In the age of Trump, bipartisanship is considered a sin. So one would think that when Republicans and Democrats do pass a law together, it'd be for something so popular, it couldn't be questioned politically: a nonbinding resolution on the cuteness of puppies, maybe, or a national ice cream giveaway.

Nope. The rare bipartisan bill turned out to be a rollback of the Dodd-Frank financial-reform act. More than 80 percent of Democrats and two-thirds of Republicans want tougher rules on banks. Yet this was our Trump-era kumbaya moment: a bank deregulation bill!

Ostensibly passed to address the causes of the 2008 crash, the Dodd-Frank Act has instead spent more than half a decade now as a hostage to a payola Congress, with both parties taking turns cutting it down and delaying its implementation. The latest indignity is S.2155, a.k.a. the "Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act." Supposedly designed to help some banks by reducing capital requirements and ending regular "stress tests," the act is really more like helping ships steam faster by allowing them to ditch their lifeboats.

But the bill isn't just unnecessary - the banking sector smashed records with $56 billion in profits in this year's first quarter - it's also a Wall Street handout disguised as an aid to "Main Street" banks.

Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a longtime critic of the "Too Big to Fail" banking system, opposed the bill. He pointed out upon passage that in one section of the act, "the change of just one word forces the Fed to weaken the rules even for the largest banks."

The microchange Brown refers to is a masterstroke of deregulatory trickery, one that should go in the Hall of Fame of legislative chicanery. The original Dodd-Frank Act said the Federal Reserve may consider weakening safety rules for a particular bank. The single word change of "may" to "shall" would mandate the Fed to consider every request for special treatment. If Bloodsucking Bank A thinks it deserves relaxed regulation, it could sue the Fed to consider its request.

Because the rules weakened under this section cover almost all the restrictions in Dodd-Frank, this "may-to-shall" trick could be the mother of all loopholes. "It's potentially the most damaging thing in the bill," is how one Senate aide put it.

But why did this bill even pass? Only 50 Republicans backed the rollback, meaning even a few members of a dependably craven Republican caucus hesitated to pull the trigger. That means they needed one Democratic vote to pass this foul thing. They got 17. Why? What made this bill the weak link in the battle line against Trump's agenda?

The 2008 crash was caused when financial companies, high on greed and the temptations of an irrationally exuberant economy, borrowed beyond their means. Leveraging themselves to the hilt, banks bet your kids' future on a losing roulette spin known as the subprime-mortgage market. Post-crash, the obvious reform was to make sure banks would have enough assets on hand that they wouldn't need bailouts the next time they ruined themselves at the tables.

Dodd-Frank told them they had to either borrow less ("reduce leverage") or have a bigger stack in reserve ("raise capital requirements"). They had to pass regular "stress tests," create contingency plans in case of collapse, and, through the so-called Volcker Rule, keep their depository and investment banking operations separate.

In recent years, however, lobbyists began to complain that the restrictions were hurting small regional banks. Currently, the rules apply to any bank with more than $50 billion in assets. The new bill raises that to $100 billion immediately, then, potentially, to $250 billion. If the carve-out goes to $250 billion in assets, roughly 99 percent of banks will be exempted from the Dodd-Frank safety provisions. So, yes, it helps out your local bank. And basically all the other banks too.

Still, Republicans and Democrats alike successfully pitched the bill as helping small business - what Elizabeth Warren described as using community banks as a "human shield."

It's a huge victory for Trump - eliminating Dodd-Frank was such an urgent need for His Orangeness that an executive order mandating the act's deconstruction was one of his first policy moves. Like his White House hirings of so many Goldman Sachs vets after loudly campaigning against the bank, Trump showed his true colors when he made killing Wall Street's most hated law a high priority.

Then again, the Democrats showed their colors when they gave him the win. Nobody will say so, but everyone on the Hill knows why this bill passed. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, three of the bill's Democratic co-sponsors, North Dakota's Heidi Heitkamp, Indiana's Joe Donnelly and Montana's Jon Tester, are three of the Senate's biggest recipients of financial-services donations. Quelle surprise!

