Katie Porter is a freshman in Congress. She ran for Congress in the 45th District in California, which has not elected a Democrat since the District was created in 1953. Porter was born in Iowa and had an elite education, studying at Phillips Academy, Yale University, and Harvard Law School (where Elizabeth Warren was one of her professors). She is a consumer advocate and a master of complex financial transactions. She co-authored a book with Warren titled The Law of Debtors and Creditors.
She has fought the abuse of mortgage holders by banks. She has planted herself firmly on the side of the little guy, the public interest, and the victims of the powerful.
In her role on the House Financial Services Committee, she has challenged some of the most powerful people in the nation. She does it with facts, logic, and subtlety. She quietly sets a trap, and then it snaps.
Watch her take apart Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, who received a salary of $31 million this year. She explains the difficulty of a teller in his bank in her district who is paid $16.50 an hour. Better than the minimum wage, but watch her quietly pin him to the wall.
The video went viral.
Paul Waldman of the Washington Post says that Porter has framed the most important issue for the 2020 election: Inequality.
He writes:
“Congratulations are in order to JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States. It just reported that in the first quarter of 2019 it made a record profit of $9.18 billion on $29.9 billion in revenue. Truly, we are living in an age of boundless prosperity.
“Well, some of us are. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, made $31 million last year. Which led to an interesting exchange between him and first-term Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) this week in a Capitol Hill hearing, when Porter asked Dimon to consider the financial situation of a teller working at Dimon’s bank in Irvine, Calif., the location of her district.
”A video of Porter questioning Dimon is spreading, and it’s an excellent reminder of something with profound implications for next year’s presidential campaign:
“Porter is uniquely situated to do this kind of questioning. A law professor with deep expertise in topics such as bankruptcy, she is quickly becoming one of the financial services industry’s most formidable critics on Capitol Hill. And she was doing more than making Dimon uncomfortable. She was obviously trying to make a larger point not just about JPMorgan Chase or even just about the banking industry, but about the American economy in general.
“That point is this: If you have a bank that’s making $9 billion in profit in a single quarter, with a CEO who makes $31 million a year, and yet people who work for that bank can’t possibly make ends meet, something is very, very wrong. And that should be at the center of the campaign of every Democrat running for president…
”Speaking of which, we just learned that as a result of that tax cut, twice as many of the largest corporations in the United States paid no taxes in 2018 as had the year before, despite making billions of dollars in profit. In many cases they even got large refunds, which means your taxes went right into their bank accounts. To take just one example, Chevron made a $4.5 billion profit and got a refund of $181 million. The banks did particularly well; the tax law increased bank profits by $28.8 billion. You’re welcome, Mr. Dimon…
”JPMorgan Chase could give every one of its 250,000 employees a $25,000 raise, and it would cost the bank only about two-thirds of the profit it made just in the first quarter of this year. But of course, it is not going to do that. We can’t rely on the generosity of corporations to tackle inequality. That’s the government’s job. Democrats just need to decide to do it, and to make clear to voters that it will be their top priority as president.”
Watch Katie Porter take on the CEO of Wells Fargo. (Ignore the misspelling on the placard she holds up. (Somebody goofed but not her.)
Watch her eviscerate the clueless head of Trump’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, explaining basic rules of consumer finance.
I love AOC.
I love Katie Porter.
These are two amazing and powerful people. They give me hope for the future.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I watched Katie Porter leave Jamie Diamon speeches. He was absolutely clueless about the solution to not leaving his employees with debt–raise their salaries, and at a level that comports with the cost of living/working in high cost places like San Francisco. She is a wonder. I will be looking at more of her clear and devastating crits of unbridled greed.
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Find any video clip of her questioning a CEO and you will be transfixed with admiration for her powerful intellect as well as her passion for economic justice.
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AGREE, Diane.
