The Unstoppable Elizabeth Warren

As despised as the Affordable Care Act has been is the Consumer Financial Protection Agency .  And as despised as Obama for getting away with the ACA, Senator Elizabeth Warren is despised by Congressional republicans for taking on the powerful banks.  And when it comes to dastardly villains, hell bent on power and revenge, there is none like Mitch McConnell.  Oh, sure, he may duck into his shell whenever a controversy arises,

but when the coast is clear and he is surrounded by his own kind, he is a true leader.

Let us remember that it was Mitch who first stated his primary purpose after President Obama's 2008 election was to make him a one-term president.  He may have a weak chin, but he has balls that even Donald Trump must admire.  Under McConnell, republican senators have stood firmly on the right to oppose Obama's every act as president -- even when he was making a proposal that had been strongly endorsed, even suggested, by republicans.

Perhaps the most absurd act of obstruction by McConnell was last year's refusal to hear testimony on the nomination of Merrick Garland for Supreme Court Justice.  It was not only unprecedented and undemocratic, the rationale given for this militant act against the president's authority was ridiculous.  As everyone from pundits to legal experts to late night talk show hosts pointed out.

His outrageous gambit appears to have won.  We may soon have a supreme court justice that moves to the right of right-wingnut Antonin Scalia.

And now he has his sights on Elizabeth Warren.

It is easy to understand why he wants Warren neutralized.  She was the voice that led to the creation -- her creation -- of the Consumers Financial Protection Agency.  Following the Wall Street fiasco that led to the Great Recession, right wingers couldn't figure out fast enough how to stop the call for regulation and monitoring of Wall Street.  And Warren is smart and persistent.  She can't be outargued, and she won't be manipulated.  She thrives on challenges and attacks; she knows she has facts and the moral high ground on her side.

She also has the American people on her side.

And, as they used to say at Ronco,

When it was learned last year that Wells Fargo executives had pressured employees to set up millions of fake accounts in customers' names, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau pursued the complaints and fined Wells Fargo $185 million dollars.  During the Senate hearing, Elizabeth Warren told Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, 

"This is about accountability.  You should resign.  You should give back the money that you took while this scam was going on, and you should be criminally investigated."

The plot thickens, because Donald Trump in his effort to keep his swamp full to capacity, nominated Elaine Chao to be transportation secretary.  Elaine Chao, since 2011, has sat at the board of Wells Fargo.  And... wait for it... Elaine Chao is Mitch McConnell's wife.

So I guess we could say there is history here between Warren and McConnell.  Or we could say, follow the money and the special interests.

McConnell had a rare opportunity to really stick his foot in it two days ago, when Warren was on the floor speaking against the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be attorney general.  She was reading a 1986 letter from Coretta Scott King to the Senate opposing Sessions' appointment to a federal judgeship.  Thinking this was the moment he had been waiting for, he had Warren stopped and told to sit down.  There was then a vote as to whether to rebuke Warren for "impugning" Sessions' character, which of course fell on party lines.

If you haven't already been immersed in this story, your head may be spinning, you may be saying "Wh-What???"  But it is true.  There is a rule -- Rule XIX -- that was created in 1902, back when Mitch McConnell was just a boy.  It came about because a couple of South Carolina senators engaged in fisticuffs on the floor of the Senate.  And -- this could only happen in Congress -- the rule does not just ban fights on the Senate floor, but any disparagement of a sitting Senator.  This odd and arcane rule has not been used in some forty years, and apparently did not apply when Ted Cruz accused Mitch McConnell of lying. So Warren's crime was that she read a letter stating that Jeff Sessions -- a racist -- is a racist.  And maybe that she is a woman.  A powerful woman.

(In a wonderful act of unity and defiance, a number of Democratic Senators, all male, took their turn to read the same letter for which Warren had been censured.)

More important, Mitch McConnell has once again put Warren front and center of the fight for honest government.  And she relishes that fight.  We can all scoff at the rule that allows unsavory senators like Jeff Sessions to hide the truth.  And we will.  We are fighting on the internet.  "Nevertheless, she persisted" has become yet another battle cry against the tyranny of Trump's right-wing.

And you can catch Elizabeth Warren on talk shows and on the internet spreading the good word.  Fighting for us all.

Thanks for the inspiration, Elizabeth.

 

Living with Tim Scott's Bad Choices

Up till now, the secret to Tim Scott's success has been knowing what side his bread is buttered on.  And that side is not the side he grew up on, but that of the well-heeled capitalists who have found the perfect African-American republican.  Little white haired southern ladies love him, and all those rich old white guys know he will fight for them, from the right to bear arms to the right to run roughshod over the environment.

