Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail by Matt Taibbi is another one for the records.

The bank has defrauded everyone from investors and insurers to homeowners and the unemployed. So why does the government keep bailing it out?

I admit to only having read the first 3 pages of this 5 page article.  How many pages of a career criminal’s rap sheet do you have to read to get the picture?

The first 3 pages were enough to get to the explanation of why bank regulation was introduced and why revoking it has led to exactly the abuses that the regulations were invented to prevent.

For a time, this ridiculous rivalry between two strutting Southern peacocks was restrained by the law – specifically, the McFadden-Pepper Act of 1927 and the Douglas Amendment to the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956. These two federal statutes, which made it illegal for a bank holding company to own and operate banks in more than one state, were effectively designed to prevent exactly the Too Big to Fail problem we now find ourselves faced with. The goal, as Sen. Paul Douglas explained at the time, was “to prevent an undue concentration of banking and financial power, and instead keep the private control of credit diffused as much as possible.”

Since the 1980s we have decided that “undue concentration of banking and financial power” was now due.  It shouldn’t be a surprise that stealing money is easier than earning it, especially if you own the police force.

The propaganda machine rolls on, making people more afraid of the people protesting the robbery than they are afraid of the robbers.

People seem to be saying, “Go ahead and steal my money.  Anything is better than being a socialist.”

I just couldn’t resist, so I read The New York Times piece Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs by Greg Smith.

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

I have no pithy nor even snide comments to make.  I have nothing to add, either.  I really don’t even have a reason to think this might be memorable and so worth recording on my blog.

I found the article  VIDEO: Elizabeth Warren Visits North Andover posted on the North Andover Patch.

Check out this clip in which Warren discusses her campaign, how she plans to appeal to the towns (and the region’s) politically diverse population, and what she would do, if elected, to confront the region’s housing and foreclosure crisis.

Here is a transcription of an email that I received about a proposed bill that makes a lot of sense to me.

The main points  described in a brief summary of the bill are:

• Make student loan repayment both simple and fair
• Jumpstart the economy and create jobs
• Send a lifeline to student borrowers who have fallen on difficult times
• Promote financial responsibility in higher education

For all the details, you can read the actual bill.

There are also answers to some Frequently Asked Questions.

Please sign the petition in favor of H.R. 4170 by clicking on the following link: http://signon.org/sign/support-the-student-loan

This seems like a needed first step to reinstating support for higher education, economic prosperity, and social mobility that has started to wane in this country.

In the hurly-burly of an election campaign, our memory of why we like Elizabeth Warren so much may grow dim, until we see a video like this one. This video shows us reasons for appreciating Warren that we weren’t even aware of.

At almost every moment in this video there is another jaw dropping revelation. If there were a video of me watching this video, you would see how literally I mean this.

This video makes it very readily apparent that Warren knows so such more than is visible from her current political campaign.

Why doesn’t the Warren campaign want you to see this video?

Of course, I am only guessing here. I am sure the the Warren Troll can come up with a good many other reasons.

• Mario Savio – Free Speech Movement.
• This video is the answer to the Warren Facebook Troll

I lost track of the political activist Mario Savio right after the Berkeley riots of the 1960s were over. It is news to me that he established a career that is worthy of remembrance as indicated in this video. I have not followed up and visited the web site yet.

We all know what the Republicans will make of this connection, if they find out about this video. At the end, I will mention how I found it, but you can bet the Republicans will find it too, especially after I blog about it.

My advice to the campaign, which they never follow, is to stop pretending the inevitable might not happen. Get out in front of the inevitable and turn it toward your advantage before the opposition tries to turn it to your disadvantage.

Ironically, in this video Elizabeth Warren talks about how a campaign could use technology to run a better campaign. Her campaign is most decidedly not taking instructions from the version of Elizabeth Warren who appears in this video.

Elizabeth Warren talks about crowd sourcing in this video. In a campaign context, I first heard the idea in an email from Scott Brown. Where is the Warren campaign?

