As this nation’s economy teeters on the brink of another Great Depression, politicians and talking heads fill the airwaves with self-serving blather. Meanwhile, the Bush administration prepares to bail out (at astronomical taxpayer expense) the financial industry, which has incidentally been his largest source of campaign contributions. The aristocrats on Wall Street have been raking in billions of dollars in the course of the last few years on the basis of crooked deals and dubious logic. Multimillion-dollar annual bonuses have been commonplace for these fair-haired sons of privilege. Last year my annual bonus was a canvas duffel bag.
In the weeks and months to come, the phrase “too big to fail” will be on the lips of experts and opinionators—the implication being that you and I who work plenty hard to support ourselves and our families will be subsidizing the jet setters with their mansions and their country clubs because if they fall, they’ll take us with them. Sounds like trickle-down economics in reverse, doesn’t it? Once again Washington is talking of dominoes knocking down everything, and what could possibly be worse than a bunch of falling dominoes?
You know what? I’d take a few lean years just to be able to watch the high and mighty come tumbling down. Nothing is going to fundamentally change if we save these guys. Ten years from now, it’ll still be the same tycoons in the top 1 percent of 1 percent running this country with their lackeys in Washington.
We teach our children about something called natural consequences: the idea that if they make a bad decision, they have to live with the results (and pay for them). I’ve got a full-time job pounding nails, a 30-year mortgage and hardly a dime to spare. And I am not interested in seeing that dime used to fix the mess created by the poor decision making of a bunch of fools, rogues and naives.
— Matt Rawlings
Weaverville
Here’s Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s bailout proposal.
Protecting the public interest in any economic “bailout”
kucinich.us/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2442&Itemid=1
I particularly like:
“In the next few days I will push for a plan that includes equity for every American in any taxpayer investment in this so-called bail-out plan. Since the bailout will cost each and every American about $2,300, I have proposed the creation of a United States Mutual Trust Fund, which will take control of $700 billion in stock assets, convert those assets to shares, and distribute $2,300 worth of shares to new individual savings accounts in the name of each and every American.”
What do you think? Specific likes/dislikes will be more fruitful than ad hominem attacks on Kucinich.
I hear ya Matt!
Don’t write these people off as “naive” or “fools”. What we are seeing is the final stages of a long term IMF plan to plunge this nation and it’s people into neo-feudalism.
You see, the United States was a political and social model that was very threatening to the global elite. Over decades, they figured out that destroying us economically was safest for them, so in 1913 they were finally able to take control of our currency.
Fast forward 88 years: “Well, we’re ready to pull the plug. Our associates are almost done acquiring all of the real assets – property, infrastructure, etc. – but won’t the Americans get angry?” I could imagime one of these foreign bankers asking another.
“Of course. That’s why we’ve infiltrated their intelligence networks and military. We’ll stage a huge terrorist attack and use that as an excuse to establish a police state! Really, though, the police state will be to prevent the American people from coming after us when they realize that we are to blame for their starvation, imprisonment, poverty and servitude.”