Here is an email, I just received from Ben Ray Luján at The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Hi everybody.

My name is Ben Ray Luján. As you may have heard, I’m the new Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. And I want to loop you in on something pretty cool.

Right now, my team is preparing our strategy for 2016. This is when we start to think about the issues we’ll make a top priority, and the campaign strategies that will help Democrats win.

There are so many exciting ideas I want to share to rebuild our middle class and the heart of America, but first I want to hear from you.

Click here to answer our 2016 issue survey and tell us what matters most to you:

http://action.dccc.org/2016-Priorities-Survey

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. Looking forward to working with you!

Ben Ray Luján
DCCC Chairman

You might want to tell him to promote the plan that was the focus of my previous post, Bernie Sanders – An Economic Agenda for America: 12 Steps Forward.

You might also mention how important it is to bring criminal charges against the executives on Wall Street who committed fraud against their own companies while bringing the world economy to the brink of collapse. What the Democratic leadership needs to hear is that as long as high crime continues to pay high returns to the criminals, there will not be much progress in fixing what ails this country. Without the promise of reform that the bottom 90% of wage earners can believe in, then Democrats do not deserve to win elections.

After I took the survey, the DCCC sent me a thank you and urged me to promte the survey among friends using the following image:

Rejected Image

I replied that I would not be using this image, as President Obama is no longer the symbol of our hopes. If they can’t understand that anyone who promotes Wall Street favoritism is not a good symbol to use, then their campaign for 2016 is doomed to failure from the start.

Politico has the article Whatever Happened to Overtime? : It’s one reason we’re poorer than our parents. And Obama could fix it—without Congress. by Mick Hanauer. The article is written by a wealthy capitalist who is trying to explain to you how he and his fellow capitalists are taking advantage of you.  He’d prefer for you voters to change the rules so he won’t have to do  this, but until you do, he and the others will continue to do this.

This is the part of the article I decided to focus on as I read the beginning.

But what about the most basic need of all—jump-starting the real economy by giving more middle-class Americans a fair shake? You would think that for a Democratic administration, raising the threshold back to where it once was would be a no-brainer, but I have grave doubts that administration officials are heading in this direction. In fact they are likely to raise the threshold only partly, and the Obama administration has not yet grappled with the broader question of how moves such as this are critical to helping to restore America’s middle class. How do I know? Intuition. OK, I admit it, more than intuition. I’ve had conversations with administration officials about their forthcoming policy changes. And the scuttlebutt out of the Labor Department looks promising—for corporations. Not the middle class.

It is my sense, based on my conversations with government officials, that the administration is buying the line from corporate lobbyists who are arguing that such rule changes would devastate their bottom lines, forcing them to lay off workers. You know, the old trickle-down gambit—if workers earn more money, it would be bad for business, the economy and workers. The Obama team, in other words, is buying into the same discredited theories that were used to erode the threshold in the first place. Officials will very likely raise the overtime threshold just enough to say they’re doing something, without actually doing much of anything for the middle class or our demand-starved economy at all.
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What very few Americans seem to understand is that that extra trillion dollars isn’t profit because it had to be, or needs to be or should be. That extra trillion dollars is profit because powerful people like me prefer it to be. It could have been spent on your wages. Or it could have gone into discounts to you, the consumer. We capitalists will tell you that our increasing profits are the result of some complex economic force with the immutability and righteousness of divine law. But the truth is, it is simply a result of a difference in negotiating power. As in, we have it. And you don’t.

This part focuses on what Obama has failed to do, but could still do to help the middle-class.  This goes along with my continuing thesis that the Democrats lost big in the last election exactly because they were not doing all they could to help the middle-class.

As I read more of the article, I realized there was much more to it.  Unfortunately for you, I am not going to quote it here.  You’ll have to read it yourself.

It goes a long way to explain why I am retired and getting richer, while you may be working and getting poorer.

New Economic Perspectives has the article The Wall Street Journal Still Refuses to Grasp Accounting Control Fraud via Appraisal Fraud by William Black.