This would be merely politically disgusting, were it not for the consequences in an overheated economy. Remember how tossing the Glass-Steagall Act during the Internet boom worked out? We should be increasing safety standards, not eliminating them. "With debt levels higher than before the last crash, a stock market bubble and wage stagnation," says Dennis Kelleher, head of the watchdog group Better Markets, "now is the worst time to deregulate the financial industry."

We've been here before - in an economy that feels shakier than suspiciously swollen stock market numbers would indicate. Either Trump is an economic genius, or we're in for a correction soon. Who feels like taking off the life jacket?
(c) 2018 Matt Taibbi is Rolling Stone's chief political reporter, Matt Taibbi's predecessors include the likes of journalistic giants Hunter S. Thompson and P.J. O'Rourke. Taibbi's 2004 campaign journal Spanking the Donkey cemented his status as an incisive, irreverent, zero-bullshit reporter. His books include Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History, The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion, Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire.

IN THE late 1980s, my secretary told me that the Deputy Chief of Staff wanted to see me.

That was rather surprising. The army command was not on friendly terms with my paper, Haolam Hazeh. For dozens of years we had been officially boycotted by the army, after publishing a story which the then Chief of Staff considered insulting.

So I was curious when I entered the Deputy's room. His name was Ehud Barak, and I had never met him before.

Our conversation turned quickly toward European military history. I was quite surprised. In general, Israeli military chiefs are technicians, not theoreticians. But, since military history happens to be a hobby of mine, I was glad to discover that Barak was quite an expert on the subject.

Thus, conversing happily about the 30-years war, I was waiting for him to bring up the matter for which he had invited me. But the time passed and no other matter emerged. There was no other matter.

EHUD BARAK was an unlikely soldier. Once his brother told me how Ehud became a commando soldier: he was short and fat as a boy, so his brother had to pull strings very hard to get him accepted by the elite unit.

The results were phenomenal. Barak was a daring commando soldier. He received several citations for personal bravery, commanded audacious exploits in enemy territory, advanced quickly in rank and in the end had filled almost every senior command post, including chief of intelligence, until he became Chief of Staff (the Commander in Chief of the armed forces).

After that it was natural in Israel for him to go into politics. In 1999, after joining the Labor Party and becoming its chief, he won the national elections against Binyamin Netanyahu.

Oh, joy! When the results were announced on the radio, there was a tremendous spontaneous outburst. Masses of people, overcome with emotion, converged on Tel Aviv's central square, the place where Yitzhak Rabin had been murdered four years earlier. I was there when Barak announced from the tribune: "This is the dawn of a new day!"

The joy was justified. Years before, Barak had told Gideon Levy that if he had been a young Palestinian, he would have joined a terrorist organization. Here was a new spirit.

But something went wrong. President Bill Clinton called for a peace conference at the Camp David resort. There the three of them - Clinton, Arafat and Barak - were to give birth to a historic peace agreement.

It did not happen. Instead of seeking the company of Arafat and airing the problems in private, Barak remained isolated in his cabin. When seated at dinner between Arafat and the young daughter of the President, Barak devoted himself exclusively to her.

True, at Camp David Barak offered peace terms which went further than those of earlier Prime Ministers, but they still fell far short of the minimum the Palestinians could accept. The conference broke up without results. A real statesman would have declared something like this: "We had a fruitful discussion. It would have been a miracle if, after a hundred years of conflict, we had reached an agreement at the first attempt. There will be more conferences, until we reach agreement."

Instead Barak made an incredible announcement: "I have offered concessions which went further than anything Israel has offered before. The Palestinians have refused everything. They want to throw us into the sea. There is no chance of peace."

Coming from the mouth of the "Leader of the Peace Camp", this turned failure into catastrophe. The Israeli peace camp collapsed. It has not recovered since. After Barak, Ariel Sharon took over, then Ehud Olmert, followed by Binyamin Netanyahu - seemingly for good. WHEN AN ordinary Israeli is asked these days "Who do you think can replace Bibi?" the almost automatic answer is: "Nobody". The voter sees no possible successor, neither in the Likud nor in the opposition.

