Tag: Punting the Pundits

Our question for today is: Why don’t the Republicans just throw in the towel? Really, this is not going well for anybody.  

Lots of reasons. There’s Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, the General Patton of the government shutdown. And people like the Republican in the House who said he and his colleagues “have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.” Also, Ted Cruz. [..]

But here’s my long-term theory. Over the past few years, Republicans have terrified their most fervent followers about Obamacare in order to disguise the fact that they no longer knew what to say about their old bête noir, entitlements. Now they can’t turn the temperature down.

Joe Nocera: A Fracking Rorschach Test

A few weeks ago, a group of scientists led by David T. Allen of the University of Texas published an important, peer-reviewed paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The subject was our old friend hydraulic fracturing – a k a fracking – that infamous process that allows companies to drill for natural gas trapped in shale formations deep below the earth’s surface.

Thanks to the fracking boom, America is on the verge of overtaking Russia as the world’s largest producer of oil and gas, as The Wall Street Journal pointed out a few days ago. Supporters of fracking (like me) tend to focus on the economic and foreign policy blessings that come with being able to supply so much more of our energy needs in-house, as it were. Critics, however, fear that fracking could have grave environmental consequences. And they worry that the abundance of natural gas will keep America hooked on fossil fuels.

Ralph Nader: Giant Pentagon Budget Is Unauditable Year After Year

The federal government is currently in a state of shutdown thanks to a small faction of extremist Republicans who vehemently bellow that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will have a catastrophic economic effect on our country. These members of Congress are so irrational about the ACA that they have caused the furlough of nearly 800,000 federal workers — some of whom handle vitally important tasks such as safety inspections, monitoring our food supply and detecting epidemic outbreaks. Congress, however, has failed to address the worst excesses in the federal budget — the bloated, highly wasteful military budget. More than half of federal discretionary spending now goes to the military budget. Many more taxpayer dollars are devoted to the Department of Defense than to the critical needs of our citizenry, including the flawed Obamacare which should be replaced with single payer — full Medicare for all.

Unfortunately, curbing the worst excesses of an out-of-control military industrial complex is not a front burner issue for the 40 or so Tea Party Republicans currently stomping their feet in Congress about health care reform. Instead, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has recently emerged as the de-facto leader of the opposition to Obamacare, has accused his opponents in Congress of “holding the military hostage” by not giving in to the demands of the extremists in his party.

Mark Weisbrot: President Obama’s Defeats May Turn Out to Be More Important Than His Likely Victory Over Republicans

Looking past the shutdown and budget battle, the big picture is that America’s four decade-long drift to the right is decisively over

If we step back a moment from the government shutdown – an assault on millions of federal workers and people who need the services of the national government at this time – and the Republicans’ over-hyped and largely empty threat to trigger a default on the national public debt, there are more significant recent political developments that will continue long after this damaging political theater is over.

President Obama was twice defeated last month on matters of national and international importance, by grassroots opposition and resistance from within his own party. The first was over his planned bombing of Syria; the second was over his attempt to appoint Larry Summers as chair of the Federal Reserve.

Forty million dollars an hour. A third of a billion every day. $1.6 billion every week. That’s a conservative estimate of the money Republicans are wasting by keeping the federal government closed down. And if pundits like Sean Hannity have their way, they’ll run up a much larger tab before this is all over.

But then, if there’s one thing Republicans know how to do it’s run a tab.

The bill has already come to roughly $1 billion as of today (Thursday), and it grows larger every moment the government stays shut down. Republicans in Congress recently voted to cut $4 billion per year from programs that feed the needy. In two and a half weeks they’ll have wasted more than that on their shutdown.

George Zorncik: Congressional Liberals Mobilize to Keep Social Insurance Out of Shutdown Talks

We’ve seen this movie before: Republicans force a showdown in Congress over funding the government, the debt ceiling or, in the present case, both. Then a “grand bargain” is proposed to solve the impasse-one that includes serious reductions to social insurance programs.

That’s just how the GOP would like the current drama to play out. Wednesday, National Review‘s Robert Costa reported that House Speaker John Boehner and Representative Paul Ryan are rallying nervous Republicans by telling them that while Obamacare may not end up getting defunded, GOP leadership is cooking up another big budget deal that includes cuts to the safety net so cherished by many conservative members. “It’s the return of the grand bargain,” one member told Costa. “Ryan is selling this to everybody; he’s getting back to his sweet spot,” said another.

