Bankruptcy "cramdown" reform was defeated in the Senate today, which caused Sen. Dick Durbin to accurately declare, "banks own the place." Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher and Howie Klein explain how. So what do we do about it?

Chris Bowers thinks we must retreat until broader cultural change occurs:

This is a great video on the problem, but skimps on the solution, just mentioning public financing at the end. Public financing without free media is only half the solution, and such a clean money system must be made mandatory. A plan to do it can be found in my forthcoming book.

By Dave Lindorff

The accounting profession might seem like the last place that you’d
find serious political hanky-panky going on, and it’s probably not on
very many people’s A-list of fun subjects to read about, but the
Financial Accounting Standards Board, a quasi-governmental body that
has statutory authority to regulate and establish the rules by which
public companies, including banks, do their books, has just caved in to
pressure from those banks and from the large number of members of
Congress who pocket huge piles of campaign swag and perks from those
banks and other public companies, and gravely undermined the integrity
of corporate balance sheets.

Last year we launched the first online donor strike to persuade candidate Obama to deliver on his promise of "change we can believe in." Now I'm glad to see the donor strike idea embraced by our friends at Change Congress.

“I’m pledging not to donate to any federal candidate unless they support legislation making congressional elections citizen-funded, not special-interest funded.”

Corrupt contributions by Wall Street (mostly to Republicans, but also to Democrats) resulted in deregulation of the financial industry, which in turn led to the multi-trillion bailout we are struggling through now. The alternative is simple and cheap: publicly-funded Congressional campaigns.

Pundits are jumping all over Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. because of this:

Blagojevich made an appearance at an Oct. 31 luncheon meeting at the India House restaurant in Schaumburg sponsored by Oak Brook businessman Raghuveer Nayak, a major Blagojevich supporter who also has fundraising and business ties to the Jackson family, according to several attendees and public records...

That meeting led to a Blagojevich fundraiser Saturday in Elmhurst, co-sponsored by Nayak and attended by Jesse Jackson Jr.'s brother, Jonathan, as well as Blagojevich, according to several people who were there. Nayak and Jonathan Jackson go back years and the two even went into business together years ago as part of a land purchase on the South Side.

By Dave Lindorff

All the attention in the breaking story about John McCain's 2000 relationship with a blonde young telecom lobbyist has been focussed on the question of whether or not they were "doing it."

As George Stephanopoulos claimed on ABC, the importance of the story depends upon whether McCain is shown to have had a "relationship" with the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman.

But really, who cares whether they were shacking up on the campaign trail? McCain, after all, already double-timed his starter wife and dumped her for a trophy wife, the statuesque and wealthy beer industry heiress Cindy Hensley, so it's not as though he is campaigning on a strong pro-family platform.

In 2006, we were lucky that voters held Republicans accountable for Iraq and corruption.   Luck is not the only thing on our side this time. While Republicans usually out-raise us in campaign funding, this election cycle we Democrats have sensed opportunity and reversed the relation.  However, if we are to begin winning elections not by chance but because of our ability to consistently out-fundraise Republicans, we must first understand why, aside from rare, anomalous, instances, Republicans routinely raise more cash than we do.  Upon analysis, the answer becomes glaringly obvious.  

ABC News reports that Speaker Nancy Pelosi selected El Pasoan Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) as the next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, the committee on which he has served for the past six years. Prior to his election to the House in 1996, Representative Reyes was a border patrol agent for more than 26 years.

But it isn't Representative Reyes' border patrol experience, or his service in the military during Vietnam, his vote against the Iraq war, or his experience on House Select Intelligence and Veterans Affairs Committees that makes his selection so intriguing. After all, Reyes was instrumental in leading opposition to the WI Republican Jim Sensenbrenner's House immigration proposal and is credited with keeping Fort Bliss and White Sands military bases open, as well as previously chairing the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Representative Reyes has been a strong critic of the administration's border security failings. "The Republican House leadership spent the entire month of August holding media events and hearings on the border, and the message from those who work on the border every day is that we don’t need 700 miles of new fence. We need a comprehensive plan that addresses the three main priorities of the Border Patrol: manpower, technology, and infrastructure. After six years of controlling the White House, the Senate, and the House, their ‘signature achievement’ on border security is a 700 mile fence along a 2,000 mile border. This fence doesn’t come close to solving our problem."

Dear Friends and Activists,

We all worked enormously hard this election for the most progressive candidates we could find, and we had a couple winners. In addition, Ciro Rodriguez is in an upcoming runoff in TX-23 with very excellent prospects. In truth we probably had even more winners but for the election shenanigans we knew would be a handicap and which certainly took place. But the good news is that in spite of them, and thanks to your valiant participation, the people have regained both the House and the Senate. This at least allows us the power and opportunity to fight another day, and it is critically important that we continue to speak out in ever increasing numbers now that we have majorities who are more likely to influenced.

In the meantime, we have put a lot of thought into the next major strategic move. There will be bills in Congress to attempt real election reform, but there is no assurance that anything of substantive impact can survive a veto, assuming we can even pressure its passage. Therefore, we propose opening up a collateral front by putting together as many state ballot initiative campaigns as possible where laws can be passed directly on to the books. What we have in mind are two separate propositions in each such state, with the idea that there is synergy in collecting signatures for two related initiatives at the same time.

1) A paper ballot initiative of some kind

2) A clean money campaign financing measure

PAPER BALLOT REFERENDUM: http://www.usalone.com/paper_ballots.php