I’ll give you the beginning of the article.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) report described one of three epidemics of accounting control fraud that drove the financial crisis in these terms.

“Some real estate appraisers had also been expressing concerns for years. From 2000 to 2007, a coalition of appraisal organizations circulated and ultimately delivered to Washington officials a public petition; signed by 11,000 appraisers and including the name and address of each, it charged that lenders were pressuring appraisers to place artificially high prices on properties. According to the petition, lenders were ‘blacklisting honest appraisers’ and instead assigning business only to appraisers who would hit the desired price targets” [FCIC 2011: 18].

The FCIC Report then documents scale of this epidemic of loan origination fraud.

“One 2003 survey found that 55% of the appraisers had felt pressed to inflate the value of homes; by 2006, this had climbed to 90%. The pressure came most frequently from the mortgage brokers, but appraisers reported it from real estate agents, lenders, and in many cases borrowers themselves. Most often, refusal to raise the appraisal meant losing the client” [FCIC 2011: 91].

And here is the conclusion of the Black’s analysis of the Wall Street Journal article.

No bank officer was sanctioned administratively by the regulators, sued by them, or prosecuted. No enforcement action is described as being taken by the OCC against any bank. The OCC is not described as adopting any rule. The OCC is not described as having made a single criminal referral. If this is what the WSJ thinks describes a “wary” regulator’s response to a fraud epidemic then they are delusional. I have explained in prior articles that the head of the OCC is an anti-regulator who has expressly refused to make ending control frauds led by bank CEOs a regulatory priority. Note that the OCC not only failed to use the word “fraud” to describe appraisal fraud, it also attributed the endemic appraisal fraud to preposterous explanations such as insufficient staff “training” and “oversight.”

To what can we attribute the absolute refusal of regulators to see any fraud when the evidence of the fraud has been presented to them for over 14 years?  What can we expect for investigations of this question from the Republican leadership of the House and the Senate in the next two years – Benghazi?

Is it any wonder that voters are disgusted with both Democrats and Republicans who cannot agree on anything except for “more money for fraudulent bankers is good for the economy”?

Naked Capitalism has the article Gaius Publius: An “Open Rebellion Caucus” Forms in the Senate.  Yves wrote the following introduction:

Yves here. Gaius Publius describes how an increasingly uppity faction within the Democratic party is revolting against the way that the party has become largely indistinguishable from the Republicans on economic matters. Oh, they make more middle class friendly noises, but as Lambert puts it, “The Republicans let you know they plan to knife you in the face. The Democrats tell you they only want one kidney. What they don’t tell you is next year they are coming for the other kidney.”

The article puts together pieces from source I have quoted on this blog.

Horrors for agreeing with the Tea Party’s fondness for the following quote from Thomas Jefferson:

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

The article ends with a video dissecting the nomination of Loretta Lynch to replace Eric Holder as Attorney General.

America’s Lawyer Mike Papantonio, Ring of Fire Radio, joins Thom Hartmann. Democrats are singing Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch’s praises. But is she really the progressive hero they say she is?

Yes, I know what RT stands for. I also get the irony of having to go to this source to hear some truth about what is going on in the USA. What other kind of source has no motive for sugarcoating these issues?

Boston CBS local is carrying the story Elizabeth Warren Draws Praise, Ire In 1st 2 years In Senate from The Associated Press.

She also faulted Obama for nominating Antonio Weiss, the head of investment banking for a financial advisory and asset management firm, for a position at the Treasury Department. Warren said Weiss isn’t qualified to oversee consumer protection and domestic regulatory functions at the Treasury.

Her opposition to Weiss has drawn criticism.

“Ms. Warren’s other main objection is simply that Mr. Weiss has worked on Wall Street, which she seems to believe disqualifies him based on symbolism alone,” wrote Andrew Ross Sorkin, a New York Times columnist and author of “Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — and Themselves.”

