...that Shelley Berkley is NOT your only choice for Senator:
(via http://www.barryellsworth.us)
(Note: This is not an endorsement of any candidate, just a reminder of other options.)
The combined actions of Congress and Wall Street have dealt devastating blows to the middle class and the poor, especially here in Nevada, while executives at our largest banks and corporations have been allowed to enrich themselves to obscene levels. Congress and Wall Street have put the short term profits of the few over the economic stability of the many. Their actions have destroyed jobs and thrown families from their homes and into the streets. They have created the worst recession since the Great Depression.
My name is Barry Ellsworth, and I am a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate here in Nevada, because I have had enough and I want things to change. I am tired of watching corrupt, incompetent, elected representatives destroy the economic lives of the citizens of this state and country, while not taking responsibility for how their actions have hurt families in Nevada. I am the father of two young children, and my concern for their future is the primary reason I have decided to run for office.
I have worked in the financial arena for over twenty five years of my life and I know what has caused our economic problems and what needs to be done to correct them. I also have a record as a job-creator. I am the Founder and former CEO and Chairman of Green Plains Renewable Energy, a company I started here in Las Vegas in 2004. Green Plains is currently the fourth largest ethanol producer in the world, and employs over 640 people. Unlike Shelley Berkley and Republican Dean Heller, who have spent their lives running for and being in public office, I actually know how to create jobs for Americans.
On a personal level, I have known my opponent in the Democratic primary, Shelley Berkley, for several years and I like her as a person. She is very pleasant to be around. And like many Nevadans, I have supported Shelley and other incumbents in the past because I believed them when they said that they were looking out for us. However, after all that has happened, and after doing my own due diligence on their voting records, it is very clear to me that they are not representing us and we can no longer ignore what they have done. If anything is going to change, the members of Congress need to be replaced and Wall Street needs to be effectively regulated. We need to send new leaders to Washington who will put a stop to what has been going on.
However, here in Nevada, Harry Reid is trying to maintain the status quo by not allowing anyone other than Shelley Berkley to run for the Democratic nomination. Shelley Berkley is one of the incumbent members of Congress who has caused our problems. Senator Reid recently forced Byron Georgiou out of this Senate race, which was one of the most deplorable abuses of power I have ever witnessed. We live in America and if someone wants to run for public office he or she has that right.
· We need to put people back to work and restore stability to our financial markets and banking system.
· We need to balance the budget by repealing the Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthiest Americans and by making intelligent, but deep
spending cuts that don’t put an unfair burden on working people.
· We need someone in Washington to protect the poor and the middle class and to stand up for the people who are the backbone of
our society.
Washington is not making honest, forgivable mistakes. They have been purchased by large corporate interests and have taken specific actions that have damaged the very fabric and foundations of our economy. They are also systematically dismantling the Constitution of the United States on behalf of their billionaire and Wall Street backers and they need to be fired.
In 1999, my opponent, Congresswoman Shelley Berkley, and her friends in Congress passed a bill known as Gramm Leach Bliley. That bill destroyed some of the most important financial protections that the Glass Steagall Acts of 1932 and 1933 had provided to the citizens of this country.
In the United States we have two types of banks, investment banks/securities firms on Wall Street like Goldman and Merrill Lynch and depositor banks where everyday people have historically kept their money. Glass Steagall made it illegal for an officer or a director of an Investment Bank on Wall Street to be an officer or a director of a depositor bank or an insurance company so certain unscrupulous people on Wall Street could not put other people’s money at risk, or just outright steal it. Those protections had kept the money deposited in our commercial banks safe for more than 70 years. By voting for Gramm Leach Bliley, Congress created the too-big-to-fail banks and allowed the high-rolling gamblers on Wall Street entrance into our banking system. By doing so, they virtually guaranteed that we, the taxpayers, would someday have to bail out the banks.
