Problems with heavily monied judge elections

At Raw Story, Adam Skaggs warns that bigger money than ever will be pouring into judicial elections in light of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling of Citizens United. He also offers some good suggestions:

[S]tates should adopt public financing systems for judicial elections (something West Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, and Wisconsin have already done). Public financing gets judges out of the unseemly business of dialing for dollars to make sure they win. States also need to adopt stricter disclosure rules, so the public knows which individuals and groups are spending in judicial campaigns. And states should institute new disqualification regulations to ensure that, if a judge is assigned to hear the case of a major campaign supporter, he or she must step aside and let a wholly impartial judge preside.

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Dylan Ratigan’s three strikes against the pending financial services legislation

Dylan Ratigan put on a "Family Fued Show" to illustrate the three major failures of the pending financial services legislation. Seems like this bill is not for any meaningful reform. It's only a dog and pony show.

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Continue ReadingDylan Ratigan’s three strikes against the pending financial services legislation

Victory at what cost?

I'm on Lawrence Lessig's mailing list. Here is an excerpt from an email he sent today, which you can read at Huffpo:

However good, however essential, however transformative this health care bill may be, we should not mistake success here as a sign that Washington has been cured. Indeed, as Glenn Greenwald reminded us over the weekend -- in an essay that should be every reformer's required reading -- success on this bill is no justification for:

claiming that it represents a change in the way Washington works and a fulfillment of Obama's campaign pledges. The way this bill has been shaped is the ultimate expression -- and bolstering -- of how Washington has long worked. One can find reasonable excuses for why it had to be done that way, but one cannot reasonably deny that it was.

Obama's victory was achieved because his team played the old game brilliantly. Staffed with the very best from the league of conventional politics, his team bought off PhRMA (with the promise not to use market forces to force market prices for prescription drugs) and the insurance industry (with the promise -- and in this moment of celebration, let's ignore the duplicity in this -- that they would face no new competition from a public option), so that by the end, as Greenwald puts it, the administration succeeded in "bribing and accommodating them to such an extreme degree that they ended up affirmatively supporting a bill that lavishes them with massive benefits." Obama didn't "push back on the undue influence of special interests," as he said today. He bought them off. And the price he paid should make us all wonder: how much reform can this administration -- and this Nation -- afford?

Another thing: As Greenwald noted in his excellent article, to get this bill passed Obama used "the exact secret processes that he railed against and which he swore he would banish."

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What won’t Obama tell us.

What isn't Barack Obama telling us? According to Dan Froomkin, there are ten major things, and Froomkin isn't pulling any punches. Not a very open government, it turns out. And for those who might think I'm an Obama basher, I voted for Barack Obama. Based on his sordid record, George W. Bush had an even more secretive government than Obama's, and I have little doubt that John McCain would have carried on in the tradition of George Bush (and McCain would have likely have involved us in a third war in the Middle East). What I would say based on these ten immensely important questions, is a major disappointment in Barack Obama, and an even bigger disappointment in the thoroughly corrupt electoral and political systems of the United States.

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Senator Ted Kaufman stands out

Arianna Huffington has recognized the excellent work of Senator Ted Kaufman, who dares to comes out swinging against Wall Street.

In the last week alone, Kaufman has taken to the Senate floor to deliver two major -- and blistering -- speeches. The first was a masterful overview, offering chapter and verse on what led to the financial crisis and what, specifically, needs to be done to ensure that we "build a regulatory system that will endure for generations instead of one that will be laid bare by an even bigger crisis in perhaps just a few years or a decade's time." . . . . The great thing about Kaufman is that he isn't afraid to use direct, pointed language, saying that "fraud and lawlessness were key ingredients" in the financial collapse. And he's willing to name names: in his attack on derivatives, he called out Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers as key cheerleaders for unregulated derivatives markets . . .
But why is Kaufman speaking out against dysfunctional/corrupt Wall Street banks while most other senators are timid? The absence of money as a factor in his decision making.
Kaufman didn't need to raise any money to become a senator -- he was appointed. And he doesn't need to raise any money for his reelection campaign -- he's not running. At 71, with a long, distinguished career in government under his belt, Kaufman is completely unencumbered by the need to curry favor and approach moneyed interests with his hat in his hand. So let's all take a good look at Ted Kaufman. This is what it looks like when our representatives are not beholden to special interests, and are only serving the public interest.

Continue ReadingSenator Ted Kaufman stands out