In particular, Costa mentioned Chained CPI as one component of the emerging proposal. This, you may recall, is a cut to Social Security benefits dressed up as a ostensibly “more accurate” recalibration of the formula used to adjust benefits to inflation. (It’s not.)

Amy Jones: The Forgotten War

Will the U.S. still be meddling in Afghanistan 30 years from now?  If history is any guide, the answer is yes.  And if history is any guide,  three decades from now most Americans will have only the haziest idea why.

Since the 1950s, the U.S. has been trying to mold that remote land to its own desires, first through an aid “war” in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union; then, starting as the 1970s ended, an increasingly bitter and brutally hot proxy war with the Soviets meant to pay them back for supporting America’s enemies during the war in Vietnam.  One bad war leads to another.

Ralph Nader: Congressional “Mad Dogs” Render the Powerful Powerless

SHUTDOWN – blared the Washington Post headline. None of the powers-that-be could stop a small faction of Republicans in the House of Representatives from shutting down many federal government operations starting on October 1.

Suddenly the powerful Business Roundtable and U.S. Chamber of Commerce are powerless, along with two hundred corporate trade associations, who see Uncle Sam as their big customer. Suddenly, the Republican dominated National Governors Association, together with Mitt Romney, the Party’s presidential nominee in 2013, are powerless. Also powerless so far are the allegedly sovereign people, who want uninterrupted safety inspections, enforcement of labor and environmental laws, children’s nutrition and educational programs (like Head Start), student loan processing, veterans benefits, detection of epidemics, access to national parks, and inspections of nuclear power plants.

As the government shutdown dragged on, gloom mounted. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, warned that foreign intelligence services might swoop in and recruit furloughed C.I.A. workers. That seemed a little paranoid, but then we’re talking about spies.

The C.I.A.-doom scenario sounded a bit like the problems facing the cast of “Homeland” this season, except for the part where a member of Congress is a terrorist mole who falls in love with an intelligence agent who frequently fails to take her bipolar disorder medication. Reality in Washington has gotten so muddled that the land in “Homeland” is looking sort of attractive.

Eugene Robinson: Warm Enough for You

Skeptics and deniers can make all the noise they want, but a landmark new report is unequivocal: There is a 95 percent chance that human-generated emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are changing the climate in ways that court disaster.

That’s the bottom line from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which Monday released the latest of its comprehensive, every-six-years assessments of the scientific consensus about climate change. According to the IPCC, there is only a 1-in-20 chance that human activity is not causing dangerous warming.

You may like those betting odds. If so, let’s get together for a friendly game of poker, and please don’t forget to bring cash.

Robert Sheer: The Government Leakers Who Truly Endanger America Will Never Face Prosecution

Secrecy is for the convenience of the state. To support military adventures and budgets, vast troves of U.S. government secrets are routinely released not by lone dissident whistle-blowers but rather skilled teams of government officials. They engage in coordinated propaganda campaigns designed to influence public opinion. They leak secrets compulsively to advance careers or justify wars and weapons programs, even when the material is far more threatening to national security than any revealed by Edward Snowden.

Remember the hoary accounts in the first week of August trumpeting a great intelligence coup warranting the closing of nearly two dozen U.S. embassies in anticipation of an al-Qaida attack? Advocates for the surveillance state jumped all over that one to support claims that NSA electronic interceptions revealed by Snowden were necessary, and that his whistle-blowing had weakened the nation’s security. Actually, the opposite is true.

Michael Lerner: Democrats: Stop Being Wimpy in Implementing the Governmental Shut Down

Spiritual progressives are not wimps. While we bend over backwards to avoid violence and to affirm the humanity in everyone, including those who are doing evil deeds, we do not back away from opportunities to powerfully challenge those deeds. Unfortunately, President Obama and the Congressional Dems don’t seem to have that kind of chutzpah.

Instead, they appear to be wimps, and that doesn’t encourage much trust. So even though temporarily they are slightly winning the battle about who is to blame for the government shut down, they keep missing opportunities to challenge the Tea Party and their supporters.

