What the beltway Dems. ignore to their own peril is the lesson from 2002, namely going along to get along with Bush-Rove gets you targeted for defeat because they think your weak.

Here's a discussion and thread on a Biden LAT letter to the Editor regarding the bill. Thought it fit in nicely here so that is why I am posting it. Mary thanks for trying to get to the bottom of this issue.

One interesting comment in that thread (but there are many others) noted during the same week of the vote, Citibank in DE announced laying off 500 workers. Ouch that had to hurt!

Congratulation for two outstanding diary on the bankruptcy bill.

Congratulation for two outstanding diaries on the bankruptcy bill.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be.

I don't care what any politician "thought" they would do or not do. That is no excuse for any Democrat voting for cloture or the bill, period.

Credit card companies being allowed to charge as much as 30% interest or more is outrageous! Late fees of $30.00 to $40.00 or more are directed at those who can least afford the debt. I have also learned that credit card companies are not too interested in working with people to bring down their debt.

In 1996, revenue generated by late fees was $1.7 billion. In 2002, late fees generated $7.3 billion. While annual fees have disappeared, issuers now levy several different fees, other than the late fee. Balance transfer fee, the over-the-limit fee and the cash advance fee and the foreign exchange fee.

Revenue generated by all fees in 1995 were $8.3 billion. In 2004, $24 billion.

Credit card companies have also figured out that if they lower the minimum payment requirement from 5% to 2% or 3% of the outstanding balance, it ensures more interest income for the card companies. If you have a balance of $10,000 at 18%, it will take you 50 years to pay off with an interest cost of $29,000. Sound fair?

Here is an interesting piece of information also. Between 1993 and 2000, the amount of credit extended to the American public grew from $777 billion to almost $3 trillion.

Agressive marketing and credit line extension
to those with low credit scores should be disallowed, and if any credit card company extends to high risk, low credit score individuals, then they should eat the loss.

This is a racket just as the insurance companies are legal rackets, and both hurt the consumer.

Personally, I have decided to protest by not using my credit card. I pay it off every month anyway, so not using it will be just fine with me. Perhaps if everyone stopped using their credit card for a month or two we could get their attention.

I applaud The Left Coaster for sticking with this sickening capitulation of the Dems all the way through and for Sen. Feinstein for sticking to her guns. There seems to be no one who is willing to stand up for us deadbeats out here who are in debt and staring down week after week of unemployment after all the benefits are drained.

I recently found enough work to avoid bankruptcy, but the sharks were circling. I hadn't yet gone past 30 days on anything, but a few more weeks and I was going to be chum in the water.

Interestingly enough, as Public Nuisance pointed out the President occasionally confuses the budget with the deficit and the national debt. This guy also said Social Security is headed for bankruptcy; actually, his government is. This guy likes to borrow in our name and last year his government spent $412 billion more than it brought in. This guy steered three different companies into bankruptcy. I don't want to hear him lecture me about personal responsibility.

1.4 million bankruptcy's last year—is this a real problem requiring confiscitory measures to be deployed by the states? Show me the crumbling banking system undone by the malfeasance of wastrels and spendthrifts. Show me the harm done to the credit merchants. Show me a decisive win by the opposition party, please—preferrably this century.

I though Bayh might be going in a different direction after he voted against Rice, but after this bankruptcy fiasco, he's clearly not the candidate we need in 2008. I was also very dissapointed by Reid's vote, since I thought he had been doing a good job as leader up to that point. That bill is one of the worst pieces of legistlation ever. I would have hoped Ben Nelson would have been the only sellout on it. Speaking of which, can we trade Nelson to the GOP for Chafee?

Senator Feinstein's one of my senators, and I don't think this shows her sticking to her guns at all. She voted the bill out of committee; and now it's gone to the floor and passed, she's saying she wuz robbed and she never meant THIS to happen.

Well, I would like to see some reason to believe her.

But as far back as mid-2003, anyone who cared to pay attention would have heard Grover Norquist's formulation that "bipartisanship is another name for date rape." But Feinstein? She's shocked, SHOCKED to find that the Republicans aren't playing fair with her.

Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Renault: Oh. Thank you very much.

I think many democrats who voted for this felt that the issue would fly underneath the radar screen, but they maybe unpleasantly surprised. I think people do know about this and are disgusted by the democrats who voted for it. My friend just wrote Biden a hand-written letter withdrawing her support for him because of his vote. I wrote the DNC that I would no longer be supporting them financially and to take me off their maiing list because of this. This recent vote by the democrats is just another in a long line of sellouts and I hope they can be made aware of our anger over their voting records.

