Take Back America from Big Banks with Financial Reform

I hear a lot of people cry about the need to "Take back America!" I keep wondering, from whom?

Maybe from the army of corporate lobbyists fighting to prevent financial reform:

Throughout the financial reform debate, the finance industry has waged an unprecedented assault on the democratic process, spending an estimated $1.4 million per day to influence Congress and hiring 70 members of Congress and 940 former federal employees to lobby on their behalf.

...The lobbying spree is taxpayer-funded—it follows $160 billion in bailouts from Congress and trillions in cheap loans from the Federal Reserve. And as their influence has come to be viewed as increasingly toxic in Washington, the banks have shifted segments of their political activity to a “shadow lobby” that includes such front groups as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce [Kevin Connor, Institute for America's Future, "Big Bank Takeover," OurFuture.org, 2010.05.11].

Read the full PDF report here (and thanks to an eager reader for starting my morning off on a depressing note!).

Here's your chance, Teabaggers, to prove you are more than an anti-Obama, anti-Democrat front group for the status quo of corporate power. Show you can pay attention to the man behind the corporate curtain. Call your Congressmen, Republicans and Democrats, and tell them to do your bidding, not the banks'. Tell them to support real derivatives reform, and real financial reform.