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Ezra Klein took a shot at John Boehner and the Republicans for pretending that they can still repeal Obamacare through the congressional oversight process. As ridiculous as that assertion is, that doesn't mean they're not going to do their best to still attempt to chip away at it where possible, but at this point, pretending that they can use the oversight process to somehow repeal the law, is just ludicrous.

After seeming to come to his senses and admitting that "Obamacare is the law of the land" Boehner quickly changed course and penned an op-ed for the Cincinnati Enquirer, arguing that the law "should be on the table for cuts in a deficit reduction deal." The White House shot that down pretty quickly, but as Klein's fellow contributor at The Washington Post wrote this week, you could still see tweaks to the law which the Democrats might go along with.

And as Klein noted, Boehner is up against the insurers and pharmaceutical companies who are now working with liberal advocacy groups, who both want to see as many Americans insured as possible for varying reasons. One wants more customers and the other wants to see as many people as possible have access to affordable health care.

Rough transcript below the fold.

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Sherrod Brown would like to see Elizabeth Warren appointed as the head of the new consumer financial protection agency, and so would I. I think she would make an excellent choice. Here's one reason why. She's been holding Tim Geithner's feet to the fire with her current TARP oversight duties.

Geithner and Warren Duel Over Banks’ Health:

When it comes to the health of the banking system, Timothy F. Geithner and Elizabeth Warren don’t see eye to eye.

Mr. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, told the Congressional Oversight Panel on Tuesday that the Troubled Asset Relief Program had been “remarkably effective” in stabilizing the banking system, noting that the program was on track to end in October with only minimal losses to the taxpayers.

But Ms. Warren, the panel’s chairwoman, questioned whether the banks were really stable enough to stand on their own without the program’s government safety net, and she called for another round of stress tests to make sure the banks are sound.

Ms. Warren was particularly concerned about the billions of dollars worth of bad securities and questionable commercial real estate loans still on the banks’ balance sheets. These relics from the boom years could haunt the banks in the future, possibly forcing them back into the arms of the government. Read on...

Elizabeth Warren appeared on the PBS Newshour and expressed similar concerns about the health of the banks and relief on foreclosures with Judy Woodruff.

TARP Watchdog: Foreclosure Program 'Too Small, Too Slow:

JUDY WOODRUFF: We heard Secretary Geithner say today he thinks the TARP program has worked remarkably well. Taxpayers are getting most of their money back. Should that be the main measurement of its success?

ELIZABETH WARREN: Well, it should be one of the measurements.

And, look, it's always part of the measurement that the initial action very well may have pulled us back from the brink of a depression. The big question is, what are we going to do with the money now? TARP is winding down. There's three more months to figure out whether or not we actually have adequate stability in the financial institutions and what to do about home mortgage foreclosure.

We only have this limited period of time to adjust the programs, to change the programs to try to deal with those problems.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let me ask you about the home mortgage foreclosures. You had a very animated exchange with the secretary over that question.

ELIZABETH WARREN: We did.

JUDY WOODRUFF: He says the success, as we heard him say, can be measured family by family, that it was never intended to help everybody.

ELIZABETH WARREN: Well, you know, no one disputes that. Of course it was never intended to help everybody. But it was intended to help somebody.

The problem we have got -- let me put it this way. This is a program that is saving a tiny number of people, ultimately, by getting them into affordable mortgages that the estimates are they will be able to sustain over time.

And for every one of those families that goes in, there are many, many more families who never make it. And the kinds of numbers we're looking at, we're looking at mortgage foreclosures that stay well over a million families this year, next year, the year after that, the year after that.

That has implications, not only for those families, but for the financial institutions that are holding those mortgages, for the construction industry, for our overall economy. We have a serious problem and a limited amount of time to get ahead of it. HAMP is not getting ahead of it.

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John King talks to West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall about the tragedy at the Massey Energy mine and the two of them go through a list of possible solutions to improve mining safety and of course they leave out the most obvious one, unionization.

We need to be asking both of them to go read this article by Meteor Blades at Daily KOS -- Want Safer Mines? Unionize Them:

It isn't a matter a matter of speculation. If you're an underground coal miner, your chances of emerging alive at the end of your shift are better if you work in a union mine than if you don't.

A report from the March 28, 2007, hearing on Protecting the Health and Safety of America's Mine Workers released by the House Committee on Education and Labor contains the following statistics for the five-year period of 2002-2006:

Underground coal injuries: 19,282

In union mines: 5,362 (or 27.8% of total)

Underground coal fatalities: 109

In union mines: 22 (or 20.2%)

According to the United Mine Workers of America, in 2007-2009, there were 45 underground coal-mining fatalities. Six of these were in union mines. Thus, for the 15-year period, less than one-fifth of the fatalities occurred in union mines. [...]

