But if you take as a given that campaign finance reform will be a part of any progressive plan for systemic reform, what do you think are the other requisite changes that need to be made?

Answer to Hamsher Koan Above From Lowly Acolyte:

“That Media Outlets May Not Be Allowed To Consolidate Power Like The Banksters Did?”

Hmmm, good news, but how does this prevent Too Big To Fail? Illinois Continental of 1984 was deemed too big to fail, despite only owning $84 billion in assets (adj. for inflation) and before Glass Steagall was taken down.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see what comes of this and other ideas for legislation, but as it stands, Glass/Steagall won’t be enough by itself.

And really, what’s happening is the fruition of what the Dem Convention here in Denver last year promised. It was after all, AT&T bags that were full of the convention loot.

And who exactly was at that crazy meeting at the Brown Palace where certain people were removed, from the frikiing sidewalk?

And Jane, you and Glennzilla got kicked out of that one receiving line up by the Ice House in LoDo? And who were the sponsors?

There’s no difference in Telco or Cable. It’s all playing out now.

But the companies under scrutiny in the biggest media deal since the Time Warner-AOL merger are helmed by executives who have been long-time contributors of the Democratic party and have other ties to the administration.

Other ties? One of the honchos used to be CoS to “Easy” Ed Rendell when he was Mayor of Philadelphia. The only reason Comcast has been contributors to the Democratic Party is because they are based in Philadelphia.

I’m not as worried by the idea of playing defense as I am by the fact that we seem to have to relearn that the world and the wheel are both round about every other generation. It’s time-consuming, and I worry that we’re running out of time.

Of course, the best thing for America as a whole — as opposed to the Masters of the Universe that drove us into the ditch and then expected us to pat them on the back for it — would be for Obama to do what hasn’t been done since the early 19th century, and create a Bank of the United States.

But whoever tried to do that would have to hire twenty-seven different food tasters.

I’d suggest reform of the justice system, prison reform in particular. The justice system, at all levels, not only hoovers money it saps the life out of everybody who comes into contact with it.

The War Resisters League Fall issue, coincidentally, is focused on prison reform.

WIN through revolutionary non-violence

Yes! And prosecute fraud, bankster, contractors etc… at the highest levels.. often.

Too big to fail from their end is like too little to matter from ours. And it will remain that way until more and more of those who are too little to matter become aware that merging together they can be become too big to stop.

But how to get from here to there?

Nothing matters more than that.

And those who don’t understand this don’t understand how we got like this in the first place.

As soon as bankster start going to prison, we’ll see an entirely new constituency for prison reform.

So, Teddy, shouldn’t that be pretty soon? O yeh.

Yeah, but they’ll be tryin’ to buy the kind of reform we want nothing to do with.

*waving*

Angela’s Mom! Nice to see ya. *g*

OK, wait, I’m reading this post as that as much of a disaster as repealing Glass-Steagall was, so is it to go back on a campaign concern by the Obama administration that “media consolidation” is as much of a concern?

If I’m conflating concerns, well, fine. Because I do connect the two.

Oh, and you, too. I like to think there is a resemblance. How are you doing?

And, notice that White House will be announcing new Open Records rules tomorrow. I think that was part of campaign open govenment.

Obama isn’t going to do anything to piss off the people who bought him the Presidency. The sooner we realize this, the sooner our disappointment will fade.

watertiger is upstairs!
Late Night: “I’m Dreaming of a Whine Christmas…”

Furry back, tail, pointy ears, whiskers?

We be fine.

I’m hoping Open Records isn’t Closed Tighter Records.

Time to climb into my tree.

Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.

Namaste

what do you think are the other requisite changes that need to be made?

:From what I was able to glean in June 2006, when the telecomms expected to subvert Net Neutrality, there don’t seem to be any ‘subject area experts’ in Congress — or even on the Telecomm and Commerce Committees (!) who can write a good, snappy explanation of the **technical issues** involved in Net Neutrality, which is related to this Comcast + NBC proposal.

If there are such experts in DC, I didn’t manage to locate them.
It’s possible that with Eric Schmidt at the New America Foundation, plus Obama’s new implementation of a Chief Information Officer, the culture in D.C. — including the ‘think tank’ culture — will at least bring in some well-informed voices who can ask what this proposed merger portends for Net Neutrality and freedom of information policies.

