Ben Nelson on the hot seat:
Among the critics is Nelson’s richest constituent, investor Warren Buffett of Omaha. Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, is Nelson’s biggest single source of campaign funds.
And if that’s not enough, Nelson and his wife have investments in Berkshire Hathaway. The latest disclosure from 2008 valued those investments at $1.5 million or more.
“To be absolutely clear, I did not vote ‘no’ because of Berkshire Hathaway,” Nelson told reporters in a conference call Wednesday morning. “Nor did the fact that I and my wife Diane have owned Berkshire Hathaway stock for 30-plus years — that had nothing to do with my vote. It’s never been an issue. And it isn’t now.”
In fact, lobbyists for the bill say they usually expect Nelson to vote “no” on procedural moves like the ones this week.
The derivatives issue isn’t the only reason Nelson has given for opposing the bill. He’s also said the bill would hurt small businesses that provide financing for customers. At the Capitol on Tuesday, Nelson specifically pointed to dentists and auto dealers.
But that’s not the way Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT), who chairs the banking committee and is leading the floor debate, remembers it.
Dodd said Nelson approached him just before casting his “no” vote and said he wanted to talk about the derivatives issue.
Look- it is one thing to be bought and paid for- we can understand that, even though it disgusts us.
It’s another thing to just be teabagger stupid, doing whatever your corporate masters want for no reason other than profound ignorance and tribalism. That’s harder to understand, but at least Nelson has lots of company there.
But to feign teabagger stupidity when you are a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway and the insurance industry? Nice try, Ben.
demkat620
I’m gonna go with B Chuck.
Yes he is that stupid. The toupee glue has seaped into his brain.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Nebraskans have an odd kind of conservatism, like a lot of western states that are red. They didn’t much like his “cornhusker kickback” and I doubt they will appreciate his pulling naked corporate shill shit like this. But it seems he can’t help himself. He needs to go away from the democratic caucus, and if that means a winger gets the seat then so be it. His type of conservadem is not acceptable nor wanted.
Just Some Fuckhead
When yer being lectured on ethics by Bushies..
Mike Kay
Are any of the Lefty bloggers who hate Obama gonna give him any credit for breaking the gop filibuster on financial reform?
According to the well respected lefty economist Robert Kuttner, it was obama himself who REJECTED negotiating with the goopers.
I mean, yes, they’ll have to shelve their adolescent taunting and actually praise a person they campaigned against during the primaries, but surely they won’t act like the corporate media they so loath and deny Obama any recognition. Surely, the great populist barons have some principles. And don’t call, me Shirley.
Keith G
I wonder how ol’ Warren Buffett feels about being pulled into the center of a political donnybrook? Seems to me that Omaha’s often reticent first citizen may be more than just a little pissed at Nelson’s ham-handed silliness.
ThinkBlue
To answer the title, “Both.”
gbear
I bet Dodd enjoyed the revenge of being able to bust Nelson on that lie.
gbear
@Mike Kay:
You’ll have to ask that question somewhere else. We’re all total Obots here.
John Cole
The thing is, if he would just say something like -“Hey, one of the most important businessmen in my state says he has problems with the current bill, and yes, he is a donor, but I think he is right and it might hurt my citizens,” I wouldn’t even flinch. In our current screwed up politics, that would seem pretty f-ing reasonable.
But he can’t.
pablo
They are just close friends….really!
Omnes Omnibus
A little from column A, a little from column B.
Big City Mary
Ah, I really like Warren Buffett. He may buy tools, but he is not one, and he constantly speaks out against income equality. He wants to make all the money for his shareholders that he can, but he does not live like a IB, nor indulge like an IB. He has made many smart investment decisions and he gives back. He is a one of the good guys.
Anton Sirius
@John Cole:
Especially given Buffett’s past history of pissing on derivatives…
I’d say it was Nelson’s guilty conscience acting up, but I don’t believe he has any kind of conscience, guilty or otherwise.
freelancer
Headdesk
but have I mentioned my plans to possibly relocate to AZ?
sigh.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: Nelson is being controlled by the malevolent chinchilla that lives on his head.
Big City Mary
I mean, Warren Buffett speaks out against income inequality!!
