Yves here. I suppose it is not surprising that Nancy Pelosi is stopping to new “step on the poors” lows despite getting Versailles 1788 wake-up calls like having her house and her office vandalized. Pelosi has kicked former law professor Katie Porter off the House Financial Services Committee. Porter has been singularly effective in using hearings to put a spotlight on inequality and bank industry abuses.
Odds are decent that Pelosi’s rebuff is payback for this exchange, which even the Washington Post applauded:
Rep. Katie Porter challenged big bank CEO Jamie Dimon to pay his workers a living wage by literally showing him the math pic.twitter.com/FpzxrIc8Co
— ᴿealfarmacist (@real_farmacist) April 13, 2019
By Howie Klein. Originally published at DownWithTyranny!
Katie Porter has been a star since being elected to Congress in 2018. Two years after narrowly ousting GOP incumbent Mimi Walters– 158,906 (52.1%) to 146,383 (47.9%)– the Republican Party was on the war-path in Orange County but not serious about taking on Porter. They defeated corporate conservative Democrats Harley Rouda and Gil Cisneros but never really got behind former Mission Viejo mayor Greg Raths, their candidate against Porter. The NRCC spent no money on Raths’ behalf and Porter beat him 221,843 (53.5%) to 193,096 (46.5%).
Several weeks ago, Porter was elected Deputy Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Having won two terms in Congress as a supporter of Medicare for All in a district where Republicans outnumber Democrats, she is best known for holding corporate special interests accountable and advocating for stronger worker protections. Her star shined brightly as a fierce questioner of banksters and government bureaucrats who came before the House Financial Services Committee.
On Thursday evening, I read that Pelosi has pushed her off the committee at the urging on the banksters, the Fed and Wall Street special interests. In a conversation with another member of the committee, an admirer of Porter’s, I was told that it was a combination of the Fed and Wall Street that demanded her removal. The member told me that “It is, in fact, a tragedy for that committee to lose someone like her. It’s a staff-run committee, with revolving-door staff… Also taking someone off a committee means they’re losing their committee seniority, which is very, very bad karma, since the whole system is built on that.”
News: Rep. Katie Porter drove bank execs and industry-friendly regulators crazy during as a member of the House Financial Services Committee. She just lost her seat on the panel thanks in part to Democratic caucus rules. https://t.co/4a9JD9iE5q
— Sylvan Lane (@SylvanLane) January 14, 2021
Hill reporter Sylvan Lane wrote that Pelosi (through the Steering Committee she controls) denied Porter a waiver to serve on 3 committees simultaneously and gave her seats on Oversight and Natural Resources and removed her from Financial Services. “Porter’s departure from the Financial Services panel will likely mean fewer headaches for the bank executives, financial regulators and industry advocates that often appear before the panel. Before joining Congress, Porter was a law professor at the University of California, Irvine and was appointed in 2012 by then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris to oversee the state’s $25 billion settlement with mortgage servicers involved in the 2007 financial crisis and housing market collapse. Porter is frequently compared by both supporters and critics to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), her former professor at Harvard Law School. Porter emphasized her legal experience and perspective as the only single mother of school-age children in the Democratic Caucus in a Jan. 6 letter to Pelosi asking for a waiver to rejoin the Financial Services panel. ‘From growing up in Iowa during the farm credit crisis, to raising young children as a single mother, I have lived through economic upheavals that limit many Americans from reaching or remaining in the middle class,’ Porter wrote. ‘Because of my work as a lawyer and consumer advocate, I also have a rigorous understanding of the 2008 financial crisis, which decimated family finances and helped cause the huge economic inequality that we face today,’ she added.”
I hope to revisit this after the weekend. Meanwhile, just keep this in mind:
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Reichstag would be closer to the mark.
*Sigh*
While I very much value your perspective, you have had a long-standing case of TDS. Remarks like this lead readers to discount other things you have to say.