I just don’t see anyone (except maybe Darcy Burner) back in D.C. who can walk some of these Congresspersons through the **technical** details that has to be mastered if anyone is going to make good policy.

Some smart Congressperson ought to call Prof Lawrence Lessig and some of his associates in to walk them through the background issues, from soup to nuts.

On the surface, this ‘looks like’ a merger that belongs in the business section and people can chit-chat about share prices.

However, that is complete bullocks.
NBC has a **cable** outlet, something that neither CBS nor ABC (nor PBS) ever managed to acquire.
That has huge implications that are more technical, and related to delivering Netflix, controlling access to emails, etc, etc. Those are critical issues; this is about who should own and control powerful technologies.

1. return of glass steagall isn’t enough. it was undermined, including in the courts, long before final repeal (more here from an old diary of mine: Which Idiot Decided to Repeal Glass-Steagall?).

2. jobs program that includes hiring 5000 white collar criminal investigators to go after the banksters

3. bill black to head sec

4. michael greenberger to head cftc

5. warren mosler to head the fed

6. capital gains tax = income tax rate or higher (for short term holdings) and very high percentages at high incomes (change incentive structure away from the big killing fast and towards having to make lots of money over a period of years).

7. change tax structure to stamp on rentier income. (have to think about this one more)

8l. how to unravel current cds and prevent their rise again? (have to think about this one)

9. massive jobs program (full employment labor buffer stock) a la randall wray

10. carbon tax and 100% dividend a la hansen

11. temporary stimulus re fed deficit spending (temp suspend payroll tax, per capita grants to states, jobs program above, increase SS benefits)

12. universal healthcare

13. industrial policy headed by galbraith

14. troops home now.

15. stop taking seriously the neoliberal competition / market based policies where markets aren’t working from dem associaiated thin, tanks (epi, caf, etc). their policies are NOT progressive and progressives shouldn’t be out there selling them.

lots more, that’s just off the top of my head…. but sleep now….

Glass-Steagall would be a good first step. I have posted a couple of Christmas lists for financial reform at the seminal. There are actually many things that need to be done. Glass-Steagall could be improved by forcing commercial banks to engage in only plain vanilla transactions and by limiting their overall size so that they would have to know the communities in which they operated. I would also cut off investment banks from any government backstop or credit line. This is of course why these things turn into long lists because along with this I would make the Fed fully public and remove banks from any managerial or voting role in it or the regional branches.

As others have said, perhaps not here, it is not just size but the interconnections that need to be trimmed.

thanks for the link to your diary from december! good research and narrative there.

2 things jumped out at me:

Rubin became Treasury Secretary in January of 1995. Before joining the Clinton administration, he had worked for 26 years at Goldman Sachs. In March, Rubin asked Congress to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act and to change the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956.

On July 2, 1999, Rubin retired and Larry Summers became Treasury Secretary. In October Rubin joined Citigroup where he would eventually be paid over a $115 million.

Rubin, formerly of Goldman Sachs, mentor to Summers and Geithner! Small world, Democratic Party financial oligarchs!

Finally, during the first week of November, S.900, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, was reported out of committee and passed in the Senate 90-8 and in the House 362 – 57. Glass-Steagall was finally repealed and Democrats as well as Republicans celebrated.

so, once again, as with the passage of NAFTA and the media consolidation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, we can say, Thanks Democrats!

funny how when you go back to the roots of current malignancies, who do you find fertilizing them with foul, corrupt, corporate giveaways? Who do you find clipping holes is the fence, and backing up a truck full of foxes to the henhouse?

Democrats! Little eager Robin’s to the Republican Batman, maybe, but definitely on the same team!

my positive suggestion? Progressives need to find a new team, before 2012!

What other changes?

Not changes, enforecement!

You know how the NRA is always saying that we don’t need new gun laws, just meaningful enforcement of the laws already on the books? (not that I am conceeding that)

Well, we DO need to bring back a modernizred Glass – Stegall, but even faster, we need to return to the FULL enforcement of the anti – trust laws.

In this country we have rampant monopolization. Reall estate monopolies, media monoplies.

Health insurers have to lose their monoply exemption.

Further we have to enforce our GAMBLING LAWS. Most of these credit default swaps and debt backed securities run afoul of NYS gambling laws. Most of them are traded in , you guessed it, echanges and OTC trading in NYS.