Omnes Omnibus
@Just Some Fuckhead: Malevolent chinchillas are pro-Wall Street? I did not know that.
tavella
@Mike Kay:
Ah, yes, Mike Kay who was bashing Atrios yesterday, because he suggested that standing up to the Republicans was good politics, and whining about how all of us awful people who asked Reid to show some spine, why he had and it was a miserable failure and all you folks are obviously losers.
I’m quite happy that the Democrats have noticed that fighting is good politics and that *no one* likes the spineless, not even the people who voted for them. I just wish it hadn’t taken a year for both them and Obama to learn the lesson and stop caving to the Republicans every time.
fourmorewars
Ben Nelson is connected to The Family. I personally would never leave that factor out of any analysis of a congressman/senator’s behavior. Just because the MSM treats these incredibly dangerous fascists as if they don’t exist, doesn’t mean anybody else should ever leave them out of the equation.
Probably precisely BECAUSE the MSM won’t make a peep about them.
JG
Being a liberal democrat in Nebraska (read: me) is difficult because all you are left with is Ben fucking Nelson. He isn’t a hard right Republican but he’s basically a Republican. And his myopic, ridiculous politics are amplified with his constant intransigence on common sense reforms.
Republicans in the state have turned against him and you don’t meet many Dems anymore who will passionately support him. Sure, he gets some muted approval but most of the Dems I know will praise someone like Chuck Hagel a lot more than they ever would Ben Nelson. He’s a schill and everyone knows it. And he pretty much doesn’t try to hide it either.
Evolutionary
Speaking of T’bagger stupidity. Here is documentation of what we know to be true. They are taxed much more lightly that they -believe- Whine about. From Bruce Bartlett at Forbes. This is a month old so apologies if you all have seen it before.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@tavella: We have mostly just done HCR for the last year. And that fight wasn’t with republicans, it was within the dem caucus, or 58 dem senators and two independents. So the fight was in house and that is always a different equation. And have you ever heard the term “setting the table”. In the case of Obama, he campaigned vigorously on at least trying to be bi partisan and changing the so called tone in DC. Liberal activists are not the entire electorate, only a tiny sliver of it, and the dem base.
Maybe he went to far with it, or not, and many, including me, and I suspect the WH were a bit surprised at the totality of GOP intractability. But nevertheless, Obama now has street cred, as it were, to claim he tried with the wingers, and they wouldn’t try back. Politics is largely about timing, and right out of the gate was not the time to go to war with the wingnuts. Now is, and it is happening, especially since the talking point of dems being filibuster proof is history. Jeesh, some on the left are as narrow minded and simplistic as on the right.
Mike Kay
@tavella: Atrios should be flogged and made to walk the plank.
WereBear
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Good points.
It is difficult for people who see the pitfalls in bad behavior, and have a genuine desire to get things accomplished, to realize that there are other people who just don’t give a large crap.
Perhaps that happened, too.
RadioOne
I think a lot of us on the left pardoned Ben Nelson in the past, because unlike Joe Lieberman, he is a Democrat from a very conservative state, and in the end he voted for the Health care reform bill.
I think most of us are pretty much done with that given his votes this week against even debating Wall Street Reform.
bob h
The irony is that Buffett has always been one of the most prominent critics of derivatives, saying he doesn’t understand them.
Hamlet
I think people are missing the substance of Buffett’s issue with the new law.
He’s not against regulating derivatives, but he’s taking issue with changing the rules for contracts that are already in place.
Buffett has several very large derivative contracts with some other insurance companies. They paid him a large upfront premium, and in exchange, Buffett will have to pay them a lot of money if the stock market is down ten or so years from now. Basically, he made a bet that the stock markets of the world would have a positive return over the next ten years.
The new rules would require that he take a large sum of money and put it in escrow in case the market ends up being down and he has to pay out the money. If the rules had been written this way originally, he would have never entered into the contract, because they wouldn’t have been profitable.
Buffett wants an exemption for the existing contracts.
Imagine that you bought a car, and then a couple of years later the government decided that you should have paid a 20% sales tax on the car and decided to charge you for it retroactively. That is similar to what is going on here.
grumpy realist
Based on my two years living in Nebraska, it’s amazing how many of them a) don’t want to change anything, even if it would be better down the line, and b) disbelieve anything exists outside Nebraska.