Always liberal.  Always available for comment.  And now, the pushy-bottom of the banking industry, shoving Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions off the bed so he can have them all to himself. New York’s Senior Senator, Chuck Schumer, shows that a Dem can be just as sleazy as anyone else when it comes to endearing himself to the banking industry.

From the New York Times :

After years of fighting Mr. Ballard at the federal Patent Office, in court and across a negotiating table, the banks went to see one of their best friends in Congress, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who inserted into a patent overhaul bill a provision that appears largely aimed at helping banks rid themselves of the Ballard problem. The Senate passed the bill easily in March.
The proposal would allow banks to get a federal re-examination of certain patents that they have been accused of infringing, specifically limited to “a financial product or service.”

Yet again, the banking industry would rather lobby politicians than have to pay for infringing the patents of DataTreasury, Claudio Ballard’s company that created the now ubiquitous process of imaging checks.  This is hardly new, as they’ve been  trying for years to get Congress to  pass a law to  relieve them of their liability.  It’s just the darn Patent Office and courts, in case after case, keep holding the big banks liable for stealing the tech they use to save billions of dollars in processing costs.  But really, we love big banks and want them to make money, don’t we?  And who really cares about some company in Plano making big bankers unhappy?

Chuck Schumer doesn’t.

Mr. Schumer said he believed he did the right thing. “This is a case where one company has made a cottage industry out of extracting legal settlements by exploiting a fuzzy part of the law on patents,” he said. “When New York institutions are in the right and under assault, I will support them all the way. If these lawsuits are legit, the company should have no problem letting the patent office do an independent review.”

Cool story, bro.  So what if DataTreasury’s patents have passed scrutiny already.  So what it they’ve passed scrutiny twice already.  What’s a third “independent review,” if they’re legit?

DataTreasury patents have already been reviewed and validated by the patent office, but the bill would allow for an expanded consideration of other elements in a new review format.

Now there’s a neat trick, changing the rules after the fact.

Calling a company that created the process used by every bank in the nation to save, and hence earn, untold billions of dollars a “cottage industry” for trying to recapture the loss from banks shamelessly stealing from them is just a bit disingenuous, Chuck.  Same with saying big banks are under “assault,” though one might hope they would be under assault from the government for a wealth of shenanigans in mortgage markets and derivatives, but that would hardly get any senator a campaign contribution from appreciative corporate constituents.

It’s said that a conservative is a liberal with a mortgage, and a liberal is a conservative under indictment.  So what’s the right thing to call a New York Democratic Senator who lies in bed on silk sheets awaiting the love of the banking industry?  We need not stress too much over the description, as can just call him by name. Right, Chuck?