"Bank of America: bad for America!"

Class Warfare: Hundreds Protest Outside Bankers' Houses In DC

 
 
Huge raucous crowds converged outside bank employees' houses on Sunday afternoon to demand banks stop lobbying against Wall Street reform. 

"Bank of America: bad for America!" shouted community leaders outside the house of Bank of America general counsel Gregory Baer.

The Chicago-based grassroots organization National People's Action, in coordination with the SEIU, bused more than 700 workers from 20 states to Baer's neighborhood, one of the wealthiest corners of Washington. The action kicks off several days of protests targeting K Street for lobbyists' role in financial reform. 

Baer himself apparently tried to blend in with the crowd until a neighbor outed him. The mob booed loudly as he walked into his house. "I don't have time for you," he said, according to Trenda Kennedy of Springfield, Ill. who used a bullhorn to tell the crowd about her trouble getting a mortgage modification from Baer's bank. 

Kennedy told HuffPost she'd been making reduced monthly payments thanks to a trial modification via the Home Affordable Modification Program. She said that when the bank turned her down for a permanent mod, she was told she still owed all the money she'd been paying during the trial. She said she's been notified of several sheriff's sale dates but has somehow managed to keep her home.
"Every time I'm inches away from losing my house, by some miracle it's been pushed off," said Kennedy, who is a member of Illinois People's Action.

Passersby and dogwalkers smiled at the sight of people gathered all over Baer's lawn and blocking the road. Baer's neighbor from across the street won little sympathy when he angrily yelled at protesters for waking up his two-year-old daughter. Kennedy was one of several people who used a bullhorn to tell personal bank horror stories.

Baer, formerly a senior official at the Treasury department, is a lawyer for the bank's regulator and public policy legal group. Bank of America declined to comment.

"Bank of America came to the homes of everyday Americans when you spread predatory loans in neighborhoods across, the country, when you financed payday-lending storefronts, when your reckless behavior sent the economy to the brink of disaster, and when your bank-owned properties littered neighborhoods from coast to coast," said a letter the group asked Baer to deliver to CEO Brian Moynihan. "You've created a historic mess and have been unreceptive to very polite, very formal and very consistent requests to fix the problems you helped create."

The group also protested outside the house of Peter Scher, a lobbyist for JPMorgan Chase. Nobody answered the door.

Is Your Senator a Bankster?

Huffington Post

Dylan Ratigan

Host of MSNBC's "The Dylan Ratigan Show"

Posted: May 7, 2010 12:46 PM




The one main benefit to the financial reform effort so far is
that it helps further do away with the false paradigms of "left" or
"right" and "Democrat" or "Republican" - fewer and fewer people are
falling for those lies anymore. Try to get an ideological conservative
to explain why Republicans love spending and so eagerly give welfare to banks. 
Try to get your local liberal to explain why it was a good idea to make
backroom deals with abhorrent corporations and drill, baby, drill. Heck, even try to get a Tea
Partier to explain choosing bailout-lover Sarah Palin to keynote their convention,
especially when that movement once had at least some pre-astroturf roots in protesting
government giveaways.
What we have now is a group of politicians with shifting alliances on
a case-by-case basis to the special
interests who fund them. And currently, the most damaging one to
our nation is the rise of the Bankster Party. Thankfully, we can now
better identify its members.
Anyone who voted for the Kaufman-Brown SAFE amendment deserves to be
considered a member of the "People's Party", at least for today. And
while I may not agree, I am also OK with someone voting no on
Kaufman-Brown if they voted no on the bailout in the first place. That
at least shows a consistent ideology and we wouldn't need to break up
the banks into smaller parts if our leaders had the will to let them
fail.
But there is a special place for those who have the audacity to do
something as incredibly un-American as voting to provide unencumbered welfare for rich bankers and then subsequently do absolutely nothing to fix the problem. And
that special place (for now) is in what we should call from this point
forward the "Bankster Party". Allow me to present to you its current
members:

BANKSTER PARTY

Daniel Akaka (B-HI)

Lamar Alexander (B-TN)

Max Baucus (B-MT)

Evan Bayh (B-IN)

Michael F. Bennet (B-CO)

Christopher S. Bond (B-MO)

Richard Burr (B-NC)

Thomas R. Carper (B-DE)

Saxby Chambliss (B-GA)

Susan M. Collins (B-ME)

Kent Conrad (B-ND)

Bob Corker (B-TN)

John Cornyn (B-TX)

Christopher J. Dodd (B-CT)

