Wall Street's main lobbying arm has hired a top Supreme Court litigator to study a possible legal battle against a bank tax proposed by the Obama administration, on the theory that it would be unconstitutional, according to three industry officials briefed on the matter.
In an e-mail message sent last week to the heads of Wall Street legal departments, executives of the lobbying group, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, wrote that a bank tax might be unconstitutional because it would unfairly single out and penalize big banks, according to these officials, who did not want to be identified to preserve relationships with the group's members.Nice. As Steve Benen points out:
As for the politics, I continue to marvel at the fact that conservative Republicans, including Scott Brown, are taking the banks' side on this. It's tempting to think Americans would reject such nonsense, but then again, Massachusetts seems poised to elect Brown anyway, and the GOP seems largely unafraid of pretending to be populist while fighting to shield Wall Street from burdens -- such as paying us back for the money we spent to rescue them from their own recklessness.
It's actually simple: GOP populism is "Whenever a Democrat uses government for any reason, it's inherently evil tyranny and must be resisted by any and every means necessary."
To whit, the government bailout out the banks. This is intolerable evil. The government should have done nothing. Now the government is trying to assess a fee against the banks to get that money back. This is intolerable evil as well. The government should have done nothing.
You see, the Party of No is really the Party Of Do Nothing. The GOP is winning by advancing the claim that doing nothing...nothing at all...would magically have solved everything. Therefore, vote for Republicans for Nothing.
Nihilism, as Digby said.
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