Digg is open

Thanks for this. I hope the SEIU and other labor unions and all their supporters boycott these banks.

Put all your money into credit unions and small, local banks (who are all doing just fine thank you). Boycott these big banks and show them just what their ‘best interest’ is – the workers who deposit money and get loans from them.

Pull your deposit and checking accounts. Refinance your mortgages with other smaller banks. AND tell them why you are doing it.

The “Liberal press”, The village and SEC turned their heads on the rape of the Global economy. Lobbyist threw billions at the coffers of politicos Here is a salient commentary Counter Punch:

Does anyone seriously think these guys are reformable?

I think it should be clear by now that these big “universal” banks aren’t working out. Far from increasing capital liquidity, they’ve simply served to infect the core lending-based financial system with Ll of systemic risks seen formerly only in fringe financial services industries. It’s time to repeal Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Seizing the offending BHCs won’t be enough… we have to prevent these monsters from rearing their heads again.

Workers tax money to help Banks lobby against Free Choice Act is like giving Heroin to a drug addict! Of course they are going to use it! to get high! It is outrageous that the Banks are using our money for such purposes..

What is the condition of our anti trust laws? The too big to fail legislation of the 1930s? When banks det this big the monopoly destroys competition…the bedrock of free markets is competition. They don’t want free markets they are an oligarchy a bedrock of fascism.

The monies spent by special interests, extends way beyond Wall St and Banking interests and into the vary heart of Government, as we all know. Trying to restrict tax payer bailout money wouldn’t make any difference since it’s fungible, and they’d cry we’re restricting their Constitutional rights to bribe Congress. We need immediate campaign and lobby reform, and as Blub stated @#5, repeal Gramm-Leach-Bliley and get Banks back to banking, instead of acing as a gaming casino.

Signed, thanks for the link.

here’s what I think needs to be done;

1. seize the momey center BHCs (including the new BHCs created when the remaining ibanks were allowed to convert their status in November) whose banks took TARP funding. Nationalizing the bank portions of the BHCs may not be sufficient to contain the systemic risk plague tearing apart the system

2. repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, which effectively introduced the risk problem we’re now seeing into the BHCs by removing the Glass-Steagal curtain between lending and premium risk activities.

3. amend the BHC act of 1956 as required to favor regional banks and to prevent other aspirants who
may wish to fill the shoes of those BHCs that have (per 1 above) failed and been nationalized.

4. reinject conservative (traditional deposit and corporate loan-based) liabilities and some assets of the failed BHCs into strong, independent regional and local banks, including newly created entities, including pieces of the seized BHCs that are sufficiently healthy to be reprivatized/sold… effectively, and AT&T style break up of recapitalized national BHCs.

5. from the core remnants of the nationalized BHCs, create a network of national development (or policy) banks, whose purpose would be to direct reinvestment in infrastructure and other national development projects, effectively terming out the problem asset problem an redirecting resources into long-term development activities.

Trust it to a bunch of DFH’s to want to suppress the right of free speech.
$$$$ = free speech – didn’t you get the memo?

This is clearly an important human rights issue,
one which I hope the Republic Party will rally around.

My note to the Secretary

It should be illegal to use Tax payers money to lobby the government for ANYTHING! Especially to inhibit the workers right to unionize! We have had enough of Big Business in the drivers seat when it comes to workers rights. It is time to even the field and get big Business out of the NLRB and put it back where it was before Ronald Regean and the Republicans destroyed the NLRB.

Digg it, digg it now! The more people we can get to see Teddy’s article, the more sigs on the petition, digg?

Book Salon up at the Mothership Thinking Big: Progressive Ideas for a New Era

Have spent the year observing and talking with nursing home and assisted living aides. They work their butts off most of them start out at 9.oo an hour and at most institutions it takes quite a while to get a raise. At the facility that my father is at presently Maria Josephs in Dayton Ohio the new corporate owners let go of a sizeable amount of aides who were making 15.oo – 17.oo an hour after 20 years of work so that they could hire 2 aides for every one higher paid aide. On top of this this place cut back there patient to aide ratio. I believe in Ohio it is 13 patients to one aide but the recommended ratio is 8-9 patients to one aide.

