Ron “Wall Street” Kind

Check Out Rep. Ron ‘Wall Street’ Kind’s Kindly Corporate Investors

  Rep. Ron Kind talks with one constituent and ignores another. What do one of the founders of Facebook, the chief operating officer or Blackstone Group, the American Association of Clinical Urologists and the co-chairman of Bain Capital have in common? By Eric Timmons La Crosse Independent (6/13/200 It’s not a trick question. All are donors to U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, D-La Crosse. Other big donors to Rep. Kind have included opioid distributors, their subsidiaries and employees, who gave $210,000 to the congressman’s campaigns over the last decade. Rep. Kind, a former chair of the right-leaning New Democrat Coalition in the U.S. House, is…

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A Commoner Writes: A Letter To Rep. Ron Kind

Congressman Kind, I will keep this short and simple. Bring back parity pricing and stop a**-licking Wall Street. Current farm policy does not work. Parity pricing makes capitalism work the way FDR made capitalism work. While you are at it bring back Glass-Steagall. The system is bankrupt. While you are at it, support the bill for an infrastructure bank. It is long overdue. Notice I left out the farcical Green New Deal. What you are peddling currently is pure bunk. Signed, Dan Roche, (a former constituent) Prairie du Chien, WI.


How Democrats Are Working Closely With Their Republican Allies To Launch A Corporate Counter-Revolution Against Progressive Reform & The American People

Whatever resistance exists in the nation’s capital, it is so often performance art, rather than anything real. By David Sirota The Guardian (5/26/20) These are bleak days for America’s progressive movement. The Democratic primary process handed the party’s nomination to the candidate with the most conservative record. Corporate-friendly politicians like the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, are using the pandemic to brandish their images and install billionaires to run things. Progressive lawmakers in Congress are being steamrolled, even by their own party’s leadership. And a recession is battering the state and local budgets that fund progressive priorities like education and the social…



A Letter To Rep. Ron Kind: The Growing Severity Of Pandemic Is Grounded In Your Failed Neoliberal Corporate Politics

  Now — like no other in your time in office — is the time to get your priorities straight: Defend the needs of citizens. By Mark L. Taylor Commoner Call (4/2/20) On Wednesday I got an email from the Daily Kos asking me to send off a comment to my representative, Wisconsin Third Congressional District Rep. Ron Kind (D). The following is what I sent in. Unfortunately, the points raised with Rep. Kind apply to the vast majority of congressional ‘representatives’ of both parties. Over the past 40 years they have systematically nailed together the conditions that are ready…



Hooked: Meet The Most Corporate PAC-Addicted Reps In Congress. Guess Who Is No. 4 On The List…

Rep. Ron kind doing his best to ignore the needs and desires of his constituents for universal Medicare For All health care at the 2018 Third Congressional District Democratic Convention.   By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (1/21/19) Wisconsin’s Rep. Ron Kind ranks as Number 4 Top Corporate PAC Sell-Out in the House of Representatives!!! Want to have health care coverage for your kids? Well don’t bother talking to “Bottom Dollar” Ron Kind, the Wisconsin rep financed and funded by the corrupt industrial ‘health’ complex. The photo is from the Third CD 2018 convention, where “Bottom Dollar” jumped away…


Rep. Ron ‘Wall Street’ Kind Betrays The Needs Of Wisconsin With Cowardly 0-For-5 Stance On Bills Important To Our Future

By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (8/9/18) For those who closely watch Rep. Ron ‘Wall Street’ Kind there is a clear understanding of the two Ron Kinds. The first is the upbeat, sunny, good looking, glad-handing pol with the rolled up sleeves waving to the crowds at the annual Westby Syttende Mai parade. The second is the corporate D.C. functionary casting reliable votes making things easier for Wall Street bankers and, with his recent falling into line to support the mind bending $717 billion annual War Department budget, military contractors. The democratic republican As the story below details, on…


Suddenly Gun Shy: The NRA Dropped Lawmaker Ratings From Their Website, But They’re Not Saying Why