5000 selfie and souvenir-taking rioters do not a violent effort to overthrow the government make, as confirmed by the fact that the police, once they got backup, were able to push them out of the Capitol in a couple of hours.
Moreover, the Reichstag fire took place AFTER Hitler had become Chancellor. It was blamed on Communists. There is even now considerable debate as to whether the fire was a false flag incident. By contrast, the preps here are clear, unless you mean to fall in with Trump-fever-swamp allegations that the more violent types among the rioters were Antifa.
In other words, this is an extremely poorly chosen analogy. Please refrain from this sort of sensationalist and historically well wide of the mark comment.
Yves,
I generally agree with your take that the reaction to the capitol riot has been unhinged among mainstream media, as wells as liberals and the left more broadly. However, i’ve also found myself revising my view of what happened and realizing some members of the crowd did have violent intent and brought the means to carrry out those plans. I think the death count is up to 5, now.
What dcblogger may be underestimating is just how isolated and lazy trump is. No one in a position of power is genuinely willing to help him carry out a coup that he’d probably appreciate if it happened, but won’t lift a finger to carry out.
Regarding the capitol riot, I do see some voices talking about what a colossal police failure this was, and i hope we see a serious examination of the leadership failures here.
Anyway, back on topic, this is a big loss and a huge disappointment.
It’s become nearly inexcuseable for the squad and progressives to justify their votes to reappoint pelosi as speaker. She’s rubbing their faces in it.
I get that the #forcethevote campaign was debatable, but there’s not nearly enough fight against congressional leadership from the left wing of the party, the squad and their new friends. What’s it going to take for open warfare from them?
As to the deaths “during” the riot, here is some granularity from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/01/08/woman-possibly-crushed-to-death-these-are-the-five-people-who-died-amid-pro-trump-riots/?sh=278e6dbd737c
To my mind, a pretty small body count for an “insurrection,” for all the hype and angst. Maybe only three dead from direct action on both sides, the two worst being Sicknick and Babbitt. A lot of voices wanting this to be a lot more than it was, as far as I can see. This was not even a patch on the police riot at the ‘68 Dem convention, https://time.com/5377386/1968-democratic-national-convention-protesters/
Seems Pelosi feels invulnerable and maybe at age 80 she has gotten to the point of wanting to drag it all down with her. Like the barbarian rulers who had their families and concubines murdered and entombed with them.
She just don’t give a rip.
I totally agree. Because it was a botched coup does not mean it was not a coup. That only a few people died does not mean there was not significant violent intent. We all heard the hundreds of raging death threats against the Veep and legislators. We all heard and saw the white privilege expressed by people who were shocked that there was any resistance or fuss about storming a sitting session of Congress and vandalizing pubic buildings. People who, now that it is hindsight, belittle the danger of the botched MAGA Insurrection are ignoring that Godzilla is still in the room
Rep Porter is amazing. The Democrats’ efforts to suppress progressives is risking popular support for their brief control of Congress.
White privilege or Right privilege?
The Antifas are just as White as the Trumpistas. But if the Antifas planned a riot at the Capitol, they would have been prevented from doing so with all suitable law enforcement violence.
” White Privilege” is invoked to prevent noticing Class Privilege and Ideology Privilege.
That’s what the purpose of Wokenism is, to confuse every issue and prevent every solution.
It was not a coup. As Lambert said, if it had been they would have used the lectern to pronounce the formation of a new government, rather than carting it out.
I think the reliability of dcblogger’s perspective is valuable even if its content is subject to discount.
Is it too far-fetched to believe that the causes of the economic mayhem that Congresswoman Porter was helping to bring to light were a substantive factor in catalyzing the right-wing populist movement that led to the riot on Capitol Hill?
Yes! Totally, totally agree!
But am sad to say there is a very definite message being delivered by the media.
