Jon Stewart demolishes senators for swooning over JP Morgan CEO

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

On his show Thursday night, The Daily Show host Jon Stewart mocked members of the Senate Banking Committee for going soft on JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon after his firm lost at least $2 billion gambling on derivatives.

During the hearing, Republican senators complimented Dimon and praised his financial empire.

“What is going on with this panel of senators,” Stewart wondered. “They’re sucking up to Dimon like they’re on JP Morgan’s payroll.”

It turns out, the biggest campaign donor to many of the senators was JP Morgan. Throughout the hearing, the senators asked for Dimon’s advise and berated their own legislative body.

Stewart ripped into Sen. Bob Corker in particular. The Senator had questioned the effectiveness of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill, even though he fought against key provisions of the law.

“Must be nice to be a Republican senator sometimes,” he joked. “Cus you get the fun of breaking shit and the joy of complaining the shit you just broke doesn’t work.”

Watch video, via Mediaite, below:

Five U.S. Senators Are Perfect Koch Servants, Americans For Prosperity Reports

By Brad Johnson/think Progress

Five senators and 39 representatives received a perfect 100 percent score from the Koch brothers’ Astroturf group Americans For Prosperity for the first half of the 112th Congress. AFP judged Congress on their votes to protect the Koch brothers’ right-wing petrochemical empire on such issues as the repeal of President Obama’s new health care law, preempting EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget to end Medicare, ending ethanol subsidies, several Congressional Review Act resolutions of disapproval to overturn new regulations and the fiscal year 2012 appropriations bills.

The Koch Five are Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Ron Johnson (R-WI), who have received a combined $187,400 in campaign contributions from the Koch empire:

THE KOCH FIVE
Senator	Koch Contributions
Coburn (R-OK)	$56300
Crapo (R-ID)	$42000
Hatch (R-UT)	$26500
Rubio (R-FL)	$34700
Johnson (R-WI)	$27900

The Kochs were the top contributors to Ron Johnson’s successful campaign to unseat Russ Feingold in 2010. Like first-termers Rubio and Hatch, Coburn has a perfect lifetime Koch score