When she was considering running for Senate, the concern among some Democrats was that Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Professor and finanicial expert, would not be able to compete with the folksy Scott Brown on the campaign battle field. But Warren surprised most with her natural ability not only as a campaign speaker, but as a person who can relate to the average voter.

At her first hearing as the most junior member of the Senate Banking Committee, Warren showed why Wall Street financiers and their lobbyists worked hard to prevent her election to the upper chamber. Her question to the financial regulators was simple, but got at the heart of the problem with the government’s response to the financial crisis:

“Tell me a little bit about the last few times you’ve taken the biggest financial institutions on Wall Street all the way to trial.”

Warren, like any good prosecutor, already knew the answer to the question. They hadn’t in a long, long time. So long that the regulators couldn’t answer. Thomas Curry who is the Comptroller of the Currency, meaning the regulator of national banks, explained, “We have not had to do it as a practical matter to achieve our supervisory goals.” He explained that through settlments and consent orders, they have achieved the necessary punishments and changes.

SEC Chair Elisse Walter said that she would have to look up when the last time her agency actually took a financial institution to trial. She explained that the commissioners weigh the costs of a trial against the benefits of the agreements and concessions they negotiate with the offenders.

Warren was unconvinced. She remarked, “Every time we reach a settlement and not a trial, it means that we didn’t have those days and days and days of testimony about what these financial institutions have been up to.” The historical coziness between regulators and the banks they regulate is well-known and Warren’s observation was getting to the heart of that. “They can break the law and drag in billions in profits and then turn around and settle, paying out of those profits… They don’t have much incentive to follow the law.”

“I want to note that there are district attorneys and U.S. attorneys who are out there everyday squeezing ordinary citizens on sometimes very thin grounds and taking them to trial to ‘make an example,’ as they put it,” Her pithy conclusion was, “I’m really concerned that too big to fail has become too big for trial.”

The financial industry is no doubt concerned about Warren’s membership on the Banking Committee and most likely considered her questioning overly aggressive. But really her questions were simple and straight-forward and need to be asked. Even though she will often be the last member of the committee to question witnesses at hearings, Senator Warren will be the one most people will be waiting to hear from.

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Let us say you wanted to learn how someone was going to vote in an election but could not ask them what party they supported — if you had only two questions for this person, what would they be? I would choose these two: What Party did your parents consider themselves to be?; and, Who did you vote for in your first Presidential Election? The reason is that these are the two strongest predictors of Party Identification — Which party your parents generally supported and who you first voted for in your early years as an adult are likely to determine how you will vote in the future.

Now say you are a Republican candidate for federal office, you would probably focus on a certain aspect of recent elections. Not only did Barack Obama get 71% of the Hispanic vote, but they made up 10% of the electorate — growing from 8% in 2004 and 9% in 2010 — notice a trend? An analysis of the 2012 election shows even stronger growth of the Hispanic vote in critical states like Arizona, Florida, Colorado, and Nevada. In the case of Colorado, Obama received 75% of the Hispanic vote. These voters are more likely to vote for Democratic candidates in future elections than they are to switch to a Republican candidate — their party ID may be hard-wired, especially when it comes to new voters.

Clearly, Republicans who are actually concerned about winning elections see the demographic problem — a higher percentage of Hispanic voters in critical states means that the GOP needs a higher percentage of the Hispanic vote to support them in elections. They don’t need a majority, necessarily, but losing three-quarters of them to the Democrats is electoral doom — now for the Presidency and soon in more and more congressional elections.

The solution at the moment appears to be the embracing of some sort of Immigration Reform by the Republican leadership. John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are on board with the plan to make sure that addressing the issue of undocumented inhabitants is NOT a political issue in 2016. The thought must be that if they pass immigration reform, Hispanics will reconsider their current loyalty to the Democrats. However, the details will be important to them — especially the way reform addresses the path to citizenship.

