Alan Grayson is wrong this time (on Crimea)

Rep. Alan Grayson is somebody I agree with most of the time and really admire for his guts, but this time he's got it all wrong. I fear he's having an Ameri-centric, knee-jerk left-wing reaction against the right-wing reaction against Putin.

First, "bloodless" cannot be the measure by which we judge the legitimacy of armed incursions by foreign powers. I daresay the U.S. could bloodlessly take over many countries if we came in with enough force quickly enough.  But that wouldn't make it right.

Second, as I've said before, the conditions in which the March 16 Crimean referendum were held, and the ridiculously short time frame, made the referendum illegitimate. Nobody in Europe would hold, much less recognize, a referendum organized under similar conditions on their own territory; so there's no reason for Europe or the West to recognize it in Crimea. To do so is actually a form of Western condescension: "Well, it's good enough for them."

(To illustrate it, I ask you to imagine a referendum for Florida's secession from the USA to join Cuba, since millions of ethnic Cubans live in Florida.  Imagine that this referendum started after Cuban troops invaded the Florida statehouse one night in Tallahassee; days later, those deputies who were allowed in by the Cuban troops, er, "local self-defense forces" voted to join Cuba (although there was no record or witness of the vote); then these deputies announced that this vote would be "confirmed" by a referendum in 2 weeks. This would be contrary to the U.S. Constitution and Florida's Constitution, just as Crimea's secession was contrary to Ukraine's and Crimea's, but that wouldn't matter, I suppose, under the ABSOLUTE right to anybody anywhere in any territorial sub-unit to their own self-determination.  Imagine further Cuba sending in troops to "protect" ethnic Cubans and "protect" their right to hold a referendum, while issuing ultimatums to local and state police, local military units, courts, etc. to pledge their allegiance to Cuba BEFORE the referendum was even held.... Need I go on illustrating how absurd this "legitimate" referendum in Crimea was?)

Third, let's recall that President Yanukovych fled Ukraine without explanation.  He was not "thrown out of power" by anybody; he chose, inexplicably, a day after coming to a compromise agreement with the opposition witnessed by EU ambassadors, (but not agreed to by Russia!), to flee Ukraine. This is not how a legitimate leader behaves.  In a few days it was discovered by the new government that $70 billion were unaccounted for in the state coffers; my guess is that Yanukovych fled preemptive to being arrested.

Finally, just to show that this is not  all about the U.S. and what we  think about a "second Cold War" or similar, just look at the reaction of Ukraine's neighbors in Poland, Moldova, the Baltics: they are not taking this "bloodless" revolution lightly, not to mention Ukrainians staring at 30,000+ Russian troops massing on the other side of the border. They are seriously frightened of Russia and what it might do next; and Grayson's official appeasement does not put their  fears at ease. 

FOX tries its best to spin Senate BENGHAZI! report

Check out the GOP Spin Zone over at Fox News: 

• 
  COMPREHENSIVE REPORT BY the Senate Intelligence Committee definitively declares that individuals tied to 
• Al Qaeda groups were involved in the Benghazi attack, and that the attack could have been prevented.

Yet further down in the article it says:

The Senate committee report stressed that the intelligence still suggests the attack was not “highly coordinated,” but rather “opportunistic” – possibly put in place in “short order” after protests over an anti-Islam film elsewhere in the region.

“It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attacks,” the report said. 

So those conclusions from the Senate committee's own biased, partisan report refutes two of the Republicans' four main accusations against the Obama Administration: that al Qaeda was behind the attacks (and not just al Qaeda-affiliate groups being "involved"); and that the anti-Islam film had nothing to do with the timing of the attack. 

The third main accusation by the GOP is that the State Department and the White House ignored security threats inside Libya. This I won't go into now. It suffices to say that Amb. Stevens alone made the decision to visit Benghazi that day, not Hillary Clinton or President Obama. He was quite aware of the risky post-conflict security situation in Libya. Rep. Grayson made this amply clear in a House hearing on Benghazi, see it here:

The fourth main accusation by the GOP is that Obama and his generals did not come to the rescue of Amb. Stevens and other U.S. personnel in time, for reasons unclear or speculative. I won't respond to this accusation now either, since I've written about it before, and no credible analysts have been able to dispute the actual events or timing.

