USA Democracy Burns, While Uncoordinated Activists Fiddle With Tactics, Not Operations

Forget the manufactured Fiscal Cliff. We're facing a Freedom Cliff!  Time to contact your Senator and Representative again.

If you're not aware of some of the policy bills being discussed in Congress, don't be ashamed to wet your pants, grind your teeth of suffer apoplexy when you read the details.  As long as enough eventually settle on a cold resolve, we'll be okay.  Please discuss this with your neighbors, since you're unlikely to see it on your local media.  It's potentially bigger than TARP, precisely because it's so insidious.

Several forms of a Regulatory Accountability Act are wending their way through Congress now, spearheaded by a bodyguard of free-spending lobbyists from Wall St. Essentially, these bills would allow the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Office of Management and Budget to review any significant rule, guidance, or policy instituted by independent financial agencies. These bills would give financial lobbies significant influence over all the independent agencies which are currently independent from them.

According to BetterMarkets, American's for Financial Reform, and OMB Watch [private emails] these bills would substantially curtail the jurisdiction of at least six Senate committees: Commerce, Science and Transportation; Energy and Natural Resources; Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; Agriculture; Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; and Homeland Security and Government Affairs (plus, of course, the Appropriations Committee and subcommittees). Finance and Judiciary aren’t listed but they may have shared jurisdiction over some of the areas covered by these agencies.

Because of some push back already, there are rumors that S. 1606 might be the compromise result. Of course, ”pretty terrible” rather than “egregiously terrible” is what passes for “compromise” these days.

The Regulatory Accountability Act (RAA, Senate 1606) is in some ways even worse than an alternative, S 3468, so if you hear anyone talking about it as a compromise please consider whether it is compromise, or capitulation.


Senate bill 1606 (the RAA) is an awful bill. AFR has posted opposition letters to the essentially identical to House & Senate bills.

http://ourfinancialsecurity.org/blogs/wp-content/ourfinancialsecurity.org/uploads/2011/11/AFR_RAA_Letter_Draft-1.pdf

http://ourfinancialsecurity.org/blogs/wp-content/ourfinancialsecurity.org/uploads/2012/09/AFR-Oppose-S.-3486-9-6-12.pdf

The trench warfare over YOUR future continues - while you're distracted over immigration, voting rights, and other easily trumpeted distractions from the real show - power.