With America roamed by angry white dudes for whom firearms are a prop for lost power, what sort of message are kids getting?

America has a free-for-all gun culture, which, unsurprisingly, means that America also has a problem with children getting accidentally killed by guns. Specifically, America has a problem with boys in particular getting into accidents with guns, as reported by the New York Times. In its review of the data, the Times found that male shooters fired nearly all guns that were accidentally fired and killed a child. Boys made up 80% of the victims of accidental gun deaths of children. Reporters Michael Luo and Mike McIntire described boys as having a “magnetic attraction of firearms”, and added this:

   Time and again, boys could not resist handling a gun, disregarding repeated warnings by adults and, sometimes, their own sense that they were doing something wrong.

So, what is it with boys and guns? Presumably, the same thing that defines the relationship of grown men and guns.

Maureen Dowd: That’s Not Amore

John Boehner wakes up in his English basement apartment on Capitol Hill, his head still in a merlot fog.

It’s a glorious autumn morning, but Boehner doesn’t want to open his baby blues. He lies there, in his “Man of the House” T-shirt and Augusta National gym shorts.

He wishes he didn’t have to go to work. He reaches for his Camel Ultra Lights in his supposedly smoke-free apartment.

“Oh, Lord,” he growls. “How did I become that idiot Newt?”

Sarah Jane Stratford: The latest message to women: ‘Lean In’ at work, but ‘get retro’ at home

For all the glass ceilings women are breaking, we can’t get away from antiquated notions of how to be perfect housewives

2013 started out with a lot of “you go, girl” news. The US elections sent a record number of women to Congress, including 20 in the senate – a whole fifth – a harbinger of change not experienced since the 1970s. Then Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In was published and despite some controversy, it brought modern women’s lives to the forefront of the national – and international – discussion. Women were encouraged to openly discuss their goals and ambitions and network with each other to achieve them.

But for all the “lean in” rallies and glass ceilings women are breaking, we can’t seem to get away from antiquated notions of how women must first and foremost be perfect wives. Women might be told to lean in at work, but the message is still, too often, “get retro” at home.

Robyn Greene: It’s Official: NSA Wants to Suck up All Americans’ Phone Records

The NSA has officially stopped sugar coating the fact that it wants to spy on every American.

At last Thursday’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on FISA legislation, Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) asked NSA director, Gen. Keith Alexander, whether his spy agency should be collecting all Americans’ phone records. Gen. Alexander, in a shockingly forthcoming response, admitted that he “believes] it is in the nation’s best interest to [put all the phone records into a lockbox that we can search when the nation needs it.” He also explained that “there is no upper limit” to the number of Americans’ phone records that the NSA can collect.

This admission is particularly unnerving in light of the last few months’ revelations of the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of Americans’ communications under programs authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot Act and Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. And Sens. Wyden (D-Ore.) and Udall made it crystal clear that in spite of all that we have learned about these programs since the NSA leaks began, there may still be a lot that we don’t know – and as they’ve been warning since 2011, they think we deserve to find out.

I start my approach to healthcare from two very basic premises. First, healthcare must be recognized as a right, not a privilege. Every man, woman and child in our country should be able to access the healthcare they need regardless of their income. Second, we must create a national healthcare system that provides quality healthcare for all in the most cost-effective way possible.

Tragically, the United States is failing in both areas.

It is unconscionable that in one of the most advanced nations in the world, there are nearly 50 million people who lack health insurance and millions more who have burdensome co-payments and deductibles. In fact, some 45,000 Americans die each year because they do not get to a doctor when they should. In terms of life expectancy, infant mortality and other health outcomes, the United States lags behind almost every other advanced country.

Robert Kuttner: Beyond the Shutdown

We already know the next two acts of this drama. The Senate will refuse to accept the latest disingenuous House offer of allowing temporary government funding in exchange for a one-year delay in implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Barring a miracle, the government will then be forced to cease all non-emergency operations as of midnight tonight.

We also know that at some point, the government will have to re-open, and that Republicans will have to relent on their fantasy of destroying Obamacare. The Republicans picked the president’s signature achievement, the one issue on which he can’t be rolled. But what will be their price for allowing the government to function?

