How can ONE MAN stop something the country so badly needs, and why is Senator Dodd allowing this?

Okay, I know. I have been furiously writing about Senator Richard Shelby from Alabama, the NO guy on finance reform. Or at least, true financial reform. I am angry that he does not want an independent consumer protection agency overseeing the banks. He instead would like it to be under some other federal agency, not an independent agency. In other words, he wants to pass milk-toast reform. Just so that he can say that he passed financial reform. What he doesn't say is WHY.

I think he is clearly on the bank's side. In a Washington Post article from December, a few things were revealed about this man to make me think that way:

1. Shelby is a legendary fundraiser. He currently has more than $15.3 million in his campaign account and personal political action committee, more of it from the employees and political action committees of the financial industry than from any other source. Shelby has declared his intention to run for reelection next year but says he won't spend all his money, and politicians in Alabama say he doesn't have to. "He'll be a U.S. senator as long as he wants to be," Fine said.

2. "He can raise enough money to sink a battleship!" said Joe L. Reed of the Alabama Education Association, a leading black political operative in Alabama. "Every time he sneezes, he raises some money."
Washington lobbyists recount stories of Shelby's relentless fundraising with grudging admiration. "I think it's the way he keeps score," said one regular recipient of the senator's blunt pleas for money.

3. Shelby keeps score in another way that helps him politically, by bringing home a huge quantity of bacon. Alabama gets about $1.50 back from Washington for every $1 it sends to the U.S. Treasury, much of it in earmarks written and promoted by Richard Shelby.

4. Nor have the Shelbys neglected the accumulation of personal wealth. They are multimillionaires whose two personal homes, one in Georgetown and another in Tuscaloosa, are each valued at more than $1 million. The steelworker's son born across the tracks moved uptown long ago.

5. For months the staffs working for Dodd and Shelby have been sharing proposals, asking questions, discussing the issues of regulatory reform. Then in October, Shelby surprised Dodd by telling him that he could proceed with discussions only if Dodd agreed to drop a proposal for a consumer financial products agency. Dodd had announced months earlier that he considered this -- a sort of consumer product safety commission for financial products, from home mortgages to credit cards -- as a centerpiece of reform. President Obama does, too. The House approved it last week.

6. Shelby trashed Dodd's draft. It was an uncharacteristic performance, harsh and sarcastic. "This committee has not done the necessary work to even begin discussing changes of this magnitude," he said, reading from a prepared text. Shelby slammed one provision after another in the Dodd draft, and announced, "I will be opposing this legislation."


Need I say more. We know that Shelby does not want any teeth in this bill. The question is WHY? Is he simply protecting his number one campaign funding source?

If you look at any banking industry blogs, you will see why. They don't want a real independent person, such as Elizabeth Warren, to watch over them. Period. They don't want it. So Shelby doesn't want it.

And we don't want another lame federal bureaucracy to fail miserably at protecting us.

That is why I don't like Senator Shelby. It is not personal. I am sure he is a fine man. I just don't like this.

And neither should you.