Scott isn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but unlike the republican candidate for president, he takes instruction well.  He believes in the republican dream, because it has worked for him.  So he can't see why it can't work for any black man in America.  All you have to do is work hard and suck up to the right... well, the right.  He jumped on the Tea Party bandwagon and it took him right to Washington, and then he sidled up to Nikki Haley, and sure enough, it took him out of the House of Representatives and into the Senate.

He was fortunate in that he did not have big intellectual shoes to fill in the Senate.  Jim duh-Mint may not have had anything going on as far as critical thinking skills, but like Tim, he knew where the power lay, and he learned the words to their song.  DeMint and Scott can recite the lines to the Tea Party Manifesto and they believe every word of it.  Because fortune has, as the Reagan bunch promised in 1980, trickled down to them.

Like, DeMint, Scott talks a good story about his hardscrabble childhood, and for Tim it really was;  no Andy Griffith's Mayberry for Tim Scott.  And as with so many who have worked hard and succeeded, they believe that those who don't succeed have no one to blame but themselves and the government.  In their minds, the government that gave DeMint and Scott an awfully good wage and benefits package is preventing the poor from finding success by helping them survive.

Scott doesn't come out too often and say that the poor should be dropped on their heads and left to fend for themselves.  Instead, he has succeeded by using the right-wing trick of attacking those who are trying to help.  Make Obama the bad guy and nobody will see those members of Congress who have been blocking any attempt to move the country forward.  Blame the president for Guantanamo Bay while Scott helped prevent any reasonable solution from finding its way into the debate.  And of course, make his constituents afraid and angry.

Remember ebola?  Tim Scott was front and center demanding that the government ban travel from affected countries.  No so much in the lead when it came to research and aid.  And, as with every other message from Scott regarding any problem anywhere in the country, he blamed the Obama administration for the government's response, whatever it would be.

Now, with the Zika virus, Scott and his hare-brained right-wing colleagues offer up a bill to provide funds for research.  Really???  Check it out.  Carefully.  Because when right-wing politicians tell you the government is going to help, it is really is time to lock up your valuables.  Because first of all, that bill would waive the Clean Water Act to allow for spraying -- when your kids get sick from the chemicals Scott will blame the president, by the time cancer rates have risen he will be on some private corporate payroll.  And here is the capper:  sandwiched in the middle of his description of the bill are the words:  "Offset this spending."  What he fails to mention is that Zika spending will be offset by ebola funds.

Pretty slick, and certainly not dreamed up in Tim Scott's small brain.  He is merely barfing up republican talking points.  The way our current republican presidential nominee has been forced from time to time to regurgitate words dictated by his republican colleagues.

And while politicians like Senate colleague Lindsey Graham who are more secure in their own shoes are speaking out against the diseased mind of Donald Trump, Tim Scott is all in.  He will support Trump in spite of racist attacks and unconstitutional proposals, because Tim Scott can't say no to the republican party.  That is where his bread has been buttered, and he hasn't noticed that when buttered bread lands on the floor, it always lands face down.

This is a really good time for South Carolinians to take a look at Scott's Democratic opponent, Thomas Dixon.

  

Video thanks to Elaine Cooper

Dixon understands what we need from our government because, as he says,

"I was part of the problem for a long time.  I was the person who was so wrapped around me and caught up in me that whatever hurt anybody else didn't matter to me. 

But one day I woke up."

 Dixon woke up.  And that is why today he fights for human rights.  The right to be safe from gun violence.  The right to earn a living wage.  The right to love whom you choose.  A woman's right to make her own reproductive choices, privately.  The right of veterans and seniors to live in security.  The right to healthcare for all.

Tim Scott may have had it rough when he was young.  But he was bought out with promises of success, and every time he votes against those who need his help he realizes that success.  So he is not going to wake up.

And that is why we need to support Thomas Dixon for Senate.  His supporters don't have deep pockets like those of Tim Scott, but that is exactly why we need him to represent us.  And we may not have a fortune, but we can send him our small donations, and we can vote just as well as the well-heeled.

So please spread the word about Thomas Dixon, and help elect him to the Senate in November.  Tim Scott, like Jim DeMint, will do just fine in the private sector.  And we will do just fine with him gone, and Thomas Dixon taking that seat.

Thomas Dixon

for

U.S. Senate