Norman Solomon: The NSA Deserves a Permanent Shutdown

To the people in control of the executive branch, violating our civil liberties is an essential government service. So — to ensure total fulfillment of Big Brother’s vast responsibilities — the National Security Agency is insulated from any fiscal disruption.

The NSA’s surveillance programs are exempt from a government shutdown. With typical understatement, an unnamed official told The Hill that “a shutdown would be unlikely to affect core NSA operations.”

At the top of the federal government, even a brief shutdown of “core NSA operations” is unthinkable. But at the grassroots, a permanent shutdown of the NSA should be more than thinkable; we should strive to make it achievable.

NSA documents, revealed by intrepid whistleblower Edward Snowden, make clear what’s at stake. In a word: democracy.

Dilip Hiro: [A World in Which No One Is Listening to the Planet’s Sole Superpower ]

The Greater Middle East’s Greatest Rebuff to Uncle Sam

What if the sole superpower on the planet makes its will known — repeatedly — and finds that no one is listening?  Barely a decade ago, that would have seemed like a conundrum from some fantasy Earth in an alternate dimension.  Now, it is increasingly a plain description of political life on our globe, especially in the Greater Middle East.

In the future, the indecent haste with which Barack Obama sought cover under the umbrella unfurled by his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in the Syrian chemical weapons crisis will be viewed as a watershed moment when it comes to America’s waning power in that region.  In the aptly named “arc of instability,” the lands from the Chinese border to northern Africa that President George W. Bush and his neocon acolytes dreamed of thoroughly pacifying, turmoil is on the rise. Ever fewer countries, allies, or enemies, are paying attention, much less kowtowing, to the once-formidable power of the world’s last superpower.  The list of defiant figures — from Egyptian generals to Saudi princes, Iraqi Shiite leaders to Israeli politicians — is lengthening.

The Obama administration’s rule requiring employer health plans to cover birth control without a co-payment has given rise to a slew of lawsuits by private companies claiming the mandate attacks religious freedom. Three federal appeals courts have ruled on the issue, with two correctly rejecting that view as without legal foundation. Given the conflicting rulings, it is a good bet the Supreme Court will agree to address this issue in the next term. [..]

Allowing employees to make independent decisions to obtain contraceptives does not violate anyone’s religious freedom. If the Supreme Court takes up these cases, it should soundly reject the warped view that some employers can get out of complying with the new law, and in effect use their religious beliefs to discriminate against women.

Dean Baker: Social Security Does Not Redistribute From Young to Old, It Is a Public Pension System

One of the most pernicious myths of the Fix the Debt Gang and other Peter Peterson type outfits is that Social Security redistributes money from the young to the old. This is bizarre because people pay for their benefits with the taxes they contribute during their working lifetimes. In fact, the average return current beneficiaries receive is not especially high (less than 2.0 percent real).

If workers contributed the same amount to a privately managed pension fund and then collected an annuity in their retirement no one would call it a redistribution from young to old. It hard to see how it becomes a generational redistribution because Social Security is run by the government. But that is what Robert Samuelson is telling readers in today’s column.

Paul Rosenberg: The US needs to adopt a new mythos that’s not at war with facts

From guns to health care, conservatives push a mythically-driven politics that’s actively hostile to facts.

Antoinette Tuff is the NRA’s worst nightmare.  In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre infamously said, “The only way to stop a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun.” But when Tuff talked Michael Brandon Hill into giving up his gun and surrendering to police on August 21, she showed the whole world just how wrong LaPierre was.  A good woman with no gun did the job perfectly, thank you very much. ]..]

It’s not that Tuff disproved LaPierre. It was something much more basic than that. Disproving LaPierre’s statement would imply it was a factual claim, when actually it was not. It was, instead, a form of mythic utterance, a ritual incantation, a drawing down of higher powers, into the holy vessel of the gun.  In the introduction to The Battle For God, Karen Armstrong distinguishes between two radically different forms of knowledge: logos, which has to do with how things work in the world, and mythos, which has to do with ultimate meanings.

How many more rounds of this must America take?  How many more times must the economic neck of the nation have a knife pressed against it by Republicans demanding a ransom?

It seems the answer is at least once more – or twice.

