Debating Conventional Wisdom About the Debate

I finally got around to watching the first Presidential debate this morning, as I was working last night. Maybe I’m just a wonk, as I neither found it as boring, nor thought Obama did as bad a job as many people, especially on the left (friends and progressive media), seemed to believe.

When I got home and checked first the news sites, then Facebook, everyone seemed agreed it as awful. One friend mentioned wanting to poke her eyes out during the debate, another posted a video of Charlie Brown’s teacher speaking to show what the debate sounded like to her and Andy Borowitz reported in The New Yorker  that “[m]illions of Americans lost consciousness on Wednesday night between the hours of 9 and 10:30 P.M. E.T., according to widespread anecdotal reports from coast to coast.”

James McMurtry’s pre-debate post made me smile, and seemed like it would have been the best way to watch the debate:

Decided to let Johnny D’s run the debate close captioned while I play. Never tried that. Should be interesting. Might even sync up. Come on out.

You Can’t Make It Here and Choctaw Bingo sounded like the perfect sound track for the state of our nation, which has only slowly turned around (and only on some issues) under President Obama.

Then the Tom Morello/Crosby, Stills & Nash concert to support California unions right to support candidates and defeat Proposition 32 in California Rolling Stone reported this morning also happened last night seemed even more relevant.

Not that I wouldn’t have loved to be at either concert, but I’m glad I finally watched the debate online.

I thought President Obama was considerably better than reports from, say:

Joan Walsh in Salon:

A subdued, deferential, over-prepared President Obama ceded the first debate to Mitt Romney on style and substance.

or Matthew Rothschild in The Nation:

[Obama] was sluggish and dull and let Romney box him all over the ring.

While I thought Obama was stronger on the issues than the left-wing pundits gave him credit for, I agree that he was too unwilling to attack Romney when he had an opening. I have mixed feelings about that, as I think it has a lot to do with Obama wanting to be a nice guy and play fair, and longing for a bi-partisanship that doesn’t exist any more.

I’m in full agreement that Obama should have fought back, for example as Truthout‘s William Rivers Pitt points out “when Mr. Romney re-re-re-re-re-told the $716 billion Medicare liearound 43 minutes into the debate.” I think President Obama is a little too hesitant to “[t]ag a liar for being a liar,” but he could have brought up the facts, without getting personal.

From the PolitiFact article Rivers Pitt links to:

Neither Obama nor his health care law literally cut funding from the Medicare program’s budget. Rather, the health care law instituted a number of changes to try to bring down future health care costs in the program.

What kind of spending reductions are we talking about? They were mainly aimed at insurance companies and hospitals, not beneficiaries. The law made significant reductions to Medicare Advantage, a subset of Medicare plans run by private insurers. Medicare Advantage was started under President George W. Bush, and the idea was that competition among the private insurers would reduce costs. But the plans have actually cost more than traditional Medicare. So the health care law scales back the payments to private insurers.

Then there was Romney’s hypocritical critique of the Wall Street bail out and the “too big to fail” banks, which I didn’t fully understand at the time, but struck me as odd coming from a venture capitalist (who has shipped jobs to China, something else Obama should have got him on).

In his column, Romney’s Obscene Posturing As a Wall Street Critic, George Zornick of The Nation takes it on, and explains what Obama should have in his response to Romney.

As Zornick points out:

Romney—the private equity veteran running a presidential campaign funded by Wall Street, on a platform that contains a full repeal of every financial regulation over the past four years—positioning himself as an opponent of those big “New York banks” was a historic moment in presidential debate cravenness. (And a real missed opportunity for Obama to wallop his opponent).

It turns out with the Dodd-Frank legislation “too big to fail” banks are subject to more regulation.

Dodd-Frank has two provisions regarding too-big-to-fail that Romney is talking about here. The first is the ability of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, created by the legislation, to name financial institutions “systemically significant.” This means they are so big that their failure could threaten the health of the financial sector, and that designation subjects them to heightened regulation and higher capital requirements.

The big banks hate this requirement, for obvious reasons—they come under increased scrutiny and restrictions. So Republicans have been dutifully attacking it. (Romney’s running mate, Representative Paul Ryan, repeatedly blasted it before joining the ticket). The GOP argument, as you heard Romney deliver it, is that by giving them the “systemically significant label, the government is officially “designating” banks as too-big-to-fail—a very bad-sounding thing indeed!

The banksters need more regulation, not less; not that I think Obama and the Democrats have done enough, with both parties too much in bed with Wall Street and corporations.