Listening to NPR hours each day, per NPR it most definitely was a coup attempt, insurrection, etc by violent terrorists who attacked Our Democracy. I won’t be surprised to see Dems explore a greater application of the (limitless?) powers in the Patriot Act to protect Our Democracy. Granted, they may not have to because so much of our economy is controlled semi monopolies owned by billionaire Democratic establishment types. Maybe that “soft-er power” can do the job.
And now NPR has guests fretting that these are crazy people, there is no reasoning with them, and what are we going to do about that? They are concerned these people are flooding FB and attacking our FB, too, because we shut down their Parlor.
It’s Our vs Them. I am wondering where are all those Parlor shut down people going to go, what might they do, are they angry? Looks like we are going in a direction of greater division while nothing that benefits working folk getting done in Washington.
I hear the occasional comments from my co worker while he plays this on the radio. The messaging by the media is working. I also talk to another co worker who shows me downloads. I think he got them from Parlor. And the bad things the rich and powerful and their association with that pedofile guy who died in prison. But here’s the thing: We both agree on the big issues, like govt is screwing working folks and favoring the rich.
But here’s the thing: We both agree on the big issues, like govt is screwing working folks and favoring the rich.
Currently the divide and conquer routine is working pretty well for the PTB, but with the rush to chase the trumpists right it may turn out in the long run to be the battle of the bulge instead…
Why bash just billionaire Democratic establishment types when there’s plenty of Republicans as well?
I live in an economically depressed area of Pennsylvania which is, not surprisingly, Trump country as well. In fact, the cities are blue but everywhere else is red. We used to have factories and other large businesses but most are gone and PA is full of small towns that are barely hanging on. We have a lot of elderly and poor. I completely understand why people are angry–left and right–but most have no real understanding of the reasons for their anger: our “free and independent press” doesn’t exist anymore (so we don’t get any facts) and the majority of Americans now live in their own deluded bubbles.
Which makes the notion that the – poor – traveled to DC or attend all these other state events weak tea and as such basing views around the prior highly inaccurate.
Unfortunately, I suspect many of the rioters would accuse the messenger, Porter, of being a socialist, communist, and other lefty slurs for being a democrat and supporting policies that would relieve their suffering. Their cognitive dissonance is overwhelming.
Just when you want to give House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a pat on the back, she goes and does something like this. Sigh.
So now Katie can take her whiteboard to Natural Resources and go after big oil, pipelines, coal, etc…maybe our climate will be a big winner with her there.
Not holding my breath, but maybe Newsom will appoint her AG to regain progressive support in the recall.
Most people don’t understand we are a one party country with 5 or 6 hot button issues.
As long as we keep blaming the other side for what both sides are doing we won’t get anywhere.
Yes. I enjoy the blue dog meme above with “GOP Service Dog,” but at this point it’s hard to maintain that NP merely serves the GOP. Her own interests and those of her elite Dem owners are very much a driver of her actions.
Pelosi has been a fine palace guard. She learned the rules at her daddy’s knee, and the people are the last concern. She doesn’t have to worry about the warnings. She knows the real guards will make sure she is fine.
She has made sure there is no examination of real high crimes. Corruption is the norm. No legislation is allowed that might honestly address the significant and real problems facing our country. See that norm. When those that thrive in our society commit crimes they know Nancy and most of Washington’s top political hacks of both parties will have their backs. Their donations, and post retirement jobs or speaking fees or book deals make sure of that.
The only real differences between the Democratic leaders and the Republicans, is that the Republicans do not pretend they are interested in making things better for those in a median wage or worse job.
Seems like AOC and progressives have done well for themselves supporting Pelosi as speaker. Did those CIA democrats get removed from their committee seats after not supporting Pelosi?
Third term of Obama, standing between FIRE sector and pitch-forks.
Careful there! Obama will have to write a THIRD biography re-writing history to explain how he was stopped from fixing anything and instead made everything worse by doing the EXACT OPPOSITE of why he was elected.
