The Great Emergency
Frank M. Di Tore
September 25, 2008
The Bushites want to pass their $700 billion bailout quicker than you can say Iraq war, Patriot Act, and Military Commissions Act. Will Congress ignore the fine print as they did with the Patriot Act?
Bush is pressuring Congress to "act fast". Why? Because if you don´t hurry bad things are going to happen to the American people when it really is about the predators who want the victims to pay for their scam game and to ensure they continue getting their free lunches and golden parachutes.
This socialism for the rich has become obvious while the rest of us continue to live with dog-eat-dog capitalism. Interestingly enough, for the last five years, while Americans in the Mid-West were losing their jobs our administration brights brushed off their job losses as the "free markets just doing their thing". Now when it´s Wall Street´s job losses and the politicians who have investments in it, suddenly it becomes a national emergency.
Recently G.W. Bush, with no shame as usual "… warned Americans and lawmakers reluctant to pass a $700 billion financial rescue plan that failing to act fast risks wiping out retirement savings, rising foreclosures, lost jobs, closed businesses and even "a long and painful recession.""
Warning us indeed. Half of America had been already aware of this administration´s deficiencies when the other half re-elected Bush with the help of quirky electronic voting machines in 2004, when he was already doing a hell of a job running down our economy under a Republican majority Congress. That´s when I first heard of the crass term, applied to Bush voters, as "dumber than dog-shit" making its rounds through blog-spheres and progressive talk-shows.
So the Bush administration is stoking up the panic again. In this drama the bankers, who are asking for this Mother of All Bailouts, are packaging this request in the most populist way in order to get it passed. Could it occur to someone that you don´t need a government bailout to determine what tainted mortgages are worth and how to split them up so they can be liquidated?
But it´s the fear game all over again as well as the ancient Judea-Christian call to the people to sacrifice and purge themselves at the altar in order to save themselves from the rage of unseen forces. Any immediate purges that need to be made are the gamblers, the socialist corporations on Wall Street who are, in essence, insisting on a huge welfare payment from American citizens to help them out of the mess their greed created.
Of course, the public buys into this nonsense because mainstream-corporate media has anointed Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson as an 'independent' oracle of financial truths". Is it no wonder that if the majority of Americans who can so easily hand their money over to religious shake-down artists that they can just as easily be swayed by financial shake-down artists from Wall Street. As long as the risk is transferred to the taxpayer it´s okay in the American bail-out culture.
Ten years ago the idea of hyper-complex derivatives and sub-prime-mortgage leveraged investments were seen by some experts on this subject as potentially disastrous, as in Great Depression. Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich warned about this in their campaign speeches. But most voters, mainly educated by mainstream entertainment news outlets like FOX, were then only interested in images and sound-bytes instead of issues. Meanwhile the Bushites have been busy busy-bees, hell-bent on reducing our civil liberties, medical care, retirement benefits, higher living costs, and leaving more Americans with less or no health care.
The stage was set with the $3 trillion war in Iraq, side-tracking the public attention from the economy but now that the proverbial poop has hit the fan the truth has been exposed. The American economic model is broke and needs to be fixed so it cannot be abused again by the greedy CEOs who run these financial corporations.
What this $700 billion bailout means has been submitted by Treasury Secretary Paulson himself:
"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."
It means absolute power, the power by Paulson to give any appointed individual the power to do what he pleases with the $700 billion. And after he leaves the Treasury Department I heard he´s going back to Wall Street. If anyone wants to trust this man there is also a Bridge to Nowhere they might be interested investing in.
The way the system works now, all roads eventually led to government bailouts with taxpayer money at risk. And for those who still think Social Security should be privatized, the current Wall Street meltdown might change their mind.
Time for a New Realism
The consequences of the Bush administration will be enormous but do not have to be fatal if the right solutions can be found and immediately put in place. But that won´t happen fast since Washington has become another one of those Brussels locations scattered about Europe where bureaucrats run the show. Nevertheless, Americans must also realize, like their Old Europe counterparts, that higher taxes, lower spending and a scaling back of grand plans are necessary in order to survive and thrive. It means the acceptance of a new realism.