So there you go.  BENGHAZI! has been reduced to plain old Benghazi, a political tempest in a teapot, where brave Americans' lives and memories have been used cynically as political ammunition by the GOP.  Moving on.

Cohen: Where's liberals' outrage over Syria?

Neo-interventionist and "liberal" pundit Richard Cohen continues his assault on liberals' heartstrings, pleading with them to attack Syria:

I pick on the American left because it is liberal and because that suggests empathy, concern and internationalism. The American right is now going through one of its periodic bouts of lunacy, reverting to a comfy isolationism-cum-selfishness that has often characterized it. (I should note, though, that back in the late 1930s Norman Thomas, the six-time socialist presidential candidate, supported the isolationist America First movement.) Still, I look to liberals to make common cause with the underprivileged, the unfortunate and the weak. If that doesn’t describe the people of Syria, then what does? Can the United States help them? We certainly could have. We certainly didn’t.

Once again, I advise all pundits and editorial page editors to read their own newspaper. If Cohen did, he would have read an interview a week ago by the WaPo's Ezra Klein with Congressman Alan Grayson, who summed up the futility of limited U.S. military intervention in Syria:

So, a) Assad has so much [military] stuff, b) the Russians will replace it, and c) we don’t want to weaken him too much. Sometimes there is no solution to the equation.

Interventionist liberals like Cohen -- and now add Christiane Amanpour -- who cry, "We must do something!" don't seem to care too much what that something is, or what it will achieve.

Beyond that, Cohen's unapologetic assertion that the U.S. is indeed the world's policeman is, well, stunning. It's so 2001. 

The inescapable truth is that the world needs a policeman. The inescapable truth is that only the United States can play cop. We have the wherewithal. A further inescapable truth is that evil exists and needs to be fought. We should always proceed cautiously and prudently, aware of mission creep, complexity and our own limitations. I have always thought, maybe naively, that these were values embedded in the very soul of American liberalism. It seems I am wrong.

Yes, and thank God you are wrong.  It's hard to believe anybody who calls himself a liberal would dare to put this in print. "We have the wherewithal"?  "We should proceed...aware of our own limitations!"  Hello!  We have almost $17 trillion in national debt, about 10 percent of it from the Afghanistan-Iraq debacles. And Cohen wants us to put a third war on the nation's credit card?!  We have a U.S. Military that is overstretched and thinned out at the junior office ranks, the backbone of our fighting force. And what if we need to fight a war where our security or interests are actually at stake?!  Folks, this is the road to empire, overreach and collapse.  

Where’s the moral outrage?

By Richard Cohen

September 13, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/18UzZVi

Grayson: 'We don't defend our freedom by giving it away'

"We Don't Defend Our Freedom By Giving It Away"

posted by Alan Grayson

June 21, 2013 | Democratic Underground

This past week, controversy raged over the revelation that under the guise of "foreign surveillance," the Defense Department is obtaining information about every telephone call in America.  As if that weren't enough, DoD also is collecting information on e-mails, videos, stored data, log-ins, etc., from Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, AOL and Skype.  Congressman Alan Grayson took to the airwaves to condemn that invasion of our privacy, and that trampling on the Fourth Amendment, in this interview on national TV:

Thom Hartmann: In the best of the rest of the news, yesterday the House Committee on Rules blocked an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have drastically cut back the NSA's ability to collect data on American citizens. An amendment was proposed by Congressman Alan Grayson from Florida. It would have prohibited the Defense Department from collecting information on U.S. citizens without probable cause of a terrorism or criminal offense. Congressman Grayson's amendment, of course, comes on the heels of reports that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the telephone records and internet information of U.S. citizens. So while the House Rules Committee may have rejected the Congressman's amendment, what else can be done now to stop the national security state from invading the privacy of U.S. citizens? Joining me now for more on that is Congressman Alan Grayson, representing Florida's 9th district. Congressman, welcome. 

Congressman Alan Grayson: Thank you. 

Thom: Or welcome back. First of all, I'm rather astounded by the Rules Committee knocking down your amendment, which seems like it echoes the Fourth Amendment. 