My husband tells me that Colin Powell will be giving a speech, that will be broadcast online to all the employees next week. Hubby will be tuning in. Why, I asked? Because it’s Colin Powell — Someone Important! — I want to hear what he has to say! Ah… and how much is he getting paid to offer up that little speech? Shrug. Yeah, that’s my sense of those folks. Powerful and comfortable while in office, and cashing in like mad once they’re out. That single speech, minutes of Mr. Powell’s time really, will net him more money than most of each of the employees make in a year.
One day Katie too will be out of office and her performance, like the one above will make her a highly paid speaker, television personality, and ‘consultant’. Her ramen days are well behind her. Perhaps in twenty years we may hear that she too has a mansion on Indian Creek Island, but as the lone outlier in her neighborhood, the Secret Service is welcome to use her toilet… but only the one off the garage.
If I seem jaded, it’s because before there was Katie, there was Elizabeth. We do love a good rousing rogering of bank executives, don’t we? Oh, nomnomnom!
I honestly don’t care what Katie Porter does after she leaves office. What I care about is that she was one of the few people in the House who had the brains and the knowledge to pin down the corporatists and get answers from them. I am disgusted that she was removed from being able to do that very important job.
Aren’t you the one who argued against attempting to remove Nancy? Duh.
I am getting sick and tired of you following me around and misinterpreting my statements. I am not going to open that old wound again by trying to explain my position to you because obviously that doesn’t work. I suggest you go back and reread my posts.
I don’t speak for Yves, Lambert, the commentariat at large, but I’m pretty sure this kind of exchange contributed to the shutting down of the comments. I appreciate the comments and commentariat as much as the links and articles. There is great value, and even enjoyment(!) coming here everyday to read.
Can we, as the rebels said when attacking the Death Star in Star Wars, “Star on target”?
Yes, you are right! I did let my irritation get to me today. I do apologize to the commentariat!
So how do you think I should handle someone who seems to be following me around making baseless and snide remarks to my comments? This is not the first or second time this has happened. I don’t know what others think, but right or wrong, I kind of feel like he’s trying to push me off NC.
Send him a “form comment”.
Thank him for his interest in your comment. Tell him that you are always happy to hear from him. Tell him to let you know if he has any other concerns.
I love it! Thank you!
I’m hearing this in the voice of an indignant-letter-to-the-editor-read-aloud-on-a-Monty-Python-skit.
It’s so off putting that I can’t be bothered to fish out amongst the feelings what the substance of objection might be.
edmondo, I am late to see this.
This was a substance free personal attack and ad hom too, so two violations in one sentence. I’ve put you in moderation. One more like this and you will be blacklisted.
Exactly right. Back to “normal”.
Cheers. Porter has done a consistently marvelous job on that committee. Pressure needs to be brought to bear on Pelosi, of whom I’m certainly not a fan. Porter’s questioning of Dimond was superb. (As for Dimond, I don’t care how massive the fine the bank paid was. He should have personally done a some time to think about things. I hope that’s not too off topic.)
‘and get answers from them’
‘Idon’tknowI’llhavetothinkaboutitIdon’tknowI’llhavetothinkaboutitIdon’tknowI’llhavetothinkaboutit’
Dimon didn’t look or sound “pinned down”; he sounded bored and a little irritated at being forced to repeat himself, and for being spoken to in such a tone of contempt… as she knew he would. She was ‘badgering the witness’, in the only place she could have gotten away with it for that long. It was pure performance, Historian. It’s on those performances we hail her as some kind of hero of ‘the little people’? Great for Katie and C-Span ratings but what changed?
I loved Elizabeth’s little diatribes on ‘The Daily Show’; I had great hopes when she ran for the senate. A few years later, I no longer recognized the woman who ran for President. She said and did things I thought were beneath her, surely she would take the high road. But no, no, she would say and do whatever it took to win. She’s a player and so is Katie.
