The bail-out funds

Remember TARP -- the Troubled Asset Relief Program? Wonder where some of that money is going? Here are three interconnected stories: From Huffington Post:

Bailout Recipients Hosted Call To Defeat Key Labor Bill
Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community's top legislative priority.

From Overruled:

Banks Spend TARP Funds on Anti-Consumer Lobbying Campaign
Last month, the Huffington Post�s Sam Stein reported that three days after Bank of America accepted $25 billion in TARP funds, it hosted a conference call with movement conservatives and business heavyweights in order to organize opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act, a key bill intended to protect the right of workers to organize and join unions. Two weeks later, Change to Win discovered that the Financial Services Roundtable, a financial industry lobbying group whose members received 78% of the hundreds of billions of dollars distributed by the TARP program, intended to host a meeting of CEOs at a $530/night resort on the Gulf of Mexico, where they could coordinate their anti-worker lobbying campaign.

The banking industry�s efforts to limit the rights of the American worker, even as it is kept afloat by hundred of billions in taxpayer dollars, is shameful�and it is only the tip of the iceberg. According to lobbying disclosure forms recently filed in Congress, the banking industry has engaged in a massive anti-consumer lobbying campaign at the same time that received TARP funds intended to rescue the industry from insolvency.

As of February 11, 2009, Bank of America has received $45 billion in TARP funds�$15 billion in direct aid to Bank of America, $20 billion to fund its purchase of Merrill Lynch, and another $10 billion in direct aid to Merrill Lynch itself. Accordingly, to provide a window into how the financial industry has focused its lobbying efforts since it started accepting taxpayer funds, this report examines the fourth quarter 2008 lobbying disclosure reports from Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and from the Financial Services Roundtable itself. During this period when the industry relied on TARP funds to remain afloat, it lobbyied on a number of bills intended to stop some of the industry�s most exploitative practices.

And finally, from Change to Win:

In Which I Explain to the Wall Street Journal How Free Speech Works Take a look at that picture. Sure looks like a nice place, huh?

It�s a plush Florida getaway on the Gulf of Mexico that includes three miles of white-sand beaches, a 51,000 square-foot spa, a 36-hole golf course, three pools (two heated and an �interactive� one for the kids, whatever that means), and six restaurants.

Naturally, access to all that doesn�t come cheap; room rates start at $530/night.

Now, if you�ve got that kind of money and you want to spend it on a vacation at a luxury resort, more power to you. But if you want to go there on my dime � and use your time there to figure out ways to limit my human rights, no less � that�s a different matter altogether.

Which is why we were alarmed to discover that the Financial Services Roundtable (FSR) � the lobbying organization for the banking industry � was organizing a meeting there that would bring together CEOs from several bailed-out banks to coordinate their opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act.

Now, I am not a big fan of organized labor -- they had their day but are now more a dinosaur serving little evolutionary purpose. Still, this is dirty politics and the idea that it's being paid for on my (and your) dime is downright nasty.... These mokes get their nickers in a bunch, come to us for a bailout and go and do the same kind of behavior that got them in dire straits in the first place. I am glad that we took all of our and all of my Dad's accounts out of the banks and into a local credit union...