Alan: Well the Rules Committee consists of nine Republicans and four Democrats. But I think that there are Members of Congress even now who aren't aware of the severity of this problem. It's been a week since we learned that every single call that Verizon carries – Verizon being the largest cell phone carrier in the United States -- every single call has call details – who is calling whom, when they're talking, how long they're talking – and that's all given to the Department of Defense. Every single call. Not only that, but there's no reason to think that if Verizon's doing this, that AT&T is not doing it. So we have to assume that every call that we make in America – even local calls, even calls to your grandmother – all those calls are being handed over to the government, in terms of the call details. In addition to that, the PowerPoint presentation internal to the NSA that was also leaked, at the same time, indicates that the NSA, according to that information, can pull from AOL servers, from Microsoft servers, from Google servers, from virtually every single Internet provider in the country, information that hosts e-mails, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol, which is basically the contents of telephone calls), and a whole host of other information that people regard as personal. Now, that's where we are right now. I think many Members of Congress are not aware of that. I think many members of your audience were not aware of the fact that the government's getting information on every single call they make. Now the question is, "What do we do about it?" The Rules Committee decided to do nothing. The Republicans outnumber the Democrats nine to four on the Rules Committee, so that doesn't surprise me. 

Thom: But the Fourth Amendment is pretty unambiguous. I mean basically we're supposed to be secure in our persons, papers, home, property, unless somebody goes before a judge and swears under oath that they have reason to believe – you know, probable cause to believe – that a crime is being committed.  Then the judge issues a very specific warrant defining the place and things to be seized, or persons to be – you know I'm badly paraphrasing the Fourth Amendment, but you know it. How is it that this is partisan? 

Alan: Well, what relying on is a decision from something like thirty or forty years ago that indicated that "pen register" information, the calling record of one person, could be released without any Fourth Amendment violation by the government, because said that pen register information was not something that the Fourth Amendment constrained. Now, what they've decided is that because they could do it to one person, they can do it to every person. The document that was leaked, the court order that was leaked, is in fact a court order to Verizon that claims to be based upon applicable law. It happens to be signed by a right-wing judge who also declared that Obamacare was unconstitutional. But leaving that aside, what the agency is doing is it's purporting to rely upon this ancient string of irrelevant legal applications, in order to spy on every one of us. 

Thom:  I just said, "How could this be partisan?" You were talking about the Republicans on the committee blocking this.  You're basically bringing the Fourth Amendment into this. And yet it's a democratic administration that's doing it. The NSA is part of the Department of Defense, which is part of the Obama Administration. Are you hearing anything from the Obama Administration that they might be having second thoughts about what they're doing? 

Alan:  Well, the NSA, DoD, and other figures are part of the Administration .  Not the President himself, though, yet. Other figures have launched a vigorous defense of this practice, saying there's absolutely nothing wrong with the Department of Defense getting telephone records about every single human being in America. Bear in mind that we've had a law going back to the 1870s, called the Posse Comitatus Act, that prevents DoD from having any operations in the United States. Now it turns out that DoD is getting all records of all of our telephone calls, and yet somehow that's defensible. You're right -- this shouldn't be a partisan issue at all, because we have Republicans who are getting their telephone records turned over, Democrats, everyone. And therefore everyone should be up in arms. We had over 10,000 people go to our website our bill . The website is MindYourOwnBusinessAct.com. Ten thousand people came to the website, and became citizen co-sponsors of my bill, in the first 24 hours. Eventually, sooner or later, we're going to see that bill heard. 

Thom: That's marvelous. MindYourOwnBusinessAct.com is the website. Congressman, we have just about a minute left. I'm curious, your thoughts on where we're going to go from here? What's next? 

Alan:  What's next is for people who respect privacy, people who respect liberty, people who respect freedom, to state, clearly, that we don't protect our freedom by giving it away. There has to be a constant, consistent effort. There certainly will be on my part.  I hope there'll be the same on the part of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of others, to make sure that we put an end to this pernicious practice, and protect our cherished freedom. 

Thom: But how do you respond to people who say, "But oh, I'm so afraid of terrorists"? 

Alan: Oh look, you know. If somebody can explain to me how tapping your phone will prevent terrorism, Thom, then at that point I'll start to be convinced. 

Thom:  Ok, I got it, and totally agree with you. Once again, the website was – 

Alan: MindYourOwnBusinessAct.com. 

Thom: MindYourOwnBusinessAct.com. Congressman Alan Grayson, great work. 

Alan: Thank you. 

Thom: Thank you so much for being with us today. 