The odds and ends between the two candidates concerning how real their changes will be remains speculation but for me Obama remains the clearer of the two. In my view he will succumb, to a degree, to Washington establishment pressures and the end result will be business as usual. This is the pessimistic view that prevails with what sometimes comes from living in a country that puts such a high percentage of its people into dangerous prisons for non-violent crimes, technically passes laws in its cities to make poverty and homelessness a crime, and has no universal health care. But if one wants to believes what Obama says then he does represent change, the beginning of a new reality for America. Obama wants the "haves" to share with the "have nots" (very Christian), advocates health care for all, and would establish something equivalent to a government jobs program for everyone.
McCain on the other hand wants none of this anti-American stuff since his interests don´t truly lie with the people. In some people age drains common sense or wisdom. Maybe that´s why McCain´s u-turns on Wallstreet are hard to keep up with. I believe it depends on the time of day whether he´s for or against tighter regulations. If given the chance, McCain will probably gut Social Security and Medicare programs. Then, the real nightmare, should McCain not make it through the end of his term (insurance actuarial tables are not encouraging) President Palin may continue 100-year foreign wars as long as it is God´s will, as well as the war against America´s poor and middle class, but along harsher lines, going further than GW Bush did. This too, although not new, is another realism that may have to be faced along with its consequences.
Republicans can no longer honestly bust Democrats for "tax and spend" or accuse our Democratic presidential candidate as a potential "budget buster" since they have busted the budget themselves. For anyone wanting to criticize Obama for proposing to spend $150 billion for alternative energy will have to think again since the Wall Street bailout will cost nearly five times as much.
Yet in the end, both ruling parties have been responsible for this mess. The president, his cabinet members, and his advisors are all responsible.
I get the impression George W. Bush doesn´t want to step outside from the West Wing too much these days. I suppose George Bush must realize that he has officially assisted in ruining what took a hundred years to build: the credibility of Wall Street and dollar-centric commerce, as well as America´s once good name. But then he was never much of a manager as his string of father-supported business failures will attest to. So the next presidential team will have to deal with the following areas:
For foreign policy and defense: a winding down in Iraq, declawing Iran and Hugo Chavez, and keeping Russia calm. As for the economy: corporate bailouts, global credit markets, and the vast and bewildering new economic world order. America cannot go it alone in a globalized world because it has lost the power it once had by abusing it.
Bush is pressuring Congress to "act fast". Why? Because if you don´t hurry bad things are going to happen to the American people when it really is about the predators who want the victims to pay for their scam game and to ensure they continue getting their free lunches and golden parachutes.
This socialism for the rich has become obvious while the rest of us continue to live with dog-eat-dog capitalism. Interestingly enough, for the last five years, while Americans in the Mid-West were losing their jobs our administration brights brushed off their job losses as the "free markets just doing their thing". Now when it´s Wall Street´s job losses and the politicians who have investments in it, suddenly it becomes a national emergency.
Recently G.W. Bush, with no shame as usual "… warned Americans and lawmakers reluctant to pass a $700 billion financial rescue plan that failing to act fast risks wiping out retirement savings, rising foreclosures, lost jobs, closed businesses and even "a long and painful recession.""
Warning us indeed. Half of America had been already aware of this administration´s deficiencies when the other half re-elected Bush with the help of quirky electronic voting machines in 2004, when he was already doing a hell of a job running down our economy under a Republican majority Congress. That´s when I first heard of the crass term, applied to Bush voters, as "dumber than dog-shit" making its rounds through blog-spheres and progressive talk-shows.
So the Bush administration is stoking up the panic again. In this drama the bankers, who are asking for this Mother of All Bailouts, are packaging this request in the most populist way in order to get it passed. Could it occur to someone that you don´t need a government bailout to determine what tainted mortgages are worth and how to split them up so they can be liquidated?
But it´s the fear game all over again as well as the ancient Judea-Christian call to the people to sacrifice and purge themselves at the altar in order to save themselves from the rage of unseen forces. Any immediate purges that need to be made are the gamblers, the socialist corporations on Wall Street who are, in essence, insisting on a huge welfare payment from American citizens to help them out of the mess their greed created.
Of course, the public buys into this nonsense because mainstream-corporate media has anointed Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson as an 'independent' oracle of financial truths". Is it no wonder that if the majority of Americans who can so easily hand their money over to religious shake-down artists that they can just as easily be swayed by financial shake-down artists from Wall Street. As long as the risk is transferred to the taxpayer it´s okay in the American bail-out culture.
