KILLING ANY AND ALL REFORMS – NO MATTER HOW SMALL – IF THEY MIGHT HURT OUR CORPORATE MASTERS
Jun 9th, 2011 | 6 responses
Recent political developments in Washington DC indicate that our elected officials are having very strong second thoughts about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) created in the incredibly weak Dodd-Frank banking reform legislation passed in 2010. Republicans are completely against the new agency’s very existence. President Obama shows no interest in appointing Professor Elizabeth Warren as its new chief even though she has championed the reform measure for several years. He also doesn’t want to spend any time, energy or political capital on helping the vast majority of Americans when there’s a billion dollars in campaign contributions to be raised.
Have I missed something over the past few months? Has there been an outpouring and groundswell of public opinion against the CFPB? Does a clear majority of American consumers reject anyone protecting them from predatory private enterprises such as greedy, corrupt financial institutions and a host of other companies that regularly screw their trusting customers? Do most Americans believe they can handle the cut-throat, skewed, capitalist marketplace on their own? Has “Caveat Emptor” become the new national mantra in light of our descent into a replay of late Roman Empire life where the Latin phrase originated?
Perhaps the corrupt crony monopolists and global corporate cartels that own Congress and this Administration don’t want the CFPB to exist. Considering how everything in America now favors their greedy interests, they want to make sure the vast majority of citizens (and mere disposable consumers in their eyes) will remain indentured serfs and completely uninformed and unprotected from any legal standpoint. They cannot stand even one iota of regulation that might hinder their paid license to rape, steal, deceive, over-charge, and embezzle from the rest of us.
Wall Street and many large business cartels escaped any criminal prosecutions for all the fraud, theft, and other crimes they committed over the past decade that led to the worst global economic crisis in decades. And the modest civil penalties they had to pay became simply another cost of doing business. They must think they are above the law and definitely they owe no level of respect, decency or concern for the vast majority of human beings on earth except their fellow oligarchs, plutocrats and kleptocrats. Even the old-time Mafia showed more ethics and morality in their treatment of others and in their business dealings.
This animosity towards any meaningful consumer protection is now bi-partisan. Therefore, where can citizens turn for justice? How long shall we sheepishly accept financial abuse, theft, and asset rape at the hands of our corporate masters and elected officials? How long will it take for people to wise up and finally erect the scaffolding for the guillotines that would put an end to this reign of terror by the global elites in government and business?
I can only pray for a complete impasse on raising the debt ceiling. That may be the only means to finally f**k those who have been so happy to f**k us for so long. It may cost many in society some short and medium-term pain. However the long-term benefits in ridding ourselves of the useless, speculative, parasitic, rentier class for ourselves and our children would be priceless.
Submitted on 6/9/11 by Marc Pascal ranting happily from Phoenix, AZ. (avenir99pm@yahoo.com) I have included this email in case the paranoids and control freaks running Homeland Security want to question me and eventually drag me off to some undisclosed location where the U.S. Constitution doesn’t apply. If one questions the status quo, one soon becomes an enemy of the state.
6 Responses to “KILLING ANY AND ALL REFORMS – NO MATTER HOW SMALL – IF THEY MIGHT HURT OUR CORPORATE MASTERS”
It will probably take until even we here in the US have food shortages. Altho if it happened sooner I wouldn’t complain. What really gets me is how the conservatives get so many people getting screwed by corporate lobbyist policies to vote for them. If you aren’t independently wealthy, you really have no business voting for the GOP.
” What really gets me is how the conservatives get so many people getting screwed by corporate lobbyist policies to vote for them.” – slamfu
There is an oft made observation that the GOP depends on a gullibility streak in their tribe. How else could you convince the very people whose lives you are negatively impacting that you are in their corner.
So your position, Marc, is that we don’t have one iota of consumer protection regulation on the books?
How about making a rational rather than a hyperbolic argument for the CFPB? How about describing what regulation we have, what specifically the CFPB would give us that we lack, what its likely downsides are, and why on balance it’s a good thing?
“President Obama shows no interest in appointing Professor Elizabeth Warren as its new chief even though she has championed the reform measure for several years. He also doesn’t want to spend any time, energy or political capital on helping the vast majority of Americans when there’s a billion dollars in campaign contributions to be raised.”
I too find that extremely frustrating. It is all smoke and mirrors. If Obama wanted to help consumers, he’d give that woman some teeth.
Both parties have been completely bought off by corporate elites, it’s disgusting. Part of me hopes that the debt ceiling isn’t raised so that, 1.) Corporations will not have such a stranglehold on our economy. And 2.) These people who think safety net programs are evil will see the effects of not having them.
I hope that if the debt ceiling isn’t raised it will show that the system we have been relying on (one in which business operates on behalf of the stockholder rather than the workers and the community) is not sustainable and needs to be seriously altered in favor of workers and their communities. The gravy train for the rich on the backs of workers and the poor needs to end.
Agreed, the non-appointment of Professor Elizabeth Warren was a huge disappointment.