Dianne Feinstein (B-CA)

Lindsey Graham (B-SC)

Chuck Grassley (B-IA)

Judd Gregg (B-NH)

Orrin G. Hatch (B-UT)

Kay Bailey Hutchinson (B-TX)

Daniel K. Inouye (B-HI)

Johnny Isakson (B-GA)

John F. Kerry (B-MA)

Amy Klobuchar (B-MN)

Herb Kohl (B-WI)

Jon Kyl (B-AZ)

Frank R. Lautenberg (B-NJ)

Joseph Lieberman (B-CT)

John McCain (B-AZ)

Claire McCaskill (B-MO)

Mitch McConnell (B-KY)

Robert Menendez (B-NJ)

Lisa Murkowski (B-AK)

Bill Nelson (B-FL)

Jack Reed (B-RI)

Charles Schumer (B-NY)

Olympia Snowe (B-ME)

John Thune (B-SD)

Mark Udall (B-CO)

George Voinovich (B-OH)

Mark Warner (B-VA)

PEOPLE'S PARTY

Mark Begich (P-AK)

Jeff Bingaman (P-NM)

Barbara Boxer (P-CA)

Sherrod Brown (P-OH)

Roland Burris (P-IL)

Maria Cantwell (P-WA)

Bejamin Cardin (P-MD)

Robert Casey Jr. (P-PA)

Tom Coburn (P-OK)

Byron Dorgan (P-ND)

Richard Durbin (P-IL)

John Ensign (P-NV)

Russell Feingold (P-WI)

Al Franken (P-MN)

Tom Harkin (P-IA)

Edward Kaufman (P-DE)

Patrick Leahy (P-VT)

Carl Levin (P-MI)

Blanche Lincoln (P-AR)

Jeff Merkley (P-OR)

Lisa Mikulski (P-MD)

Patty Murray (P-WA)

Mark Pryor (P-AR)

Harry Reid (P-NV)

John D. Rockefeller IV (P-WV)

Bernard Sanders (P-VT)

Richard Shelby (P-AL)

Arlen Specter (P-PA)

Debbie Stabenow (P-MI)

Tom Udall (P-NM)

Jim Webb (P-VA)

Sheldon Whitehouse (P-RI)

Ron Wyden (P-OR)

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List of Senators Who Are Working For Wall Street ~ Betrayers of The American People

Here are the senators who voted last night to preserve Wall Street's power.

   Akaka (D-HI)

Alexander (R-TN)



   Barrasso (R-WY)

                           

Baucus (D-Montana)

                            

Bayh (D-IN)

   
 Bennet (D-CO)

  Bond (R-MO)


 Brown (R-MA)


 Brownback (R-KS)


  Burr (R-NC)
        

  Carper (D-DE)


  Chambliss (R-GA)


Cochran (R-MS)


  Collins (R-ME)


  Conrad (D-ND)


  Corker (R-TN)

  Cornyn (R-TX)


   Crapo (R-ID)


  Dodd (D-CT) <--- Guess he couldn't even bring himself to do the right thing even on his     way out.


  Enzi (R-WY)


  Feinstein (D-CA)


  Gillibrand (D-NY)

  Graham (R-SC)


  Grassley (R-IA)


  Gregg (R-NH)


  Hagan (D-NC)


  Hatch (R-UT)


  Hutchison (R-TX)


  Inhofe (R-OK)



  Inouye (D-HI)



  Isakson (R-GA)


  Johanns (R-NE)


  Johnson (D-SD)


  Kerry (D-MA)  <-----I am So, So disappointed, I truly expected better of him.



  Klobuchar (D-MN)


  Kohl (D-WI)



  Kyl (R-AZ)


  Landrieu (D-LA)


  Lautenberg (D-NJ)


  LeMieux (R-FL)


  Lieberman (ID-CT)  <----Never expected better from him so no disappointment here.


  McCain (R-AZ)    <---Once upon a time I had respect for him.


  McCaskill (D-MO)


  McConnell (R-KY)


Menendez (D-NJ)


Murkowski (R-AK)


Nelson (D-FL)


Nelson (D-NE)


  Reed (D-RI)


Risch (R-ID)


Roberts (R-KS)





Schumer (D-NY)




  Sessions (R-AL)


Shaheen (D-NH)


  Snowe (R-ME)


  Tester (D-MT)


Thune (R-SD)


Udall (D-CO)


Voinovich (R-OH)


Warner (D-VA)


Wicker (R-MS)