Bank Transfer Day November 5

(This post first appeared on October 11, and is reposted to reflect the growth of the movement, which has seen 650,000 credit union accounts opened in the past four weeks -- as many as in all of 2010. Mine is one of them. Make yours one tomorrow or Saturday.)

Now this would be a statement.

Even with most credit unions closed for Columbus Day there was plenty of online buzz, and uncertainty, about what the credit union industry role might be on “Bank Transfer Day,” the latest event surfacing from the “Occupy Wall Street” protests.

Industry sources, speaking off the record, suggested any wholesale switch from large banks to CUs on Nov. 5, the day designated by one Californian and carried aTwitter Monday, could conceivably put net worth ratios out of whack.

The balance sheet problem was raised by several industry officials as a potential hazard as online articles focused on what “Occupy” supporters are calling now for a specific action to underscore their complaints against big banks and corporate greed.

For the record, Mark Wolff, CUNA senior vice president-communications, said only that the trade group welcomes the idea of “a viral 'Bank Transfer Day'” since it shows “just how angry consumers are becoming with their treatment by big banks” and will now look at CUs.

CUNA said its Facebook posts have already witnessed big jumps in traffic on www.asmarterchoice.org. There also have been big gains on www.findacreditunion.org.

I first saw this as a movement at least a year ago at the Move Your Money Project.

Wire service reports Monday identified the ringleader of “Bank Transfer Day” as Kristen Christian, a 27-year-old Los Angeles art gallery owner who said she is not affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street protest, but that demonstration organizers had reached out to her to express support.

Christian reportedly chose Nov. 5 because of its association with 17^th century British folk hero Guy Fawkes, who tried to blow up the British House of Lords but was captured on that day.

A Facebook page for the event states that "together we can ensure that these banking institutions will ALWAYS remember the 5th of November! If the 99% removes our funds from the major banking institutions on or by this date, we will send a clear message and give the 1% a taste of the fear that we experience every day when we aren't able to pay for our rent, food, medication, utilities, student loans, etc."

I'm in. How about you?

The latest on Houston's elections

-- Texas Watchdog has a in-depth story on where HISD's candidates get their campaign contributions from: HISD vendors. Yet another depressing expose' into how our local officials are compromised by the money in politics.

Our analysis of three years' worth of campaign donations shows that vendors and contractors to the Houston Independent School District gave nearly half of all contributions to the incumbents in the past three years.

Here's a spreadsheet of the twenty largest contributors, which include an executive search firm that wanted to conduct the headhunting for Terry Grier's replacement, Centaurus Advisors (they've been mentioned here recently) and the maintenance and construction contractor for the school district, which has earned over $3 million and given back $62,000 in campaign donations.

Go look at their interactive tools to see each candidate's contributions.

-- At Large #2 legacy candidate Bolivar Fraga may have cleared up his campaign loan woes by paying it off early, but there are still plenty of reasons not to vote for him. Big Jolly's Yvonne Larsen also throws rocks at Stephen Costello, Mayor Annise Parker, and Ellen Cohen.

See? We do agree on some things.

-- I got some calls this week on my reporting relative to "Swift Boat" Bob Perry's contributions to District C candidate Ellen Cohen. Those callers essentially asked the same question: why I was holding Cohen to a higher standard than I held, say, Melissa Noriega, or Mayor Annise Parker, or Controller Ronald Green. (I could not find any record of homebuilder Perry's contributions to the mayor or the controller, but I'm not as good at sleuthing these things out as others.)

I thought the answer was obvious, but I'll explain again: Noriega, Parker, and Green do not have acceptable alternative, much less progressive, challengers. And all three have also met -- at times exceeded -- minimum acceptable job performance standards for this observer. All three earned endorsement from this corner... if only half-heartedly in the mayor's case. And as posted earlier, the contribution itself wasn't so much my issue with Cohen as it was the controversy created in the atmosphere around it.

"Non-partisan" general elections with multiple candidates, like primary elections where all the choices are from the same party, are the voters' opportunity to pick the best candidate among several. And the quality of of a solid progressive choice in the general election in Karen Derr is what drove my endorsement. Cohen, again as previously written, may emerge as the only acceptable (and progressive) choice in a runoff. If she does, I can easily support her election.

I'm sure there will be more developments with Election Day less than a week away. Go vote early if you haven't already.