Fox In The Hen House

A few days ago, incoming Agriculture Chairman Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK) announced the hire of Ryan McKee as the senior staffer to oversee the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. McKee is currently a lobbyist working for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s division dedicated to deregulating complex derivatives products. In her new role working for Lucas, McKee will be liaising with regulators in charge of implementing new rules under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law to overhaul the over-the-counter derivatives market. She will tell you she's fighting to “kill” financial reform:

“We want to make sure that we hold all the Republicans and are able to influence enough Democrats to have a working majority to kill this thing outright or modify it to the point where it’s palatable to the business community,” Jason Matthews, the Chamber’s director of congressional affairs, told the callers. Ryan McKee, a senior director at the Chamber’s Center for Capital Markets, was even more direct in response to a question from an caller: “We’re fundamentally trying to kill this,” she said.

These people wrote rules that enabled them to loot the financial system for their own gain. And now they're fighting the fix from within the Republican party, presumably so they can do it again. Stop them or you can kiss your 401k and your economic future good by.

Not Seeing It Our Way

Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) , incoming chair of the House Science and Technology Committee. In an interview with the Dallas Morning News this month said of the gulf oil spill: "As we saw that thing bubbling out, blossoming out- all that energy, every minute of every hour of every day or every week - that was tremendous to me. That we could deliver that kind of energy out there - even on an explosion."

19 Americans died on that rig. The regional economy was decimated. And the Gulf of Mexico fouled in the worst way. But this guy thinks it was tremendous. The reason for this is probably because when he sees oil, he sees money and power. And he just doesn't give a rip about anything else.