As I wrote, isn’t it time for this to occur?

Why not just rename it the FIRE Capitol.

Why is it we’re always seeing the same names on these corporate quislings lists? It’s disgusting.

Error! Kaufman was not in the Senate for TARP 1. Kaufman is a replacement for Biden.

Shaheen and Mark Warner same.

Thanks, Jane. Some of these assholes sure do love them some bank taxpayer money while clearly not caring much at all about We The People.

I wish I knew why Byrd is one of them. Byrd also opposed cramdown.

Can you say “corporate shill?” I knew you could.

Again, credit card companies are a step above loan sharks in that they can’t break your head if you don’t pay. If you don’t like the rate, don’t take the loan. Clearly people can live without credit cards but they choose not to. I remember the days when you had to go and see a banker to get a loan, and that sucked. I suppose credit card companies will still do business with rates capped at 15% but it might preclude a lot of people, such as myself when I was younger, from getting a loan.

Notice that Holy Joe got the most. These people are disgusting and are not good for America. We need to primary all of them even if we lose. At least we would get the word out about them and they would have to spend time and money. And Tester, Again!

good for bernie sanders.

i’d like to add one more vote to the list – the vote on amending tarp 1 to create a temporary surtax on income iirc over $500,000 to help pay for a portion of tarp 1.

sanders was the only one to vote for it.

our senate sucks.

Can anyone explain using credit cards for anything but emergency use? I’d really like to hear a reasonable, rational reason for purchasing everyday items with borrowed money.

How about naming it Capital One™ Hill?

“When I die I hope people say, ‘That guy owed me a lot of money.’”
-Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey

Well, at the risk of being accused of agism (sp?), there *is* the question of mental acuity wrt him. And that’s coming from someone who’s pushing the package in years and beginning to have memory problems herself. *G*

There you go, that’s much better.

isn’t it interesting that baucus is number three on the list (after only the fake dems lieberman and specter – so i should really call him number one)… the very baucus who is being entrusted to come up with health care reform.

no surprise that all we’re getting from him is some fake kabuki about a so-called public option while making sure that the most popular option, single-payer, can not be mentioned let alone disturb the purity of the dems and the insurance industry’s public or secret negotiations.

btw, ralphbon has an awesome diary about his experience at the protest and lobbying day in dc yesterday, Return of the Baucus Thirteen:

Wednesday, Washington belonged to hundreds of “mighty mighty nurses” rallying for single payer legislation, as well as other critical issues such as legislated nurse-patient ratios and solidarity with individual nurse unionization struggles.

They were marching and lobbying in conjunction with groups active on single payer, including Progressive Democrats of America, Healthcare-Now, and Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). Plus me, just some guy.

Actor Mike Farrell, who recorded a set of PSAs supporting single payer, joined with some of the heroes of single-payer advocacy like Roseanne DeMoro, Exec Director of California Nurses Association, and Dr. Margaret Flowers of PNHP, who’d so eloquently laid out the issues on the Ed Schultz show a few days before. Bernie Sanders, who has a single-payer bill in the Senate (structurally distinct from John Conyers’ better known HR 676, but single payer nonetheless) spoke as well.

Dr. Flowers was one of the “Baucus Eight,” arrested after standing up and protesting the absence of single payer advocates at last week’s Senate Finance Committee roundtable on health care. Five other activists from this week’s follow-up roundtable brought the arrest total up to 13.

lots more at the link.

Byrd has rare lucid moments, which unfortunately is more than can be said for many of his younger colleagues.

SD, I charge all kind of everyday things on a credit card, and then I pay it off every month. I use their money – my money sits in an account that gets (miniscule) interest. This only works if you don’t carry a balance.

I also prefer to mail order/internet shop with a credit card, because if that number gets stolen, they don’t have my money, like with a debit card, but instead have the credit companiy’s money, and we’ll argue about who gets to pay for it. Identity theft would still be a bitch, but at least they wouldn’t have that direct path into my checking account.

Again, I must stress that this only works if you don’t carry a balance. That’s the hard, must be disciplined part, and trust me, in my younger days, I wasn’t. Learned this the hard way.

It’s given me a stellar credit rating, but I think that stuff’s a scam too.

It is beyond me why people have no problem racking up credit card debt. Most of the time it is not because they are strapped and buying essentials, they are buying things they don’t need and can’t afford. It’s one thing if you pay it off each and every month.

Oh, I do *SO* agree. These people who literally pay for *everything* with plastic….apparently there’s some sort of thingie where you get points or something based on what how high a bill you rack up each month…or frequent flyer miles or some such. As you can tell, I don’t know the details. *G*

The concept of paying with paper and coin seems to be going the way of the dodo bird.

