Auditor candidate vows to expose Wall Street corruption

Kentucky - like many other states - has an elected office of auditor, which has some important fiscal responsibilities. Christopher Tobe is a candidate for auditor in next Tuesday's Democratic primary, and he's promised to expose Wall Street corruption that plagues the state's public pension system.

Tobe, a financial adviser, says he wants to use the auditor's subpoena power to open the books on the pension system. This would expose the system's reliance on private equity and hedge fund investments that have allowed investors to gamble with workers' hard-earned money.

For several years, the pension crisis has been trotted out by Republicans and the right-wing media as an excuse for trying to slash pension benefits or replace pensions with a 401(k)-style program that would give workers' earnings to wealthy investors. At the same time, Kentucky's crooked Republican machine wasted taxpayer money compiling a report demanding the federal government slash Social Security benefits, so it isn't only pensions they're trying to cut.

By opening the books of Kentucky's pension system, other states may be encouraged to do the same. This scares the living dickens out of Wall Street and Republicans. Kentucky's system is worse than most states though because it actually farmed out some of its work to a Wall Street investment firm.

Now more than ever before, Republicans have promoted hate crimes, passed laws to trample bodily autonomy, and fostered unchecked militarism. But the GOP is also ear-deep in Wall Street - an industry that has robbed workers in Kentucky and elsewhere.