What I do feel Obama did a pretty good job of defending was the Affordable Health Care Act (or Obamacare, as even he is calling it):

And let me tell you exactly what Obamacare did. Number one, if you’ve got health insurance, it doesn’t mean a government takeover. You keep your own insurance. You keep your own doctor. But it does say insurance companies can’t jerk you around. They can’t impose arbitrary lifetime limits. They have to let you keep your kid on their insurance — your insurance plan until you’re 26 years old. And it also says that you’re going to have to get rebates if insurance companies are spending more on administrative costs and profits than they are on actual care.

Number two, if you don’t have health insurance, we’re essentially setting up a group plan that allows you to benefit from group rates that are typically 18 percent lower than if you’re out there trying to get insurance on the individual market.

Further pointing out:

… the irony is that we’ve seen this model work really well in Massachusetts, because Governor Romney did a good thing, working with Democrats in the state to set up what is essentially the identical model and as a consequence people are covered there. It hasn’t destroyed jobs. And as a consequence, we now have a system in which we have the opportunity to start bringing down costs, as opposed to just leaving millions of people out in the cold.

Romney, in response claims “I like the way we did it in Massachusetts. I like the fact that in my state, we had Republicans and Democrats come together and work together.” He complains that the Affordable Health Care Act was passed without a single  Republican vote, and talks about “[w]hat we did in a legislature 87 percent Democrat, we worked together”. . .

There’s a major difference with the Republicans in Congress, though, and Obama rightly comes back with “I agree that the Democratic legislators in Massachusetts might have given some advice to Republicans in Congress about how to cooperate, but the fact of the matter is, we used the same advisers, and they say it’s the same plan.”

Above quotes from Washington Post’s transcript: http://apps.washingtonpost.com/politics/transcripts/2012/presidential/live/739/?wpisrc=nl_politics

While I wish it was stronger, the Affordable Health Care Act is a start and one of the things Obama tried to do. Like with jobs, there was a lot of push back from the Republicans in Congress.

Of more concern, with Obama (and even more so with Romney), are all the issues still not covered in this debate. Yes, I know I’m voting for the lesser of two evils. While I’m on the “for voting for the lesser” side of the progressive debate, I don’t feel like we should downplay (in addition to corporate influence) wars, drones, the NDAA, Guantanamo. . .

Oh, yeah, to take off my partisan hat for a moment, and switch to my favorite non-profit, how did we do with Amnesty International’s Human Rights Presidential Bingo?

Amnesty International Presidential Bingo

Darn! A losing ticket again. . .

Just wish the stakes weren’t so high.

Un-Occupy-ing the Big Banks

People are breaking up with the big banks! Tuesday’s protest against Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and yesterday’s National Bank Transfer Day were truly inspiring. According to the Credit Union National Association (CUNA), at least 650,000 people have joined credit unions within the last month as of Friday, the day before the official National Bank Transfer Day (further inspiring – a movement started by one woman’s Facebook post!).

A number of people went into and closed their accounts Saturday at both the Chase branch across the street, then the Bank of America branch at Westlake park.

Bank Transfer Day - Seattle

While I understand they are part of the 99% and don’t blame the big banks’ local employees, they do need to either get educated or stop telling lies about credit unions. I forget what else they claimed to one of the customers closing their account that set me off, but one of the things they were whining about was that credit unions don’t pay taxes. That would be income tax, which is true – because credit unions are non-profit cooperatives, where all the customers are co-owners who get to vote on polices and there are no shareholders getting wealthy off ripping people off with bad loans and excessive fees.

http://www.cuna.org/gov_affairs/legislative/cu_difference.html

I’ve been with the Seattle Metropolitan Credit Union for several years, having left Washington Mutual (or WAMU!, as they liked to call themselves), before the crash and Chase taking over. I still have free checking, no charges from SMCU for using other institutions ATMs, and a nationwide network of  credit unions and ATMs I can use for free (including ATMs at 7-11, which admittedly is a little strange).

There are a number of reasons to take your money out of the big banks and go to a credit union or community bank. Fees are one of them. I couldn’t afford $5 or $10 a month for my checking account, yet it’s the customers who have the least money the banks like Chase and Bank of America charge (although they did back down, due to the protests, on charging a monthly fee for using their debit cards as well).  True, they are a business, and if they want to run a business model charging those who can least afford it to subsidize those who have the largest accounts, they can do it. I fortunately still have a choice not to keep my money there (and wouldn’t even if I were one of the wealthy. For shame! Exploiting the poor, like you need it more?).