I was particularly pleased that the best opposition case that her critics could come up with was the above misstatement of what her complaint was.  Weiss’s lack of experience in the area to which the President wishes to appoint him, and the fact that there are much  better candidates with far superior qualifications is actually the basis for her objection.  It is exactly the fact that the Wall Street apologists and even some of its critics just do not seem to understand the problem that makes Elizabeth Warren such a standout crusader for the middle-class.

MSNBC has the story Deval Patrick reveals ‘huge mistake’ Democrats made in 2014.

“One problem the president has is he doesn’t tell the story well or regularly,” he told host Chuck Todd. Obama needs to tout his accomplishments more often, Patrick said, citing the “importance of repetition.”

I would never inflict any show on you that was hosted by Chuck Todd, so I will not include any video from whatever show it was.

As for what Deval Patrick was reported to have said, that has been my complaint about Obama for 6 years now.  One more thing though, there is a story to be told well and regularly, but there is also part of the story that can’t be told well because the story is not good.  Obama muffed his chance when his administration did not go after criminal complaints against the criminal bank executives.  That was completely his administration’s call.  Congress could not have blocked him.

He is also too strong a believer in right wing  economics, and his actions have clearly  demonstrated that.

His pushing of anti-middle-class trade deals is also a hard story to tell well.  It is not just that he is acquiescing to someone else’s activity.  It is his administration that is negotiating this in secret, and he is in the forefront of pushing for the TPP in word and deed.

By the way, Governor Patrick, you are not so good a follower of your own advice.  The Governor does not make a lot of well publicized appearances to tell his story frequently.  When I have hard him speak, he does tell the story well, though.

Yes, the key is to tell the story well and frequently even after you are elected, but first you’d better have a good story worth telling. For instance, I think Elizabeth Warren is making the record for a good story to tell, and her public appearances inside and outside of the Senate are telling that story well.

Mother Jones has the article Elizabeth Warren’s Next Target: Walmart.

Warren and her colleagues also plan to discuss legislation that could help Walmart employees and other low-wage workers around the country, including measures that would raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, forbid unpredictable irregular work schedules for part-time workers, and help prevent employers from retaliating against workers who share wage information.

It is so great to see that Elizabeth Warren’s ideas for improving the plight of the middle-class extends far beyond just the banks and the crimes their executives have committed.

Thanks to Amherst For Elizabeth for posting this on their Facebook page.

I don’t think Oregon’s Senator Merkley is as well known back here in Massachusetts’ as our own Senator Elizabeth Warren is. I’d like to correct any impression that there might be that Elizabeth Warren is alone in this fight. Or that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are the only two in the Senate fighting for progressive principles.

I found another YouTube video Merkley: Let’s end outrageous tax loopholes that ship our jobs overseas.

Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley addressed the Senate on July 23, 2014, in support of a bill being debated that would bring back manufacturing jobs to Oregon and to all of the United States. Senator Merkley is an original cosponsor of the Bring Jobs Home Act, which would close tax loopholes that subsidize corporations for moving their operations overseas and create new tax incentives for companies that bring jobs back to America.

Senator Merkley adds some facts that offsets some of the statistics that people use to make you think that the situation is improving more than it actually is.

In an economy while jobs have been returning, quality, living wage jobs remain elusive. Indeed 60% of the jobs that we lost in 2008 and 2009 were living wage jobs, and in the jobs we are getting back only 40% of those are living wage jobs.

So when even some Democrats would like to blow their own horns about how the economy is recovering by counting the number of people finding work, remember that not all jobs are created equal. If someone lost a living wage job and had to replace it with a minimum wage job, that is not recovery.

A Ready for Warren Facebook post highlighted the following video.

From the YouTube post we have the following introduction:

Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley questions William Dudley, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, on whether financial regulators have truly ended “Too Big To Jail.”

Previously I had posted a video Elizabeth Warren Blasts New York Fed President William Dudley. I didn’t want to leave the impression that Elizabeth Warren is all alone in fighting this fight. (I have read that there were actually two or three more Senators than just these two grilling Dudley.)