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February 23, 2010 MSNBC

Dylan Ratigan Spells It Out For Congressman Joe Wilson "If You Believe Everybody In America Has The Best Health Care YOU'RE DELUSIONAL!

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Dylan Ratigan responds to Glenn Beck's attack on him as a "global warming nut" with a chalkboard of his own. Looks like the food fight between MSNBC and ClusterFox continues. What's that saying? Never argue with a fool, they will lower you to their level and then beat you with experience. Engaging Glenn Beck is a complete waste of time.

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Dylan Ratigan allows Marsha Blackburn to come on his show and play populist with her concerns for transparency and the national debt. This woman is about as far to the right as you can get with her voting record but he's going to allow her to come out and paint herself as some politician that's just concerned for the average working person out there.

BLACKBURN: Dylan one of the things you have to do is regain their trust. You do that by transparency, by moving these discussions out in the open where the American people can see and hear what is being done and said and I think that's an important step in this process. Certainly you mentioned the Tea Party movement and Enough is Enough. That is what people are saying. They've had it. Enough is enough. They are looking at a budget that the President has brought forward today that is focused on debt. It is not focused on jobs and creating jobs. And I think that's why so many people have said look, we're frustrated with this.

One of the things I'm going to do is immediately file the bills I file every year that call for 1%, 2% and 5% across the board spending reducations. Let's actually begin to cut what the Federal government spends.

The Republicans are all suddenly worried about the debt now that a Democrat is in charge when we never heard this kind of carping out of them while Bush was running the show. Blackburn goes on to claim that she "doesn't do earmarks". From Media Matters -- Rep. Blackburn Blasts Earmarks, Forgetting Her Own:

In a December 2, 2009 op-ed in the Washington Times, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) urged Republicans to campaign on earmark reform, noting she had "sworn off" earmarks herself. During the preceding year, Congresswoman Blackburn requested nearly $12 million in earmarks. As Blackburn has no doubt realized, it's easy to fast immediately after a $12 million meal.

She then goes on to cite Rep. Paul Ryan's "Roadmap to Recovery" as a solution to America's financial problems.

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Dylan Ratigan talks about the decision by Tim Geithner to keep details of the AIG bailout secret. More from Reuters--New emails show AIG mulled bank payment disclosures:

The New York Federal Reserve Bank actively worked with bailed out insurer AIG to build a case against disclosing details of AIG's payments to banks just days after the insurer considered making them public, documents released late on Saturday showed.

Lawyers for the Fed bank, which had taken over a pool of AIG assets as part of a $180 billion government bailout of the insurer in 2008, advised that AIG maintain a "confidential treatment request" from the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to emails provided by Rep. Darrell Issa, a U.S. lawmaker probing the matter.

A separate batch of emails made public earlier this month showed that New York Fed had advised AIG not to disclose the payments in a securities filing in late 2008.

The email traffic has raised questions about the role of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who ran the New York Fed at the time of the AIG bailout and the insurer's payment of some $62.1 billion to banks to liquidate credit default swaps it had sold to them.

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Dylan Ratigan and Elizabeth Warren discuss the Congressional Oversight Panel's findings that the implicit guarantee of future bailouts is keeping us from having any real reform of our financial systems in this country.

From The Hill--TARP oversight report: 'Implicit guarantee' of future bailouts hampering reform:

Unwinding the Treasury Department's $700-billion rescue program will be difficult, so long as there is an "implicit guarantee" that the federal government will continue to save failing banks, according to a new report.

The 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) has ultimately prompted banks to adjust "to the notion... [they] will be safe, no matter what," explained Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel that has been tracking those dollars."The whole market has adjusted to the notion that the big banks will be safe no matter what, and they can start planning their business approaches accordingly," Warren told CNBC on Thursday. "And thats dangerous."

"This business of regulatory reform that's going through Congress... is really where this is going to all come down," she added, as those reforms would allow the federal government to "credibly say to any large financial institution, 'If you screw this up badly enough, you really can be liquidated.'"

Without that legislation, "At the end of the day, when TARP is over, it's not really over," the chairwoman continued.

Warren's remarks on Thursday coincide with the Congressional Oversight Panel's latest look at the TARP's management and execution. The report, released this morning, stresses the legacy of the 2008 bailout program might be a lingering impression that the federal government will rescue failing firms that pose systemic risks to the nation's economy.

"This belief distorts prices, giving large financial institutions an advantage in raising capital that mid-sized and smaller banks – those not too big to fail – do not enjoy," Warren and her colleagues found. "These implicit guarantees also encourage major financial institutions to take unreasonable risks out of the belief that, no matter what happens, taxpayers will not allow their failure."

"So long as markets continue to believe that an implicit guarantee exists, moral hazard will continue to distort prices and endanger the nation’s economy, even after the last TARP program has been closed and the last TARP dollar has been repaid," the panel concluded.