Many of the things that Warren talks about in the use of technology for making the CFPB agency a strong one are exactly the ideas that her campaign needs to use, but the troll stands in the way of doing these exact things. He has a thousand reasons to turn down any suggestion that comes into the campaign via the Facebook page. (And to disparage the suggester in the bargain)

How to get the DVDs

So here is how I stumbled across this lecture. I was doing research on how one might acquire the rights to rebroadcast the lecture in my previous post, The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class. By the way, these two videos are wonderful companion pieces.

I found that you can purchase DVDs of these lectures from The University Of California TV.

The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class: Higher Risks, Lower Rewards, and a Shrinking Safety Net $24.95.

Before I had scrolled down to find the above video, I happened to notice this one.

Main Street First: Fixing Broken Markets and Rebuilding the Middle Class with Elizabeth Warren.

It appears from the UCTV web site that it will be easy to get permission to rebroadcast these DVDs in a non-profit situation.

My battle on the Elizabeth Warren Facebook page has produced one good result for me. A fellow battler introduced himself to me. As a result, I found the following video.

This video was part of the We Are All Anonymous article on DailyKos.

For those of you who do not know about Elizabeth Warren’s expertise in consumer finance, here she is explaining how the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is trying to simplify various consumer financial forms. The CFPB is the agency that Warren fought to have created and which she set up. The Republicans were too protective of the banks to let her run the agency, that is why we get to voter for her as the U.S. Senator for Massachusetts.

On her Facebook post about this video, she says:

On Wednesday, I met with a small group in Charlestown to talk about protecting consumers from tricks and traps hidden in the fine print of consumer loans. One person asked why banks and credit card companies aren’t forced to write in simple language that everyone can understand. Here was my response.

Unlike some in the other party, Elizabeth Warren seems to have formed her opinions about the Girl Scouts from first hand knowledge.

I guess we consider this post an antidote to GOP lawmaker: ‘Radicalized’ Girl Scouts ‘sexualizing’ recruits. Doesn’t it feel better than to have a politician talk to us in a calm, rational, sincere voice? Even Mitt Romney likens what some Republicans say to lighting his hair on fire to get attention.

Cape Cod Today has the article Elizabeth Warren: Whose Side Are You On? by Mary Wentworth.

She has some policy disagreements with Elizabeth Warren that are similar to mine,

First off, your Foreign Policy statement that “Iran is a significant threat to the United States and our allies” because it “is pursuing nuclear weapons” verges on warmongering.

She also has some complaints about the campaign that are similar to mine.

The web site does not invite a repeat visit. Rework it so we can find out what happened yesterday, what’s up for today, communicate with one another, contribute to fill a bat or a balloon when you need a money bomb, let us show how we can work together to promote your candidacy. Make it a fun place.

One thing that is different is that she has the professional political experience to give some credence to her observations.

Thanks to Michael Horan for posting this article on his Facebook page, where I first saw it.

Raw Story is carrying the article, Ohio stiffens regulations after concluding that fracking caused earthquakes.

Ohio state regulators announced tough new regulations on Friday after concluding that the injection of wastewater underground as part of the controversial gas-drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” had almost certainly caused a dozen earthquakes near one well.

This story was published Friday, March 9, 2012.  I scooped them by more than a year with my previous post EPA to natural gas companies: Give details on ‘fracking’ chemicals published on December 30, 2010.

I added the following to the article about the EPA:

To add to the worries enumerated in the above story, I recall the troubles that came to light many years ago in Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado. There was a sudden rise in minor earthquakes that was attributed to the pumping of industrial waste into underground storage. The threat was so serious that such pumping was halted. I’m off to track down the story of the earthquake in Indiana, Indiana earthquake strikes in rare location, to see if it is near any natural gas wells that have been subject to fracking

After writing the above paragraph, I did the research and added the results to the end of that post.

That link above to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal showed that the U. S. Army knew about this hazard in 1966.  Why should it be a surprise to Ohio almost 50 years later?