Washington is still wrangling over a way to avoid a government shutdown next week, while Republicans are already gearing up to refuse to raise the debt limit – something that no Congress under any other president has ever refused to do.

Ralph Nader: The UN Needs a Larger ‘War on Poverty’

The United Nations has recently been the source of much discussion and controversy. In a speech this week to the UN General Assembly, President Obama continued to make his case for a military strike against Syria. The president posed this question (which he could have asked himself) to the assemblage: “What is the role of force in resolving disputes that threaten the stability of the region and undermine all basic standards of civilized conduct?”

I’ll pose another question. What is the role of ending extreme poverty on a global scale that threatens the stability of millions of innocent human lives and undermine all basic standards of civilized conduct? What about access to food and water, education, and immunization to diseases?

Michelangelo Signorile: Why Barilla Pasta CEO Is So Clueless About Gays

A lot of people are scratching their heads, wondering how the CEO of Barilla Group could be so profoundly stupid as to slam gays by saying they should go eat someone else’s pasta. “For us, the ‘sacral family’ remains one of the company’s core values,” Guido Barilla, CEO of the Parma, Italy-based company, said in an interview. “Our family is a traditional family. If gays like our pasta and our advertisings, they will eat our pasta; if they don’t like that, they will eat someone else’s pasta.” Barilla also said that he wouldn’t depict a gay family in an ad, responding to a question about a female Italian politician’s criticisms of the stereotyping of women in ads in Italy, saying of his advertising, “the women are crucial in this.”

What many people don’t understand is that in Italy what Barilla said is, sadly, too often perfectly acceptable. He was speaking on an Italian radio program. He was likely oblivious to how it would play globally, and probably not very conscious of how the rights and conditions of LGBT people, and the role of women, have changed dramatically in the rest of the industrialized West. His pasta may be the No. 1 pasta in the world, but it appears he leads the insular life that many Italian straight men lead — yes, including educated, wealthy men — keeping women in their place and dismissing gays.

Les Leopold: Is the President Selling Out Higher Education to Wall Street?

The Obama Administration is transporting Wall Street logic into higher education by proposing to measure the value of a college by the earnings of its graduates. This conceptual coup may be the best news for Wall Street since the abolition of Glass-Steagall.

We need not repeat all that has been written about how this money-making metric misses the point of college — about how students should be studying to become good citizens and leaders, to find and know themselves, to discover which pursuits in life best suit them, to develop an inquiring mind and so on. But such musings, however admirable, miss the main point: Using future earnings as a measuring stick transforms the entire notion of higher education into yet another financial instrument. No doubt some Wall Street hustlers are already dreaming up how to create derivatives they can sell to insure students and their families against less than expected earning outcomes from the college investment. Wow, an entire new casino in the making, right up there with the ethanol market.

On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew sent the House a very serious warning that, for the first time, the United States would be unable to pay its bills beginning on Oct. 17 if the debt ceiling is not lifted. House leaders responded on Thursday with one of the least serious negotiating proposals in modern Congressional history: a jaw-dropping list of ransom demands containing more than a dozen discredited Republican policy fantasies. [..]

But the absurdity of the list shows just how important it is that Mr. Obama ignore every demand and force the House extremists to decide whether they really want to be responsible for an economic catastrophe. He made a mistake by negotiating in 2011, hoping to reach a grand bargain; that produced the corrosive sequester cuts.

To prevent the House from making every debt-ceiling increase an opportunity to issue extortionist demands for rejected policies they can achieve in no other way, the president has to put an end to the routine creation of emergencies once and for all by simply saying no.

John Nichols: House GOP Debt-Ceiling Plan: Paul Ryan’s Losing Ideas From 2012

Was there a presidential election in 2012? Yes.

Who won? Barack Obama.

Who was elected vice president? Joe Biden.

Who lost for president? Mitt Romney.

Who lost for vice president? Paul Ryan.

Cool, just wanted to get that straight.

The latest scheme (pdf) from House Republicans might have confused folks.

House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan are not quite done threatening a government shutdown as part of the “Defund Obamacare” debacle. But they are already on to their next project: holding hostage any agreement to allow the debt-ceiling to rise.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: The Robots Are Coming – Now What?