Republicans are wary of creating all of these new American citizens, but not for the reasons they state, such concerns about rewarding illegal behavior. Rather it is in the voting demographics. When these people become citizens, who will be getting the credit for their newly-minted status as Americans? Not the Republicans, who had to be dragged to the negotiating table, but President Obama and the Democrats who campaigned and addressed this issue important to many Hispanic voters.

The Republican strategists understand what this means — as these people go through the system and become citizens, they are more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans. With an estimated 11 million undocumented inhabitants in the U.S., if all of them were able to eventually become citizens, the odds are they would reward Democrats when they got their first chance to vote. And since the party a person first pulls the lever for is likely to continue to get their support for years to come, Republican strategists are having nightmares about multitudes of new Democratic voters being added to precincts all across the country.

So that is the Catch-22 for the Republicans — If they address comprehensive immigration reform they could be allowing Democrats to increase their support by millions over the next several elections. If they don’t address this issue, then the Democrats can hammer them with it in 2016 and beyond. Not an easy political choice to make.

The guess here is that Republicans will support a reform package, but while it will allow the legalization of the undocumented workers, the path to citizenship will be long, difficult and possibly out of reach. The GOP will be willing to let these inhabitants work, pay taxes, add to the economy, and contribute to the growth of America without fear of arrest or deportation. They’ll just make sure they can’t vote.

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The World According to Dick Cheney, a new documentary that opened at the Sundance Festival, begins with a series of quick-hit questions posed to the former Vice-President. We learn that his most cherished value is integrity and that his favorite food is spaghetti. But when asked what are his faults, Dick Cheney stammers, and after a few seconds admits that he never thinks about his faults.

Based on 20 hours of interviews with the neocon icon, the documentary by R.J. Cutler (who produced The War Room, a documentary the team behind Bill Clinton’s 1993 campaign for President) will probably be criticized for not asking the tough questions. Instead of challenging Cheney on his series of public pronouncements on Weapons of Mass Destruction, “enhanced interrogation”, Abu Ghraib, or his belief that George W. Bush would be viewed as a liberator of the Iraqi people, he is asked about events in a neutral tone. The questions allow Cheney a great deal of latitude to explain himself and he is rarely challenged by the filmmakers on his assertions. Cutler lets his answers hang in the open, using journalists like David Corn and Bob Woodward to provide the counter-facts.

But the image that emerges of Cheney during the film is chilling. While his rise to power was impressive in its speed and trajectory (he was the youngest Chief of Staff ever at 33 years old), he is astonishingly unreflective in terms of his own decision-making. As with the decision he made to have the Air Force shoot down United Flight 93 if necessary, he remarks that while those around him seemed astonished, once the decision was made, he was comfortable with it and able to move on quickly.

It is in the early part of the film that Cheney shows his only on-screen irritation during the interview process. When he was 22, Cheney was in jail for his second drunk driving arrest. At the time he was a Yale dropout and seemed to have no direction in life. Lynn, then his girlfriend (and now his wife), apparently gave him a dressing down and an ultimatum. When asked what Lynn said to him, Cheney shifts in his seat uncomfortably, remarking that he would not be revealing personal history. Later when asked about his claims about Iraq, Abu Ghraib and “enhanced interrogation,” he displays no signs of discomfort — only certainty that he was right.

The film shows that Cheney’s rise through the ranks impressed upon him both a need for the consolidation of unchecked executive power, and most worryingly his own infallibility.

We learn that when Cheney was chosen to be Bush’s running-mate in 2000, Cheney had been the person in charge of vetting the candidates for the role. While he claimed that he had no interest in being the nominee himself, he set up a selection process that was so intrusive, Cheney admits he probably would not be willing to go through it himself. Cheney portrays his acceptance of Bush’s offer to become Vice President himself as a favor to the future President. The documentary reveals that Cheney’s acute understanding of political power was exceptionally useful in the days following the disputed 2000 election. While waiting for the process and courts to come to a decision, Cheney was also heading the Bush transition team. In this position he was able to fill all of the political appointees below the Secretary level with people of his own choosing, allowing him to build a power base within the Administration that even the President could not match during his first term.

