A quick rant to start this off: Know your enemy. My inbox sickens me every day with psychotic rantings from moveon.org and the angry, babykilling chants of NARAL. Not to mention various other liberal organizations. I do this for one reason only: to know what they’re up to and look for opportunities for countermeasures. Every now and then, I think to myself, why do I not just unsubscribe from this garbage? But then, as happened yesterday, I get an email that reminds me why I subject myself to it.
Yesterday, I received an email from Daniel Mintz, of Move On’s political action arm. It came with a link to a petition to treasury secretary Tim Geithner. The message:
“We can’t trust the same people who got us into this financial mess to help lead us out. Replace the leadership at the bailed-out banks, starting with Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis.“
That’s the gist. If you want to read it, here’s the whole message (out of fairness, I’ve also included their ‘sources’):
Dear MoveOn member,
Last week the Obama administration took tough, decisive action with the auto industry, forcing the resignation of the CEO of General Motors.
The president knows that we can’t trust the same folks who got us into this mess to help lead us out.
It’s time to do the same for the banks. And the best way to start is by firing Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis. He’s the worst of the worst.
Lewis’s poor management helped ruin his company and our economy. Shareholders are calling him “reckless” and citing “disastrous missteps.”1 Worse, Lewis accepted $45 billion in taxpayer bailout funds, but instead of using all the money to get the economy going again, he let $3.6 billion go to bonuses for top execs.2
There can’t be real reform on Wall Street until the CEOs who brought down the banks we had to bail out are long gone.
Can you sign our petition asking Treasury Secretary Geithner replace the leadership at bailed out banks—starting with Ken Lewis? Clicking here adds your name:
http://pol.moveon.org/lewis//o.pl?id=15895-10098841-dQqO7mx&t=4
The petition says: “We can’t trust the same people who got us into this financial mess to help lead us out. Replace the leadership at the bailed-out banks, starting with Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis.“
Lewis is the CEO of the biggest bank in the United States.3 If Secretary Geithner forces him to resign, it’ll send a strong message to the rest of Wall St.: The era of zero accountability is over and reckless behavior that puts our economy at risk won’t be tolerated.
Of all the folks who helped bring about the recession, Lewis is one of the worst:
- Shareholders say he helped drive the company into the ground. Bank of America has lost billions—and 90% of its value—in part because Lewis “hastily arranged the ill-considered acquisition” of Merrill Lynch.4
- Even after the crisis, he hasn’t changed his ways. He ensured that high-level staff received bonuses—despite recent announcements that the bank was laying off another 35,000 employees.5
- On top of all this, he’s fighting against more rights for workers. Three days after receiving $25 billion in bailout money, Bank of America brought together powerful banking interests to figure out how to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that makes it easier for workers to form unions.6
Ken Lewis has got to go. And we need to look closely at the other bailed-out banks that may need new leadership too.
Our friends at Service Employees International Union (the country’s fastest-growing union) have been leading this campaign for a few weeks—and they’re building momentum quickly. If hundreds of thousands of us act, together, we’ll be impossible to ignore. Please sign today!
http://pol.moveon.org/lewis//o.pl?id=15895-10098841-dQqO7mx&t=5
Thanks for all you do.
–Daniel, Patrick S., Eli, Lenore and the rest of the team
Sources:
1. “Investment group calls on BofA to fire Ken Lewis,” WCNC, March 5, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51294&id=15895-10098841-dQqO7mx&t=6“Union to B of A: Fire Ken Lewis or Risk a Shareholder Revolt,” Talking Points Memo, March 5, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51295&id=15895-10098841-dQqO7mx&t=72. “Thain tells investigators BofA’s Ken Lewis knew of bonuses,” CNN Money, February 20, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51285&id=15895-10098841-dQqO7mx&t=83. “Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis scores another deal,” Fortune, September 15, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51289&id=15895-10098841-dQqO7mx&t=94. “Investment group calls on BofA to fire Ken Lewis,” WCNC, March 5, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51294&id=15895-10098841-dQqO7mx&t=105. “Ken Lewis, What’s Really in Your Company’s Best Interest?” SEIU Blog, February 12, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51290&id=15895-10098841-dQqO7mx&t=116. “Bailout Recipients Hosted Call to Defeat Key Labor Bill,” Huffington Post, January 27, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51292&id=15895-10098841-dQqO7mx&t=12
What we’re looking at here is simple distraction. It is an extension of the liberals’ general goal of making you forget whose fault this is. It’s a simple strategy: misdirect and incite to action. Liberals who are busy frothing at the mouth and signing petitions don’t have time to examine reality. And that’s precisely what Daniel Mintz — and Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, for that matter — want.
People are starting to notice what RedState bloggers and Conservative talkers have been saying all along: that this is the Democrats’ mess. And the Dems are noticing that we’re noticing. And they don’t like it. To wit:
Daniel Mintz and Barney Frank don’t want you to remember that this all started with Jimmy Carter and company mandating that banks give loans to people of dubious reliability (PS, the entire above link is well worth the read, and counts as my citation on other points as well). Or that said legislation was tightened further in the age of “Political Correctness.” Or that Barney Frank denied Fannie and Freddie were in trouble — all the while having slept with a former Fannie Mae exec, and recieving over $40,000 in campaign donations from the group. Or that Frank and Dodd, both recipients of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from Fannie and Freddie, as well as AIG and others, ignored warnings that the housing bubble had to burst. They don’t want you to remember that they voted for a bailout package nobody had time to read, or that they voted for the “bailout bonuses” everybody’s up in arms about.
No, Democrats don’t want to take any blame for this mess we’re in. And so, they point the finger at bank CEOs — for doing what banks do! They seek to unconstitutionally expand the powers of, not only the President, but the President’s underlings, to dictatorial proportions. And moveon.org is trying to convince people, not only to accept these unprecedented governmental powers, but to ask for them. Tricky as hell, Dan Mintz. Sly as an effing fox.
It’s up to us, then — we who know the truth — to counter these lies. We haven’t forgotten where this crisis came from, and we can’t let them forget, either.
