[Plura-list] Pelosi kicks Katie Porter off the Finance Committee

[Cory Doctorow]

Today's links

* Pelosi kicks Katie Porter off the Finance Committee: Paging Upton
Sinclair, Mr Sinclair to the white courtesy phone.

* This day in history: 2001, 2006, 2016, 2020

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current
writing projects, current reading

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🧶 Pelosi kicks Katie Porter off the Finance Committee

The Democrats are at least two parties. The progressive wing of the
party (which is by no means unified) and the finance wing of the party,
which is also the party leadership.

During the leadership race, the progressive wing was represented by
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren; the former wants to minimize the
role of markets in our lives, the latter wants to redeem markets by
regulating them. It's a distinction with a difference, but I donated to
both.

Both wings of the party have prominent representatives in Congress;
Sandersism are most visibly associated with AOC (whom I donated to) and
Warrenism is embodied by Katie Porter (likewise), who was also one of
Warren's law school proteges.

Porter is a force of nature. She is infamous - and celebrated - for her
brutal, no-holds-barred questioning of both corporate and administration
witnesses, using a white-board to pin them down and eviscerating any
attempts at bullshittery.

This isn't just about getting facts into the record (though, she is *so
good* at getting facts into the record!), it's also about effecting
change, like when she single-handedly cornered the CDC's chief into
guaranteeing universal, free covid tests:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/13/go-katie-go/#katieporter

During the 2020 election, corporate democrats and their supporters
excoriated anyone who dared to question whether the party's corporate
establishment would ever rise to the occasion and deliver the
transformative change it demands.

This "disunity" was treated as a reckless invitation to an apocalyptic
second Trump term. Particular viciousness was directed at we who
questioned the party leadership, such as supporters of Shahid Buttar, a
radical human rights lawyer who primaried Nancy Pelosi.

Though Buttar was the target of a racist, Islamophobic smear-campaign
mounted by party hacks, he fought a good and important fight (I was a
donor to his campaign):

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/useful-idiots-nancy-pelosi-challenger-shahid-buttar-taibbi-1055443/

Pelosi's return to Congress means that Congressional Dems are now
subject to her instincts, whims and loyalties. Those loyalties run deep.
Pelosi is a major recipient of finance-sector donations.

https://observer.com/2017/08/democratic-party-nancy-pelosi-victory-fund/

Finance is one of the great villains of our century, and their cheating,
theft, and destruction - foreclosures, fake accounts, usury, theft -
have been rewarded, not punished. They showered establishment Dems with
unprecedented sums in 2020:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/28/finance-202-financial-sector-is-showering-democrats-with-campaign-cash/

One of the bright lines separating the progressive Dems from their
establishment rivals is the finance sector. The latter love 'em ("that's
where the money is" -W Sutton). The former are eager to euthanize some
rentiers (-JM Keynes).

Now, it happens that the Dems' most powerful scourge of the finance
sector is Katie Porter, whose public eviscerations of finance criminals
and their government enablers are the stuff of legend.

Here she is gutting Jpmorganchase's Jamie Dimon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WLuuCM6Ej0

And here she is just slaughtering the henhouse fox from Trump's Consumer
Finance Protection Bureau:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBaCc5VUHS8

Steve Mnuchin didn't have a chance. Oh my god is that mediocre,
upward-failing cartoon villain out of his league.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78zpa0hQ1aw

Which brings me back to Nancy Pelosi.

Who just rigged it so that Katie Porter will no longer be on the
Congressional Finance Committee.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/01/pelosi-removes-katie-porter-bringing-joy-gratitude-to-every-crooked-bankster-on-wall-street.html

At a moment where the Dems' midterm fortunes are absolutely dependent on
their willingness to deal out a reckoning to the banks for their covid
profiteering, they are eliminating their most ardent and skilful
finance-fighter.

Pelosi thinks the problem isn't systemic, it's individual: that we have
to reform bad banks, not banking itself. Pelosi is also worth ~$200m
(mostly through her husband, a prominent finance leader) and depends on
finance-sector contributions.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/feb/03/facebook-posts/no-nancy-pelosis-net-worth-not-196-million/

As Upton Sinclair wrote, "It is impossible to get a Congressional
Majority Leader to understand something when her political career and
family fortune depend on her not understanding it."

