Pelosi Calls For Commission to Investigate Wall Street Tricks

SPEAKER ADDS SUPPORTS TO PLAN RECENTLY GAINING MOMENTUM
With an eye towards quelling the populist anger roiling across the nation, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today called for the creation of a commission to root out the causes of Wall Street's meltdown patterned after an obscure Depression-era committee.

In San Francisco to speak about her book encouraging the rise of women in society at a gathering for the Commonwealth Club of California, Pelosi said Americans are angry with the economy and bonuses given to AIG and said at least 75 percent want an investigation into the missteps that led to this recession.

"That's what we would do with this commission, is to make sure it does not happen again." she said.

Pelosi spoke with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner this morning about the plan to emulate the Pecora Commission created in 1932. That commission named after the Deputy District Attorney of New York County Ferdinand Pecora followed two failures and benefited by Franklin Roosevelt's election. The commission's findings led to the Securities Act of 1933 and the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission,itself, alleged to have been lax in regulating Wall Street with Bernard Madoff's infamous Ponzi scheme being the poster boy for this age of decadence.

“Some people can tell you one piece of it. Others can tell you another piece of it. It's really hard to know. Do you understand it?” Pelosi asked rhetorically, “We need a clearer understanding of how we got here.”

Pelosi is not the first politician to allude to the Pecora Commission in recent weeks. Sen. Byron Dorgan called for a new iteration of the committee along with reinstituting the Glass-Steagall Act whi9ch separated commercial and investment banking. Many believe its repeal in 1999 was the impetus for banks and investment firms like Citigroup and Travelers to merge and allow the subprime credit markets to run rampant. A New York Times editorial last month also called for a Pecora-like commission to be created.

Earlier in the day, appearing on the local Fox affiliate KTVU, Pelosi characterized an upswing of “Tea Party” tax protests as window dressing for elite conservative interests in lower taxes calling them “Astroturf”, as a manufactured antonym for “grassroots”.

The Speaker drew upon her personal biography to encourage woman to continue to rise to more positions of power. Her book, Know Your Power: A Message to American Daughters urges woman to get involved in all aspects of community service. Pelosi, herself, is the daughter of the Baltimore establishment and said she found politics both exciting and distasteful. “It taught me I didn't want to be a part of it,” she said.

While raising five children with husband Paul Pelosi, who incidentally spent the speech doting over their newest grandchildren, she slowly became immersed in Bay Area politics with her big break occurring in 1976 when she secured Maryland for a youthful Jerry Brown in the Democratic presidential primaries. Pelosi joked, though, the then-Governor of California had a problem with saying, “thank you.”

Despite no longer being in office and playing to the liberal San Francisco audience, Pelosi also had a few jabs for former President Bush. While saying she “absolutely loves” working with President Obama, she said “having a great intellect saves a lot of time.”

Pelosi Says Health Care Is Top Priority

COLUMNIST SENDS SPEAKER A NICE EASTER CARD
E.J. Dionne's column in today's Washington Post sheds a quite divergent view of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. It should be noted Dionne is somewhat liberal and the skewed perception of Pelosi as someone moving the country towards so-called "San Francisco liberalism" is purely a right-wing talking point. Nonetheless, the profile illuminates a possible Congressional road map for the rest of the year.

Pelosi told Dionne, "'The priority, of course, is to pass health care,' Pelosi said without blinking." The American Prospect's Ezra Klein notes in his blog this is the first indication Pelosi sees health care reform as a top priority over cap-and-trade.

To my knowledge, Pelosi hasn't said that before. More to the point, she's not signaled it. At a recent Maria Leavey breakfast, she implied just the opposite, and many folks I've spoken to on the Hill have suggested that her priority was energy rather than health care.

To reverse that specific perception, Pelosi seemed to be giving Dionne a lesson on Congressional parliamentary procedure by saying she could muster 51 votes on health care under the rules of "reconciliation" where committees receive technical instructions on where and how funding will be budgeted. In effect, it's a promise that health care will be legislated but without specifics. Under the procedure a bill only needs a simple majority, whereas, a bill without reconciliation needs a more problematic 60 votes in the Senate. Pelosi also referred to the diversity of the party that also has the support of some coal-producing states. She showed Dionne a statue of a coal miner in her office given to her by a West Virginia congressman.

Dionne also mentions the recent relaxing of Republican attacks against Pelosi. With President Obama's post-election popularity too strong to spar with, Republicans targeted Pelosi without abandon. An article in Politico from last November said the tactic has failed every time it has been utilized, "It didn’t work in 2006, and it’s not working this year, yet many Republicans continue to use Pelosi power as the ultimate threat to American governance."

