Congress avoids another shutdown, passes corporate-friendly budget with Obama's blessing

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/12/us-usa-congress-budget-deadline-idUSKBN0JP23320141212

It was a tough position for Dems: agree to basically roll back Dodd-Frank regs on derivatives trading, and increase contribution limits to political parties, or risk getting an even uglier, GOP-driven budget proposal in January when the new legislators move in. It was sad to see Obama and some other major Dems fold like a cheap suit in the face of this raw deal. More left-leaning Pelosi and Warren were vehemently opposed, but were ultimately overruled.

It was reported that JP Morgan Chase literally wrote the section of the bill relating to derivatives. This is not new, but it's sad to see Obama being such a cheerleader for this bill considering his previous statements on financial reform and Wall Street abuses.

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My mistake, it was Citigroup that wrote the rider, not Chase. But it really doesn't make a difference. It implies that the rider is in the Street's best interests, not the public's. The language relates to bailouts from losses on derivatives trading. Dodd-Frank had an exception (that would have gone live in 2015) to prohibit taxpayer bailouts for derivatives losses from trading that was deemed too risky (trying to reduce moral hazard). Well the big banks would have none of that - they are like a degenerate gambler in Vegas demanding that Bellagio cover any losses they incur (and then they try to tax dodge any gains they make). Of course the Street insists that derivatives serve to lower systemic risk, not increase it. That is true in some cases, like how gun proponents say that firearms reduce violence. But then what about the times when the opposite occurs? Banks just say, "Oh well, we tried our best. Now pay us." While global wealth evaporates but they still get their bonuses.

http://billmoyers.com/2014/12/12/unsurpriing-connection-two-odious-parts-cromnibus/

“I love the American political system, I really do, but the ability to sneak in substantive policy measures and make it take it or leave it, I think it’s appalling,” said Simon Johnson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, who is a prominent critic of the nation’s big banks.

-NYT

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It's hard to oppose the subtle, gradual rollbacks and changes that are eroding our democracy and "the soul of America". It's not like there was a coup and all of a sudden an evil regime took power. It's easy to fight back when it's a "Red Dawn" scenario, but Americans are lazy/easily distracted and we don't want to do the hard work of citizenship if it's not glamorous or urgent. The people who value power/profit are patient (and wealthy), so they chip away at our values bit by bit, at each election cycle and session of Congress/Supreme Court that the public barely pays attention to.

Reagan declared that we don't torture, and he was far from a dove. Now you have modern-day GOPers making all sorts of excuses to condone torture (or even argue that it's patriotic). In hindsight, Cheney was such a disaster for US ideals - and I think he had more of a negative impact on history than people like Qaddafi and Kim Jong Il (at least those guys practices overt evil, and were therefore easier to oppose). After the deaths of old-schoolers (and mostly straight shooters) like McCain and Hagel, I really fear what direction the GOP will go with unqualified political animals like Cruz and Ryan as the prominent voices. I mean, we already see the direction now: corporate plutocracy, oppression of women/minorities/foreigners, a disdain for science/logic, and unrestrained security state, to name a few.

I don't have much knowledge on this matter, but my personal feeling is that presidents who have the most reform potential have a greater view of themselves vs. the office of the president. What I mean by that is - they are either self-assured iconoclasts/visionaries like Lincoln, tremendously principled and conscientious like the Roosevelts, or chip-on-the-shoulder megalomaniacs like Nixon. They want to mold America into their image, and won't just be passive presidents who don't rock the boat and piss off the powerful. They never ask "is this what a president would do?" They do it because they know it's right, and they don't care if the pollsters and establishment approve or not (the opposite of Hillary).

That is the kind of leader we need to fight the negative trends now - and Sanders/Warren strike me as that type of personality, however their electability and charisma are another issue. Many thought Obama was going to be one of those reformers (he was mostly a DC outsider, "post-partisan", and one of the few presidents who grew up poor), but alas he is just a weak-willed bureaucrat who couldn't influence Congress, and deferred to the Pentagon and Wall St. to our detriment. He's a great campaigner but not a great leader of men. Considering the hand he was dealt, I wouldn't say he was a bad president, but he is a colossal failure in terms of missed opportunities (and the fact that some key issues got worse under his tenure - but not the things that the Tea Party would complain about). That's what's kind of ironic/tragic about Obama, both the left and right curse him for different reasons, which maybe suggests he doesn't have a good sense of his political identity, and tries to float in the center to please everyone, even though it's impossible. And unfortunately the modern US center is further to the right than most prominent European conservative parties. It's been scientifically shown that the US center has drifted right significantly since WWII.