They sold out - not much more needs to be said.

I always expected DINOs like Nelson to sell out. Being a moderate is not about voting for Republican legislation and selling out your party's values. Nelson should remember that when the voters of Nebraska are given the choice between a senator who votes with Bush 85 percent of the time, and one who votes with him 100 percent of the time, they'll chose the 100 percent guy. But having about half of the Senate Democrats vote for it is disgusting. None of those sellouts deserve consideration for president. Frankly, I'd be relieved to see Nelson gone because his frequent sellouts allow the GOP to call their scams "bipartisan." He's a dependable Republican vote anyway, so he makes no difference as a Democrat.

I concur. Not a penny more for the Dems. Why should we? Look at how little they could be bought for by the industry. They are cheap French whores, every last one of them (apologies to the French).

Neither a borrower nor a lender be.

Tell that to the pretzledent and the budget deficit.

Yes, good info.in both articles, Mary.

$30B in profits wasn't enough?
Outrageous, outrageous usurious practices and 30% interest while home mortgages etc. are less than 10%.

Also, outrageous is being obligated past 4 years as would in any contract.

ACTALLY, A DEBTOR'S PRISON/JAIL WOULD BE BETTER FOR PEOPLE THAN THIS BILL!

________________________
One credit card corp., Providian, was finally fined $400+M for their practices, but are still in business(got at them out of SF area;; consumers got $1 while the attorneys got millions off). Gives heavily to politicans. Davis even put the head (from India) on a state Board.

They added (and may still have ) another scam about never crediting the payments as being on time --even when they were.

All credit cards are crap; but when you have no other way out, it's great to have them handy--pay 'em down and stop bitchin'.

Look on the bright side: Jane Fonda needs hip replacement surgery! Exercise is good for us? Excuse the pun, but go figure. I've said it once and I'll say it again, drink heavily, smoke cigarettes or cigars and get artificial tanning and charge it all to a credit card! What's the use of pulling out our hair over ANYTHING anymore? George is King! Get it?

No, I don't get it and I don't get over it. There is no opposition party. No one is willing to fight. The vote on the bankruptcy bill is a prelude to the vote on Social Security. The Democrats are willing to sell out anything. They aren't my party. They don't get my support any longer.

I am not interested in an Obama or a Nader or a Michael Moore. I will support someone who believes in placing my interests before their own, and it is not the Democratic Party. The party doesn't exist yet, perhaps, but it will.

They added (and may still have ) another scam about never crediting the payments as being on time --even when they were.
Posted by Alex

I have long suspected that was their practice. Remember what Gekko said in the movie Wall Street, "greed is good, greed is right, greed works."

Above post by me.

Also from Wall Street: "The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest."

Same story different day. Here is more on this same sh*t but in the context of the 2004 presidential election.

How George W. Bush Won Second-Term U.S. Presidency in 2004: Elections Run by Same Guys Who Sell Toothpaste

By Noam Chomsky | March 8, 2005

International Relations Center www.irc-online.org

Presidential candidate John Kerry’s platform and program were way to the right of popular opinion on just about every issue in the 2004 U.S. elections. To the extent that anybody could even understand the program, people didn’t favor it. People who voted for Kerry are people who were concerned about the economy and about health issues. Do you think those people could tell you what Kerry’s health program was or what he was going to do for the economy? I mean, I couldn’t tell you. You have to do a research project to figure out what the program was. And it’s not that people failed to know it because they’re stupid. It’s because it was not presented as something comprehensible.

Of the people who voted for candidate George Bush, the major categories were people who were concerned about terror and about national security. It’s claimed that people who were concerned about values voted for Bush, but that’s mostly a statistical artifact. When you asked the further question, “What values do you have in mind?” it turned out that the major values were things like, “I don’t like this society because it’s too materialistic,” and “There’s too much oppression.” Those are the values. Is that what Bush stands for? Getting rid of that? As far as terrorism is concerned, the administration very consciously chose actions that it was expected would increase the threat of terror and, in fact, did. It’s not because they want terror, it’s just not much of a priority for them.

People who voted for Bush tended to assume that he was in favor of their views, even if the Republican Party platform was diametrically opposed to them. The same was largely true of Kerry voters.

