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This is truly disgusting.
Tea Party Congressmen Accept Cash From Bailed-Out Bankers
By Heidi Przybyla and Phil Mattingly - Apr 29, 2012 11:00 PM CT
Tea Party Congressmen Accepting Money From Disdained Wall Street
Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call
Stephen Fincher speaks during a news conference at the Republican National Committee following the House Republican Conference meeting, in Washington, on March 6, 2012.
Tea Party Congressmen Accepting Money From Disdained Wall Street
Jonathan Gibby/Getty Images
Tea Party member Mike Keating displays the pins that decorate his hat, while waiting for the start of a rally supporting Arizona's Immigration Law SB 1070 at the Arizona state Capitol in Phoenix, on April 25, 2012.
Republican freshmen have made clear their disdain for expanding government, and openly opposed a financial regulatory overhaul enacted by Democrats in 2010 before the newcomers arrived in Washington. Their ranks include ten Tea Party-backed freshmen on the House Financial Services Committee, part of a force that won election in a populist backlash to government spending that included emergency lending to major banks and bailout of firms including U.S. automakers.
Still, the lawmakers haven’t passed, considered or even introduced legislation to address concerns about “too-big-to- fail” banks voiced by members of both parties and such Federal Reserve bank presidents as Richard Fisher of Dallas and Jeffrey Lacker of Richmond, Virginia.
“I haven’t seen any of them putting forth legislation on breaking up the big banks or on other things that would genuinely prevent a bailout next time,” said Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform, a Washington- based umbrella group of organizations that supported the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act and other financial regulations.
Freshman Power
Since arriving in Congress in January of 2011, Tea Party- backed lawmakers have demonstrated their determination and muscle by forcing several rounds of government spending cuts through standoffs over raising the national debt ceiling with House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and other Republican leaders, putting the government on the brink of a shutdown.
Yet the anti-bailout fervor that drove the messaging of Republican candidates during the campaign cycle of 2009 and 2010 has dissipated, and those same lawmakers are now collecting money from the firms bailed out by President George W. Bush’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program bailout program.
Five banks -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. (C), Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) -- held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56 percent of the U.S. economy, according to central bankers at the Federal Reserve. Combined those institutions took $150 billion in bailout money in 2008 and repaid it by the end of the next year.
PAC Donations
The political action committees of those institutions have distributed $169,499 through March 31 to the campaign coffers of the ten freshman Tea Party-backed lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee, according to an analysis of campaign finance disclosure records.
Fincher, who is among them, promised as a candidate to “Help Main Street” and ensure there would be “no more Wall Street bailouts” in an advertisement that ran 98 times in the Nashville market in the run-up to his victory in a district previously held by a Democrat since 1988, according to New York- based Kantar Media’s CMAG, which tracks advertising.
“There was a lot of visceral reaction” to federal intervention to save Wall Street, said Mark Skoda, founder of the Memphis Tea Party and a Fincher constituent and supporter. “Stephen was very much using the language that Wall Street was problematic here and we were not going to do anymore bailouts.”
Fincher, through his spokeswoman Jennifer Cook, declined an interview request. Several others receiving donations from the banking firms also have declined to comment. ...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...t-bankers.html
Tea Party Congressmen Accept Cash From Bailed-Out Bankers
By Heidi Przybyla and Phil Mattingly - Apr 29, 2012 11:00 PM CT
Tea Party Congressmen Accepting Money From Disdained Wall Street
Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call
Stephen Fincher speaks during a news conference at the Republican National Committee following the House Republican Conference meeting, in Washington, on March 6, 2012.
Tea Party Congressmen Accepting Money From Disdained Wall Street
Jonathan Gibby/Getty ImagesTea Party member Mike Keating displays the pins that decorate his hat, while waiting for the start of a rally supporting Arizona's Immigration Law SB 1070 at the Arizona state Capitol in Phoenix, on April 25, 2012.
Republican freshmen have made clear their disdain for expanding government, and openly opposed a financial regulatory overhaul enacted by Democrats in 2010 before the newcomers arrived in Washington. Their ranks include ten Tea Party-backed freshmen on the House Financial Services Committee, part of a force that won election in a populist backlash to government spending that included emergency lending to major banks and bailout of firms including U.S. automakers.
Still, the lawmakers haven’t passed, considered or even introduced legislation to address concerns about “too-big-to- fail” banks voiced by members of both parties and such Federal Reserve bank presidents as Richard Fisher of Dallas and Jeffrey Lacker of Richmond, Virginia.
“I haven’t seen any of them putting forth legislation on breaking up the big banks or on other things that would genuinely prevent a bailout next time,” said Marcus Stanley, policy director of Americans for Financial Reform, a Washington- based umbrella group of organizations that supported the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act and other financial regulations.
Freshman Power
Since arriving in Congress in January of 2011, Tea Party- backed lawmakers have demonstrated their determination and muscle by forcing several rounds of government spending cuts through standoffs over raising the national debt ceiling with House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and other Republican leaders, putting the government on the brink of a shutdown.
Yet the anti-bailout fervor that drove the messaging of Republican candidates during the campaign cycle of 2009 and 2010 has dissipated, and those same lawmakers are now collecting money from the firms bailed out by President George W. Bush’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program bailout program.
Five banks -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. (C), Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) -- held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56 percent of the U.S. economy, according to central bankers at the Federal Reserve. Combined those institutions took $150 billion in bailout money in 2008 and repaid it by the end of the next year.
PAC Donations
The political action committees of those institutions have distributed $169,499 through March 31 to the campaign coffers of the ten freshman Tea Party-backed lawmakers on the House Financial Services Committee, according to an analysis of campaign finance disclosure records.
Fincher, who is among them, promised as a candidate to “Help Main Street” and ensure there would be “no more Wall Street bailouts” in an advertisement that ran 98 times in the Nashville market in the run-up to his victory in a district previously held by a Democrat since 1988, according to New York- based Kantar Media’s CMAG, which tracks advertising.
“There was a lot of visceral reaction” to federal intervention to save Wall Street, said Mark Skoda, founder of the Memphis Tea Party and a Fincher constituent and supporter. “Stephen was very much using the language that Wall Street was problematic here and we were not going to do anymore bailouts.”
Fincher, through his spokeswoman Jennifer Cook, declined an interview request. Several others receiving donations from the banking firms also have declined to comment. ...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...t-bankers.html
There was at least that facade. 
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