  By Hunter The Daily Kos (6/12/18) Over the weekend, reporters noticed an odd thing about the National Rifle Association’s website: The NRA “ratings” for lawmakers, giving them letter grades for their willingness to block new gun restrictions and weaken existing ones, had vanished without explanation. Was it a glitch, or something else? The nation’s largest domestic terrorism lobby is clamming up about the change, but the Washington Post’s Phillip Bump was able to pry the barest hint of information from an unnamed NRA staffer when he called for an explanation. “I think our enemies were using that,” he said. He…


Rep. Ron Kind’s New Democrat Coalition Key In Voting To Gut Essential Bank Failure Protections

By Dennis Brault The Commoner Call (5/28/18) Trump just signed, and a bipartisan congress passed (RON KIND), a bill that says banks worth $249- $50 billion are NOT deemed important enough and therefore are allowed to fail. Four regional banks fail, worth $249 billion each, and a quick trillion evaporates from the economy. Regional and medium sized banks are doing fine and don’t need this. How is this loss of taxpayer protections, against a future economic bubble bursting, a good thing? Why RON KIND? Why would congress do this? Why RON KIND? It couldn’t be that this is an election…


A Commoner Writes: Ron Kind Deserves Praise For Joining Climate Solutions Caucus

  This is big news.  We’ve been lobbying Rep. Ron Kind (D) to join the Climate Solutions Caucus since its inception.  He has shown interest, but the big challenge was for him to find a Republican representative to join with him — a case of bi-partisan outreach that may lead to meaningful political action on climate change. Progressive hard-liners (such as Naomi Klein) may argue that the only way to save the earth is a total overthrow of the present order, but for many of us, the issue of climate change is such a pressing and overriding challenge, that we…


WTH, Dems? Tammy Baldwin, Gwen Moore & 7 Other Democrats Sign Up To Protect Wall Street Corporate Car Thieves

  By Zach Carter The HuffPost (4/22/18) If an ordinary person committed any of the abuses listed in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s latest complaint against Wells Fargo, other ordinary people might call it “theft,” or “car theft.” Alas, Wells Fargo is only considered an ordinary person when it spends money on elections. The rest of the time, it is a too-big-to-fail bank, and improperly relieving its customers of their automobiles is just one of a few “unfair acts and practices” to which it neither admitted nor denied when it agreed to settle a federal investigation on Friday. But the…


Healthcare For All: Rep. Ron Kind Misses A Big Opportunity To Show Leadership & Listen To Voters

Rep. Ron Kind ignores the health care concerns of 3rd Congressional District democrats this past Saturday in Sparta.   By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (3/15/18) This past Saturday the Democratic Party Third Congressional District Convention was held in the American Legion Hall in Sparta. Somewhere around 100 democratic party activists from all over the far flung 3rd CD gathered to hear from candidates for a variety of offices, debate a slate of interesting resolutions and network with other activists. A contingent of Vernon County delegates (I was one) decided we needed to carry the cause of Medicare For…


Local Group Urges Rep. Kind To Take Direct Action To Strengthen Our Families By Supporting Medicare For All

  By Evan Dvorsack The La Crosse Tribune (2/18/18) There was a consensus among the crowd at Congressman Kind’s listening session last week [2/12] in La Crosse: The U.S. health care system needs radical change, and a Medicare for All system, as proposed in HR 676 “The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act,” is the best way forward. Even Rep. Kind admitted “it’s an aspiration I share,” but he expressed some concerns about the bill. I will address those concerns below. But first, what is Medicare for All, as laid out in HR 676? Medicare for All (also known…


Scarlet Letter: What The NRA ‘A’ Rating Is Really All About

  “Lives Over Bribes” — Gun control rally sign. By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (2/22/18) The recent mass shooting — the latest bauble on the bloody necklace of American exceptionalism — has ignited the recent episode of national gun cult debate we have all grown numbingly use to. There are the predictable laments of “never thought it could happen here”, the candle-lit vigils, prayer services, grieving families, parades of ambulances and the empty thoughts and cynical prayers of the nation’s supposed ruling class. A ruling class that just can’t bring itself to even consider a tiny less wealth…


School Shooters Love Wisconsin’s Bipartisan Congressional Accomplices

  By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (2/19/18) School and other mass shooters do not act alone. They are assisted by politicians on the take to the National Rifle Association. Through their indifference and coldly calculating, never satiated hunger for campaign cash and other benefits, these pols ignore the wishes of the majority of Americans to bring some legislative sanity to our gun cult. When the shooters begin their rampages they have been legislatively protected, coddled and assisted by those who are supposed to represent us. The National Rifle Association loves to splurge their cash — including donations from…


