Demo slap fight: A burst of Durst

Pub date January 25, 2008
SectionBruce Blog

Who will take on the banks? asks Columnist Robert Scheer. Will Durst reports on the slap happy Democrats.

B3 note: Columnist Robert Scheer asked the correct question in his Jan. 23 op ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Who will take on the banks?” He noted that Clinton, Obama, and Edwards “lamely attempted to deal with the dire consequences of the banking meltdown without confronting the banks. They made all the proper concerned noises about millions of folks losing their retirement savings and homes, but none was willing to say what Kucinich would have: Bankers are crooks who will steal from the public unless the government holds them responsible.”

Scheer rightly noted that deregulation became “the mantra covering corporate theft in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and it is amazing that not one of her interlocutors adt the South Carolina debate asked Hillary Clinton about her husband’s signing of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of l999, which permitted banks, stockbrokers and insurance companies to merge, overturning one of the major regulatory achievements of the New Deal.” So who will take on the banks that brought on the mortgage crisis? B3 note: It is to the Chronicle’s credit that they run Scheer’s excellent political column, the column that was too liberal for the Los Angeles Times.

Meanwhile, Will Durst takes on the slap happy Democrats.