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From MSNBC's Morning Meeting, Dylan Ratigan loses his temper with Debbie Wasserman Schultz when she starts spinning about what a good bill HCR is going to be but doesn't answer his question about why Wall Street is so happy and all the health insurance stocks are going up. Ratigan tweeted that he will apologize for losing his temper but not for "challenging lies and misinformation".

Here's the terrible thing about the administration and Reid allowing this health care bill to be watered down so badly by the ConservaDems in the pocket of the insurance companies. Now you've got someone like Debbie Wasserman Schultz who you know probably doesn't like what's going on any more than most of us do being forced to try to defend this crap sandwich to the likes of Ratigan, and not being able to. She really did not look like she was prepared for this interview at all. I think Ratigan was extremely rude, but I don't disagree with his points.

Wendell Potter followed up on the phone and gave him some plain spoken answers about why the stock market is so happy. Then he let hack KT McFarland follow up and act like Republicans aren't as happy about this as the insurance industry. They get to sit back and play populists and let the Democrats own this mess.

Eli over at FDL has more on this--What’s The Matter With Democrats?:

Not only have Obama and the Senate Democrats adopted pro-corporate policies that will hasten their own political demise, but they have allowed the Republicans to keep their hands clean and pretend to oppose legislation that they would have happily championed a few years ago.

[...]

Unless Obama and the Democrats pull their heads far enough out of their corporate donors’ asses to hear the transpartisan outrage brewing outside the Beltway, the 2010 and 2012 elections will be very very bad for them. They will reap all of the pent-up rage and resentment that was aimed at the Republicans in 2006 and 2008, and we know how that turned out.

Given Rahm's statement to Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, the administration is looking pretty tone deaf these days--Rahm Emanuel: Don’t Worry About the Left. Not helpful Rahmbo. We've got Axelrod trying to calm down left wing bloggers one day and Rahm Emanuel telling us to stick it the next. Talk about mixed messages.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders joined Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC's Morning Meeting to discuss his decision to block the confirmation of Ben Bernanke for a second term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. From Sen. Sanders site--Sanders Blocks Bernanke Confirmation:

December 2, 2009

Sen. Bernie Sanders Wednesday placed a hold on the nomination of Ben Bernanke for a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. “The American people overwhelmingly voted last year for a change in our national priorities to put the interests of ordinary people ahead of the greed of Wall Street and the wealthy few,” Sanders said. “What the American people did not bargain for was another four years for one of the key architects of the Bush economy.”

As head of the central bank since 2006, Bernanke could have demanded that Wall Street provide adequate credit to small and medium-sized businesses to create decent-paying jobs in a productive economy, but he did not. He could have insisted that large bailed-out banks end the usurious practice of charging interest rates of 30 percent or more on credit cards, but he did not. He could have broken up too-big-to-fail financial institutions that took Federal Reserve assistance, but he did not. He could have revealed which banks took more than $2 trillion in taxpayer-backed secret loans, but he did not.

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From Morning Meeting Nov. 25, 2009, Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi and the Financial Times' Chrystia Freeland discuss Matt's recent article at Rolling Stone and the divide between the recoveries on Wall Street and Main Street. Their analysis about what's wrong with the economic team Obama has surrounded himself with is spot on and until he starts listening to some different voices on how to fix our economy, Matt Taibbi is correct, the cycles of bailouts are going to continue to repeat themselves.

Ratigan: But Matt’s ultimate point is that we have all these people that are still perpetuating a policy that is supportive of the banking system for sure, regardless of who’s in there and an economy that is, has small business lending off a cliff, profits back at a record on Wall Street, one in four, one in seven mortgages delinquent; you know I could go on and on with these statistics but basically the economy was torpedoed and the financial markets were supported and the reality Matt is that it’s far more profitable not to lend money In this country. The fact of the matter is we’re giving banks money at a time when the government has rules that say you can make more money if we give you money if you don’t lend it.

Taibbi: Right…right…

Ratigan: And that is the inherent insanity of the entire situation. It’s like giving the banks money, legalizing the banks to make money without having to lend it is like letting the cops create a military state. They’re the custodians of wealth, the custodians of security have been completely compromised—you think it’s the people around the President that are largely responsible for that, correct?

Taibbi: I think so. I mean you have to remember that probably, if you were going to have a Nuremberg for the financial crisis, Bob Rubin would be one of the first people on the dock.

Ratigan: Yeah.

Taibbi: I mean he has a unique responsibility for what went wrong because he was not only responsible for the bad policy, the deregulatory policy under Clinton but he also helped destroy one of the biggest companies in the world in CitiGroup. And yet he was the guy who was put in charge and his people of being the architect of Clinton’s economic policies.

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Dean: Senate health bill 'watered down':

Former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Howard Dean said Monday that Senate Democrats' healthcare legislation is so diluted it threatens the party's 2010 chances.