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as with other freshmen legislators speaking up and making new ideas clear, it is wonderfully inspiring to hear this kind of erudite, EDUCATED conviction
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Laura,
Google Katie Porter’s questioning of the CEO of Equifax. He made excuses for the public release of personal data about large numbers of individuals. He said it didn’t matter, no one was hurt. She asked him to put his name, address, and social security number into the public record, and of course, he refused. And she said, in effect, but that’s what you did to your clients.
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Reposted to
lonergan_l@googlegroups.com
The present discussions concerns economic theory. CBK
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“The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
Milton Friedman.
I saw that video. The woman who is the subject of the discussion, is working for a pay rate which she agreed to and accepted. She is there, working, of her own free will and accord.
She chose to have a child, and the associated costs of parenthood.
I cannot get the point that the congresswoman is making.
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You are a hard, cold man.
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Maybe I am. But the unmarried woman, who is the subject of the discussion, has made some choices. Maybe she is a widow (I doubt it), maybe she is divorced (also unlikely). She is probably never married, and she has a child alone. And her situation is (most likely) the result of her own choices.
Who should be compelled to pay for her choices?
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That’s ridiculous. Many millions of Americans live on far less than $16.50 an hour and can’t afford medical care or decent housing. Your advice is that they chose to be poor. I say theylivein a rigged economy that protects the 1% and screws the bottom 60% or more.
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Anyone … I repeat, anyone that doesn’t think someone who works a full-time job doesn’t deserve a liveable income is a heartless, ruthless, greedy, “B” word.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, “One in nine U.S. workers are paid wages that can leave them in poverty, even when working full time.”
https://www.epi.org/publication/one-in-nine-u-s-workers-are-paid-wages-that-can-leave-them-in-poverty-even-when-working-full-time/
“This statistic shows the not seasonally adjusted number of full-time employees in the United States from 1990 to 2018. In 2018, about 128.57 million people were employed on a full-time basis. The number of full-time employees in the United States has increased by almost 20 million people since 1991.”
https://www.statista.com/statistics/192356/number-of-full-time-employees-in-the-usa-since-1990/
That 1 in 9 ratio adds up to 14,285,555 million Americans working full time for poverty wages.
Anyone that works full time SHOULD, MUST, earn a liveable wage.
For instance, if In-N-Out (just one example) can pay livable wages with benefits so can every other business in the United States.
“In-N-Out employees can work their way up to $160,000 a year with no degree or previous experience”
“The burger chain offers benefits including 401(k) plans, paid vacation, and dental and vision coverage for part- and full-time employees — a rarefied package in the fast-food industry. In a Glassdoor ranking of the best places to work in 2018, In-N-Out earned the No. 4 spot and beat out tech giants like Google and Microsoft. It was the only restaurant chain in the top 50.” …
“It’s not an act of charity, according to Jayaraman. Her research shows that paying employees well leads to better productivity, less employee turnover, and bigger profits.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/in-n-out-employee-pay-2018-1
And In-N-Out is not alone when it comes to paying their employees enough to live on.
“The majority of Costco workers who spoke to Business Insider cited the compensation as a huge plus.
The trifecta of wages, benefits, and job security came up in responses from 21 employees. On Glassdoor, the 401K match, health insurance, and vacation time were the perks most frequently thrown around by reviewers.
One Costco employee told Business Insider that wages are “topped out,” and another employee said that the pay and benefits are especially good for those without a bachelor’s degree.
And what’s more, there’s “a sense of security” among Costco workers, an employee with three and a half years of experience told Business Insider.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/costco-jobs-best-part-2018-4#the-majority-of-workers-said-that-pay-benefits-and-job-security-are-a-huge-draw-1
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Charles believes that anyone living on a marginal income has only themselves to blame. He is accusing about half the population of being deadbeats.
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What is a deadbeat?
Well, a deadbeat isn’t someone working a full-time job or more than one job.
Forbes published this story: “More People Probably Work Multiple Jobs Than The Government Realizes.”