The members of the present cabinet - male and female - are nobodies. Little politicians who are good at creating scandals and attracting public attention, but not much else. If there ever were talented leaders in the Likud, they have been removed by Netanyahu long ago.

Half the Israelis believe that "Bibi" is an excellent leader. And indeed, He looks good, is a very clever politician, a wizard of public relations. He makes a good impression abroad and manages the country's daily affairs in a passable way.

The most exact judgment about Bibi was passed by his own father, the history professor. He said: "Bibi can be an excellent Foreign Minister. But he cannot be Prime Minister!"

Nothing could be more true. Netanyahu has all the qualifications of a Foreign Minister, but he has none of the qualifications necessary for a Prime Minister. He has no vision. No answers for Israel's historic problems. No wish to overcome Israel's many internal divisions. Many Israelis hate his guts.

So who can replace him, even in theory?

THE POLITICAL field looks like a human desert. Politicians appear and disappear. The Labor Party (in its different guises) changes leaders regularly like clothes. The glamorous new boy, Ya'ir Lapid, the creator and sole chief of the "There is a Future" party, is losing his luster rapidly.

When somebody asks in a small voice: "What about....Ehud Barak?" a silence ensues. There is no easy answer.

Since leaving public life, Barak has become very rich. His main occupation seems to be advising foreign governments. He lives in the most luxurious building in the center of Tel Aviv. He has no political party. Perhaps he is waiting for The Call.

As a personality, there is no doubt that Barak stands out. He is far better qualified than any other Israeli politician. If a new young leader does not emerge from nowhere, Barak is the only person who could take Netanyahu on.

But one feels in the air a palpable hesitation. He has no following. People admire him, but do not love him. He does not inspire trust, as Rabin did. He has open contempt for people who are less talented than he, and that is a great disadvantage for a politician.

And then there is his record of past failures.

In Goethe's Faust, the outstanding work of German literature, Mephisto, the devil, introduces himself as "the force which always desires the bad and always creates the good." Similarly, Barak is an arch-angel who always desires the good and always creates the bad.

There is Camp David, of course. There was his hatred for Yasser Arafat, the only Palestinian who could have made peace with Israel.

His very superiority causes a problem. It does create suspicion.

One of Israel's two most pernicious problems is the deep-seated feeling of the immigrants from Eastern countries of having been discriminated against. (The second problem is the relationship between the Orthodox and the atheists.)

When he was Prime Minister, Barak did something unique: on behalf of the government he asked the forgiveness of the Easterners for the discrimination they had suffered. Somehow, it fell flat. No one even remembers the gesture. For Easterners, Barak looks like the typical overbearing Ashkenazi (Westerner).

Bibi Netanyahu, in contrast, is adored by most Easterners, though he is and looks as Ashkenazi as anyone can. Why? God alone knows.

SO, COME next election, would I vote for Barak?

The opportunity would arise only if Barak decides to accept the challenge and succeeds in uniting behind him all the opposition parties, which hate each other. That by itself would be a Herculean task.

If that happens, I would recommend voting for him. To be honest, I would recommend voting for anybody who seriously challenges Bibi. I believe that Bibi is leading Israel toward an abyss - an eternal war against the Palestinians, a war nobody can win.

WOULD I vote for Barak in spite of his record? Intelligent people can learn from experience (though few do).

When former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher set her nation on the path of wholesale privatization and austerity in the 1980s, she declared that "resistance is futile." "There is no alternative," she decreed, to the rule of "markets," not just in Great Britain, but for all of humanity and for all time. Thatcher found a soul mate in President Ronald Reagan, whose assault on the public sector in the U.S. -- packaged for a racist American electorate as a campaign to purge "welfare queens," and accompanied by a fierce anti-drugs and crime crusade -- was soon joined by the most shamelessly corporatist wing of the Democratic Party. President Bill Clinton completed Reagan's welfare and crime agenda and, as a final gift to Wall Street, deregulated the banks.

