Strike One

Last week, I watched with interest the coverage of the passing of the financial reform bill on The Dylan Ratigan Show. I have several thoughts/observations about his coverage that I am going to spread across a few separate posts.

First off, the show uses this caption:

SENATE PASSES WALL ST. "REFORM" 60-39.

I point this out only to make sure everyone knows (although if you're bothering to read this... you probably already do know) that the bill passed with zero votes to spare (that will be more relevant in a subsequent post). Oh, and I was mildly annoyed by the quotations around the word "reform" because of it's implication - but that annoyance was really moot considering he spent days flat out saying it was not true reform.

Anyway, Mr. Ratigan decided to make a big deal of a poll that said that 80% of the population doesn't think it fixes the problems or will prevent the next crisis or whatever (Ratigan didn't seem to really think the exact phrasing of the question was important I guess). And he says this:

The American voter has a pretty clear view of this. Four out of five people in that Bloomberg poll say they don't think this does anything to fix the problem. The problem they see is that the banks are too big to fail, the banks give 40% of the funding to all politicians. Politicians then do what the banks want them to do ultimately when to comes to protecting their core businesses.

With all due respect to my fellow citizens, I say with great confidence that there is NO WAY Americans have "a pretty clear view of this." This is an extremely complicated issue and I suspect >50% of the members of congress couldn't discuss this topic with any depth of understanding and clarity.

And for TeaBag Nation who throw hissyfits about members of congress not reading bills... I suspect, in this case, they are completely correct but I do not think it matters because most would not understand it anyway.