from Political Theater:
With Barney Frank’s farewell, a few video highlights
Whatever your view of his politics, it is difficult to deny Rep. Barney Frank's inimitable facility with the spoken word. With the news of his retirement, it seems only appropriate to look back on a few of his best video moments.
Ezra Klein deserves a hearty hat tip for his roundup (do check it out), which leads with the most must-see of Frank's takedowns:
Frank also has strong opinions about members of the current Republican presidential field, particularly Newt Gingrich, who suggested during a recent debate that Frank might deserve prison time for his role in the housing crisis (more at this video):
As for Elizabeth Warren? Barney Frank says: “Let’s fight!”
Is President Obama up for a Senate confirmation fight over Elizabeth Warren? Maybe not right now. But that’s just the sort of rhetorical rumble Barney Frank would like to see.
The former Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who co-authored the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, tells MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Warren might survive a confirmation battle.
His reasoning? “This is not just the left and the right. The Republican Party is united against healthcare and united against the environment. They’re not united against financial reform.”
Even more to the point: “The Tea Party people didn’t send people to Washington to defend derivatives. I think the fight over Elizabeth Warren would be worth having and I’m not sure how all the Republican senators would vote.”
Warren, of course, is the outspoken, bespectacled Harvard law professor who has struck fear in the hearts of bankers and their friends in Congress by pushing hard for consumer protection in the financial sphere.
Obama put her in charge of setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But he has not named her to head the operation, a post that would require confirmation in the Senate, where Democrats retain a slim majority. For now, she serves as a special advisor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
The confirmation fight Frank envisions sounds a bit like a fantasy match — a fantasy particularly for him, given that he sits in the House of Representatives and not the Senate.
from Summit Notebook:
Unlikely alliance: Congressman Barney Frank and the Tea Party
At first glance it would appear that Congressman Barney Frank and lawmakers backed by the Tea Party movement would have little in common -- one is a liberal Democrat, the others are conservative Republicans.
Look again.
Frank said his quest to reduce military spending will probably attract Tea Party lawmakers who campaigned on a platform of fiscal discipline, even to cuts in an area that typically meet strong resistance from Republicans.
"I think the notion of nation building, of America enforcing stability over the world ... is wasted money because it doesn't work," Frank told the Reuters Future Face of Finance summit. "I think there's some potential alliance there."
Frank also sees another area in which the Tea Party might be allies -- any attempt by the Republican majority in the House to roll back reforms on derivatives in the wake of the financial crisis. "If they were to try to roll back derivatives regulation legislatively, yes, the Tea Party people would be allies of ours," he said.
What about their ideological differences? "You learn to work with people that you don't have anything in common with," Frank said.
The former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee says being in the minority now has its moments.
Think brussels sprouts and cauliflower are agricultural commodities? Think again.
While the financial bailouts tossed to automakers, banks and other groups during the recent economic crisis left a funny taste in the mouth of some Americans, one former U.S. regulator hopes efforts to prevent another panic doesn’t go rotten.
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is immersed in drafting dozens of rules to assist it in increasing oversight of the once opaque over-the-counter derivatives market, widely blamed for exacerbating the recent financial crisis.
Among the rules it must craft is what the definition of an agricultural commodity is? Of course, corn, cotton, soybeans and livestock, among other items, fall into this realm.
But what about those “other foods” such as brussels sprouts, artichokes, cauliflower, or anything with curry? A former CFTC chairman says they are “abhorrent to American sensibilities” and should be banned.
“Like every U.S. citizen, there are certain agricultural commodities that are abhorrent to me,” said Philip McBride Johnson, who is now with the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
In a comment letter to his former agency, he said there is a “natural link” between defining an agricultural commodity and a provision in a law that requires the regulator to protect the public by forbidding the listing of certain products that “are abhorrent to American sensibilities.”
Clearly banned under this act are financial products based on wars, terrorism, and assassinations. If Johnson has his way, regulators will be able to protect consumers from a dozen foods that don’t mesh with his palate.
Calm before the storm: Does silence on Warren signal decision soon?
An eerie calm has descended over the blogosphere after the feeding frenzy that broke out earlier this week on whether President Barack Obama was poised to name Elizabeth Warren to lead the new consumer financial agency.
The week started with an avalanche of stories and blogs speculating on the possibility of Obama naming Warren, a Harvard law professor, as an interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The move would have allowed Obama to avoid what would likely be a heated confirmation battle.
Senators Chris Dodd, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins expressed reservations about the temporary appointment on Tuesday, urging Obama not to bypass the Senate confirmation process.
But today, there has been little grist for the mill when it comes to public comments on Warren. Sometimes in Washington, silence means something is brewing.
Could this mean a decision is imminent?
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs seemed to signal the process was moving closer to a decision but gave no specifics on timing.