Grayson gets standing-O as spokesman for OWS

Here's a partial transcript:

Grayson: Let me tell what they're talking about. They're complaining about the fact that Wall Street wrecked the economy three years ago, and nobody's been held responsible for that. Not a single person has been indicted or convicted, for destroying 20 percent of our national net worth, accumulated over two centuries. They're upset about the fact that Wall Street has iron control over the economic policies of this country, and that one party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street, and the other party caters to them as well. That's the truth of the matter, as you [Bill] have said before. And . . . .

P.J. O'Rourke: Get the man a bongo drum, they've found their spokesman!

Grayson: If I . . .

P.J. O'Rourke: Get your shoes off, get a bongo drum, forget where to go to the bathroom, and it's yours.

Grayson: If I am the spokesman for all the people who think we should NOT have 24 million people in this country who can't find a full-time job; that we should NOT have 50 million people who can't see a doctor when they're sick; that we should NOT have 47 million people of this country who need government help to feed themselves; and that we should NOT have 15 million families who owe more on their mortgage than the value of home, OK, I'll be that spokesman.

That's my man! If Obama talked like that -- and believed it -- he'd win 70 percent of the vote in the next election.

Alan Grayson on Occupy Wall Street

Uploaded by adelphiaboy

October 8, 2011 | YouTube

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhrwmJcsfT0

Fed bailouts: $16 trillion... and counting

As Alan Grayson and others are pointing out, page 131 of this report from the GAO to Congress shows that from December 1, 2007 to July 31, 2011, the Fed has lent $16.1 trillion to U.S. and foreign banks!

As Grayson notes, that's $50,000 for every man, woman and child in the U.S.

But for the federal government to compel those same banks to give Americans something in return, like real mortgage modifications and debt relief for "stupid" borrowers, would be wrong both morally and economically.

FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM: Opportunities Exist to Strengthen Policies and Processes for Managing Emergency Assistance

By Government Accountability Office (GAO)

July 2011

URL: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf

Obama is a great celebrity, but poor leader

Obama never wants to put policies forward. He won't use the bully pulpit. He won't name the names of those stifling reforms. He won't twist arms. Instead he leaves the fate of reform in the hands of Reid and Pelosi, who must battle a united Republican party that plays by no rules and draws no boundaries. Obama isn't a president with a knife in a political gunfight; he's somebody who sends Reid and Pelosi with knives into a political gunfight. He simply refuses to fight. He refuses to lead.

Can you imagine if a leader with guts like Alan Grayson was in the White House right now? BP would already be under temporary U.S. government receivership; they wouldn't be considering whether to issue billions in dividends to British pensioners back home while America's Gulf Coast drowns in oil.

The BP Speech: Obama Still Refuses to Lead

Faced with the worst environmental disaster in history, Obama wants change. He just won't fight for it.

By Zach Carter

June 15, 2010 | AlterNet

There's no getting around it: President Barack Obama's speech on the BP oil disaster was an overwhelming disappointment. Despite confirming support for stronger regulation of offshore drilling and developing a national clean energy agenda, Obama failed to offer any policies to actually prevent the kind of catastrophe currently playing out on the Gulf, and refused to coalesce around any specific measures to wean the United States off of fossil fuels. Faced with the gravest environmental catastrophe in American history, Obama has indicated he believes sweeping change is necessary. It is equally clear that he is unwilling to fight for that change.

Obama did at least reiterate his support for a six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling, but offered no proposals for dealing with drilling in shallow waters, and no long-term solutions for how to regulate it. The president also acknowledged that the Deepwater Horizon fiasco was a direct result of our nation's failure to embrace a long-term clean energy policy, and strongly urged Congress to act now to overhaul our current policy. The best moment of the speech came nearly two-thirds of the way through:

"No matter how much we improve our regulation of the industry, drilling for oil these days entails greater risk. After all, oil is a finite resource. We consume more than 20 percent of the world's oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world's oil reserves. And that's part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean – because we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water."

It appeared for a moment that things were about to take off. And then ... they didn't. Obama made clear how high the stakes are on our nation's energy policy, but never exactly said what our nation must do to fix it.

"I am happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party – as long they seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels .... the one approach I will not accept is inaction."

Translation: Give me a bill, I'll sign it.