Thatcherism was firmly at the helm on both sides of the U.S. corporate duopoly. Democrat-based "resistance" was effectively confined to the "social issues" of abortion, gay rights and a vague quest for "diversity" -- questions whose resolution, either way, do not threaten the iron rule of capital. Barack Obama's answer to the 2008 financial meltdown was to pump at least $4.5 trillion into private finance capitalist coffers and declare, through his attorney general, that the surviving banks were "too big to fail." Although the system had come close to global collapse, an alternative remained unthinkable. Even the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011-12 dared not propose the nationalization of the banking sector. As I wrote in these pages last month, the Occupiers "walked right up to the edge of the pool, but they did not dive in."

With the rule of the rich unchallenged, is it any wonder that an arch-racist Republican oligarch sits in the White House, while the richest oligarch of all, Jeff Bezos, muses over which American metropolis he will grant the privilege of becoming his next company town? Or that Trump's Democratic opponent was Bill Clinton's partner in corporate crime, who used her husband's "foundation" to shake down the global oligarch class for tens of millions of dollars, and herself pocketed millions in speaking fees from bankers -- and who now contemplates a political comeback as the farcical queen of "resistance"?

There can be no reversal of the corporate "race to the bottom" unless the Lords of Capital are dethroned, through nationalization of their assets. Everything else is, ultimately, tinkering at the margins -- reforms that are worthwhile and necessary, but leave the "commanding heights" of political economy in the hands of the Lords of Capital.

The people would like to "break" the banks – indeed, many if not most would relish doing violence to the class that torments them to no end with fees and long ago ceased sharing even a small portion of their calculated usury with depositors. Everyone -- literally speaking -- knows that banker criminality was at the heart of the 2008 collapse, that the same institutions and thieves emerged from the debacle richer and more powerful than ever -- and everybody hates the banks. Black people despise entrenched capital most of all, and are most amenable to socialist solutions. But hatred of the banks cuts across all ethnic and most class lines. The only thing most Trump supporters hate nearly as much as their non-white fellows, is bankers. But, unless you are among the overwhelmingly white and rural residents of North Dakota, home to the only state public bank in the nation, you are not familiar with any public banking model and have never experienced a situation in which private bankers did not have the first and last word.

Fortunately, as a serendipitous consequence of the newly legalized cannabis industry, California is awash in reefer cash that cannot be deposited in federally-sanctioned banks -- a problem begging for an immediate socialistic solution. As crusading anti-banker Ellen Brown reports in a recent article, the majority of cannabis "businesses are operating on the black market without paying taxes." The state and cash-strapped municipalities want to tap these reefer-gotten gains, with Los Angeles "Mayor Eric Garcetti estimating it would bring in $30 million in taxes for the city."

Sincere reformers, having watched as private banks leached billions in profits from bond-financed public development and affordable housing efforts -- often adding 50 percent or more to the cost of the project -- got the Los Angeles City Council to agree last month to put on the November ballot a bill that would establish a public bank for the city, the largest cannabis market in the state. City Council president Herb Wesson says the lure of marijuana money has been a boon to public banking advocates, but the cannabis windfall is not "what's driving it." Anti-bankers from across the state have formed a California Public Banking Alliance to push for state-chartered banks that could handle the financing of a whole range of governmental functions and projects, saving municipalities and agencies billions in private banking fees and usurious interest rates.

These public banks will require state charters and other legal adjustments to operate outside the federally-sanctioned system, but the political prospects look good. Ellen Brown reports that state treasurer John Chiang backs public bank charters, as does Democratic gubernatorial front-runner Gavin Newsom, the current Lt. Governor. President Trump has signaled that he might not stand in the way, leaving such matters to the states.

On its Facebook page, the advocacy group Public Bank Los Angeles says getting out from under the Wall Street banks "can be a CORNERSTONE ISSUE for the progressive movement here at home and beyond." They continue:

"Right now, our taxpayer dollars are being held by private banks like Wells Fargo, who use our money to invest in immigrant detention centers, destructive fossil fuel pipelines, private prisons and other socially and environmentally harmful projects.

