Republicans like to proclaim themselves as champions of the free market, but only as long as it makes them money.
At the risk of speaking ill of the dead, what good was Lehman Brothers, anyway? And what about Merrill Lynch? If they were so bullish on America, why is it that, despite the overwhelming influx of foreign investments that flowed into Lehman, Merrill and their Wall Street peers over the last half-decade, so few jobs were created in America during that period of "recovery"?
Where's the Torrents of Outrage?
After years of bad investments and wild spending,Bush administration is asking Congress to give $700 billion of our tax money to a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, (Paulson) for him to spend however he wishes with no oversight or legal accountability. And this is after taxpayer money was granted to save the hides of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as AIG.
These bailouts are part of the ongoing Republican economic war on working Americans. Republicans,with the help of the Democratic Congress, are working to redistribute wealth from working consumers to CEOs and investors. Taxpayers are being forced to take torrents of risk and debt from the people who justify their huge profits and salaries by claiming they take on such huge risks and debt.
"The Bush administration, six weeks before an election, wants the middle class of this country to spend billions, possibly trillions of dollars on a bailout. The wealthiest elite, who have benefited from Bush's policies and are in the best position to pay, are being asked for no sacrifice at all. Not only that, but this government puts them in charge of putting together their own bailout (benefits)package! This is ludicrous.
Obviously conservatives and Republicans in Congress are throwing tantrums about how any additional provisions to the $700 billion blank check are partisan maneuvers to take advantage of a crisis. They say this as if Hank Paulson isn't a conservative Republican asking for $700 billion for his conservative friends on Wall Street. This is an ideological war and they are assaulting America. I'd call it treason but it's legal.
Wall Street is vanishing before our eyes. And by the measure of their contribution to America's economic strength and well being, both Reagan-age government and Wall Street's investment banks plainly deserve to die.
Politics of Fear
The governments strategy to mask the war on working families has always relied on two powerfully effective weapons in their arsenal of cunning deceitfulness.
First, the embrace of tax cuts is an attempt to distract American consumers. The government puts a few hundred dollars in one pocket, while taking thousands out of the other. The Bush tax cuts were a clear example of this; in fact, this strategy has been working quite well for Republicans since the Reagan Administration.
Second, is the use of Politics of Fear. When Bush and Congress think they can't con or bully us into going along with them, they invoke panic and fear with the help of the media. Bush and Congress feed the media their propaganda and the media, without questioning or investigating the facts, pound into the viewing public the governments propaganda.
Wake up America! How many times are we going to be willing, or even able, to bailout the wealthy? No, a bailout is not what is needed, a torrent of phone calls, emails, and letters are whats needed. We need to put this Congress on a 40 notice!
We Americans have to face the fact that deregulation is just another form of privatization and has never been done with the American consumers in mind, so why should we, the middle class, be left with picking up the tab? This after another giant tab that has already been dropped into our laps because of a treasonous, invasion/occupation of Iraq, supposedly due to 911, while the real criminals, the bin Laden cave dwellers, were allowed to go loose? The US, concealed by the criminal leadership of the Bush Administration, has the largest debt ever in our history and it just keeps escalating. Why should we have to keep paying for their ravenous appetite for wealth and power?
The high office of President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the American's freedom, and before I leave office I must inform the citizen of his plight. - John F. Kennedy at Columbia University, 10 days before his assassination
And who left this country in dire debt before Clinton was elected? Bush number one. And, what majority in Congress ran the government for most of those 12 years and brought us NAFTA, deregulation, and privatization, and cut government programs for the poor? The Republican Party.
Who put Bush number two into the White House? A criminal Supreme Court who wanted their own Republican bush-league in the White House.
Who doesn't give a damn about those American citizens who have lost their homes, their jobs, their savings, their lives, their health, their retirement?
The banking sector meanwhile, which once again is the catalyst of this monumental disaster, won't mind any of this, for it will continue operating on the international stage, shifting its focus to lending money (no longer dollars, though), to growing economies in Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. And this is what, in truth, the "rescue" of Wall Street is all about.