However, taking taxpayer money for a bailout (with your CEO, who makes $10,000 an hour, on the Fed board, no less), not paying any taxes and foreclosing on homeowners trying their best to pay their bills is not okay, even if it is legal.

Which is what brought so many of us out into the street in the rain Tuesday night, to protest Chase CEO Jamie Dimon:

I’ve already mentioned in my last post some of the reasons we’re protesting Chase (and in my post before that, Bank of America).  Here’s a little more from Working Washington‘s blog entry, November 5: We’re breaking up with the Big Banks (and remember, according to the Seattle school teachers at the other protest, Chase is getting away with not paying taxes on mortgage interest as an in-state bank):

Chase Bank hasn’t been a good relationship. When they first took over Washington Mutual they fired 3400 employees as a way of introducing themselves to our state. They then raised fees on social services like EBT for which they were already being paid by the state at the ridiculous cost of $8 million a year, your tax dollars not at work.

Chase Bank didn’t stop there. They then gave even larger bonuses and pay to their CEO Jamie Dimon ballooning his pay to nearly $10,000 per hour. In fact, he is the highest paid banker in the United States. His earnings have exploded while he continues to foreclose on Washingtonians; nearly 10,000 and counting while making a profit on food stamps from folks who can least afford it.

Now, don’t feel too bad about Jamie Dimon, according to a Seattle Times article about his visit and the protest, he doesn’t lose any sleep at night. Having a lot of money and no conscious will do that for you!

Too much pepper spray flying once again (shades of WTO and the protests shortly after), and I evidently just narrowly avoided getting hit both at the protest I happened upon after my last class let out (maybe 2:30 or 3 pm) at the Chase branch on Capitol Hill on Broadway and at the Sheraton where Jamie Dimon was speaking (video below by Jonathan Walczak of the Seattle Weekly). Ironically, the Sheraton is within a block of the Washington State Convention Center which hosted the WTO a decade ago.

While I wasn’t crazy about some of the “f@#k the cops” chants or the challenging people just trying to get home by the mostly young protesters at that earlier protest; after seeing the photo of the cops pepper spraying them in the Seattle Times, I’d have to say that they were remarkably restrained.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/photogalleries/localnews2016673721/10.html

I was heartened to see so many more people, and including a lot of union members and a Marine with an American flag, by the time the rally and march to greet Chase CEO Jamie Dimon started at 6 pm, in the cold and pouring rain. We even had older people in wheelchairs taking to the streets and one woman on oxygen (which made me very nervous, as she was near the front, like I was, just behind some young people in bandannas and even gas masks, with the already itchy fingered SPD with their hands on their pepper spray canisters. I was glad when her friends persuaded her to move back).

Myself? I sometimes moved back, and sometimes was up near the front, taking pictures, and I checked out the action at all the exits the crowd had eventually blocked. I was generally hanging back just a bit, but ran into a friend and ally who came to America after being involved in the protests at Tiananmen Square in China, and really didn’t feel like chickening out as she went up front and even talked to one of the police officers (fortunately, not while they were into pepper spraying). Which did put things a little in perspective, as I don’t think SPD would get that bad, at least not deliberately, but one of the did have a gun with, I think, rubber bullets ready; and as Oakland showed, people can be seriously hurt by “less-lethal” (and unneeded) weapons.

I noticed the headlights on the police helmets, which I suspect was to make it harder to photograph or videotape their excesses. On the other hand, I could read their name tags and they didn’t seem to be covering those over, which was an issue during the WTO era.

SPD's Helmet Lights

I know a lot is made of the excesses of a few protesters, like the “black block” anarchists in Oakland that same night. I’m not defending them, but anyone focusing on the actions of a handful, when thousands were peacefully taking the highway and closing down the port in a mostly peaceful general strike in Oakland is missing the point.

Teachers Educate Chase Bank

I went down to Westlake and joined Occupy Seattle‘s Robin Hood Tax protest yesterday. I got a good education on Chase Bank‘s corporate greed from Seattle’s school teachers.

Teachers Give Chase a Lesson

It turns out Chase hasn’t been paying any state tax on mortgage interest income, thanks to a loophole created for Washington Mutual as an in-state bank. Chase is based in Manhattan, so how did they get to keep that loophole when they bought WAMU for pennies for a dollar? According to the Social Equality Educators website: “Their fair share would add nearly $100 million per year to our State’s sorely strapped budget.”  Closing loopholes for out-of-state banks sounds like a good place to start to turn around our grim budget our Governor proposed to us Thursday, instead of cutting education, health and social services.