A new study says that nearly half of all American jobs may soon be performed by robots. And the White House has just announced the formation of “the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership Steering Committee ‘2.0,’” which it describes as “part of a continuing effort to maintain U.S.leadership in the emerging technologies that will create high-quality manufacturing jobs and enhance America’s global competitiveness.”

That seems like a good idea, but it raises a number of questions. There is only one labor representative on the committee, as compared to eleven corporate CEOs, and it would be good to know why. What’s more, labor isn’t acknowledged in the President’s statement that “industry, academia, and government must work in partnership to revitalize our manufacturing sector.”

That’s unfortunate, because the working people of America should have a strong voice in designing the future of our manufacturing sector. In fact, that role is more important than ever, as a manufactured product – a range of devices commonly described as “robots” – may change the face of work in America.

Jill Filipovic: The way America eats is killing us. Something has to change

Another report confirms: we’re the United States of big meals, yet we do little to change our disastrous corporate food culture

It will shock no one to hear that Americans are remarkably unhealthy eaters. A new American Diet Report Card (pdf) confirms it: we eat far too much cheese, sugar, starch and red meat. We don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables. We consume almost 500 more calories per day than we did in the 1970s.

Our eating habits are poor, but it’s not because we’re a nation of lazy fools jonesing for our daily Big Mac fix, health be damned. It is because we are far too deferential to the interests of big companies, too invested in a corporate-serving narrative of personal responsibility with no parallel requirement of social responsibility, and too culturally wedded to a food model of quantity over quality. [..]

The message is getting through, but slowly: the way we’re eating is killing us. Something has to change.

There’s something profoundly despicable about a Justice Department that would brazenly violate the First and Fourth Amendments while spying on journalists, then claim to be reassessing such policies after an avalanche of criticism-and then proceed, as it did this week, to gloat that those policies made possible a long prison sentence for a journalistic source.

Welcome to the Obama Justice Department.

While mouthing platitudes about respecting press freedom, the president has overseen methodical actions to undermine it. We should retire understated phrases like “chilling effect.” With the announcement from Obama’s Justice Department on Monday, the thermometer has dropped below freezing.

Lateefa Simon: When will the US stop building more prisons?

I was once a teen mom with an arrest record and few options. I know from personal experience how a job can change a life

America’s prison crisis isn’t about a lack of space; it’s a systematic lack of opportunity in poor communities. We have failed as a society to understand what it takes for previously incarcerated people to live meaningful, productive lives – and to keep them out of prison in the first place.

It sounds deceptively simple, but my own experience – and a growing body of research – shows that one thing can help keep people from entering prison and prevent those released from going back: jobs. Employment opportunities give people a sense of purpose, help build confidence and foster strong social connections and pay the rent.

William Pfaff: Time for the West to Cease Intervention

We have today entered a new political-or politico-religious-period in which the Muslim peoples of the Middle East are seizing control of their own fortunes, a control lost as a result of the First World War and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, which, with its Arab Caliphate predecessors in Crusader times, traces back to the very origin of Islam in what now is Syria, Iraq and Arabia proper.

Few in the West seem to have grasped the significance of the fact that Muslims themselves have taken over the struggle against Islamic radicalism. The West did not start the war in Syria. Until chemical weapons were used in the war, it has had no direct implication in it, and feeble indirect ones, other than to assist the victims. It is the Syrians’ war, and that of the other Arabs who have chosen to take part.

Robert Sheer: Obama’s Friends in Low Places

That Barack Obama is such a kidder. No matter how awkward the moment, he’s got just the right quip to purchase some wiggle room. Remember when his old Chicago banking buddy Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, first ran into that bit of trouble over his bank’s “London Whale” derivative scam? That scheme has already lost $6 billion with close to $1 billion more piled on by the SEC in fines last week after JPMorgan admitted it broke the law.  [..]

It should be remembered that this same Dimon, who appeared before a Senate committee wearing presidential cufflinks, once worked with Sanford Weill in engineering the reversal of the Glass-Steagall law to make Citigroup, a previously illegal merger of investment and commercial banks, possible. But despite his record as a leader in the radical deregulation of banking that caused all of the trouble, Obama turned to Dimon for direction on fixing the economy.