I’ve been wondering how Lizzie or Katie really feel about serving under a ‘touchy-feely-hair-smoocher’ of a President? Are they okay, as long it’s not Bernie? Of single individuals who dealt Bernie’s campaign 23 stab wounds, I’d put Elizabeth Warren and her team at the top of the list. What he said all those years ago was that a woman can’t win as President. So far he’s been right; it was the truth. Vice President Harris? Biden’s cabinet is playing to the camera. Gosh, it looks diverse, but that’s what the voters thought about Obama… it was a new day in Washington, cuz the President is Black!
How many more times will The People tolerate being disappointed and mourn to see their candidate’s ambitions fall to the greater ambitions of The Parties? Chris Hedges wrote there are only three choices left to us — Reform, Revolution, and Tyranny. Reform seems increasingly unlikely.
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/video/2016/may/03/damian-lewis-antony-julius-caesar-friends-romans-countrymen-shakespeare-video
Well I can definitely understand why you feel the way you do. We haven’t had much success in getting politicians with the backbone to keep promises they’ve made – and more than one of them have sold out once they’ve got into office.
But Reform takes a long time – it just cannot happen overnight – and I think we have to support those few politicians who seem to be at least moving in that direction. We have to change the Overton window before anything else happens, because you know as well as I do, politicians blow with the wind.
I absolutely don’t want Revolution or Tyranny so I have to be hopeful for Reform, as slow as it always is.
Others watched that exchange and thought Dimon came across as a cartoon villain and a rather smugly incompetent one at that. Deflating the pretensions of these ‘masters of the universe’ is useful in and of itself imo. I applaud Porter for that.
The kind of a grilling Porter administered in committee is obviously aimed at getting the info into the record. It’s necessary. That it was also entertaining is a plus.
Are we still looking for heroes? Celebrity culture is an advertising tool. Bernie and Warren moved some things forward. Thanks for that. The squad has built a bit on that and maybe will do some more. That’s good. The real work is necessarily being done by organizations outside of the parties. The national figures need not be lionized, they are tools of a larger movement. If they go dull or are not suited to the task at hand, we should put them down and find another.
As a non-American observing from a distance it looks as though Celebrity Culture ( loose definition of “culture” admittedly) is an all pervasive force within the US. Whether it is Schwarzenegger, Trump, Madonna, Oprah, Kardashians, Snoop Dog, or any number of Hollywood has beens, these are the people lionised by the US media and therefore the majority of people. And this has seeped out into the rest of the capitalist world too, for example Bollywood and Kpop.
Meanwhile societies’ real heroes and heroines in research, medicine, science, teaching, environmental work and the like go largely unrecognised (and even unemployed if they are not funded by industry)
To my mind this value distortion is one of the fundamental problems in US society, and therefore throughout much of the world, given the strong cultural influence of the US.
I’m sure the real heroes and heroines in research and teaching would appreciate jobs and grant money but the last thing they need is the attention of a wider public so heavily populated with disruptive lunatics.
Dimon has consistently shown utter contempt for Congress. Go look at the London Whale hearings. He didn’t bother preparing and said things his lawyers would have strongly advised him not to say. And he’s always been that way. A friend was in his HBS section and said he was an arrogant loudmouth back then.
To so corner Dimon that he wouldn’t offer a response is an achievement.
They’re just men, Ives. They can be called before a congressional committee — it’s pure farce! — but they can be called. They can be called on the carpet, as CEO’s it’s their job if the issue is important enough, and they get paid handsomely for their time. It’s entertaining too, but nothing really changes when the show’s over. Katie scored some points and Dimon… looked and sounded exactly like we expect him to — ‘an arrogant loudmouth’ that Katie shut down to ‘I don’t know, I’ll have to think about it’. Like there was some possibility that after the meeting ended, he’d go sit alone with a hot cup of tea and really soul search how best to help his employee and all the underpaid of America. If sarcasm worked on people like Jamie Dimon, we’d be having a different conversation here at NC altogether.