Appearing on MSNBC, the former Vermont governor and outspoken proponent of healthcare reform charged Democrats were "playing with dynamite in terms of dividing the party.”

"The big problem is the policy. This thing has been pretty watered down," Dean said during the interview, noting the House bill was "better" than the "decent" Senate bill. "Right now, it's about as watered down as it can get and still be a real bill. For example, there's really no insurance reform in this bill, already."

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MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan talks to Rep. Alan Grayson about the amendment passed by the House Financial Services Committee to allow an independent audit of the Federal Reserve. If Alan Greenspan is not happy about it, I take that as a good sign they did the right thing. It only took putting this country on the edge of financial ruin that we're not out of yet for the S.O.B. to ever admit he might be wrong about anything.

Ratigan: Alright first big newsmaker of the Meeting, Democratic Alan Grayson, better known for some of his fiery comments on Republicans and health care, now taking aim at the Federal Reserve along with so many others. He says the Federal Reserve is more secretive than the CIA, and his new amendment co-sponsored by Republican Ron Paul would allow the first ever independent audit of the Federal Reserve. The amendment edged out a competing proposal from North Carolina Congressman Mel Watt who wants to limit those very audits.

Congressman Grayson now joins the Morning Meeting. Your amendment approved by the House Financial Services Committee—a huge step forward. Where do you go from here and what’s your level of confidence Representative that you can continue to addendum behind this piece of legislation?

Grayson: Where we go is to stop the secret bailouts. There have been hints and hints now for more than two years that the Fed’s been conducting huge bailouts on the scale of hundreds of billions of dollars to favor large failed banks. Now we’re going to find out all about it, and we’re going to decide whether it’s good or bad.

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From The Daily Show:

While promoting her new book, Sarah Palin delivers her wisdom as a conservative boilerplate Mad Lib.

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November 19, 2009 MSNBC
Naomi Klein and Ryan Grimm explain to Dylan Ratigan why we need to audit the Federal Reserve.

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November 13, 2009 MSNBC
Dylan Ratigan pushes his "Space Agenda"
GO DYLAN!

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Dylan Ratigan has a bit of fun with a deadly serious topic and 'celebrates' the anniversary of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which tore down the wall between Wall Street investment banks, commercial banks, and insurance companies. Gramm-Leach-Bliley repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and/or an insurance company.

While I think Ratigan's theatrics are a bit over the top, the point he's trying to make is not. We're long overdue with some new regulations to get rid of these too large to fail entities with both regulating and breaking them up. Why the Obama administration has continued to keep our economy in a state where it could collapse again due to the risk these institutions pose is beyond me.

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Here's something you don't see every day. One of these talking heads stopped in their tracks for lying on the air. MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan calls out The Family Research Council's Cathy Ruse (what a name for a spokesperson, huh?) for lying about what affect the Stupak amendment would have on private insurance if passed.

After noting that The Family Research Council called the Stupak amendment a “huge victory for women", Ratigan asked her this:

Ratigan: Cathy, what was the victory?

Ruse: Well the victory is that the question is elective abortion and who should be forced to pay for those, the individual or the government. Before the Stupak amendment passed, Americans would be forced to pay for other people’s elective abortions.

Ratigan: That’s not true.

Ruse: It is true, under both the public option plan and…

Ratigan: No, that’s not true…

Ruse: …and under the federal subsidies…absolutely true. That’s why…

Ratigan: The objection was to the use of the exchange. I’ll have this debate but you have to operate in the factual reality which is you’re saying that all the private insurance being sold on a publicly established exchange cannot fund elective abortion, and that is not federal dollars paying for abortion—that federal dollars paying for an exchange upon which private insurance is sold where elective abortions are provided.

Ruse: The Stupak amendment did two things. It prohibits federal funding for covering elective abortions, but it allows private insurance to carry coverage of elective abortions so long as no federal tax dollars are involved. And let me just…

Ratigan: Cathy, you’re not dealing with—you can’t—just coming on television and lying is not journalism, nor is it actually beneficial to the country. Let’s talk about what we’re discussing which is the establishment of an exchange upon which private insurance that we bought and sold establishes federal dollars. Nancy you were going to say?

Keenan: Yeah listen, we know that about 80-85% of private insurance companies today privately cover abortion care, and what the Stupak amendment does, is basically means that women will not be able to purchase insurance coverage that covers abortions with their own money, with their own money in this new healthcare system. That’s the reality of the Stupak amendment and it is outrageous that they are saying that this is good for women or that this is somehow the status quo. This goes far beyond the status quo.

Maybe Tony Perkins should get himself someone else go to up against Dylan Ratigan if his group wants to continue to try to spread misinformation about what the Stupak amendment does, although I don’t think Perkins himself would have faired much better against Ratigan. Both Ratigan and Keenan go on to point out what the real purpose of the amendment is, which is to prevent private insurance from paying for any abortions, get Roe v Wade overturned and to derail health care reform.