(Sinclair sometimes got eerily specific!)

Porter is a force of nature. She flipped a red district and then won it
again while publicly supporting Medicare For All. She upended the
staffer-controlled Finance Committee, ending the reign of underlings who
cycled in and out of the finance sector and finance regulation.

The Pelosi-controlled Steering Committee appointed her to two other
committees (Oversight and Natural Resources) then refused to waive the
rule against serving on more than two committees, forcing her off the
Finance committee.

Porter is the only single mom of school-aged children in the House,
giving her a unique perspective on finance that is completely alien to
colleagues whose fortunes rise to the hundreds of millions.

Economically, by every quantitative measure, establishment Dems are
significantly to the right of Richard Nixon. Their lip-service to
progressive causes stretches as far as replacing half of the 150 white
dudes who own the world with women and people of color.

Biden is already moving to stuff his administration with finance sector
ghouls who made (literal) bank off of  393,000 US covid deaths.

The decision to call off the banks' fiercest watchdog puts the
Democratic Congressional majority at risk in 2022.

And that puts everything at risk: climate, economic justice, and
repelling the forces of violent white nationalism.

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🧶 This day in history

#20yrsago Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s formal excommunication
https://web.archive.org/web/20000226054133/http://www.panix.com/~pnh/GodandI.html

#15yrsago New discussion draft of GNU General Public License is released
http://gplv3.fsf.org/

#15yrsago Firefly fans trying to raise enough dough to produce a new
season
https://web.archive.org/web/20060118033219/http://www.browncoatsriseagain.com/

#15yrsago King Foundation uses copyright to suppress “I Have a Dream”
speech
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/14/AR2006011400980.html

#5yrsago Worried about Chinese spies, the FBI freaked out about Epcot
Center https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/jan/14/fbi-epcot/

#1yrago Court case lays bare KPMG’s crimes: poaching employees from its
own regulators and making them steal government secrets
https://www.pogo.org/investigation/2020/01/how-accountants-took-washingtons-revolving-door-to-a-criminal-extreme/

#1yrago Bill from Missouri’s Rep Ben Baker threatens librarians with
prison sentences for allowing minors to read books banned by town
committees
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/16/missouri-could-jail-librarians-for-lending-age-inappropriate-books-parental-oversight-of-public-libraries-bill

#1yrago Carriers ignore studies that show they suck at preventing
SIM-swap attacks
https://www.issms2fasecure.com/assets/sim_swaps-01-10-2020.pdf

#1yrago Hong Kong shoppers patronize “yellow” stores that support the
uprising; while “blue” businesses that support the mainland are
vandalized
https://news.yahoo.com/hong-kong-protest-shoppers-show-true-colours-033856318.html

#1yrago American conspiracy theorists keep insisting on their right to
trial by combat
https://loweringthebar.net/2020/01/kansas-man-seeks-trial-by-combat.html

#1yrago Five steps for thinking about climate change without being
overwhelmed by hopelessness
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/opinion/sunday/how-to-help-climate-change.html

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🧶 Colophon

Currently writing: My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel
about truth and reconciliation. Friday's progress: 516 words (99972 total).

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (part 27)
https://craphound.com/news/2021/01/11/someone-comes-to-town-someone-leaves-town-part-27/

Upcoming appearances:

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https://linux.conf.au/schedule/

* Evening with William Gibson, Jan 25,
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/william-gibson-cory-doctorow-agency-tickets-132831910821

* Boskone, 58, Feb 12-15, https://boskone.org/

* Keynote, NISO Plus, Feb 22-25,
https://niso.plus/cory-doctorow-to-keynote-at-niso-plus-2021/

Recent appearances:

* Monocle Reads
https://monocle.com/radio/shows/meet-the-writers/monocle-reads-87/play/

* Hedging Bets on the Future (Motherboard Cyber):
https://play.acast.com/s/cyber/hedgingbetsonthefuturewithauthorcorydoctorow

* Applying the Pandemic Mindset to Climate Change:
https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/12/applying-the-pandemic-mindset-to-climate-change-with-cory-doctorow

Latest book:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone
technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political
cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution
and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet
analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a
solution.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. Order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

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