Turning the House

(Community Matters) Way too early to predict a return of Congress’ House of Representatives to Democrats but not at all too early to recruit & fund incumbent challengers – HuffPost on GOP vulnerability. See The Center of American Politics for the type of candidates it will take to win over districts in play. If Ds could take back the House and win a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, they could make serious progress on climate change, tax code revisions and health care reform enhancements.  D reps from swing districts would likely temper calls for swings too far left. I wish we’d prioritize a rewrite of business regulations, deleting and consolidating a lot of them, preserving what’s needed to ensure (boost) public safety and to recapture costs currently being externalized. I’m not sure even a D majority in both houses will be powerful enough to scale back the finance industry. Banking/finance is out of control – its influence is too overwhelming for meaningful oversight and restructure, the extraordinary profits being generated are an insidious tax on the middle class at every turn of a transaction – not to mention unfair practices such as high frequency trading. Even the reported settlement for $13 billion against JP Morgan while a substantial dollar amount, represents only half of last year’s profits and would be charged against a $28 billion reserve. Preserving states’ rights to pursue criminal charges is critical.