Yup. She is as sharp a questioner as Al Franken was on the Judiciary Committee. Typical of Dems to kneecap themselves.
“If I seem jaded…”
i think cynicism…even hypercynicism…is perfectly rational. it may even be inevitable, once one breaks out of either Team’s bubble universe.
aside from my wife, who at least acknowledges that Team Blue is only marginally better for ordinary people, every Dem i know in real life believes that the Demparty is still the Party of the Little Guy(tm).
Conversely, on the Right, only the local hard core Party People believe that the GOP is “on our side”…and that obtained before trump inserted his bulls&&t into everything.
I saw somewhere(*) this morning that Demparty is gearing up to go all in on “immigration reform”….may as well go all in on abortion, or publicly funded sex changes.
it’s like they want to lose the midterms, and avoid governing at all costs….by stirring as much $hit as possible, and “owning the right”.
a sort of good thing i saw(again, somewhere(*) in my early morning ramble) is the idea that the Bidenists are talking big about sending $ to the state and local parties…so at least the Texas Dems might get a working phone line, and/or answer emails.
They might even find the will to send missionaries to rural places….it’s been 15 years since there was a demparty storefront for an election in my county.(gop maintained one until trump, even though they really didn’t need to)
(* i’m trying to break my habit of having 50 tabs open,lol…i’ve been on cnn, the hill, politico, guardian, nyt, wapo, ap, nymag and fox this morning…and that’s with awakening Late(almost 5am),lol.)
As I recall, both Porter and Warren have done really fine work as documented by Credit Slips. It bums me out that pro consumer reps are hobbled by their leadership for what I can only guess is a few shekels more. The Carlin quote of “its a big club” comes to mind.
Those “few shekels more” times millions add up. ;)
https://www.dailyposter.com/p/dems-reject-bigger-survival-checks
If you read the linked story, the Finance committee is one of two (or three, ugh forgot already) committees which are considered important enough that you are not allowed to be on any other committees. Waivers have been given out, and the story doesn’t say but possibly are still available.
*Or* Pelosi, who I have clearly been and am no fan of, decided it was time to squash all that. New Congress, time for some housecleaning. The story doesn’t say that either, however. So who knows.
But the important thing was that Ms. Porter, who I am a fan of, listed Finance as her third choice. Third. And the other two committees were ones without the limit.
Thus the rules say that she can serve on her first two choices, *or* she can only serve on her third choice. She set herself up for this.
It sounds like Pelosi put Porter on Natural Resources which then required Pelosi to remove Porter from one of her two other major committees and Pelosi chose to remove her from Financial Services.
I see nothing suggesting that Porter asked to be put on Natural Resources, or that Pelosi considered removing her from the Oversight & Reform committee.
Pelosi appears to have initiated and then resolved this situation without any involvement from Porter. (Wikipedia has updated Porter’s committees but Porter’s own homepage has not. ?) At least that would be my take based on the information provided. I cannot find any news stories suggesting that Porter requested the Natural Resources assignment.
That’s from The Well, December 22, and it clearly states Porter was added to Natural Resources. I can find nothing online suggesting that Porter had sought this assignment.
I’m finding it curiously difficult to find the current membership of the Democratic Steering Committee (on this one Wikipedia hasn’t updated its page) but the leadership of the Steering Committee is traditionally in the Speaker’s (or Minority Leader) back pocket. I really would like to see a better news story on this as there seems to be a lot going on between the lines.
Having now read The Hill, it appears Porter did request Natural Resources, and did list Finance third.
Hard to say how that happened. She could have been told she had to pick another major committee because she was going to lose Finance, or was told she’d be granted a waiver, or who knows what happens in Congress.
It’s Congress. (Since my comment was awaiting moderation, please feel free to remove both of my comments.)
Good points, Chris. Why does an up and coming Congressperson want to sit on the House Oversight committee first when it seems like she was getting her best press from the Financial Services committee that she listed as her third choice?