The reason for this is that the parties try to exclude the population from participation. So they don’t present issues, policies, agendas, and so on. They project imagery, and people either don’t bother or they vote for the image. The Gallup Poll regularly asks, “Why are you voting?” One of the choices is, “I’m voting for the candidate’s stand on issues.” That was 6% for Bush, and 13% for Kerry—and most of those voters were deluded about the positions of the candidates. So what you have is essentially flipping a coin. Each candidate got approximately 30% of the electorate. Bush got 31%, Kerry got 29%.

The party managers know where the public stands on a whole list of issues. Their funders just don’t support them; the interests they represent don’t support them. So they project a different kind of image.

If you listen to the presidential debates, you can’t figure out what they’re saying, and that’s on purpose. The last debate was supposed to be about domestic issues. The New York Times commented that Kerry didn’t make any hint about possible government involvement in health care programs because that position has, in their words, “no political support.” Well, according to the most recent polls, 80% of the population thinks that the government ought to guarantee health care for everyone, and furthermore regard it as a moral obligation. That tells you something about people’s values. But there’s “no political support.”

Why? Because the pharmaceutical industry is opposed, the financial institutions are opposed, the insurance industry is opposed, so there’s “no political support.” It doesn’t matter if 80% of the population regard it as a moral obligation: That doesn’t count as political support. It tells you something about the elite conception. You’re supposed to vote for the image they’re projecting. That’s not surprising really. Just ask yourself, “Who runs the elections?”

The elections are run by the same guys who sell toothpaste. They show you an image of a sports hero, or a sexy model, or a car going up a sheer cliff or something, which has nothing to do with the commodity, but it’s intended to delude you into picking this one rather than another one. Same when they run elections. But they’re assigned that task in order to marginalize the public, and furthermore, people are pretty well aware of it.

For many years, election campaigns here have been run by the public relations industry and each time it’s with increasing sophistication. Quite naturally, the industry uses the same technique to sell candidates that it uses to sell toothpaste or lifestyle drugs. The point is to undermine markets by projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information—and similarly, to undermine democracy by the same method.

In the year 2000, there was a huge fuss afterwards about the stolen election, with the Florida chads and the Supreme Court. But ask yourself who was exorcised about it? It was all among a small group of intellectuals. They were the ones who were upset about it. There was never any public resonance for this. In the current election it’s being reiterated. There’s a big fuss among intellectuals about the vote in Ohio, how the voting machines didn’t work, and other things. But the interesting thing is that nobody cares.

Why don’t people care if the election is stolen? The reason is that they don’t take the election seriously in the first place. They reacted about the way that people react to television ads. It’s a mode of delusion. If the Democrats want to succeed in that game, they’re just going to have to figure out better ways of delusion.

There is an alternative, and that is to try to run a program that’s committed to developing a democratic society in which people’s opinions matter.

These are remarks Noam Chomsky made on Jan. 25 at events in Santa Fe, NM, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the International Relations Center (IRC), online at www.irc-online.org. Chomsky is a member of the IRC’s board of directors.

Same story different day. Here is more on this same sh*t but in the context of the 2004 presidential election.

How George W. Bush Won Second-Term U.S. Presidency in 2004: Elections Run by Same Guys Who Sell Toothpaste

By Noam Chomsky | March 8, 2005

International Relations Center www.irc-online.org

Presidential candidate John Kerry's platform and program were way to the right of popular opinion on just about every issue in the 2004 U.S. elections. To the extent that anybody could even understand the program, people didn't favor it. People who voted for Kerry are people who were concerned about the economy and about health issues. Do you think those people could tell you what Kerry's health program was or what he was going to do for the economy? I mean, I couldn't tell you. You have to do a research project to figure out what the program was. And it's not that people failed to know it because they're stupid. It's because it was not presented as something comprehensible.

Of the people who voted for candidate George Bush, the major categories were people who were concerned about terror and about national security. It's claimed that people who were concerned about values voted for Bush, but that's mostly a statistical artifact. When you asked the further question, “What values do you have in mind?” it turned out that the major values were things like, “I don't like this society because it's too materialistic,” and “There's too much oppression.” Those are the values. Is that what Bush stands for? Getting rid of that? As far as terrorism is concerned, the administration very consciously chose actions that it was expected would increase the threat of terror and, in fact, did. It's not because they want terror, it's just not much of a priority for them.

People who voted for Bush tended to assume that he was in favor of their views, even if the Republican Party platform was diametrically opposed to them. The same was largely true of Kerry voters.

The reason for this is that the parties try to exclude the population from participation. So they don't present issues, policies, agendas, and so on. They project imagery, and people either don't bother or they vote for the image. The Gallup Poll regularly asks, “Why are you voting?” One of the choices is, “I'm voting for the candidate's stand on issues.” That was 6% for Bush, and 13% for Kerry—and most of those voters were deluded about the positions of the candidates. So what you have is essentially flipping a coin. Each candidate got approximately 30% of the electorate. Bush got 31%, Kerry got 29%.