In fact, union mines may have a higher number of citations for safety violations than non-union mines. That is because union inspectors accompany Mine Safety and Health Administration inspectors when they check out a mine. They are far less likely to pass over problem situations than are inspectors who are being pressed by company officials to finish up and get out of their hair so they can get back to digging. Union inspectors seek those citations because they want to prevent injury and death. Read on...

In contrast, look at the ridiculous list of items they come up with that won't do an ounce of good. Hotlines, creating a fund so mines can be shut down for inspections if there are concerns so the workers don't lose pay, Congressmen "chaining themselves to a fence" and telling industry not to cut corners. It's painfully obvious neither of these two have ever worked in a dangerous industry.

The only thing that's going to prevent these kind of tragedies is the workers being able to report problems without fear of being fired and being trained properly in the first place to recognize hazards on the job. Recognizing and removing hazards before someone gets killed takes day in and day out cooperation between the company and the workers and safety issues being addressed as soon as they are found. No inspector or outside group is ever going to do that efficiently or in a timely manner. That takes boots on the ground in the form of workers and their supervisors being trained to recognize the hazards in their workplace and being allowed to report problems without fear of retribution or firing even if it means shutting a job down to get a problem fixed.

When a company does not care about the safety of its workers, a union is the only other organization that's going to fill that gap in a manner that truly protects their workforce. Seeing the types of abuses these miners have suffered just sickens me and knowing the track record of this mining company, sadly the tragic results of their neglect doesn't surprise me either.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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Dylan Ratigan and Elizabeth Warren discuss the Congressional Oversight Panel's findings that the implicit guarantee of future bailouts is keeping us from having any real reform of our financial systems in this country.

From The Hill--TARP oversight report: 'Implicit guarantee' of future bailouts hampering reform:

Unwinding the Treasury Department's $700-billion rescue program will be difficult, so long as there is an "implicit guarantee" that the federal government will continue to save failing banks, according to a new report.

The 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) has ultimately prompted banks to adjust "to the notion... [they] will be safe, no matter what," explained Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel that has been tracking those dollars."The whole market has adjusted to the notion that the big banks will be safe no matter what, and they can start planning their business approaches accordingly," Warren told CNBC on Thursday. "And thats dangerous."

"This business of regulatory reform that's going through Congress... is really where this is going to all come down," she added, as those reforms would allow the federal government to "credibly say to any large financial institution, 'If you screw this up badly enough, you really can be liquidated.'"

Without that legislation, "At the end of the day, when TARP is over, it's not really over," the chairwoman continued.

Warren's remarks on Thursday coincide with the Congressional Oversight Panel's latest look at the TARP's management and execution. The report, released this morning, stresses the legacy of the 2008 bailout program might be a lingering impression that the federal government will rescue failing firms that pose systemic risks to the nation's economy.

"This belief distorts prices, giving large financial institutions an advantage in raising capital that mid-sized and smaller banks – those not too big to fail – do not enjoy," Warren and her colleagues found. "These implicit guarantees also encourage major financial institutions to take unreasonable risks out of the belief that, no matter what happens, taxpayers will not allow their failure."

"So long as markets continue to believe that an implicit guarantee exists, moral hazard will continue to distort prices and endanger the nation’s economy, even after the last TARP program has been closed and the last TARP dollar has been repaid," the panel concluded.

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Rachel Maddow talked to Sherrod Brown about the financial crisis and outrage over the AIG bonuses. Brown stated how important it is that people have some confidence in government, in Wall Street and the banking system. Although Brown didn't think that the outrage over the bonuses was unwarranted he noted that there are bigger issues that need to be addressed.

One being looking into why AIG passed billions of taxpayer funds onto financial institutions such as Société Générale, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs and made them whole when that was not necessary to stabilize the financial industry.

He stressed what Congress needs to do next.

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From The Cafferty File Nov. 17, 2008. David Sirota has more at Daily KOS.

Republican Senator Jim Inhofe from Oklahoma wants to put a “freeze” on the remaining cash in the big government bailout of the financial industry. In this week’s lame duck session, Inhofe plans to push for legislation that will require Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s plan for the remaining $350 billion in the bailout package to be voted on in Congress.

Despite promises from Congressional leaders that there would be both, there is absolutely no transparency or congressional oversight on where the first $290 billion has gone. Senator Inhofe suggests Paulson “may have given the money to his friends.”

Inhofe, who voted against the bailout package when it was originally passed, said in a letter to fellow lawmakers this weekend, “It is Congress’s duty to have a say in what happens with the remaining authorized amount of $350 billion. It is clear that it was a mistake to sign a blank check to one man for such a tremendous amount of money.”

Here’s my question to you: Should Congress freeze the remaining bailout money?

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