Presumably, with a bit less than 100 days of the Obama presidency to work with, Republicans are turning their criticism towards the White House. Karl Rove ironically believes Obama is more divisive than President Bush in today's Wall Street Journal.

Despite the constant attacks on her leadership, Pelosi has proven to be a speaker unfazed thus far. Whether Pelosi can help the President push through Democratic-themed legislation like health care reform is unclear, but it shows that it takes more pieces of the puzzle to assemble than one might think.

The Politics of Forgotten Politics Past

THE GOP BRAND IS DOWN, BUT NOT OUT

Everything is coming up roses for Democrats these days. The President is loved. Americans are uplifted by his words and change is poised to spill across the land--nothing is going to stop us now! Except, such exuberance is part and parcel of any new administration and history always has something to say about such matters. These days feel similar to President Bush's election in 2000--sans the goodwill among Americans--but Republicans were similarly glib. Karl Rove was planning to make the GOP the dominant party in the U.S. for generations. He would even went as far as attempting to exterminate the Democratic party. The tide has turned, though.

Democrats are in a fog of triumphalism that cannot possibly continue. Political luck goes only so far. To latch on to the remote possibility of doing what the GOP attempted to foist upon the Democrats is a waste of energy in a time when grave circumstances hover over the Capitol.

Here's a bit of the liberal naivete going around: Two respected bloggers, Alex Koppelman at Salon's War Room blog and Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic envision a Republican Armageddon in today's Gallup story culled from 2008 election data which says only four states (all in the wild West) are overwhelmingly red. Koppelman adds, "This is most likely not the kind of thing that gets fixed easily." Really?

How quickly the past eight years are forgotten-specifically 2002-2005--when the tables were turned. After fearing a Democrat would never win another presidential election and flubbing two straight, we have left-leaning journalists falling over themselves in glee.

Both bloggers padded their arguments with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's comments to the RNC today where his fear of the party's collapse was not as fearful as other may view it--as John McCain might say, "the fundamentals" of the party are sound. The Gallup map shows only Utah, Idaho, Wyoming and Alaska as solidly Republican. Shockingly, the data puts Texas in the competitive column.

Now, really! There are an infinite amount of occurrences that can change the map and attitudes in a hurry. The data based on party affiliation and skewing sharply towards Democrats is going to continue to grow as it has for the last 10-15 years, but to have a blanket of Bible Belt states in competition is highly improbably once you attach a conservative candidate to the polling. No matter who is in the White House regions like the inner West and the South where the post-industrial economy ha not penetrated the workforce, these areas will continue to vote for a Republican candidate.

The easiest way for Republicans to remake the map without changing the way they do business is simply to wait for President Obama to falter in alleviating the failing economy. If he does it poorly enough, House Republicans for one could easily siphon off large chunks of the Democratic majority Nancy Pelosi presides over by 2010 or 2012.

Indeed, the country is trending to the left and will continue with new young voters and immigrants, but touting these results so early in the new administration is kind of like saying the Yankees will, without a doubt, win the World Series after spending a third-world country's GNP on three superstars. There is much time to for everything to change and it is guaranteed to happen. Besides, the Three G's--gays, guns and God--have a way of stoking conservative fears around the country, too.

Payback's A Bitch: Dems Take Control Of Congress

FIGHT BACK AGAINST TROOP SURGES IN IRAQ

Washington is a buzz as the Democrats take control of Congress Thursday. After President Gerald Ford's death last week, the Capitol is dripping with nostalgia of a bygone era when Democrats and Republicans actually spoke decently to each other.

Hold on. Only half of D.C. is spewing this talking point and its Republicans.

After six years of nearly complete marginalization by the Republicans in Congress, the new majority party is poised to give the GOP a dose of their own medicine and it should be as costly as the over-priced medication millions of uninsured American dole out everyday.

There is no reason for the Dems to concede anything to their GOP colleagues, at least until next year when conciliatory gestures will go well with a cocktail of Hillary, Obama or John Edwards.

The Dems constituency made it implicitly clear last November that the ultra conservative direction of America needed a correction in the direction of the center. I have no allusions of Democrats achieving anything more than their pre-programmed first 100 hours of a minimum wage hike, stem cell research and reduction student aid interest rates, but if they do anything they must contain President Bush's maniacal grasp on leading this country by the slimmest majority of popularity and logic.

After those first 100 hours, Nancy Pelosi must vigorously lead the party and a possible sizable chunk of the GOP caucus against the President's blood lust for further entrenching the U.S. in Iraq. The position must be clear and concise; nobody in America except for the men in Bush's shrinking inner circle believe a troop surge is anything but folly.

Pelosi must realize the basic duty of their service is to lead the country by the wishes of the people and they have spoken. Take a stand, Madame Speaker.