The party managers know where the public stands on a whole list of issues. Their funders just don't support them; the interests they represent don't support them. So they project a different kind of image.

If you listen to the presidential debates, you can't figure out what they're saying, and that's on purpose. The last debate was supposed to be about domestic issues. The New York Times commented that Kerry didn't make any hint about possible government involvement in health care programs because that position has, in their words, “no political support.” Well, according to the most recent polls, 80% of the population thinks that the government ought to guarantee health care for everyone, and furthermore regard it as a moral obligation. That tells you something about people's values. But there's “no political support.”

Why? Because the pharmaceutical industry is opposed, the financial institutions are opposed, the insurance industry is opposed, so there's “no political support.” It doesn't matter if 80% of the population regard it as a moral obligation: That doesn't count as political support. It tells you something about the elite conception. You're supposed to vote for the image they're projecting. That's not surprising really. Just ask yourself, “Who runs the elections?”

The elections are run by the same guys who sell toothpaste. They show you an image of a sports hero, or a sexy model, or a car going up a sheer cliff or something, which has nothing to do with the commodity, but it's intended to delude you into picking this one rather than another one. Same when they run elections. But they're assigned that task in order to marginalize the public, and furthermore, people are pretty well aware of it.

For many years, election campaigns here have been run by the public relations industry and each time it's with increasing sophistication. Quite naturally, the industry uses the same technique to sell candidates that it uses to sell toothpaste or lifestyle drugs. The point is to undermine markets by projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information—and similarly, to undermine democracy by the same method.

In the year 2000, there was a huge fuss afterwards about the stolen election, with the Florida chads and the Supreme Court. But ask yourself who was exorcised about it? It was all among a small group of intellectuals. They were the ones who were upset about it. There was never any public resonance for this. In the current election it's being reiterated. There's a big fuss among intellectuals about the vote in Ohio, how the voting machines didn't work, and other things. But the interesting thing is that nobody cares.

Why don't people care if the election is stolen? The reason is that they don't take the election seriously in the first place. They reacted about the way that people react to television ads. It's a mode of delusion. If the Democrats want to succeed in that game, they're just going to have to figure out better ways of delusion.

There is an alternative, and that is to try to run a program that's committed to developing a democratic society in which people's opinions matter.

These are remarks Noam Chomsky made on Jan. 25 at events in Santa Fe, NM, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the International Relations Center (IRC), online at www.irc-online.org. Chomsky is a member of the IRC's board of directors.

Gee Diane, I am just shocked beyond belief that those upstanding and integrity filled Republicans would do that to you.

I am happy that the general consensus in this blog is to say fuck you democrats, because they are not democrats, not in the least. They all stay in 5 star hotels, ride around the country 1st class, and then repeat the talking points about how they care for the middle class, and those who are less fortunate. They are the ultimate in a good cop, bad cop scam, pretending to take care of you and then fuck you in the end. Ultimate hypocrisy. I have more respect for the scum in my toilet bowl than I have for the current "democrats". I am 52 years old, have fought for many things the old Democratic party stood for, but I can not stand this current breed of politicians. It's time we told them what we think. Also, how could I make it even one day without Petzold's pieces of wisdom. Thank you, Toby, oh thank you.

Oh yes, thank you Mary for the good research and excellent work. I think rlprather probably has a good take on all of this, because he usually has a good comment.

Props to riprather for making a point Dems ignore at their peril. But I'd go even further: it's not just the White House that sees "go-along" Democrats as weak, it's the electorate as well. (I think it was the LA Senate race in 2002, where Landrieu initially came out of the gate wrapping herself in Georgie's mantle, lost support, and only won the runoff by recasting herself as someone who would stand up to the Boy king.)

Politicians, I believe, grossly underestimate the appeal of sticking by your guns, even when polls and conventional wisdom say you shouldn't. I knew a lot of Democratic voters whose favorite candidate in 2000 was neither Gore nor Bush, but McCain--even though they disagreed with him on many issues, they felt his positions were honestly arrived at.

This was, of course, long before McCain allowed himself to become a Karl Rove stage prop in the 2004 elections, but that's another story.

sf and Zak,

Thanks for the complements. I'm glad I decidied to check out TLC one more time before turning in(I'm on eastern time-SC). Until later good night all, : )