On the cusp of landing a banking reform bill on the Senate floor, Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Richard Shelby (R-AL) showed up for a status report. Mr. Dodd, as it is well documented, has been the driving force behind the initiative, but Mr. Shelby has worked closely with him the entire way. However, the body language from both men were quite telling.
Senator Dodd said that the Goldman Sachs episode (where they made billions betting against the economy), there is a heightened need for reform. To which, Sen. Shelby countered that we need to end the casino atmosphere on Wall Street. Wait... not really a counter. In fact, through his Stepford tone, Mr. Shelby said things that pretty much put him on the same page as Mr. Dodd, but he couldn't show any kind of collective sense of accomplishment. His predicament is that banking reform is something everyone wants and that there isn't enough to disagree on, which doesn't help Republicans politically.
On the other hand, Mr. Dodd was trying to say that the bill should be named the Dodd-Shelby bill, but Sen. Shelby was cutting that down with a lack of acknowledgment all together. Maybe it was just the different temperament of the two men, or possibly it's just a reflection of the political climate. Republicans are obligated NOT to warm up to Democrats - we know this. And to further that point, Senator Shelby said that the bill doesn't, in fact, prevent too big to fail, and must be tightened up. Hence, Republicans will oppose the bill in its current form, which is very shrewd politically. By saying that the bill doesn't go far enough, Republicans will not vote it and in essence blocking a bill that they don't want to see pass even if it did have more teeth.
However, we do agree with Mr. Shelby in reference to the bail-outs. Mr. Gregory pointed out that most of the banks and the automakers have paid back their respective bail-outs. Mr. Shelby said that not all the bail-out money, even from those firms paying it back, will ever be reimbursed. That's just true, a lot of that money is just money down the drain to create some kind of solvency somewhere in a corner of the economy. It's sort of like that $9 Billion in cash that disappeared in Iraq. It paid someone somewhere for something that can't be discussed. And Mr. Shelby also quoted Paul Volker in saying that if you're too big to regulate, you're too big to exist - also true because we would still like to think that no one in this country is above the law.
Senator Dodd stated that the complexity of the bill is a red herring, and we agree simply because you can not oppose something because it seems too complex. Just master the complexity. Newsweek's Evan Thomas pointed out, on the panel, that we're not going to turn things around this time, 'growing out of it,' not without regulation. So in spite of what we said above about politically shrewd moves, the Republicans don't have the collective will to oppose banking regulation reform.
In a day where hard partisanship sells, here's an issue in which you can see consensus, but we can't bring ourselves to it. This plays into the other topic of discussion, for today's panel, which was the role of government. How much should it play a direct part of our daily lives? How strong of a hand should it have? Well first, that's a good question for Arizona.
For a state that leans way right and shouts complaints about government's big hand, they decided to act on immigration because the federal government has down nothing 'for decades' as the Arizona Governor put it. But they didn't quite act in a 'freedom loving' kind of way. Even before the bill was signed, the jokes about, "Where are your papers [with German accent]?" were flying around.
But even today's panel was unanimous in its opinion of what likely effect this new law will have, namely the potential for racial profiling. And it will happen, it's like physics. Arizona passed this lawyer to address illegal Mexican immigration and it's inevitable that American citizens are going to be required to show citizenship upon request. That's not freedom, that's nationalism, more in line with the fascist tendencies. And we're not saying that the Arizona legislature is a bunch of Nazis, not at all. They are just reacting in a drastic way to what they feel is a drastic problem... again social physics.
Also, as PBS's Michele Norris rhetorically asked, are they going to check Chinese immigrants or Irish immigrants or the Brit who overstayed his visa? Officially, maybe... but unofficially, absolutely no. So the essence of that is racial profiling of one group. And as Erin Burnett of CNBC pointed out, an expendable one. In her ever cavalier, corporatist view, she explained that corporations, though it would seem they like cheap labor, will still be able to get it despite this law. It's the Chinese and Indian immigrants that they welcome for the high tech.
Lastly, this has put immigration reform to the forefront of the Demcrats' agenda, New York Times David Brooks explained, simply for political reasons, not out of necessity - ahead of energy policy, which is a much higher priority. And why? Because everyone wants that Latino vote, with the exception of Senator John McCain, who endorsed the bill. In a hard turn right, Mr. McCain, who worked on immigration reform for years with the late Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts, it was pointed out, went back on one of his well-established positions to get the right votes. But what ever votes he's courting, his endorsement doesn't line up with something we thought Mr. McCain was all about - the defense of freedom.
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