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TechnoratiRepublican Government-Bashers Line Up for Federal Aid
What has happened to those conservative Republican leaders whose mantra was "government is the problem -- not the solution"?
Tell that to the once-bloated financial giants now standing in line for whopping government handouts to the tune of $700 billion. And who can forget those who wanted to "get the government off our backs"? Their silence now is deafening.
In the rush for bailouts for the hard-hit government mortgage finance giants, the U.S. Treasury seized control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and is trying to rescue American International Group, the largest insurer of the world. It allowed 158-year-old Lehman Brothers to collapse, but came to the rescue of the Bear, Stearns, another Wall Street firm.
What about the thousands of suffering homeowners who face mortgage foreclosures? They are at the end of the public trough and almost forgotten in the scramble to protect Wall Street. And what about the failed CEOs who hope to walk out the door with obscene multi-million-dollar golden parachutes and big bonuses?
Isn't there something wrong with this picture?
Both Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have worked out a plan to pass on the price of the bailouts to the American taxpayer. Congress is still scrutinizing the proposal.
The U.S. financial mess has rippled through other economies of the world. The fault rests with Wall Street greed, which brought on good times for the high rollers, who thought it would never end. And it rests with the federal government for its failure to police mortgage lenders.
Republican lawmakers and presidents who abhor government restrictions and oversight because of their anti-government philosophy have put America in a critical financial state.
We should be looking at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt blueprint. People were in despair after the stock market crashed in 1929 and the Great Depression slowly settled in. They lost hope until FDR took office in 1933 and told Americans in his first inaugural address that we had nothing "to fear but fear itself."
Roosevelt, thinking of the poor and desperate, created several New Deal programs to put people back to work. He was viewed as a savior at the time by millions of Americans, but he also had bitter detractors who resented his radical steps.
I remember the suffering during the Depression in my hometown of Detroit and the long lines of forlorn men, standing in the dead of winter outside the auto factories, hoping for jobs. The popular song on the radio was "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime." The best-selling book was John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath."
Roosevelt was innovative. Some programs worked, some didn't. But many remain today to provide some sense of security, like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Labor Relations Act to protect unions and the Social Security system to help the elderly. In the 1930s, 9,000 banks closed down. Today we have to ask: Why didn't the so-called experts see the storm coming in the 21st century?
Ironically, the remaining affluent and the poor are now on the same page with Abraham Lincoln, who said: "Government should do for people what they cannot do for themselves."
26 Comments so far
Show AllDafoe
This country got what it voted for, remember the "great Communicator" Ronnie Reagan who singlehandedly brought down the USSR he who said govmints the problem and you cheered on all his solutions and the Shrubs? Talk about a dumb wimpy electorate!! Sold their birthright for a mess of potage/bullshit mixed in with a good ol' religious message. Welcome to the slippery slope the bailout money will end up in swiss banks and things will be worse, who in this world will trust this country? Turned out to be just like the USSR, tow parties with a single paymaster, lots of prisons, lots of poleese great at making weapons of war and guns for local consumption, doesn't make most of its clothing imports steel and on and on it goes. No one is going to deny the corporate welfare bums their place at the trough, they have been at the public nipple longer than anyone has been on welfare. This country has been fed lies for so long they beleive them it is easier than thinking for oneself.
"MORE CHICKENS,PLEASE," said the "Wall Street Chicken-coop" FOXES.
Just this week l saw a man on Wall Street in sitting at a bus stop with a sign saying " WILL LEVERAGE BUYOUTS FOR FOOD"
Don't you just love 'Christian' values?
JUNEAU, Alaska -- Sarah Palin felt so strongly about the public corruption indictment of a Republican state senator this summer that she urged him to resign - but not strongly enough to return the $1,000 he gave to help elect her governor.
She appears to be waffling on the issue of the bailout to Wall Street.
P.S.: In my state of Nebraska, a lot of women drooling for her in the suburbs are trying to imitate Palin. Their hubbies are busy getting themselves drowned in debts with lavish spending. These women are what you could call STEPFORD WIVES.
Once again, THANK YOU to the Lady in the Red Dress. I have decided that if something can't be explained simply, then it's b.s. Well done, we needed reminding, and will again. And again.
HEY ! WHERE IS JOHN MCCAIN?
Why he has taken time off to run to his bank to grab all of his wife’s money to put in his mattress just in case the people do stop the bail-out.
One error Helen, Wall Street knew it would end some day, they aren't stupid.
Wall Street also knew that the US electorate would be stupid enough to believe Dubya's shock doctrine and go along with a taxpayer funded bailout.
Government IS the problem.
If government had not spent the past quarter century deregulating the financial industry, the current "crisis" would have never occurred.
The US electorate and their elected officials are falling for another shock doctrine in spite of the fact that history has shown that (in 1987) when the stock market dropped, it rebounded because the governmnet did not interfere, while a four year recession resulted from the 1989 savings and loan bailout where government DID interfere.