When 9/11 happened, Cheney’s power as Vice President became virtually unprecedented. While Bush was reading to children in Florida, we learn that Cheney was making the critical decisions, including the grounding of planes and the ordering stragglers to be shot down. With a naive, inexperienced President, Cheney effectively ran the national security team in the days after the tragedy.

The climax of the film takes place just before Congress goes to vote on giving the President the right to use military force against Iraq, and reveals just how manipulative the former VP was when it came to getting what he wanted. Dick Armey, the Republican Majority Leader in 2002, was vocally against granting the President the authority and would vote ‘No’ when it came up in congress. Understanding that an ‘No’ vote would give cover to a number of Democrats and Republicans to do the same, Cheney met Armey and told him that the situation was even worse then reported — that Saddam was close to developing “suitcase nukes” and that Saddam’s family had had direct contact bin Laden (both completely false). Burdened with this new information, Armey announced that he would support the resolution, thus guaranteeing its easy passage.

While Cheney runs without peer during the first term, it also emerges that he became marginalized in the second term when he failed to tell the President that a number of lawyers were ready to resign if the unwarranted wiretapping program was allowed to continue. And when the Valerie Plame scandal emerged, Bush eventually stopped taking Cheney’s phone calls when it came to pardoning his Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby.

The World According to Dick Cheney is fascinating for political junkies and serves as a lesson in the use and misuse of power. Free of the ambition to become President himself (despite flirting with the idea in 1996), electoral politics were never in Cheney’s calculations, making complicated decisions  easy for him to make. The film reveals that Cheney views introspection, doubt and uncertainty as weaknesses. In a world of grays, Cheney turned all problems into black and white.

The major theme that emerges from the film is that Cheney had the mindset of an infallible monarch and made policy decisions based on that belief. While Cheney was an elected official, it was this mindset that made him the exact type of person who should never have power in a Republic.

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On September 24, 2011, then-President of Russia, Dmitri Medvedev nominated Vladimir Putin to be the United Russia Party’s nominee for President in the 2012 elections. That action caused a little-known performance artist, Nadezhda (Nadia) Tolokonnikova to create the punk/feminist art collective called Pussy Riot. The all-female group performed spontaneous punk performances all around Moscow wearing colorful balaclavas to cover their faces, popping up in shops and in public squares yelling out lyrics such as “Putin Pisses Himself!” But it wasn’t until their guerilla performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior that they actually got real attention due mostly to the arrest of three of their members. Pussy Riot had performed their protest music and actions before… in a hair salon and on Red Square, for example, but when they did it in the Cathedral, the authorities could detain them with the support of the religious Orthodox church community and tried to make it look like it wasn’t about their politics.

In the documentary, Pussy Riot–A Punk Prayer, which just premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, we see how a small group of women who are tired and angry about Putin’s autocratic hold on their country used protest art to test the limits of free speech in Russia. While they, unfortunately, found out what that limit is, through their eloquence and courage they also have shined a light on the hypocrisy of so-called democratic Russia. The purpose of their February 21, 2012 arrest may have been to intimidate those who want to protest Putin, in actuality the trial of Pussy Riot has shined a light on the grip Putin and his cronies have on Russian society.

A good documentary has good “casting,” meaning that the main characters are compelling to watch on screen. In their film, directors Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin have three compelling main characters in the three young women on trial. In addition to Nadia, Maria (Masha) Alyokhina and Yekaterina (Katia) Samutsevich are bright and determined and their eloquence in interviews and at trial bring a depth of understanding to their motivations. While all three are strong personalities, Nadia is clearly the star of the film. She not only has the looks of Hollywood starlet, but it is clear that she is the intellectual force behind the reason and actions of Pussy Riot. One of the leaders of the Cathedral who supports their arrest remarks that Nadia is dangerous… she is a “Demon with a Brain,” he explains.