If the Federal Government had not gotten in the way, NYS AG’s Office was in the process of enforcing those gambling laws until the Comptroller of the Currency and the rest of Treasury started hollering “pre-emption”.

NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED if the Federal Government, during the Bush administration, had shown ANY respect for State’s Rights.

It seems that there are several factors in “too big to fail”:

- When a company is so large that its disappearance from the market makes other companies fail; that means that suppliers, customers, and creditors of the company are highly dependent on the “too big to fail company”; so oligopoly, monopoly, oligopsony, monopsony are inherently brittle systems. That would indicate that there needs to be some revision of what constitutes an antitrust violation.

- When a company is so large, diverse and complicated a conglomerate that the board, shareholders, and executives have difficulty understanding and managing the politics and communications within the organization. This would indicate that there needs to be a return to limiting vertical integration, horizontal integration, and conglomeration. Glass-Steagall prevents horizontal and vertical integration of banks; it needs to be extended to all of the FIRE sector. Comcast-NBC is a classic example of vertical integration of already horizontally integrated companies. There needs to be a Glass-Steagall act for every industry (GM and Chrysler were too big to fail too).

- When a company is so large, powerful, or connected that its executives think they are the government. A lot of the military-industrial-complex companies are too big to fail, which means that the loss of jobs and the supply chain effects are one reason that Congress is reluctant to reduce defense spending. The healthcare industry increasingly also has this issue.

- When a company gets so large that its internal communications become more important to its operation that its communications with customers, suppliers, and the communities in which it exists in determining policy. When it can hold a town or state hostage for what it wants, its failure can also mean the failure those folks. This is a matter of corporate accountability being able to penetrate the “corporate veil” to hold the board and executives responsible.

TO get anywhere significant, I would think we would have to sponsor a constitutional amendment reversing corporate personhood. As long as they have many of the same constitutional protections as actual human beings, we’ll have a hard time reining them in.

Bloody revolution

Jane, I really love all of your work. You always seem to be hovering around the issues that matter, and not distracted by the other B.S.
One question though, when are we throwing this piece of garbage Barack
Hussein Obama under the bus? It’s time we start looking for an alternative. He has totally betrayed us progressives and has failed on all his campaign promises. I am taking bets on who will be first to take this
next big step, either you or Arianna. I am putting my money on you, only because you are a little less high profile. Go for it Sister!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think there are three critical areas. Anti-trust and campaign finance reform have already been mentioned. The third is intellectual property law. The new copyright and patent laws and rulings are just another way of concentrating power into small groups.

Awesome list Selise.

Progressives need to create more progressives before 2012. The team responds to the folks who appear to have the votes nationwide, on a state-by-state electoral basis. And it responds to the realities in the Senate. The key to the Senate is replacing Republicans with progressives instead of with Blue Dogs.

The Democratic Party has fallen victim to the red state-blue state mentality that sought create a permanent Republican majority. The fact is that people are persuadable in the absence of a monopoly of 24-7 propaganda, and even that propaganda is beginning to wear thin for 80% of the voters–including Republicans.

Obama did show us how to outflank the Republican capture of the Village by using local media and field organizing. Progressive candidates and spokespeople need to do the same. We need speakers and bus tours in red states and Blue Dog districts–folks strong enough to face down the teabagger intimidation tactics.

When progressives begin to be visible in every “real American” place and not isolated in the bicoastal enclaves, then politicians will start taking progressive policies seriously. Right now, Republicans think they have nothing to fear from a progressive movement and dismiss it and try to build a faux populist conservative movement. And Democrats think they have nothing to fear from a progressive movement because it is isolated to certain demographics. When the reality that neither of these is true becomes visisble, it won’t matter what party you work through, there will be candidates seeking progressive votes.

When that happens, even Rahm Emmanuel will be working hard to get progressive policies accomplished.

Politics is the art of persuasion. Too many progressives think that the logic of progressive principles and policies will carry the day without the necessity of persuading people one-by-one — friends, neighbors, co-workers, family. It takes work beyond picking candidates and voting for them.

The revolution is when the electoral college works to the advantage of progressives and when the Senate works to the advantage of progressives. Studying the 1934 and 1938 elections might be an instructive exercise.