, strong leadership - the kind that will be needed in the Senate - should come directly from her, at the top of her campaign. It should be part of the platform of who she is.

Now, we're not going to fall to the level of Mr. Romney, or Ms. Fischer's press flack, and make outright negative and spurious claims about why Ms. Fischer chose not to debate. The fact is, Fischer's decision spoke louder than anything she could have said. It says she's not ready yet - and doesn't know when she will be.

As the President noted Monday, what his campaign - what all the campaigns this year - should be about, are real issues that display the qualities that prove whether a candidate is truly ready for office. In the case of President Obama's challenger, Mr. Romney, if Romney is going to ignore his record as Governor of Massachusetts, and focus on his record at vulture capital firm Bain Capital, then Romney's record at Bain is fair game.

If someone is merely hanging on, pointing whatever direction the SuperPACs tell them to point, they're a long way from being ready to rumble - let alone take office. Governing properly isn't for the faint of heart. If a candidate doesn't know that already, once they are in the race is not the time to be learning that lesson.

When The Chickens Come Home...

When you got up this morning, if the most important "news" item you saw or heard was the death of Bee Gees co-founder Robin Gibb, we're sadly not surprised. Massive protests at the NATO meetings were something the "news" folks didn't seem to want to talk about much today. There were still a few individuals in the media talking about the SuperPAC buyout of last week's Nebraska Republican primary race - but we're not too surprised that the story of the SuperPACs and the 'Ricketts Plan' somehow slipped from the headlines already.

If newspapers were still owned by newsmen, and radio stations by radio people, and local TV stations by those who actually understand local TV news, the fact that the wealthiest men and women in America - and indeed from around the world - are buying our elections at all levels, would be the top story today, and every day for weeks on end.

That it is not shows how corrupt, bastardized, and weak our mainstream media has become. Take Wisconsin, for example.

Over the weekend, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel announced their endorsement of embattled Republican Governor Scott Walker, against the Democratic Mayor of Milwaukee, Tom Barrett. This seemed to surprise some in the national media - but it shouldn't.

In a recent story, initially published by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Walker was caught - on video - making it clear that his top priority, from the day he got elected, was to "divide and concquer" unions and working class Wisconsinites, in favor of his corporate buddies. Not surprisingly, in the video, Walker was talking with two incredibly wealthy Wisconsin businesswomen - women who control or influence companies that do measurable business with Journal Communications, the Journal-Sentinal's parent company.

That shouldn't shock anyone. For far too long now, the so-called objectivity of much of the media hasn't originated from the journalists in the newsrooms, as it should, but instead from the pinheads in the boardroom, who cringe at the slightest threat of an advertiser deciding to pull up stakes.

The position of the overly Wall-Street friendly folks controlling the Republican Party is similarly disconnected from reality. As current Chairman of the Republican National Committee Reince Preibus said this weekend, all these baseless attacks by SuperPACs would just go away if Democrats - including the President - would just give up and let Republicans win.

Priebus' comment is not only ridiculous, it's completely at odds with reality. His comment mirrors almost identically the kind of reaction regularly heard from bullies, after they receive a taste of their own medicine.

That kind of blowback is exactly what happened to Joe Ricketts and his family last week, when his chickens came home to roost. The amazingly rapid backpedaling and denials surrounding the Ricketts Plan were the effect of real news men and women shining journalistic sunlight on the disease of SuperPACs in American democracy.

We wish we could say that metaphorical bird is cooked, that you could stick a fork in the idea that SuperPACs are now going to keep the sleeze to a minimum, after the plan with Joe Ricketts' name on it, blew up in his face - but we'd be as crazy as GOP Chariman Preibus if we believed that.

Fact is, because of the Citizens United ruling, a single average, multi-billion dollar Romney SuperPAC donor is now equal to 181,000 average Obama campaign donors. That gives an overwhelming and unequal advantage in our elections to those in our society who have far more money than sense.

The advantage small dollar donors have, however, is that the media can't and doesn't need to shine its spotlight on them individually, like it can the big dollar donors who are trying to turn this nation into the Corporate-Owned States of America.

No matter what, this year's elections are going to be hard-fought battles, at every level. We just hope that our fellow media members keep the heat on those who are attempting to buy the elections outright.