Mary Schapiro And What To Do When They Don’t Seem To Care About Us
By Chris Martin on January 20, 2009 at 7:30 PM in Banking Institutions, Barack Obama, Economy, Media
I’m with Larry, no matter what we think about Obama he will be the president tomorrow and we have to figure out how we move on from here. In my first post, I discussed some of Obama’s early signals and how they provide a lens that shapes the way I will be viewing the Obama presidency.
While I believe it is important to document all the bad things that happened to this point (and may happen during Obama’s presidency), my main personal concern is the question: how we can force positive changes when the people on top are not “on our side”.
By scrutinizing Obama I hope to learn where he is and isn’t vulnerable to persuasion and where my efforts will be best spent.
I included a video of Michael Jackson’s song “They Don’t Care About Us” above because that is how I now approach my political activism*.
I used to be a very active Democrat because I believed that they had my best interests at heart. The primary machinations disabused me of that view. I already had a deep distrust of the Republican Party in general, the last eight years revealing the grounded ness of that distrust.
Furthermore, it is clear that the media is not on our side. They have gotten us into so much trouble by enabling the worst abuses of the Bush Administration. I’ll go further and even say that they were active participants in bringing our country to the precipice on many different fronts. This mindset may seem hopeless and, in fact, the odds of getting our voices heard may be stacked against us. That means we have to navigate the current climate deliberately and we all would do ourselves a favor by getting more familiar with the terrain. (* I want to be explicit here: though I view the major political parties and the news media as generally corrupt and not on the side of “the little guy/gal”, I know many people in both parties and in the media who decent and caring people carrying on the fight for us. Its important to keep these folks in mind and give them support.)
I had other topics I wanted to discuss, but reading Larry Doyle’s plea for answers from Mary Shapiro, I felt it was worth brainstorming ways in which we could generate a more vigorous and wide reaching debate on the important issues that Larry raises. I can’t say I have the answers, but I have a few questions I’ve been asking since I first read Larry’s article.
What are the steps that take place in the confirmation process, and who are the folks who can help get us answers or at least ask the questions? The first step in the process is the Senate Banking Committee hearings (online here). Committee hearings can kill a nomination or set the frame in which the nomination is debated when the nomination goes to a full floor vote. Who are the members of the committee we can consider potential allies? I personally see a number of old fashion deregulators and Wall Street types who probably couldn’t care less what we had to say. On the other hand, Jon Tester was elected largely on a platform of cleaning up the mess we are in. Additionally, Sherrod Brown has a long track record for being more of a populist and though I’m not entirely comfortable with protectionist policies on moral grounds, he has generally pushed for policies to hold corporate malfeasance in check. Can we pressure those two to start shaping the debate for us? Are there any other members on this committee who may be sympathetic? Can we take advantage of any overly partisan Republicans who just want to stick it to Obama in order to get them to ask some of these questions?
Assuming that we can get some Senators to ask questions, we will still need at least some in the media to cover the concerns we have. In Larry’s article, he notes work done by the Wall Street Journal. Clearly others are worried about Ms. Shapiro’s “light touch”, but I don’t know many folks who subscribe to the WSJ. At Google News there are currently only about 115 articles getting a hit with the search “Mary Shapiro Confirmation”. Do we recognize any of those sources? Which news sources are missing? Are there any articles appearing in Tester’s or Brown’s home state (MT and OH respectively)? How can we get more local coverage in MT and OH papers?
Those are some of my questions and thoughts. What are your recommendations?
, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
, the novel by John Le Carre, a new motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.
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