Guess what this place has 13 to 1. I have called the ombudsperson for this region and they are supposed to do a check soon. One aide (and I have talked with over 30 said that if the state or health dept really want to get a clear picture of what goes on in one of these facilities…come in after 3p.m especially on weekends. These aides are over worked and underpaid. Let’s hope SEIU has success in uniting these workers at some point. Because this industry is profitting off of their backs.

I posted this within the SEIU’s petition”

Secretary Geithner, it is *not* in the best interest of the majority of US citizens for any financial institution receiving taxpayer bailout funding to lobby against any legislation – such as the EFCA – that works to improve the quality of life for, and the choices of, working class citizens who are essentially providing the majority of that taxpayer bailout money.

I no doubt do not have to remind you that President Obama voted for the EFCA legislation while in the Senate, and feel like it is bad form and rude for B of A CEO Ken Lewis to suggest that it’s in his firms “best interest” to spend money lobbying against the President’s vote on the matter. same. Does this person (Ken Lewis) think he’s in any sort of a position to lecture my President in suce a manner? I think not, but, emotions aside, what Lewis said is simply inappropriate in light of the fact that he was in charge of B of A while the company made the bad loans that led to their current position.

Great letter, paz3

We are 1199 members (wife is) and we support 1199. It’s a great union.

I don’t think banks should be allowed to lobby at all. NADA

How disgusting. So first the unions want to take away the secret ballot via the misnamed EFCA and now they want to take away free speech. Hope and change indeed.

Contrary to the spin Rush puts on this, it does NOT take away the secret ballot. It reinstates a province that was once available to the workers.

But if the workers still want to take the extra step of having a vote after having had more than 50% of the employees ask for a union, they can have it. It just means that now, the company HAS to respond to the request for a union, which they do not have to do currently.

And No, it does NOT mean that the union is going to publish a list of all the names with a big YES or NO next to each name. Tha is a figment of Rush’s fevered mind.

And you’re happy with your tax dollars being spent to lobby Congress? You like it that the Banks can come and hold up the treasury then use that money to make life more difficult for their workers? Where’s MY free speech when they use MY dollars to work against MY interests?

We all need union jobs.

I went and signed the SEIU petition but I must say the folksy tone of the letter-to-email-your-friends was irksome. (I never start my emails with ‘Hey,’), and also as others have noted Tim Geithner is not my friend and is not doing the right thing.

C’mon SEIU, you just keep pissing me off and I often work with you on the same issues.

Sorry dakine, you are woefully misinformed. This is from wikipedia:

If enacted, EFCA would require the NLRB to certify a bargaining representative without directing an election if a majority of the bargaining unit employees signed cards, the card check process.

In other words, if a majority of employees sign cards — and we can all figure out who has and who hasn’t — then no election has to be held. No one has ever said that a list will be published, but when union guys come to your house and pressure you to sign a card then the secret ballot has officially gone out the window. To argue otherwise is either disingenuous or ignorant.

I don’t like most of what my tax dollars go to fund. And I certainly don’t want it going to the abridgment of free speech.

Oh, and their free speech doesn’t reduce yours. That is the beauty of speech. Someone else speaking doesn’t reduce your ability to do so.

Except right now, 95% of a bargaining unit group can request a union election and the company does not have to comply. EFCA balances the field and puts things back as it was.

And yes, I still have my “Free Speech” rights. But I should pay my tax dollars so that the millionaire Banksters at BoA, Goldman Sachs, etc can holler that much more loudly, using my dollars? I’m sorry, but someone who has admitted that the EFCA would raise the standard of living for the workers and fights it specifically for that reason? NO thanks.

As long as money is considered “speech” my rights are trumped specifically because I and millions of others do not have that level of cash to compete with Big Businesses who can buy access, buy the soap box and block me.

Come out of the DC bubble Colin and find out what the rest of the world is dealing with.