But –
So it sounds like she had a very realistic expectation of being granted a waiver, since she had received one previously and others received them this time around.
And it isn’t like these are some hundreds of years old norms created by the holy founding fathers. More like a few months, and created by our current corrupt Democrats –
Back in 2004 when George Bush was re-elected, one of his congressman was caught asking the business community what laws they wanted so that they could write them up and pass them. Even for a George Bush administration, it was not a good look. This is worse. By Pelosi doing this, even before Biden sits his bony a** in the White House, she is basically telling corporate America that they have free license now to do whatever they want and any critic of them will be muzzled. If they thought that the Trump years were good for them, they ain’t seen nothing yet.
And Kamalabama is positioned to be President after Biden so she can be Janey-on-the-spot just in time to give all the Black Hat FIRE sector perpetrators non-prosecution agreements and pardons and etc. when the crimes they have been authorised to keep committing melt down the Financial Economy again.
If Gabbard tries to primary Kamalabama for 2024 I will vote for Gabbard. If Gabbard does it on the Republican side, I will vote in the R primaries to vote for Gabbard.
I will be curious to see the final make up of the committee. AND to check which members have waivers.
Pretty sure Waters is happy to see Porter’s back. Not only was she a spoiler in the kabuki play, but she took attention from Maxine.
Perhaps she thinks she can actually get more done on this committee. Had her rock star moment, parlay to real investigative work in Demo silo.
Anyway, her choice. Hope she is successful.
Whatever happened to Nancy’s promise to only serve one term and then step down?
She and DiFi are seeing who can hold out longer.
DiFi is oldest living member of Senate.
With “living” being a debatable term, moreso in DiFi’s case, cognitively speaking, than Pelosi’s.
The ownership by “big business and finance” of our two major political parties is an old story. We need actionable ideas as to how to reduce this, not complaints that it exists. Exposing the problem is a step in the right direction, but it is only a step, not a suggestion for any fixes.
Your openining remarks includes the line, “I suppose it is not surprising that Nancy Pelosi is stopping to new “step on the poors” lows despite getting Versailles 1788 wake-up calls like having her house and her office vandalized.” Is “stopping” a misprint?
As Mr. Klein wrote in his article, Pelosi is likely responding to pressure from big donors on Wall Street and senior Fed officials, and probably senior appointees in the incoming administration. Rep. Porter has pulled back the curtain a bit to give us a peek, and they’re afraid of her. She’s intrepid, highly intelligent, and understands how the system works. She remembers who caused the 2008 financial crisis and what occurred in its aftermath. She knows what policies need to be enacted to change the trajectory, and she’s not corrupt. In a just world, Rep. Porter would serve on the House Financial Services Committee.
And assuming a future just world, Senator Porter.
Long time reader first time commenter!
While I’m definitely simpatico to the underlying principal of this post, upon actually reading the linked articles, I got a very different impression of the context than this post started me with and felt the need to point it out.
This post would lead me to believe that Porter was ousted completely against her will, when in fact, Financial Services committee was her last stated priority position request:
…
While I agree it’s quite the loss, given how much I’d enjoy watching her and her whiteboard of terror skewer CEOs, the “Pelosi pushed her out” narrative seems a bit sensationalist given that she wasn’t pulling all that hard to stay there herself. Not all unfortunate things are the work of intentional malice.
You choose to airbrush out that Pelosi gave other similarly situated reps waivers. So this was malice.
I so admire women who speak truth to power and Porter is an excellent example. There needs to be thousands of these women speaking the truth at the same time to the same billionaire class. I wait patiently for that moment.
I gently disagree. Speaking truth to power is a fine idea, but I’d prefer them regulating their industries and prosecuting their crimes.
And speaking truth aBOUT power TO the powerLESS. So they can understand the nuts and bolts and screws and wiring diagrams of power.
Porter is not a regulator. You can’t ask a fish to fly.
What’s that quote from Talleyrand that Lambert’s always using? Oh yeah…