Nelson (shill-FL) is up in 2012. This is just one more thing to throw at him for the next 3 years. Crist is trying to capture the Dem and Indy vote and the GOP is trying to help by endorsing him instead of the neocon Rubio. Good luck with that.

Yeah, I almost started to add something to that effect.

It is important to remember that this is a cosmetic vote. It does tell who the bad guys are as in the list above. But it does not tell us who the good guys are because everyone knew in advance that the bill would fail. That goes as well for Dodd and Reid. Allowing a vote on a measure that doesn’t have the votes means nothing.

OT but for those interested in seeing the photos Obama doesn’t want the world to see here is a link that has several that were leaked to an Australian newspaper. Scroll to the bottom of the page. Let these few photos go viral.

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/

If you pay off the card each month, what’s the point? Convenience? The card processing company gets at least 3.5% of the purchase price at the time of transaction, which forces the retailer to charge higher prices to make up for it. Some retailers are offering discounts if you pay by cash or check. The card processing companies take even more of a bite for debit card purchases.

Notice who the biggest beneficiaries are: Lieberman and Specter.

Hugh, if it’s purely cosmetic, why is that list so long? (Serious question, I don’t doubt your statement.) Seems to me they could have had more yes votes, still had it fail, but had some Senators burnish their support-the-people credentials.

I don’t expect a yes on this from Johnson in SD, since so many banks are in that state due to the easy laws on this stuff, but I would think that the WA ladies could have said yes?

I didn’t see any pics on that link.

I use credit cards a lot – except at the supermarket. They are handy; I don’t like to carry a lot of cash because I’m old and small and I pay the entire balance every month. The companies don’t make much money from me.

They’re there for me. Scroll down. Not for the squeamish.

excellent point. we’ve seen too many cosmetic votes to start ignoring them now.

still, i give sanders props for trying.

scroll to the bottom

I hadn’t scrolled far enough. Here’s the specific link for the torture pics.

Off to try to catch the little guy at work for a trip to the vet. From his behaviour, primarily no production when he tries to go, he’s got some internal problems. Regardless of the outcome I don’t want to see him suffer.

Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.

Namaste

Part of the point is convenience. I tend to not carry cash – my company does direct deposit of my paycheck, so I don’t go to the bank very often. I find that I spend cash much easier than I do with plastic (I know, that sounds weird, but that’s me) without knowing where the money went. The plastic, either debit or credit, gives me more of a paper trail and I can track the stuff easier, but that’s just me.

If you do online shopping, it’s hard not to use plastic (paypal aside, but I’m NOT giving my checking account number out, sorry, not happening) and so that’s the other point for me.

As far as the fees go, that’s a valid point, and I guess if we could, as a majority of society, refuse to use plastic that might help, but unless you can get enough buy in for them to reduce prices because they don’t have to cover fees any longer, I’m paying the fee regardless, so I might as well have the convenience.

Quite frankly, the fees for the debit cards to merchants piss me off. That transaction for the bank is easier to process than a check, it is less likely to result in overdrafts, so one would THINK it would be something they would encourage, but no, that would lose them some revenue from their overdraft fees and such, so they get it both coming and going, which makes them banksters I guess, but still pisses me off.

The protection for merchants not getting a bad check would be a good thing, I would think, but the banks are going to squeeze them too.

I didn’t say I NEVER use cash, I said I bought every day things on the credit card, because you asked why someone would do that, and I explained why I did. Doesn’t make me right or you wrong, it just is.

The card companies take a bigger bite on debit cards because they don’t have an opportunity at interest income on debit cards. Incidentally, this is why the Wal*Mart crowd has gotten into the banking bidness in a big way. They don’t want to pay the banks the transaction fees.

When purchasing by mail order or over the internet, credit cards provide significant protection for the consumer, or used to.

Blue Texan’s regularly scheduled 10:30 post is up and ready: “National Review: GOP Should Block Health Care Reform Because Most Americans Think Our Health Care System is Awesome”

Stabenow voted for the screw-the-people bankruptcy bill as well. We really need a progressive to run against her. (Marcy, what are you doing with the rest of your life?) :^)

I disagree with you. In this economy, credit card is how people make ends meet. There has been report after report about this in the MSM.

That is an excellent question.

I don’t think a valid answer exists.

For every person that gives the “use their money for a month” answer, 10 others forget to pay on time or get laid off, etc.

The widespread use of credit cards is a by product of marketing, plain and simple.

Remember how cool it was/is to have the ‘right’ card, be it silver, gold, platinum or (the latest hip thing) black?

I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve seen with $20,000 or more in the bank getting next to nothing, while carrying credit card balances they could easily pay off that carry double digit interest rates.

High interest rates for robberbanks and tax billions we need Robin Hood…the peasants are getting screwed…bidness as usual…shut up and keep bailin.

