Obama Takes Lead on Immigration

Obama Takes Lead on Immigration.  This June 15^th was shaping up to be another ho-hum day in the political sphere, with talks of grand

speeches, jaw dropping gaffes, and a lack fresh new ideas from either Presidential Candidate. That was until about 10:15 a.m eastern time when President Obama announced that his Administration will halt the process of deporting young illegal immigrants from the U.S..

Even the right-wing hacks over at Fox News cannot underestimate how much of a gamechanger this is

for this November's election, and how much of a shot in the arm this is for a President who may have been struggling with one of if not the biggest and most influential voting block in the country.

The disenchantment with the President from the Latino Community has been well documented, There has still been no comprehensive immigration reform that the President promised throughout his campaign in 2008, not to mention the fact that 400,000 illegal immigrants have been deportated by The Obama Administration. Friday is a reversal of that somewhat, and even though it is not the pathway to citizenship that the Latino Community wants, hopefully it will be a conversation starter for Congress and persuade them to pass The Dream Act that has been sitting on their desk for almost two years.

To go along with the political implications of this decision it places Republican Presidential Nominee, Mitt Romney and The Republican Party in general in a perilous position. Romney in order to secure his party's nomination placed himself as far to the right as he could on the issue of immigration during the primary season. Romney expressed his want to veto The Dream Act, and touted the virtues of Self-Deportation. Last September Romney was quoted as saying “I would be civil and resolute in terms of securing our borders even if that means constructing a high tech fence and investing in adequate man power and resources”.

Unless Romney thinks the electorate is really stupid, doesn't have the luxury of the internet, or suffer from memory loss, they are not going to forget those things. Even the possibility of Florida Senator Marco Rubio as a Vice Presidential running mate may not have the positive effect that he would've hoped for. Rubio referred to the President's announcement as a “short-term answer”, but the question is if Rubio were as popular on the hill as Republicans would like you to believe he would have enough pull to get his bosses, John Boehner and Eric Cantor to pass the aformentioned “Dream Act” which is similar to what Rubio has proposed in the past, and what the President has proposed today!

The Jeb Bushes and the Haley Barbours of the GOP understand the changing demographics of the country, and why the rest of the party needs to join them in their way of thinking. “We need to secure the borders for a lot of reasons, and we need to realize we are not going to deport 12 million people and we don't need to” said Barbour who spoke on Friday morning during a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. If only the elected officials inside the party like Romney, Boehner and Cantor were listening to those outside of the party the GOP would be viewed more favorably by so many, instead by taking these harsh stances they may be giving away the White House by alienating the groups that exist outside of the good ol' boy network that has propped them up for so many years.

I would like to hear from you. email me at ebrew79@live.ebrew79@live.com or follow me on twitter @ebrew79

Too Big To Fail Still In Effect

Listening to J.P.Morgan Chase's CEO Jamie Dimon tell members of the House Financial

Service Committee that he and his company are doing everything it can to restore confidence

in the U.S. financial system left me awed. The thing is I don't know if I was awed by Dimon's

apparent delusion or his impressive ability to lie with a straight face.

Dimon was called to testify before the committee on Wednesday so that he could explain the $2 billion

dollars in losses that JP Morgan Chase experienced due to a risky trade back in May. The losses called into question the companies practices and whether or not it had learned anything from the financial meltdown that ravaged Wall Street at the end of 2008.

After patting himself on the back for not accepting bailout money from the government during the crisis, Dimon went into a diatribe about how the company that paid him almost $21 million in compensation pay in 2010 is less like Wall Street and more like Main Street. “We provide health-care

coverage for 417,000 people, we have long standing relationships with 400,000 small businesses, and last year our Foundation made charitable contributions of approxiametly $100 million across the U.S.”

Dimon conveniently glosses over the fact that not much if anything has changed on Wall Street, including banks like his still being “Too Big to Fail”. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was signed into law almost two years ago by President Obama. The law implements financial regulatory reform. However the law has yet to be fully put in place, and Congressional Republicans have typically tried to water it down at every turn. Dimon himself has tried to use his considerable clout to trash one of the bills key provisions “The Volcker Rule” which places restrictions on proprietary trading. He has even gone on every money grubbing CEO's favorite network

CNBC (or Fox Business News, there is no difference) to publicly voice his displeasure with the rule to the sympathetic ears of Maria Bartiromo.

A repeal of Dodd-Frank, which is what every Republican under the sun including Presidential nominee Mitt Romney wants, means a return to the wild wild west atmosphere of 2007-08 that Jamie Dimon and Wall Street bigwigs everywhere loved. Who cares about families being thrown out of their homes and the nation's economy being thrown into a tailspin that makes it virtually impossible for average Americans to find a job that pays a living wage, I'm getting another yacht and a summer home to boot.

The real problem lies not with the Dimons of the world, who are insatiable vultures when it comes to cash, and will stop at nothing when allowed to take advantage of the system. The problem lies with elected officials, particularly Democrats who are in a position to stop them.

As a huge fan of President Obama, I have been disappointed with the fact that none of these billionaire CEO's have been perp walked into police stations in front of millions. The President can go a long way in rectifying this, assuming he gets re-elected by using 2013's State of the Union address to announce his intention to bring back the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.

Unlike Dodd-Frank, Glass-Steagall is cut and dry. It imposed banking reforms to control speculation and it also limited activities between commercial banks and securites firms. This will in effect break-up the “Too Big to Fail Banks” and restore some sanity to the banking system, and the President without the threat of Wall Street's money being used to vote him out of office will restore consumer confidence.

Surely, Republicans in Congress particularly Eric Cantor and John Boehner assuming they are still around will try to stop the President on this, After all the GOP begin watering down the original Glass-Steagall in the early 60's. By 1998 Bill Clinton and Congressional Democrats basically said “the hell with it” and allowed the rest of the law to be struck down, despite the pleas of former Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan, one of the loudest proponents of the law.

I know, the chances of the President actually doing this are extremely remote, but if it were to happen the great thing about the unbrideled joy that I would have, is that it would be matched by the downright anger and disgust felt by Jamie Dimon and every other CEO on Wall Street.

I would like to know what you think email me at ebrew79@live.com and follow me on twitter @ebrew79