Amid the ongoing uproar over Mitt Romney's snooty remarks at a Florida fundraiser concerning the "47 percent" who pay no federal income taxes, the party's high-rolling host hasn't drawn quite as much attention as he deserves. As the head of private equity firm Sun Capital Partners, Marc Leder is a longtime associate of the Republican nominee — and a practitioner of the same dubious behavior that has smudged Romney's reputation.

Leder has been dogged by tabloid headlines recounting his nasty divorce and wild partying (replete with reported nudity and public sex around the pool at a summer house he rented on Long Island's East End — for $500,000 a month). What he has in common with Romney, however, isn't a taste for bacchanalian revels but a record of business and taxation practices that working Americans might find troubling.

At the moment, Leder is under investigation by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who subpoenaed internal records from Sun Capital, Bain Capital, and several other private equity giants last July.

Issued by the Attorney General's taxpayer protection bureau, the subpoenas were evidently designed to probe whether Leder and other executives had misused "carried interest," a method of reducing tax liability by converting management fees into investment income — which is taxed at the lower capital gains rate of 15 percent that keeps Romney's taxes lower than the rate paid by many middle-income families. (Tax analysts say that Bain Capital records released last August indicate that the firm may have saved more than $200 million in federal taxes thanks to the carried-interest ...

Eric Schneiderman was right.

New York State's Attorney General told an audience at the Take Back the American Dream Conference that we need a "transformational politics" that will change the way we look at ourselves, our society, and our economy.

The wealthy have amassed an ever-greater share of our national income through conscious policy choices, said Schneiderman, not through an act of God. They’ve been able to divert our nation from a production economy to a financial-speculation economy the same way.

Schneiderman was suggesting that political action should help us change the way we view our economic world.

Free Your Mind, Arrests Will Follow

I couldn't agree more. Thanks to an expensive and intensive decades-long campaign of propaganda and political influence-peddling, many Americans re-adopted a mythology about wealth that had been discredited and abandoned by most of the world (including the United States) in the 20th Century. We need to transform ourselves, remove the blinders, and see things as they really are.

Schneiderman's distinction between "transformational" and "transactional" politics was also valid: Voters don't just want to see a legislative accomplishment - any accomplishment - regardless of its impact. They want to see accomplishments that reflect who we are as a people, and which advance us as a society.

But transformation will need some involvement from the world of "transactional" activity, too. As I told the group, I can't think of any single act that would be more "transformative" that the arrest of a senior Wall Street executive.

Wall Street: CSI

The occasion was a panel discussion on "Taking On Wall Street" moderated by MSNBC's Alex ...

There is some good news in the fight for homeowners and against the big banks. Homeowners who are facing foreclosures because of unfair and often illegal practices by the major financial Goliaths are learning how to organize, how to shame bank executives and how to get local media attention.

But a panel of activists at Netroots Nation also expressed disappointment that there has not yet been any prosecutions of banking industry executives for any of the wrongdoing that led to the financial crisis and the millions of home foreclosures that followed.

That disappointment will greet Eric Schneiderman, the New York state attorney general who is also the head of an investigative task force on the financial crisis commissioned by President Obama, when he speaks tonight at a Netroots Nation plenary session.

Tracy Van Slyke, the director of New Bottom Line, one of the progressive grassroots organization leading the effort to break up the big banks and hold them accountable for causing the financial crisis, reflected the mood of the panel when she said that she was viewing the work of Schneiderman and the task force "with growing disappointment and growing anger" because of its slow progress.

Matt Browner-Hamlin, senior economic strategist at the Citizen Engagement Lab, said that top banking executives have already testified to actions before Congress that should lead to indictments, but so far they have not. There is a need for some real heroes in the fight against the big banks, Browner-Hamlin said, and "I had hoped that Schneiderman would be one of those heroes. Unfortunately, that's not going to be the case."

The heroes instead have been ordinary homeowners facing the threat of losing their homes who have found that by banding together with community activists and other homeowners they can often curb the big banks' worst behavior and begin to move public opinion on such issues as whether the big ...

Twenty-two states joined an amicus brief that will be filed today in the Supreme Court by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) calling for the Supreme Court to back off its election-buying decision in Citizens United. The brief, which supports the state of Montana’s effort to preserve its ban on corporate money in elections, argues that state elections present an even greater risk than federal elections of being corrupted by corporate money — and thus states should be allowed to restrict such money even if the justice  READ FULL POST 10 COMMENTS

Forgery. Perjury. Investor fraud. Bribery. Money laundering. The body of evidence against individuals at the nation’s biggest banks is overwhelming. Nothing speaks louder about the banks’ guilt than this evidence - nothing, that is, except the billions they’ve paid to settle the charges.

The Administration reacted indignantly this week to suggestions it’s still slow-walking its investigation. And then, despite all this evidence, the Treasury Secretary of the United States proclaimed that no laws had been broken. And the White House wonders why its word is no longer enough?

A source in the office of a key figure in the investigation has denied a new story that they’re ruled out criminal prosecutions. But the burden of proof has shifted. Nothing will convince the public now except action.

Straw Men

Whether it’s JPMorgan Chase settling bribery charges in Alabama, Wells Fargo settling charges of laundering drug-cartel money in Mexico, or the nation’s five largest banks buying their way out of widespread foreclosure fraud and tax evasion, never in history has so much evidence led to so little action. Investigators pinpointed the fraudulent activity of individual accountants in GE Capital’s settlement with the SEC, only to be dumbfounded to discover that no criminal indictments were handed down.

So it was nothing short of astonishing to hear the Secretary of the Treasury assert yesterday that no crimes were committed by America’s banks, saying that “most financial crises are caused by a mix of stupidity and greed and recklessness and risk-taking and hope” and adding “you can't legislate away stupidity and risk-taking and greed and recklessness.”

That’s a ...

Two thousand bucks for having your home illegally foreclosed on is an insult. But two billion dollars' worth of lawyers suing bankers on behalf of wronged homeowners could change everything. And a real investigation into bank crime could make a real difference.

Will we get those things? Maybe - but only if we fight for them.

There are still opportunities to take action. (There's even a loophole in the deal that could still leave banks on the hook for robo-signing crimes.) So rather than attacking one another - something progressives are very good at - why don't we build pressure for the best outcome we can get?

Yesterday I was asked if I woukld appear on KPFK radio this morning discuss the foreclosure fraud settlement. This morning they told me they'd added David Dayen of Firedoglake, whose reporting on this deal continues to be the best anywhere, "to get a different perspective." It was a great discussion, but if they were looking for disgreement I'm afraid we disappointed them. (audio