"Reinstate Glass Steagall Act" Agreed by Tea Party, Move On Founders in California Meeting

On Jan. 14, Joan Blades, co-founder of Move On with her husband Wes Boyd, wrote in Huffington Post about a Living Room Conversation (a standard MoveOn meeting format) in California, where she, along with a group of MoveOn'ers, got together with Mark Meckle, a founder of Tea Party Patriots and his people to work on areas of agreement.

Her Huffington Post article titled "A Living Room Conversation to Reinstate Glass-Steagall," begins as follows: "Tea Party and MoveOn activists joining voices to reinstate Glass-Steagall? That's not far-fetched; this is common ground."

She describes the meeting where she was nervous about meeting the Tea Party leader, but says it was a good surprise.

"Right or left, none of us are comfortable with the degree of influence that big corporations have on government regulation," Blades said.

She concludes, "Things we agree we would like to see: Reduce big business influence on government, Reinstate Glass-Steagall Act, Reduce government mandated nonproductive burdensome paperwork" and criminal justice.

On Jan. 17, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Joe Garafoli, who was allowed to sit in on the "Conversation" (reporters are usually not invited), wrote an article titled "MoveOn Founder, Tea Party Meet." He, too, expressed surprise at the common ground: "The day's assigned topic was 'crony capitalism,' even though the conversation veered from education to crime reduction."

"After three hours of watching one another's media caricatures evaporate, the six decided that, for starters, they'd all support reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act.

"The Depression-era law prevented commercial banks from getting involved in investment banking, but it was repealed in 1999 during the Clinton administration. The rollback is widely seen as a major contributor to the 2008 financial market crash. Reinstating Glass-Steagall has an appeal to both the political left and the right because it curbs the power of major Wall Street players that control the nation's politics and finances. Nobody in this living room likes 'crony capitalism,' and they know why reinstatement hasn't happened."

Neither Kaptur/Jones bill reinstating Glass-Steagall was mentioned in either article—showing, once again, that the leadership is up to LaRouche PAC.