Government and Politics Notebook

- Capitol Hill: Report details links between Wall Street, lawmakers
- Virginia Politics: Virginia Organizing Project rally to address mental-health cuts
- Lieutenant Governor Race: Bowerbank talks jobs  

Capitol Hill: Report details links between Wall Street, lawmakers

The financial sector invested more than $5 billion in political influence purchasing in Washington over the past decade, with as many as 3,000 lobbyists winning deregulation and other policy decisions that led directly to the current financial collapse, according to a 231-page report issued today by Essential Information and the Consumer Education Foundation.

The report, “Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America,” shows that, from 1998-2008, Wall Street investment firms, commercial banks, hedge funds, real estate companies and insurance conglomerates made $1.7 billion in political contributions and spent another $3.4 billion on lobbyists, a financial juggernaut aimed at undercutting federal regulation.

During the period 1998-2008:

* Commercial banks spent more than $154 million on campaign contributions, while investing $363 million in officially registered lobbying;

* Insurance companies donated more than $218 million and spent more than $1.1 billion on lobbying; and

* Securities firms invested more than $504 million in campaign contributions and an additional $576 million in lobbying.

Nearly 3,000 officially registered federal lobbyists worked for the industry in 2007 alone. These companies drew heavily from government in choosing their lobbyists. Surveying 20 leading financial firms, “Sold Out” finds 142 of the lobbyists they employed from 1998-2008 were previously high-ranking officials or employees in the Executive Branch or Congress.

The report documents a dozen distinct deregulatory moves that, together, led to the financial meltdown. These include prohibitions on regulating financial derivatives; the repeal of regulatory barriers between commercial banks and investment banks; a voluntary regulation scheme for big investment banks; and federal refusal to act in order to stop predatory subprime lending.

“The report details, step-by-step, how Washington systematically sold out to Wall Street,” says Harvey Rosenfield, president of the Consumer Education Foundation, a California-based non-profit organization. “Depression-era programs that would have prevented the financial meltdown that began last year were dismantled, and the warnings of those who foresaw disaster were drowned in an ocean of political money. Americans were betrayed, and we are paying a high price — trillions of dollars — for that betrayal.”

“Congress and the Executive Branch,” says Robert Weissman of Essential Information and the lead author of the report, “responded to the legal bribes from the financial sector, rolling back common-sense standards, barring honest regulators from issuing rules to address emerging problems and trashing enforcement efforts. The progressive erosion of regulatory restraining walls led to a flood of bad loans, and a tsunami of bad bets based on those bad loans. Now, there is wreckage across the financial landscape.”

The report and excerpts are available at: “Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America” is available at www.wallstreetwatch.org/soldoutreport.htm.

Virginia Politics: Virginia Organizing Project rally to address mental-health cuts

Members of the community, in partnership with Virginia Organizing Project, will be holding a demonstration at the Roanoke City Library on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to express our grave concern for Governor Kaine’s proposed closure of Virginia’s public child and adolescent psychiatric facilities – specifically the Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents and the children’s unit at the Southwestern Virginia Mental Health Institute.

This rally is to call attention to the closure of these facilities and the resulting risk to our children; children who have serious mental illness and are uninsured will no longer have the safety net of state-supported psychiatric care.

The Roanoke City Library is located at 706 S. Jefferson St.

Lieutenant Governor Race: Bowerbank talks jobs

Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Jon Bowerbank on Tuesday discussed how to create high-paying jobs in the Commonwealth during a meeting with the Springfield District Democratic Committee.

“In this tough economy, creating good paying jobs won’t be easy, but it can be done,” Bowerbank said. “As the CEO of a business I started above my garage that now employs hundreds people across Virginia, I know how to grow businesses from the bottom up, I know how to create good-paying jobs, and I know how to use effective business practices to get our economy back on track.

“It is also vitally important that we create jobs not just for Virginia’s highly populated areas like Springfield, but for all parts of the Commonwealth. I started my business in Southwest Virginia, and I have seen firsthand the benefits that come to small communities when their residents are able to get high paying jobs in the same town they grew up in. As lieutenant governor I will use my experience in business and job creation and work hard to make sure all Virginians have the opportunity to get a good job no matter where they live,” Bowerbank said.