This is highly organized crime – makes the mafia look like child’s play. The greatest heist in history goes down while our leaders twiddle their thumbs.

I’ll get behind that!

This from the NYT daily email, “Today’s Headlines”

A measure by Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of
Vermont, to cap credit card rates at 15 percent received
only 33 votes, far short of the 60 needed to pass.

Propagating the canard (”Reid’s Rule”) that nothing can be passed without 60 votes. Might as well not try, then, huh?

Make ‘em filibuster, Harry!

Thank you for the link, Bluetoe, and eCAHNomics @34. Yesterday’s WAPO stated that these forbidden pictures were from other prisons in Iraq, not Abu Ghraib. For me, that’s clear support that the torture was ordered from the top. One report stated that there were multiple reports daily from the torturers to CIA HDQTRS in Langley.

When Zubaydah was recovering from his severe wounds, Bush is reported to have asked, “who ordered pain medication for him?” – and the medication was stopped. That is just pure sadism; gleefully enjoying the pain suffered by others.

Shut the door on the “mistakes” of the Bush administration? Hide all that? Cover it up?? No. It is a blueprint for future tyrants who manage to take-over our government, and unless these crimes are duly prosecuted there will be more of them.

I find the vote by Warner to be the most disheartening. He cruised to election easily last year, so he has no reelection worries right now. As a millionaire himself, he doesn’t need to rely on credit card companies for contributions.

Here is how it works:

There are ~ 100 senators.
A corporate bill or amendment needs X votes to pass.
They start off with the moderates and add sentors until they achieve X.
Most of the time the 80 senators in the middle (or the 42 or so Dem senators in the middle) do not have to cast a “bad” (against the peoples interest vote) – but sometimes they need an extra one or two so they just dip in a bit more.

If someone one the list above was not there that day, or they could not reschedule there is a 99.9% chance they just grab one more Dem to vote the corporate line and problem solved.

Above:

They start off with the Republicans, then add “moderates” and “blue dogs” until they have X.

Every now and again they let someone like a “moderate” republican vote “for the people”, and then an extra dem has to vote against (I imagine its typically someone Rahm has told that sticking it to the Libs will help them win in their next race).

If I had completed the thread I could have summarized my poor algebra with your point.

Its a cosmetic vote. The shame of it all is that there is a real opportunity now, but on many things every day bring more into focus that the same disfunctional system (for most people, works great for the few) is going to get a few touchups and up again with the house of cards.

All the better for suckers rallies and taking the last of peoples money as their jobs and houses and income (taxes) go to banks.

Is there any way you can manipulate this chart so I can print it out? I want to send a love note to each of these guys. If you can’t get it so I can print it, can you keep moving the chart so it is accessible for a few days? Thanks.

Try to copy it and paste it into McSoft WORD, it will likely work. I tested it, it does work.

I put a thousand dollars on a credit card last year for an operation for my best friend…my dog. Say what you will, he would have died without the operation, I would do it again.
I’m sure this won’t sit well with the credit card snobs here.

off topic; see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..02016.html on the mortgage fraud reality and Citibank and others complicity in financial sector disaster.

Whine,moan,bitch,and complain but don’t take any meaningful action seems to be the theme here. Recall the muthaforkers !!

Recall does not apply to Senators and US House members. They are considered “Federal Officers” and as such not subject to recall, even if they are from states that have recall provisions.

Once a Senator or Representative has been seated, they are there for the duration of the term unless their “peers” expel them, usually for something like fraud or other criminal acts. (I believe the last expulsion was James Traficant of Ohio who was expelled after being convicted in the early 2000s.)

I wish I didn’t agree with you. shell game.

Impoverishing the taxpayers for the sake of too big to fail. Way to go congress!/s

all this carping is dandy and fine when the number of the year ends in nine,
but when it ends in ten, remember you must vote Democratic again!

Please take a look at my post here. Banks are screwing good customers by raising rates on people who are current, but can’t make the payment in one lump. I don’t disagree with your basic analysis on the initial borrowing on the credit card. Do you want to argue that the banks should be able to raise the rates, just because they can?

There are a few types of situations where everyday expenses with CCes makes sense:

If your income comes in large, infrequent chunks rather than as a steady stream of paychecks, using credit cards for everyday expenses can make sense.

If you get airline miles or similar inducements for money spent with a credit card and you get an interest grace period (almost everyone does) and you pay the card off every month, you can come out money ahead by using the card.

If your credit is sufficiently good to get a very low CC interest rate, they can be the cheapest and most way to finance certain durable goods purchases.

The hell I will; no way I will vote for more corruption and lack of ethics and moral stances.

I was listening to Randi Rhodes on the way home from work and it sounded like there was a poison pill in the legislation that allowed for firearms in the National Parks if you voted Yes. I haven’t yet checked the legislation but thought I should because I live in Washington State.