I, ironically, missed the largest march so far, the previous Saturday, catching up on other things, and having been to the march the Saturday before that.  I want to mention that because if, like me, you missed that one, it might seem like energy is waning.

Here’s a video from their march through Pike Place Market:

They were protesting Chase then as well. Following Governor Gregoire’s draconian proposals for our state budget, even though she and other Democrats say they don’t want to do it; I think we need to push them and the Republicans, who are all too willing to cut social services, health and education, on why we’re giving an out-of-state bank a free ride. Its time to end corporate welfare, and they are the ones who should be shamed, not the people who end up out of work or underemployed, just struggling to get by for themselves and their families.

Ironically, Chase even profits on that:

Chase Profits for Food Stamps

Why does Washington, and other states, pay to have their food stamp cards run through Chase bank? Why not have them through a credit union, say for Washington, WSECU, the Washington State Employees Credit Union? Why, in fact, is there apparently a state law that limits cities like Seattle to using only the largest banks, according to the city budget director interviewed in The Stranger, in response to Nick Licata’s proposed resolution for the city to review its banking and investment practices?

OK, I’m off on a tangent. Back to this Saturday’s rally, which was about a proposal to pass a version of the Robin Hood Tax, an idea that originated in England. What Adbusters proposed is taxing 1% of financial transactions and currency trades.

Sounds like a good idea to me. Sadly, the money has been going in the other direction, with the public bailing out the poor bankers, who apparently can’t manage their money properly. Shouldn’t we have some case managers if we’re going to have corporate welfare?

How much corporate welfare? Just for starters, the results first Federal Reserve audit, which happened thanks to an amendment added to the Wall Street reform law by Senator Bernie Sanders (VT):

The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

$16 trillion – that’s a lot of money, and with some of that (plus interest – it’s a loan, right?) would do a lot towards balancing the budget and we might not need to take a Credo action to tell Congress not to use Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security as bargaining chips.

 “As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,” said Sanders. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”

Not to mention the conflicts of interest that the Federal Reserve routinely gives waivers for:

For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed’s board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed.  Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed’s emergency lending programs.

Would that be the CEO of Chase who is coming here to Seattle, and Occupy Seattle is planning to protest, starting at 5:30 pm Wednesday? Seems like we have a lot to talk about. . .

Don’t Occupy Bank of America

Wait, I was wrong about Bank of America trying to shift their shaky Merrill Lynch derivatives off to be covered under the FDIC insurance covering our savings and checking accounts. I wasn’t paying attention. It turns out they have, to the tune of $53.7 trillion.

Don't Occupy Bank of America With Your Money

According to Truthout:

The total amount of derivatives in the FDIC-insured portion of B of A as of mid-year was $53.7 trillion, up 10 percent from $48.9 trillion the prior year, and up nearly 35 percent from its pre-fall crisis level of $40 trillion (the Merrill Lynch securities division holds $22 trillion in addition.) The bank has $5 trillion of credit derivatives, nearly double its $2.7 trillion pre-Merrill amount. In addition, because of its inherent zombie status and rating downgrades, the cost of insuring B of A against a possible default continues to rise in the credit derivatives market – a pattern that American International group (AIG) once followed.

So the FDIC, which is meant to insure safety of our savings and checking, is already being used to cover shaky investments. Fees to customers continue to be raised. I’m kind of shocked that people put up with that, having left WAMU years ago over overdraft fees, back when banks had free checking (without a high minimum), and no monthly debit card fees, or fees for online bill paying. We still have free checking at credit unions, with no monthly debit fee In fact no charge at their own machines for anyone, customer or non customer, and you can use any credit union ATM and many other places, including 7-11s fee-free.

Then, of course, Bank of America throws out people trying to close their bank accounts. They say you can’t close your account if you’re protesting. Wait! Its their money, and they were very polite in asking for it back.

It gets worse.

It is the official bank of the US military and has branches by or on many bases, which provides the firm with another locus of extortion. B of A can entice military personnel to take out loans at usurious rates. Personal loans made to soldiers for a few thousand dollars can actually keep them indebted for the rest of their lives.

Last May, Bank of America paid $22 million to settle charges of improperly foreclosing on active-duty troops. The firm spun these foreclosures as being Countrywide’s fault for having started them before becoming part of B of A.

Pretty outrageous. At our expense. This is why people are Occupying everywhere, and good reasons not to let your funds occupy Bank of America and the other big banks. There are a lot of options with credit unions and community banks, and with credit unions, you’re a co-owner. People run the credit unions, not some corporation.

November 5 has been declared Bank Transfer Day. Maybe its time to consider other options.