What should be done? Let's start with walking back Obama's previous expansion of offshore drilling operations and redirecting the $39 billion a year in taxpayer subsidies for the oil industry toward investments in clean energy. There are plenty of problems with the cap-and-trade plan approved by the House last year, but there were plenty of good provisions that Obama could have endorsed tonight. It's not like climate change is a new issue for this administration. They've been working on it for more than a year.

The speech was, in short, woefully insufficient as a response to the worst environmental catastrophe in history. But it would be a mistake to view the shortcomings of tonight's BP speech as an isolated failure. Tonight's address, instead, is indicative of a now well-established pattern in the president's governing strategy. Obama does not advocate for reforms, he advocates for consensus, and his rhetorical insistence on fixing a "broken" Washington and entering a new "bipartisan" era has rendered his administration utterly subservient to the very problems he seeks to transcend.

When we say that Washington is broken, we mean many things, but the core issue is whether top policymakers are still capable of enacting policies in the public interest. But Obama has steadfastly refused to stick his neck out on almost any policy during his presidency. Passing a health care reform bill was the goal, not securing the public option that could rein in long-term health care costs. Passing the stimulus was the goal, not passing one large enough to actually break the back of the recession. After tonight's speech, it's not clear what, exactly, Obama is fighting for on climate change, but he is adamant about not alienating "either party."

Obama's opponents have clearly learned their lesson. All you have to do to thwart the president is refuse to play ball. The more unreasonable your behavior, the further he will cave in his quest for bipartisan support. Hence the absurd accusations of health care "death panels" and permanent Wall Street "bailouts." More than a month after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, BP's liability for economic damages stemming from the spill remains capped. The only way to end partisan sniping is to make the political debate about something other than partisan negotiations—that is to say, make the debate about an actual policy, and force people to discuss that policy in good faith. By focusing on Republicans and Democrats coming together, Obama has created a political environment that is about Republicans and Democrats, rather than citizens and solutions.

Leaders make a clear and convincing case for their policies, based on how those policies will play out in the real world. When someone opposes those policies with irrational or absurd arguments, a leader explains to the world why that opposition is unwarranted. Obama has been reluctant to confront his opponents at best, and his refusal to stand firm for sound environmental policy in the face of the BP oil catastrophe betrays him as a leader with no policies. In other words, he has allowed himself to become exactly what the John McCain campaign called him in the last desperate weeks of the 2008 contest: a mere celebrity.

There are limits to what a U.S. president can accomplish, particularly when one political party entirely devotes itself to blocking his agenda, regardless of the effect on the citizenry's well-being. But a leader does not simply refuse to fight when faced with difficult odds. And despite the small-bore reforms outlined in tonight's speech—a new chief for the regulatory agency responsible for overseeing Deepwater Horizon—Obama explicitly backed away from anything resembling a fight over energy or environmental policy.

This response to BP's malfeasance might be forgivable had it been Obama's first capitulation in the name of political expediency—environmental disaster or no, he could credibly claim to be withholding political capital for other endeavors. But we've already watched Obama give away critical provisions on the economic stimulus package, health care reform, Wall Street reform, climate change and even subsequent legislative efforts to create jobs (he is now, timidly and belatedly trying to make the case for a jobs bill in small forums). There is no longer any reason to make excuses for him. Time and again, this president has simply refused to fight for any controversial legislative act. This is not an effort to gain greater political leverage. This is Obama's "leadership" strategy. Tonight's speech, for all its minor merits, was a tremendous failure of leadership.

Supreme Court decided 5-4 to destory U.S. democracy

Gee, do you think conservatives will bitch about "judicial activism" and "legislating from the bench" after this decision, which will overturn McCain-Feingold and 100 years of legal precedent and statutory law?

Methinks not.

Get ready for an all new America. Kinda like the old America, only more of the same, and worse -- where your views aren't worth two s**ts wrapped in a one-dollar bill.

Rep. Alan Grayson, just about the only Democrat with balls in Washington, has pre-emptively introduced 5 bills in anticipation of Dubya's Supreme Court opening the gates of hell to overrun our democracy. Check it out, and write your Congressmen to get on board, or we're all f***ed.

(Meanwhile, Obama has promised a "forceful response" to the SC decision. Uh-oh. Somehow Wall Street is going to get a few $ billion out of this, I just know it.)

