Bailout Paulson? Bullshit!

[Boondog]

Everyone is now aware of just how unprecedented the proposed Paulson Plan is, and how, though it proposes a short term "fix" (in a junky sense) for economic woes, all it does is treat the flashiest symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.
There are many other unaddressed symptoms of the unregulated Paulson (Goldman-Sachs' - can't be said enough) Wall Street, ones that most people are very aware of. This problem is not so esoteric as they would want us to believe, and I tend to think that people are not so stupid that they can't understand a clever and massive criminal scheme if given the facts, and IF FEAR DOESN'T GET IN THE WAY.

People are familiar with poverty, the inevitable consequence of an extraordinary concentration of wealth that's crept up on us over the last 30 years, and been going gangbusters the last 8. Foreclosures, evictions, and still banks go under. Huge, as yet uncalculated, loss of retirement investments. State and federal funding availability for infrastructure just drying up. Government funding for education, healthcare, and any hope of a concerted effort to address global warming from (what used to be) the wealthiest government in the world... just floating away like a CO2 laden cow-fart on the wind. These are just a few within the cascade of symptoms caused by, well, it's hard to say it simply, but greed, I suppose comes closest. Avarice.

But we also know this problem comes from a strangely (or intentionally) naive position, brought to its paradigmatic form in the works of Milton Friedman. An economic model of a completely free market, one that will self regulate and promote untolled wealth for the most agressive and for the rest of you a whiff of "democracy and freedom." Hah. A self-serving fundamentalist fool's story that can only go over when told by the rich and powerful to cover up their awful sins. And not too many people are buying it these days, at least here in Montana.

They've (neocons, privateers, Reagan Republicans, Augusto Pinochet...) been telling themselves these lies so long that they believe they are doing good by stealing money. And that's what they did. Steal money. Credit default swaps (just one example)???!!! Forsooth, a Ponzi scheme of the most massive proportions, if ever there was one.

Now we are told by Bush last night, by Paulson and Bernanke every day and every hour they can get press time, and by the main stream media because that's what they like to do, that DISASTER LOOMS. What the hell does that mean? Disaster for whom? In what form? Catastrophe? Oooh, a second "Great Depression," according to Sarah Palin. They are talking about losing some billions of dollars, numbers in a computer somewhere that never passed through a real person's wallet. Whatever real dollars there were have already mostly been stuffed into corporate officer's (and Hank Paulson's, by the way) bank accounts. Out of my hands and into theirs.

And they have the audacity now to say the only way I can protect my financial well being, my family, my home, my life, is to pay up. Paulson speaks of "others" causing this, in response to Senator Brown's question, "does Wall Street owe the American people an apology?" and blames the regulators (HAH! what regulators? They threw away any "regulators" toolbox) and ordinary people for accepting mortgages they couldn't afford (What? How dare you, Paulson). In his spinning, though he even almost says, "yeah we got rich and we screwed up the system, but so what? What are you "the People" going to do about it?" And he offers us no choice - "even though we stole your money and blew up the US financial system, you now have no choice but to give it all to us now. We own you."

Extortion. Economic slavery. Don't go for this. Don't fall for the 9/11 fear tactics and pass another Patriot Act. This is another Patriot Act moment for us all, and we have options for dealing with the damage caused by this massive criminal act. There are options other than further victimizing crime victims through Paulson/Bernanke/Bush's extortion. There are workable, insightful, immediate measures that government, in the very best role that it can serve, can undertake to deflect much of the pain of having to pay for the sins of the rich that will be passed down to all.

These are the moments that separate ordinary lives from an extraordinary ones, politician from a statesman/stateswomen.

Encourage your government representatives to look at the facts, to have courage, and remind them that you don't think this is so esoteric that you can't call bullshit. And that you vote, and will remember.

[Cartaphelius]

1. Take back your country.

Terrorists, that is all these folks are, who, according to the Patriot Act, should be subject to the same treatment imposed upon the "terrorist" previously identified as our enemies. If the Bush administration wasn't neck-deep in this current fleecing of America, President Bush would be demanding the same response.

Many too many of us have lived though and been saddled with the cost of bailout of; The Savings and Loan Banks (Neil Bush & John Keating), WorldCom, Enron and now Wall Street, all of which occurred during and with the consent, tacit or otherwise, of Republican Administrations.

Demand that the criminals be held accountable. Throw the net as wide as necessary to include former Senator Phil Graham, the sponsor
of the deregulating legislation that created our current debacle.

[Boondog]

2. Phil's too busy advising McCain to go to jail

The house republicans must be some conflicted puckered individuals tonight. First and foremost, they want to get re-elected so their cynical approach of siding with "Main Street" rather than "Wall Street" makes me laugh out loud as they run like hell from anything Bush related. And distance from potential criminal prosecutions is probably important to them too, as if they had played any role before in this farce other than as enablers. They've never seen a taxpayer dollar they didn't want to privatize, so the idea of a wholesale $2300/per person sharecropper excise on every person in the US (to "bail out" DeutscheBank and BankeSwisse, among others) probably has them salivating. Then they've got that fundy-ingrained no regulation/no government is best thing going on so they want any handover of public funds to be completely string free (or oversight, or public ownership, or regulation free). But in these conflicted times, I think ass-covering has risen to the top as their highest priority.

I certainly would like to see some focus on PGramm as well. Glass-Steagall repeal just has to come out in this election. A lot of people who didn't give a shit about Glass-Steagall a week ago would be a lot more receptive to some information about who Phil Gramm is and what he did in 1999 these days, I think.

[GetTheRightVote]

3. They can not be allowed to pass this bailout period !!!

:grr::grr: