Elizabeth Warren embarrasses bank regulators [VIDEO]

Elizabeth Warren asks surprised bank regulators when they last took a Wall Street bank to trial. Read more: http://www.upi.com/blog/2013/02/15/Elizabeth-Warren-embarrasses-bank-regulators-VIDEO/

Newly-elected Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA),(L) got straight to business in her first Banking, Housing and Urban affairs committee hearing this week when she asked surprised regulators when was the last time they took a Wall Street bank to court. (File/UPI/Mike Theiler)

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Published: Feb. 15, 2013 at 1:59 PM

By KRISTEN BUTLER, UPI.com

Read more: http://www.upi.com/blog/2013/02/15/Elizabeth-Warren-embarrasses-bank-regulators-VIDEO/2631360954180/#ixzz2L0u335Le


"I sat where you sat, it's harder than it looks," said Democratic senator from Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren as she opened her first Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing. Indeed, she has testified in such hearings, and would have been on the panel herself representing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau if her nomination to head the agency hadn't been thwarted in 2011.
Warren questioned top regulators from the alphabet soup that is the nation's financial regulatory structure: the FDIC, SEC, OCC, CFPB, CFTC, Fed and Treasury. Her primary question was "when was the last time you took a Wall Street bank to trial?" There were no straightforward answers.
"We do not have to bring people to trial," Thomas Curry, head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, assured Warren, declaring that his agency had secured a large number of "consent orders," or settlements.
"I appreciate that you say you don't have to bring them to trial. My question is, when did you bring them to trial?" she responded. "We have not had to do it as a practical matter to achieve our supervisory goals," Curry answered.
Warren turned to Elisse Walter, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who said that the agency weighs how much it can extract from a bank without taking it to court against the cost of going to trial. "I will have to get back to you with specific information," Walter said as the audience stifled laughter.
"There are district attorneys and United States attorneys out there every day squeezing ordinary citizens on sometimes very thin grounds and taking them to trial in order to make an example, as they put it. I'm really concerned that 'too big to fail' has become 'too big for trial,'" Warren said.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/blog/2013/02/15/Elizabeth-Warren-embarrasses-bank-regulators-VIDEO/2631360954180/#ixzz2L0tzO3Nw

Can Only Push Good People so far Before Someone Snaps - Dorner

Even though I hate Dorner for killing innocent people and doing this all the wrong way -and he probably got what he deserved (if what we hear is True) - I do believe Dorner has a point - I hope this blows the lid or at least suspicion on the Corruption inside the LAPD - But knowing how much they hid the media, etc - the way the showdown went down - who knows - you can only push people so far before they snap - just saying.

David Cruz - giving the truth - not canned truth

David Cruz - The ONLY REAL news Source right Now -All other Media giving False #Dorner reports http://www.ktlkam1150.com/pages/DavidCruz.html …

 Listen Live http://www.iheart.com/live/197/?autoplay=true

NEWS: Do You Want To Live Without The Postal Service? Millions of people. Billions of pieces of mail. Nearly every day. Think anyone can do better? Think again. (Via Randi Rhodes)

Recently, the U.S. Postal Service announced that - starting August 1, 2013 - they would eliminate Saturday service for all items except packages.

While this action may technically be unconstitutional, the Postmaster General is only pushing Congress to act after nearly 15 years of obstruction. In fact, USPS is taking this action as part of a broader cost-saving measure to save the postal service from extinction.

Extreme measures like this wouldn't be necessary if Republicans (and a few corporatist Democrats) in Congress would remove the insane burden they placed on the Postal service with the Orwellian-named 'Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act' - an action that forced the postal service to pre-fund 75 years’ worth of pensions and health care coverage for retirees at a 100% rate, a burden no other public or private institution in America has to match.

If you think any private company anywhere in the world could do what the Postal Service does, for anywhere near the cost they charge, you need to watch this quick movie from Esquire's Jesse Lichtenstein.

Now, read Lichtenstein's full piece, "Do We Really Want to Live Without the Post Office" in Esquire Magazine.

As Lichtenstein says:

This isn't a story about whether we could live without the post office.

It's about whether we'd want to.

Read more: http://www.randirhodes.com/pages/rrnews.html?feed=393046&article=10789537#ixzz2KM1n9hww

Time to Pop this Zit!

There is a lot of Ugliness, Hatred, Paranoia, Fear, Unfairness in the world right now. The truth is, it has always been there, it was just easier to hide it before. But Evil cannot be quiet for to log before it shows its true self. The Silver lining to this playbook right now is, at least we are aware of it, It is Exposed. The truth is coming out. The Toxic Ugliness has risen to the surface like a big Zit on the face of the world, that we need to Squeeze & Pop to release the toxins to Free ourselves, so we can become Clean, Fresh and Healthy once more!

Paranoid NRA Releases Enemy List – Are YOU On It?

 

Paranoid NRA Releases Enemy List – Are YOU On It?

www.addictinginfo.org

The NRA has its own hit list of enemies, a quality it shares with such notables as Pol Pot, President Richard Nixon, and Generalissimo Francisco Franco.

 http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/01/30/paranoid-nra-releases-enemy-list-are-you-on-it/

 

Randi Rhodes: Tag Team

The jobs figures for January are out. The private sector added 166,000 jobs last month. But once again we lost public sector jobs—last month we lost 9,000 government jobs. Republicans in Congress won’t be satisfied until theirs are the only government jobs there are left. More

In the Senate hearings on the confirmation of Chuck Hagel yesterday, Afghanistan was mentioned just 20 times. Israel was mentioned 166 times. OK, enough, Republicans! If your point is that Chuck Hagel should not be the Defense Minister of Israel, I completely agree.

Hagel wasn’t prepared for how combative John McCain was. There are only two things you can expect from John McCain—anger or confusion. And this hearing took place in the morning, when the anger was fresh, and before the confusion set in. Yes, Chuck Hegel questioned the surge—the surge was essentially doubling down on the biggest foreign policy disaster since Vietnam. John McCain is trying to rewrite history to make the surge seem like the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae of Iraq. The surge was a painful but possibly necessary step to put an end to something ugly. It was essentially popping the pimple that was Iraq.

In Alabama, the hostage stand-off in the bunker with suspect Jimmy Lee Dykes continues. Does everybody in these situations have to have a name that sounds like a character on The Dukes of Hazzard? Dykes fired shots at his neighbors in a dispute over a damaged speed bump. Welcome to the future of conflict resolution, if the NRA gets their way. A New York Times article about the situation says that locals describe Dykes as a man who hates the government and has been in legal trouble for firing a gun at his neighbors. In other words, he didn’t really stand out. The man has built a bunker out of cinderblocks and PVC pipe. Here’s a little advice for anti-government types—if you can get the materials for your bunker from Home Depot, chances are not good that it can resist an assault from the US military. If this guy didn’t have a hostage, the government wouldn’t exactly need a high-tech bunker buster bomb. They could do the job with a sledgehammer and a shovel.

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Jon Stewart vs. Wayne LaPierre, Lindsey Graham, and the latest rightwing shill to sell her soul to the industrial gun complex: Gayle Trotter...

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