Thursday, July 22, 2010

Prez signs Wall Street reform bill

The last time speculation on Wall Street created a crises that crashed the US economy FDR and a Democratic Congress put some rules in place to prevent another great depression. Over the last 20 years many of the safeguards that were put in place in the 1930's were repealed including the Glass-Steagal Act when Bill Clinton was President. Add in lax enforcement of the laws on the books after 2001 then in 2008 all hell broke loose again causing a deep recession that we are just recovering from so it's time to rein in the big banks to prevent a three-peat.

Congressman Paul Kanjorski has been working on a fix for a long time and it got past the finish line despite universal opposition from the the Republicans in Congress. Boner already wants to repeal it. The Republicans want to repeal everything but have no solutions to the country's problems and after fiasco of the last decade it's clear they don't know how to govern.

Kanjo was on stage for the signing.


Kanjorski Joins President for Signing of Wall Street Reform Bill into Law






Ezra Klein takes on the liberal argument that it doesn't do enough.


I had a brief conversation on the telephone with Kanjo yesterday about Wall Street reform and a few other things. I don't report telephone interviews very well since I don't know shorthand and I'm a not a trained reporter/journalist and have never claimed to be. He promised I can sit down with him in person when I can use my recorder in the near future. So this is paraphrased but certainly not taken out of context.

On Wall Street Reform

I don't think we will appreciate for decades how much good this law will do... My amendment could be described as surgical Glass-Steagal. I look forward to discussing this with you in the future... I had a good conversation with the President today.

Gas Drilling

I support the smart development of gas extraction which includes development of a plan for best practices and oversight. We should have an energy institute to develope that plan...PA is one of only 2 states that doesn't have an extraction tax. That money could be used to fund the oversight/inspections that are required.

...on a lighter note I asked him what was his favorite baseball team. He likes the Philiies and the Yankees. I pointed out that he had that Yankee thing in common with Lou Barletta. I invited him to our next meet the candidates/blogger event September 17th and he said he would make it if Abbie would let him.



6 comments:

Anonymous said...

But there is no such thing as "smart gas drilling".. I recently read that all the local government people picked up this phrase a few years ago when this all started. It got them out of a pickle because they could support it but not be responsible, leaving the "smart" part to others, namely the INDUSTRY. Not smart. Now that we know a bit about this phenom, they can't say no but there is no avenue to support it. It is not possible to inject 5 million gallons of local water (reduction in local supply) into each well mixed with tons of toxic chemicals and expect it to be smart. It is just plain stupid anyway one looks at it.

Anonymous said...

This drilling is important. Controlled drilling is much more important!

Anonymous said...

Gort, revive SK over at sights on Pa , i think i just heard the wind blow out of their sails! lmao

Unknown said...

Gort,

You linked to Ezra in this story as an authoritative source on wall street reform.

This Ezra? - http://bigjournalism.com/jsexton/2010/07/20/journolist-ezra-kleins-secretive-conspiracy/

You're a blogger. Were you one of the 400? http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/23/two-more-members-of-journolist-identified/

Gort said...

Dave,

I really can't talk about the list since everyone involved is sworn to secrecy but I am on the Wapo list of The Best State Political Blogs

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/fix-notes/the-best-state-political-blogs-2.html#more

Unknown said...

"sworn to secrecy" - I'm sure you get the irony of your "no comment" response.