As Wall Street turned its back on America, so did our government. The Bush administration and congressional Republicans (John McCain among them), as well as key Democrates, (Nancey Pelosi, H. Reid just to name a couple) kept American incomes low by opposing hikes in the minimum wage; and shunning policies to modernize infrastructure, make college more affordable, and boost spending on renewable energy.
Tax cuts, which chiefly bolster our ability to consume imported goods and commodities, aren't the answer, and aren't even possible with the passing of the wealthy elite bailout plan. Mean while, infrastructure investments make us more productive and have a multiplier effect that creates more jobs over and above those that the government funds directly.
This bailout scam is not about saving Main Street, as Bush the Senate and Congress would have us believe. Main Street, under the bailout, is toast. This bailout is about helping big business, banks AND foreign banks, investment banks and insurance companies that brought on this crisis to ride it out in style, their astronomical losses bankrolled or absorbed by the American taxpayers, so that they can shift their operations overseas and continue with their rape and pillage of the global economy.
We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks...They are, not government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers... - Senator Louis T. McFadden (for 22 years Chairman of the U.S. Banking & Currency Commission)
The Bush GOP
It's thirty years over due to take these Bush Republicans off government welfare and start demanding accountability, justice, and a US government that is for the American people ... as it should be, as it was meant to be. We Americans shouldn't have to wait, and we don't have to wait, for elections to give somebody the boot when they can't or won't do their job, or abuse their power.
At this pace, the wealthy banking and political elite will make the "Great Depression look like "boom times". And when this happens, (and it will if this bailout passes), the Republicans will tell us that it's our own fault for not pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Sound familiar? They are right in one respect ... anyone who keeps voting these same political demagogs back into office ... is a vote against themselves, and a vote against this country.
Think what you do when you run into debt; you give to another power over your liberty. - Benjamin Franklin
The Bush administration and Congress never intended to lead this country, only to use it for as long as they could get away with their war against the American people. If this administration, this Congress, and to a lesser extent, this Senate wern't corrupt to the core, they'd tell Wall Street to start looking for their boot straps! Instead Bush, Reid, Paulson, Pelosi, with a "wink and a nod" are telling Wall Street, "relax, don't worry, we've got you covered. When they should be telling them instead, to clear their calendars for the next 20 to 25 years!
"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing upthe ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning, they want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand... It never did... and it never will... Find out just what the people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." - Frederick Douglas (1857)
Take the rules and laws away from society and watch it stumble and crumble. Human beings aren't that different from one another. Without laws, without rules, some will take advantage and consumers will get used and abused. We Americans have had over 30 years of government malfeasance that hasn't been stopped. And because they were not held accountable in the past, these past eight years have been the worse government lacking in responsibility in US history because the same criminals are still running this government.
Financial markets that were deregulated by "GI Joe and his cohorts, should be made to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps, any which way they can.
"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." -- President Kennedy Speech 1961.
Why should we Americans bail any of these people out, when they have failed the American people so badly?
Like any rabid, and dangerous monster, it has to be put to death. Most of us didn't have to be told that deregulation and privatization is a government without management, without law and order. A free society can't exist without rules, or law and order and neither can a democratic government.
Power should not come to anyone just because of time served in government, or time served in the military, or because of gender, or race, any more than power coming to the White House through a Supreme Court that decided to break US law. We can't expect to have a functioning government from unlawful acts brought about by the dysfunction of US branches of government or by the usual fraud that has been found during the last eight years of elections, and without accountability or much change. Many American citizens feel that their vote doesn't count and we can't change this government. Well, without citizen action and participation, that belief is true. If we don't take an active role in our government we can't change it.
Why should we Americans become enslaved, chained, and restrained because of the fallout due to the unbridled greed and violence of the Bush Republican Party, and those who keep supporting them? And, what about those of us who stand still instead of speaking out, using our vote, and doing our job to protect this country?
Americans have something worth more than the GOP bootstraps to clean up this government, and bring back the good life for all ... we have ourselves ... the power of millions. We just have to use it. And now is the best time to use our strength, as it is an election year. If Americans put our numbers to use and stand united as one against a terrorist government, we can put a stop to these abusive officials.
Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Debbie Robinson
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