With their protest on the altar of the Cathedral, Pussy Riot intended to protest the coziness of the Orthodox Church and the Putin regime, but it allowed authorities to detain them on charges of religious hatred and hooliganism, turning the act into an attack on the Church. So while the trial of the three women gained sympathy for their cause around the world, in Russia they are not viewed positively by most. The witnesses against them were mostly members of the church who claimed personal harm by the 45 second Pussy Riot performance.

The trial footage shows the savvy defiance of the three defendants in the face of an absurd process. They challenge the judge and prosecutors, demonstrating again and again that it is Putin’s Russia that is really on trial. There is some remarkable footage of the three women talking amongst themselves in the defendant’s “cage” where they discuss the process, but also their concerns about their families and children. In one scene they are told to stop talking to each other by an officer of the court, when they repeatedly ask why, they are just told again and again to be silent, as they just shake their heads, smirking at the incredulous situation.

As the trial continues, the women start to learn that their plight has gotten international attention, including Madonna showing her support at a Moscow concert. With their closing statements, Nadia, Masha and Katia turn the tables on the court, with words as eloquent as Thoreau on unjust laws and the need to protest them. The fact they are found guilty is expected by them, and the court obliges with two years in a labor camp as their sentence. Despite the harsh verdict, the women hold their heads high and as supporters cheer them on as they are brought to prison, they still look determined and defiant. While Katia later has her sentence suspended on appeal, Nadia and Masha are still jailed, though still working on their appeal.

It is impressive that the filmmakers were able to start and complete this documentary in less than a year. In short notice, they have produced a documentary that beautifully demonstrates that there are courageous people willing to use their art, and their lives, to shine a light on injustice. The brilliance of the film is that almost all of the dialogue comes from the accused (and their families) and their accusers. It is through the words of both sides that it becomes clear that while the women of Pussy Riot may be the ones technically on trial, it is the Russian system that is really under scrutiny… and in the eyes of those who are paying attention, it is obvious as to which side is in the right.

NOTE: Pussy Riot — A Punk Prayer was bought by HBO Films

Pussy Riot’s outlaw performance at the Moscow Cathedral

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The House Republicans are meeting in Williamsburg, VA for their annual retreat. Usually these party retreats are used to debate policies, discuss upcoming election strategies and for the members to get to know each other. This year, however, it seems that the purpose of this year’s getaway is for the party leadership to try to reel in whack-job elements of the membership.

Already the attendees have heard from pollsters who actually had to explain to those listening that they should never, ever talk about rape. They have been given explanations about how it would actually be a bad strategic move to fail to increase the debt ceiling, with Budget Committee Chairman and former next Vice-President of the United States, Paul Ryan, trying to persuade his team to adopt at least a short-term extension.

The need to tame the beasts of the right-wing of the right-wing party is in part due to the political system that has evolved in the USA. First, because of the weak party system, leadership has very little control over who actually runs for office under their party’s label. In parliamentary systems, for the most part, the party aparatus selects those who run on the party lists. Those who are found to be narrow-minded ideologues are generally not on the list in the next election, if even chosen in the first place, at least when it comes to major parties (Le Pen in France has never quite achieved major party status, thank goodness.) We generally don’t read about zany stances by MPs in the British Parliament. But since n the USA anybody can run — and it has become increasingly obvious that, on the Republican side at least, anyone can win in the U.S. electoral system — unfased, right-wing vigor has become an increasing percentage of the make-up of party membership. And since they don’t have to worry about party leadership in order to get a place on the ballot in the next election, they don’t have to listen to party leadership when they are trying to talk sense into them.

But the crazy quotient doesn’t just come from the weak link between members of Congress and their party. It also emerges from the science of gerrymandering. With congressional districts, using pinpoint data and powerful computer programs in their design, becoming safer and safer for one party or another, the fear of losing an election comes in the primary and not the general election. The incentives for a member of the House of Representatives that emerge from these ideologically pure districts is to not be outflanked by the extremes. In other words, they fear the local conspiracy theorist who might decide he or she should run for Congress more than they fear John Boehner. The worse problem for the Republican Party right now is that many of those righteous extremists not only ran for office, they were elected.

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