Supreme Court Rips Up Campaign Finance Laws

By Deborah Tedford
January 21, 2009 | NPR

URL: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122805666

Grayson's pre-emptive strike against SC campaign finance ruling

You know that I believe that all campaigns should be publicly financed. If the SC removes all restrictions on corporate to political campaigns, then we'll have a completely bought-and-paid-for political system. You and I won't matter at all.

Alan Grayson Introduces Bills To Fight Corporate Money In Politics

By Arthur Delaney

January 14, 2009 | Huffington Post

Anticipating a Supreme Court decision that could free corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) introduced five bills on Wednesday to choke off the expected flood of corporate cash.

"We are facing a potential threat to our democracy," Grayson said in an interview with HuffPost. "Unlimited corporate spending on campaigns means the government is up for sale and that the law itself will be bought and sold. It would be political bribery on the largest scale imaginable."

At issue in the Supreme Court case is whether the government can limit corporate spending during presidential and congressional campaigns. The case is pitting Citizens United, a conservative group, against the Federal Election Commission. The FEC banned ads for Citizens United's film bashing Hillary Clinton during the 2008 election season.

Grayson introduced a handful of bills on Wednesday -- the Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act, the Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act, the End Political Kickbacks Act, and two other measures.

The Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act would impose a 500 percent excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees and on corporate expenditures on political advocacy campaigns. The Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act would require public companies to report what they spend to influence public opinion on any matter other than the promotion of their goods and services. The End Political Kickbacks Act would restrict political contributions by government contractors.

The other measures would apply antitrust regulations to political committees and bar corporations from securities exchanges unless the corporation is certified in compliance with election law.

"This case is basically about an effort to get around that. Citizens United took corporate money and tried to influence an election," said Lisa Gilbert of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. "These are all pieces of good policy. I hope they draw attention to the potential frightening implications of Citizens United."

ABCNews reported on Wednesday that Democratic leadership is hard at work on a legislative response to the Supreme Court's expected ruling. Grayson told HuffPost that he had consulted with leadership before launching his preemptive strike.

Jeff Patch, a spokesman for the Center for Competitive Politics, an organization that advocates for lifting campaign finance restrictions, said Grayson's bills were too focused on corporate spending. "These are totally targeted at corporations, but Citizens United is widely believed to affect corporations and unions and nonprofits equally."

Grayson disagreed. "One year's profit for Exxon is greater than the entire political expenditure of all unions put together," he said.

Grayson added that he wanted to send the message that people are paying attention to the Supreme Court.

"This issue transcends the usual political arguments. I don't think the teabaggers would be very happy if our government was bought and paid for by a huge national corporation," he said.

The Supreme Court's ruling, which has been expected for months, could come as soon as Jan. 20.

Bigfoot, Nessie, & a Democrat with balls, or, Fantastical creatures rumored to exist but rarely seen

Yeah, I'd also like to know whether the Fed extended $9 trillion in credit since last September, and whom they gave it to, and who's responsible for overseeing it, if not the Fed's own Inspector General? Good question, sir!

Rep. Alan Grayson, who rightfullly accused Republicans in Congress of wanting Americans to die, (45,000 of them a year to be more precise, according to Harvard Medical School), and as a result is being accused by the right-wing Web of being an anti-Semite, (Is that the best they could do? Truth is, sadly, that they don't have to do any better.), is one of the few Congressmen who has the balls to challenge America's rich and powerful elite, who are always well represented in the Treasury and the Fed.

Grayson also laughed in Ben Bernanke's face during his testimony before Congress, when Bernanke said it was a "coincidence" that the nominal exchange rate of the U.S. dollar increased 20% the same day the Fed agreed to lend half a trillion dollars to foreign central banks.

And he rightly called out former Treasury Sec. Hank Paulson for a $700 million conflict of interest in bailing out Goldman Sachs.

Watch and enjoy this 3-fer!


Rep. Alan Grayson: Is Anyone Minding the Store at the Federal Reserve
May 5, 2009 YouTube.com

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJqM2tFOxLQ&feature=channel


Rep. Alan Grayson: "Paulson Had a $700 M Conflict of Interest"
July 16, 2009 YouTube.com

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbISRwE2lfw


Alan Grayson: "Which Foreigners Got the Fed's $500,000,000,000?" Bernanke: "I Don't Know."
July 21, 2009 YouTube.com

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0NYBTkE1yQ&feature=related