CARTOON: How Rep. Ron Kind Chose To Observe Today’s 5th Anniversary Of The Sandy Hook Slaughter Of Innocent Children & Teachers

  Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (12/14/17) On Dec. 6 Wisconsin’s Democratic Rep. Ron Kind Voted For The National Rifle Association’s ‘Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017’, Which Overrides State & Local Protections From Handgun Violence. In many states, including Wisconsin, concealed carry gun permits are easier to get than a drivers license. Two states encourage mail-in orders for concealed carry gun permits from non-residents. Few states require permit holders to pass any kind of rigorous, real-world training and evaluation of gun handling skills and judgment. On December 6 Rep. Ron Kind joined his close pal republican Rep. Paul…


They Can’t Handle The Truth: Ron Kind’s ‘Third Way’ Comes To Wisconsin, Heard What It Wanted To Hear And Continues With It’s Clinton Corporate Delusions

  The researchers had somehow found their premise perfectly illustrated. Their journey to Trump’s America had done nothing to unsettle their preconceptions. By Molly Ball The Atlantic (10/23/17) It was the hippies who drove Nancy Hale over the edge. She had spent three days listening respectfully to the real people of Middle America, and finally she couldn’t take it any longer. She turned off the tape recorder and took several deep breaths, leaning back in the passenger seat of the rented GMC Yukon. The sun had just come out from behind a mass of clouds, casting a gleam on the rain-soaked…


Wisconsin Dem Rep. Ron Kind Helps House Pass Pork-Laden Military Bill Sure To Make ‘War Profiteers Rejoice’

  “While war profiteers rejoice, voters wonder why the government cannot provide for education, job creation, healthcare, and needs in their community.”   By Jake Johnson Common Dreams (7/14/17) The U.S. House on Friday [7/14] overwhelmingly approved a $696 billion defense policy bill—the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)—that critics were quick to denounce as yet another vote for “endless wars” and “Pentagon boondoggles.” “Every year, Congress authorizes billions of dollars of Pentagon pork at the expense of other security needs and other taxpayer priorities,” Paul Kawika Martin, senior director for policy and political affairs at Peace Action, said in a statement. “While war profiteers…


Ron Kind One Of Only 5 Dem Reps Supporting Killing Hibernating Bear Cubs & Wolf Pups In Their Dens On Federal Refuges In Alaska

  By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (4/3/17) Wisconsin progressives are use to nominally democratic Rep. Ron Kind aligning himself with the most venal and corrupt Wall Street interests. His participation in Wall Street funded groups like the Third Way puts him in the role of butler and pool boy to the powerful. Despite this, the congress critter manages to keep a wholesome, sunny reputation in Wisconsin’s Third Congressional District, with most voters having no idea Ron is aligned with corporate interests that would like to take a chainsaw to well earned benefits programs like Social Security and Medicare….


CARTOON KNOWLEDGE: What’s A ‘Snollygoster’? We Have Three Prime Examples In Wisconsin

By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (2/27/17) Commoner Call reader Richard Smith sent in a note the other day alerting me to probably the best word I have ever seen to describe a politician. It is one of those words that sounds exactly like what it means: snollygoster. It’s perfectly suited to a particular brand of politician citizens on both sides of the American political chasm have come to loathe. Truly, snollygoster is a tag with bipartisan applications. While all politicians have to occasionally stretch the truth or compromise on some campaign promise or utter some meaningless BS to…


A Guy Oughta’ Ask Why In A Year Of Change GOP Didn’t Run Against Rep. Kind…

(The Commoner Call & Lines of Resistance cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2017. Open source and free to use with link to www.thecommonercall.org ) ***** By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (1/30/17) A fellow commoner forwarded Rep. Ron Kind’s latest fundraiser, posted above. The underlying assumption, I’m guessing, of the congress critter’s appeal is that he is such a stellar democrat not even the Trump wave could take him out. Of course the GOP did not even field a candidate in 2016. Nevertheless, folks are urged to pony up some bucks if they want to keep their wonderful congressman…