House Democrat wants GOP apology for threats and violence
House Democrat Barney Frank says Republican leaders should apologize for threats and vandalism against Democrats who’ve had the temerity to back President Barack Obama’s legislative agenda.
Why? The Massachusetts Democrat says Republicans have actually been cheering on the bad behavior. And, he adds, recent Republican condemnations have not gone far enough.
“I’m glad that my Republican leadership colleagues now have decided to denounce it. But they’ve been very late to do that. Over the weekend, they were much more egging on this kind of behavior than denouncing it,” he told ABC’s Good Morning America. ”I think there ought to be some apologies.”
First, there was House Republican leader John Boehner’s castigating remark last week about the “punk staffers” who are working on Democratic financial reform legislation. Frank believes that comment was the starting gun for increasingly aggressive rhetoric by Republicans and their supporters.
Then there were the folks in the House balcony on Sunday who disrupted the healthcare proceedings with shouts that prompted security officers to act.
“Republicans were standing on their feet, cheering them on, urging them physically to resist the officials,” Frank told ABC. ”To undo that, I think they should apologize.”
Follow the link to the video. The congressman is spit upon at 00:13 seconds. Only a partisan lying hack would see this and say nothing happened.
from MacroScope:
Another kind of death panels
U.S. Representative Barney Frank has never been shy about expressing his opinions. His opening remarks at a hearing he chaired with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Wednesday was no exception. Frank poked fun at a political squabble over healthcare reform as he detailed his position on what to do about non-bank financial firms considered "too big to fail."
"There will be death panels enacted by this Congress, but they will be for non-bank financial institutions that will not be considered too big to die. I say that because we have this euphemism that we are going to be 'resolving' these institutions. It has not been my experience that when someone says they are going to resolve something, they kill it. We are talking about dissolution, not resolution. We are talking about making it unpleasant for the entities. This is not a fate people will want."
First Draft: Monday’s blue mood — AIG outrage
It’s on front pages, news shows and all over the Web: outrage at the bailout of AIG, the troubled insurance giant that — so far — has gotten $173 billion in U.S. taxpayer money and has given out $165 million in bonuses to the very executives who brought the company to its knees.
A quick Web search of “AIG outrage” for March 2009 gets 190,000 hits, ranging from Al Jazeera (“Outrage against AIG set to mount”) to USA Today (“AIG bonus outrage plays Treasury officials for saps”). Part of the outrage stems from the Obama team’s contention that there’s nothing they can legally do to stop these bonus payments.
Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who heads the House Financial Services Committee, came up with a plan in an interview on NBC’s “Today”: AIG’s execs can keep their bonuses but they don’t have to keep their jobs. “These people may have a right to their bonuses but they don’t have a right to their jobs foever,” is how Frank put it.
At the White House, President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are set to talk with small business owners about a plan to make it easier for them to borrow money.
Outside the Beltway, the mood turns from outrage to madness — the college basketball kind of madness that comes in March when the NCAA unveils its tournament field. The national championship is April 6 in Detroit.
Photo credits: The American International Group building in New York, March 2, 2009 file photo. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/Files
Duke’s guard Jon Scheyer (R) passes under the basket as Florida State guard Jordan DeMercy defends during men’s NCAA basketball action in Atlanta, Georgia March 15, 2009. REUTERS/Tami Chappell
excuse my lack of knowledge… but, how on earth could someone consider this W.Street lads TOP TALENTED?? if i do wrong on my business and got expelled by the market for that reason, do i get paid by the government…? some 250 years ago, those who were filling for bankruptcy were jailed in the Tower of London.
McCain warns of too many Democrats in Washington
Is John McCain running against Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi?
At two rallies in Virginia on Saturday, the Republican candidate slammed the House Speaker and other congressional Democrats almost as much as his rival for the White House. A President Obama would be unlikely to curb the excesses of a Congress likely to remain in Democratic hands, he warned.
“The answer to a slowing economy is not higher taxes, but that’s what’s going to happen when Democrats have total control of Washington,” McCain told several thousand supporters in Springfield. “We can’t let it happen, my friends.”
McCain hopes voters will opt for partisan gridlock over one-party rule.
Supporters at both Virginia rallies, in Springfield and Newport News, booed lustily at the mention of Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, the acerbic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. McCain invoked the trio several times as he raised the specter of higher taxes.
“We know this Congress is planning all sorts of new taxes,” McCain said.
“I’m not going to let this Congress tax away your retirement,” he added later.
McCain is grasping at any straw he can find. But this comment would, in my opinion, only serve to alienate any Democrat who might be thinking of voting for him. However, I don’t think that will happen. To say this to a bunch of Republicans is useless. That’s the way they feel to begin with. This is just the type of comment that John McCain has been making that makes me further think that John McCain as President is not a good thing for Americans at all.