The next year, Congress passed The Commodities Futures Modernization Act. The bill allowed Wall Street to operate in a completely unregulated environment for the first time since the Great Depression and made it illegal for anyone to regulate “derivative financial instruments created by a bank.” The bill made it illegal for anyone to regulate Credit Default Swaps (CDS) Residential Mortgage Backed Securities (RMBS) or Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO) that were often being sold by Wall Street as AAA securities that were in reality junk. That is securities fraud yet thanks to Congress, not one person has been indicted for doing this. These unregulated “financial weapons of mass destruction” as Warren Buffett has described them, caused the near collapse of our financial system. They caused the housing bubble and its collapse, the high rate of unemployment and the worst recession since the Great Depression. Millions of people lost their jobs, their homes and their savings because of what these people have done and millions more still could because Congress has refused to put any meaningful regulation in place to properly police the derivatives market.
Throughout our history, any time we have allowed unregulated financial markets to exist, depressions and/or deep recessions have been the result.
And if Shelley Berkley or Harry Reid try to tell you they didn’t know what was in these bills, or what their consequences would be, that simply isn’'t true. Watch Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota warn the U.S. Senate about what would happen if they passed Gramm Leach Bliley HERE and HERE. He stood on the floor of the U.S. Senate and told its members that if they passed the bill, “five, ten fifteen years from now, you will regret it.” “It will raise the likelihood of future massive taxpayer bailouts.” “It is a terrible piece of legislation.” Watch Representative John Dingell of Michigan give the same warnings to the House of Representatives HERE. He said we might as well call this the “Let’s Stick it to the Public Bill,” because that is exactly what it does, along with completely destroying their privacy.
Shelley Berkley and Harry Reid knew what was in these bills and what passing them would do to the American taxpayer and to our economy. Yet still they voted to pass them. What more has to happen until we, as voters, throw the incumbent members of Congress, like Shelley Berkley, out of office?
Our representatives are elected by US to represent US. They are supposed to go to Washington and enact and enforce laws to enhance and better OUR lives. But that sadly isn’t the case today. They represent and serve Wall Street and other large corporate interests that fund their campaigns. For that to change, we have to get the money being paid to our politicians by Wall Street and other large corporate interests out of politics, and we have to get the corrupt representatives who put winning their next election over the economic security of the people out of office. For that to happen, people like me have to be willing to run for office and then people like you have to be willing to fund and support their campaigns so we can get honest people in Washington to fix our problems.
I am running to give the voters of Nevada a choice. We are not helpless. We can solve our problems
If there has ever been a time in which YOU AND I, AS A CITIZENS OF THIS STATE AND COUNTRY, NEED TO PARTICIPATE IN OUR GOVERNMENT, IT IS NOW. If you want to get special interest money out of the campaign process and send someone to Washington that will represent you and enact and enforce laws that will benefit the people, this is your chance to support a campaign Of the People, By the People and For the People.
If you want real change in Washington, PLEASE support this campaign by clicking on the CONTRIBUTE button and giving what you can. I am going to need to raise a significant amount of money to win this election, and I am going to need your help to do that. If you can afford to give $25.00, $50.00, $100.00, $250.00, $500.00, $2,500.00 or $5,000, then please give what you can. If you can afford $5.00 or $10.00, please give that. But please contribute. Then please share this information with your family, friends, co-workers and neighbors and ask them to contribute. And please don’t wait for somebody else to do it. Each of us needs to do our part to fix this state and country or things are just going to get worse, not better.
And if you really can’t contribute financially, contribute by sharing this information with everyone you possibly can and urging them to support this campaign. You can download and print flyers by clicking the "Print Flyers" link on the GET INVOLVED page that you can pass out to your friends and neighbors. Then please take a walk around your neighborhood and tape a flyer on your neighbors’ doors. Get on your computer and email this piece (which can be found on my website) to your entire email list and ask them to support me - even if they do not live in Nevada because this is not a problem in our state alone. Almost every incumbent member of Congress needs to be voted out or recalled – but it can start here.
Without your help, nothing is going to change. However, if everyone reading this would donate what they could financially, even if that was only $25 dollars, and then tell at least 10 other people about this campaign, then the people of Nevada will know they have a choice. They can vote for someone who will represent them and change things for the better. We can solve our problems and make this state and country work again.
I hope you will join us.