"The best way to DIVEST from these horrible investments is to move our money out of Wall Street and into a public bank!

"Are you an environmentalist? Join the movement and find out how a public bank can help the City of Los Angeles invest in a clean, green renewable future where solar and wind power our cities, not dirty and destructive fossil fuels.

"Are you fighting against homelessness and for affordable housing? Public banking can dramatically lower the costs of affordable housing and take control back from the too-powerful developers and private banks.

"Do you fight for economic justice, including supporting the needs of the unbanked and underbanked? Organize with us and find out how public banking can be a powerful solution to provide banking services to those in need, keeping people away from payday lenders and other predatory institutions.

"Why do we allow private banks to syphon off our taxpayer dollars and extract wealth from our communities, when real alternatives exist? Why does the power to create money lie in the hands of obscenely rich and powerful bankers, who gamble with our money and our livelihoods? Why does Wall Street take a 50% cut of our infrastructure spending, when we have such severe and pressing needs?"

Donald Trump's new Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, could determine how the court rules on cases that shape the future of voting rights in the United States. And if his track record is any indication, many Americans could be disenfranchised as a result.

As a judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, Kavanaugh voted in 2012 to uphold a South Carolina voter ID law that the Obama administration said would disenfranchise tens of thousands of minority citizens. The Justice Department blocked the law, which required government-issued photo identification to vote, in late 2011 for violating the Voting Rights Act.

"The absolute number of minority citizens whose exercise of the franchise could be adversely affected by the proposed requirements runs into the tens of thousands," wrote Tom Perez, who was then assistant attorney general for civil rights and now leads the Democratic National Committee. The Justice Department found that more than 80,000 minority registered voters in South Carolina did not have DMV-issued identification, with African Americans 20 percent more likely than whites to lack such ID.

But when South Carolina then sought approval for its law from a three-judge court panel in Washington, DC, Kavanaugh wrote the opinion upholding it. He found that the controversial law "does not have a discriminatory retrogressive effect" and "was not enacted for a discriminatory purpose." He pointed to a Supreme Court decision upholding Indiana's voter ID law in 2008. "The Supreme Court's affirmation of the general legitimacy of the purpose behind a voter ID law is consistent with the fact that many States-particularly in the wake of the voting system problems exposed during the 2000 elections-have enacted stronger voter ID laws, among various other recent changes to voting laws."

From 2011 to 2012, 19 states controlled by Republicans passed laws restricting access to the ballot. These included voter ID laws, cutbacks to early voting, and restrictions on voter registration that disproportionately targeted Democratic constituencies, like voters of color.

South Carolina didn't present any cases of voter fraud to justify its law, but Kavanaugh wrote that such laws were constitutional despite an absence of evidence of fraud. "We conclude that South Carolina's goals of preventing voter fraud and increasing electoral confidence are legitimate; those interests cannot be deemed pretextual merely because of an absence of recorded incidents of in-person voter fraud in South Carolina," he wrote.

Kavanaugh's opinion suggests that when it comes to voting rights, he would reliably side with the Supreme Court's conservative majority, which in 2013 gutted the Voting Rights Act, ruling that states with a long history of voting discrimination no longer needed federal government approval for election changes. This year, the court's conservatives also upheld voter purging in Ohio and racial gerrymandering in Texas.

Kavanaugh downplayed the racially charged origins of South Carolina's voter ID law and its impact on voters of color. Members of the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus walked out of the legislature when the bill was first considered. After the law passed, Ed Koziol, a Republican supporter of the law, wrote an email to the bill's author, Rep. Alan Clemmons of Myrtle Beach, saying that if African Americans were offered a $100 award for obtaining voter ID, "you would see how fast they got voter ID cards with their picture. It would be like a swarm of bees going after a watermelon."

"Amen, Ed," Clemmons responded. "Thank you for your support of voter ID."

Though Kavanaugh said he was "troubled" by that racist email, he wrote that "one legislator's failure to immediately denounce those views in his responsive email, as he later testified he should have done - do not speak for the two Houses of the South Carolina Legislature, or the South Carolina Governor."