“Significant anecdotal and research evidence suggest, as Ocasio-Cortez believes and has experienced, that many poorer people work multiple jobs. According to the BLS explanation of unemployment statistics, the CPS depends on in-person or telephone interviews of people over a period of time. To include someone, it must be possible to repeatedly find the person.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2018/07/22/more-people-probably-work-multiple-jobs-than-the-government-realizes/#240fadc22a21
Another piece from the Wall Street Journal said 7.6 million working Americans had multiple jobs. (but Forbes thinks that number is higher)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-everyone-have-two-jobs-1532474015
Business Insider agrees with AOC and Forbes:
“More Americans need a 2nd job to make ends meet — and it’s sending a troubling message about the economy”
https://www.businessinsider.com/more-americans-working-more-than-one-job-to-make-ends-meet-2017-8
How many “dead beats” are there in the United States? Deadbeat as defined by someone who refused to work and lives of the social safety net.
The answer is not many.
Mashable deals with this one with “6 Welfare Myths We All Need to Stop Believing”
“Welfare recipients are often characterized as lazy, simply waiting for the next month’s benefits to roll in. But nearly 73% of people receiving public benefits are members of working families.
“Some programs, like TANF, actually operate under the expectation that families are working but need temporary assistance to become financially stable. Many argue the problem is really income inequality, which leaves minimum wage earners struggling to afford basic needs, and therefore reliant on public assistance.
“Viewing people as morally responsible for their own situations “obviously ignores the systemic inequalities in the economy and polity that make people poor in the first place,” independent scholar Gwendolyn Mink, who authored Welfare’s End and several other works on public assistance programs, tells Mashable. “The kind of income inequality that is in the system puts especially women of color at the lowest end of the earning spectrum, which is a sentence of abject poverty.”
“Even though welfare recipients are in the labor force, Mink explains, they aren’t earning enough money to support a family and provide food security for their children while at the same time pay bills, such as rent and utilities.”
https://mashable.com/2015/07/27/welfare-myths-debunked/#xPEchSbopZqn
Charles reveals his media news source and his ignorance when he spouts off like this. Fake Fox News and other misleading Alt-Right fake media sources have been pushing this lie for decades until people like Charles believe the lies.
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Charles A family relationship, especially where children are involved, is not the same as an employee/ employer relationship; neither are these two cultural entities the same value to a culture, far from it. It’s only all about the money in very short-sighted, capitalist-saturated minds. Don’t “get a job.” “Go back to school” and get a better, broader viewpoint. CBK
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Some people are beyond the ability to reason and learn from actual facts.
The environment parents create in their homes is crucial to how a child grows up and perceives the world. And the preschool child read to by their parents before the child said their first word and continues to read to them and then encourages them to read on their own later almost always ends up being a lifelong learner and lover of reading. Once a child is an avid reader, the odds heavily favor that child will always read above grade level.
Most teachers are not in a position to do what parents can do for their children.
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Thank you, Diane. I don’t think I would have found what you posted.
I agree: AOC and Porter ROCK.
Another one I have watched over the years is Senator Barbara Milkusky from Maryland. Boy did she kick butts. Funding for New Horizons was ZERO in the Bush Sr. budget even though it was already approved. Well guess who came to the rescue … a FEMALE, Barbara Milkulsky.
I love no-nonsense women with intelligence and morals. We need more of them.
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I am interested in seeing more this congressperson. There are some videos on YouTube.
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This is the way to transform the Democratic party, one or two progressives at a time = AOC, Bernie, Porter, Omar, Talieb, etc. I’d prefer a tsunami of progressives but I’ll settle for this drip, drip approach for the time being.
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We need more intelligent, ethical people in Congress. Porter is very skilled at seeing through the financial, corporate manipulations. She is a welcome change to the corporate pawns in Congress that do the bidding of the corporate masters.
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I think it is a safe bet that the DCCC’s Campaign Arm will not allocate any money (that poured in from Corporations) from its war chest to help re-elect AOC or Katie Porter.
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last time I checked, 9.8/29.9 = 32.8% profit, which by itself is obscene. I think the refusal of top management to live with a bit less profit and pay their workers better and charge their customers less is immoral.
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