Ten years ago the idea of hyper-complex derivatives and sub-prime-mortgage leveraged investments were seen by some experts on this subject as potentially disastrous, as in Great Depression. Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich warned about this in their campaign speeches. But most voters, mainly educated by mainstream entertainment news outlets like FOX, were then only interested in images and sound-bytes instead of issues. Meanwhile the Bushites have been busy busy-bees, hell-bent on reducing our civil liberties, medical care, retirement benefits, higher living costs, and leaving more Americans with less or no health care.
The stage was set with the $3 trillion war in Iraq, side-tracking the public attention from the economy but now that the proverbial poop has hit the fan the truth has been exposed. The American economic model is broke and needs to be fixed so it cannot be abused again by the greedy CEOs who run these financial corporations.
What this $700 billion bailout means has been submitted by Treasury Secretary Paulson himself:
"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."
It means absolute power, the power by Paulson to give any appointed individual the power to do what he pleases with the $700 billion. And after he leaves the Treasury Department I heard he´s going back to Wall Street. If anyone wants to trust this man there is also a Bridge to Nowhere they might be interested investing in.
The way the system works now, all roads eventually led to government bailouts with taxpayer money at risk. And for those who still think Social Security should be privatized, the current Wall Street meltdown might change their mind.
Time for a New Realism
The consequences of the Bush administration will be enormous but do not have to be fatal if the right solutions can be found and immediately put in place. But that won´t happen fast since Washington has become another one of those Brussels locations scattered about Europe where bureaucrats run the show. Nevertheless, Americans must also realize, like their Old Europe counterparts, that higher taxes, lower spending and a scaling back of grand plans are necessary in order to survive and thrive. It means the acceptance of a new realism.
The odds and ends between the two candidates concerning how real their changes will be remains speculation but for me Obama remains the clearer of the two. In my view he will succumb, to a degree, to Washington establishment pressures and the end result will be business as usual. This is the pessimistic view that prevails with what sometimes comes from living in a country that puts such a high percentage of its people into dangerous prisons for non-violent crimes, technically passes laws in its cities to make poverty and homelessness a crime, and has no universal health care. But if one wants to believes what Obama says then he does represent change, the beginning of a new reality for America. Obama wants the "haves" to share with the "have nots" (very Christian), advocates health care for all, and would establish something equivalent to a government jobs program for everyone.
McCain on the other hand wants none of this anti-American stuff since his interests don´t truly lie with the people. In some people age drains common sense or wisdom. Maybe that´s why McCain´s u-turns on Wallstreet are hard to keep up with. I believe it depends on the time of day whether he´s for or against tighter regulations. If given the chance, McCain will probably gut Social Security and Medicare programs. Then, the real nightmare, should McCain not make it through the end of his term (insurance actuarial tables are not encouraging) President Palin may continue 100-year foreign wars as long as it is God´s will, as well as the war against America´s poor and middle class, but along harsher lines, going further than GW Bush did. This too, although not new, is another realism that may have to be faced along with its consequences.
Republicans can no longer honestly bust Democrats for "tax and spend" or accuse our Democratic presidential candidate as a potential "budget buster" since they have busted the budget themselves. For anyone wanting to criticize Obama for proposing to spend $150 billion for alternative energy will have to think again since the Wall Street bailout will cost nearly five times as much.
Yet in the end, both ruling parties have been responsible for this mess. The president, his cabinet members, and his advisors are all responsible.
I get the impression George W. Bush doesn´t want to step outside from the West Wing too much these days. I suppose George Bush must realize that he has officially assisted in ruining what took a hundred years to build: the credibility of Wall Street and dollar-centric commerce, as well as America´s once good name. But then he was never much of a manager as his string of father-supported business failures will attest to. So the next presidential team will have to deal with the following areas:
For foreign policy and defense: a winding down in Iraq, declawing Iran and Hugo Chavez, and keeping Russia calm. As for the economy: corporate bailouts, global credit markets, and the vast and bewildering new economic world order. America cannot go it alone in a globalized world because it has lost the power it once had by abusing it.
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