Oh. Fuck.

[unusualmusic_lj_archive]

Via: Daily Kos

In a recent interview with Reid in his opulently chandeliered suite in the Capitol, I ask why the Democrats had not used their majority in the Senate to close the hedge-fund loophole. He greets the question with dead silence. When he finally speaks, he tells me something I never thought I would hear from a Democrat: that it would be wrong to single out the nation's wealthiest investors simply because they are bilking the treasury out of billions.

"The only difference between hedge-fund operators and other folks similarly situated," Reid argues, "is that they make more money." He and Schumer would be "totally in favor" of taxing them, he adds — so long as the same tax rates were brought to bear on thousands of far less profitable business partnerships whose activities the tax break was intended to boost. The "fairness" stance appears reasonable, until you consider that Reid and Schumer used it to transform a modest tax reform — one co-sponsored by the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee — into a far more sweeping measure that was easily blocked by the GOP minority in the Senate.

What Reid also failed to mention is that the real difference between hedge-fund billionaires and others "so situated" is that they are the ones underwriting efforts by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee run by Schumer. According to campaign-finance records, seven of the country's 10 richest hedge-fund managers contributed an average of $24,400 to the DSCC last year. "Schumer didn't want to turn the spigot off," says Bob McIntyre, director of the nonpartisan Citizens for Tax Justice. All told, the hedge-fund and private-equity sectors have showered the Democrats with more than $14 million this year — double what they have given Republicans.

...

Even some Republicans are bewildered by the failure of Senate Democrats to stand up to the White House. "When you see a headline like 'In The Senate, A White House Victory On Eavesdropping,' something is wrong," says Lincoln Chafee, a moderate Republican from Rhode Island who was ousted from the Senate in 2006 by voters who believed a Democratic majority would take on the Bush administration. "We threw out all these incumbents for a reason. But there's been no discernible change in direction."

Instead, Chafee says, Senate Democrats caved to Bush on wiretapping because they're still "skittish" about being tagged as soft on terror. Reid and the Democrats, he says, need to "draw a line on what's more sacred: short-term thinking about a possible terrorist attack, or the long-term ramifications of undoing our Constitution."

But what really made Chafee "drop my coffee" was the day Democrats led a 76-22 vote to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard — part of the Iranian government — a terrorist organization. "You have the new senators like Jim Webb warning Democrats that 'this is the last ticket we want to give Bush-Cheney' — an excuse to engage in Iran. And they did it anyway. Harry Reid was quoted as saying, 'We certainly don't want to be led down the path, slowly but surely, until we wind up with a situation like we have in Iraq. So I'm going to be very cautious.' And then votes 'aye'! He makes the exact linkage to Iraq, in which he voted 'aye' — and he does it again. That to me was beyond the pale."

There is worse. Much worse


We. Are. SCREWED.

Comments

[doktor-x.livejournal.com]

They really are pretty pathetic.. Democrats were clearly voted in to oppose Bush and his eternal war in Iraq and on the constitution, and everyone is still waiting for them to do anything other than let Bush have his way.. And obviously, they’re also as much bought and paid for as the Republicans >_<