More recently (July 2008), the bush that cries wolf was admonishing the US to hurry up and approve more oil drilling to keep the price of oil from rising. Since then, the price of oil has dropped without any new drilling being approved because speculation slowed down. Obviously most of the US electorate and elected officials are still falling for the oil shock doctrine judging from pending drilling legislation.
Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee in "All The President's Men" talking to Woodward/Berstein:
"...because nobody gives a shit--what was that Gallup Poll result? Half the country's never even heard the word Watergate."
Same as today, probably worse. Most probably have no idea that $1 trillion the Fed gifts to their criminal cartel "friends" costs taxpayers $8,000 apiece, or that having Hank P., former Goldman Sachs thief as Treas Sec is like having John Dillinger in charge of regulating the Dillinger gang, or that, according to the head of the CBO today, this "bailout" will only make things worse, and that there are lots of financial sector companies that appear solvent but, in fact, are already insolvent...
Hell, nearly half the country still supports McCain, which proves just how little they know and/or give a shit...
"Hell, nearly half the country still supports McCain, which proves just how little they know and/or give a shit..."
We can thank the corporate media, co-opted by Bush and Cheney with the relaxation of ownership restrictions, for the public's general ignorance. They've been behind McCain since last year.
q
With the end of Reconstruction, Republicans changed Lincoln’s observation to read that government should do for the wealthy what they cannot do for themselves. This protection of private interests at public expense is what the GOP calls law and order.
Make no mistake, the majority of our "Honorable" leaders will have alot of worth-less (then they are now) stocks if they don't give themsleves our money in this "bailout".
Helen is right. It's almost comical to watch the Republicans hold their hands our to recieve what they spend their careers opposing. Government assistance. McCain is even running a TV ad right now stating that Obama will support big government and regulation. Newsflash for you John - that's what you're doing right now. Asshole!
John McCain suspended his White House bid over the Wall Street meltdown...
I think he's off to bundle Wall Street's Pigs in Pokes for pennies on the dollar
and sell them to Paulson at full price using taxpayer's dollars.
This was DESIGNED to work this way... the whole point of any of these "institututions" Is to EXTRACT wealth from the ones who create it to the ones that POSESS it. The machine is working so well now that it works TOO WELL.
Slow it down, tie them up with stupid objections, make it impossible for them to succeed. Remember we cannot have a police state if they can't afford to pay their mercinaries, uh officers.
They did it to themselves, but they have been doing it to us for generations... debt.
Thank goodness it's JUST the ecoNOMY and not the ecoSYSTEM.
Imagine the chief up there, "Uh... we were wrong about global warming and, as it turns out, we're SOL."
Whew, that's a relief now lets go back to burning fossil fuels as fast as we can afford to!!
i think the republican idiots hold to a Calvinist view that help is ok as long as its people who deserve it. Rich people deserve help--because they are rich and clearly better than poor people who are poor because they clearly deserve to be--otherwise they would be rich.
See?
“Today we have to ask: Why didn't the so-called experts see the storm coming in the 21st century?”
They did. The honest ones, like Nader, were ignored by the vast majority. The dishonest ones made out like bandits. They are still making out like bandits, thanks to the Democratic controlled congress’ “bailout”.
The Democrats do not control Congress. While they have a clear majority in the House of Representatives, their majority in the Senate depends on two "independents," one of whom is the neoconservative Joe Lieberman, adviser to the McCain campaign.
The republicans have had more control of Congress then the Dems over the past eight years.
As all of the trolls on this site do, you deliberately overlook one very important detail: the bailout proposal is coming from the republicans.
q
It does not take a majority in either House to make a stand. It does not require a majority vote to table legislation through various means either. With a Democratic majority, however slim it might be, the chairmanships of the various committees are all democrats and can actually refuse to allow bills to leave committee.
So what is worse, quickstepper, accusing someone of being a troll or posting inaccuracies? your deliberate mangling of the power of the committees, the filibuster and other parliamentary methods for delaying votes in order to make a dishonest point might seem to place you, yourself under a bridge.
The bailout, by the by, is coming from the Executive Branch and not at all from the republican party , as your decpetive post implies. It seems to me, from all the quotes I've heard, that many republicans are not at all enamored of this proposal, and good for them.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
“As all of the trolls on this site do, you deliberately overlook…”
Oh what a surprise! Namecalling from defenders of the Democrats!
Is that tumbleweed I see blowing across the empty spaces where your logical reasoning should be? Oh, and Lieberman? Whould that be the same one who ran as the Democrats’ candidate for vice president? It is funny isn’t it how the two corporate parties can mix and match their members, It is almost as if they worked for the same special interests on wall street.
But keep up the insults, keep sending them your money, if you have any. Congress is doing a bang up job right?, why not give the same bunch some more time to, do whatever it is that they do.
Fulminate all you want, your comment about the Democrat-controlled Congress is still wrong.
q
“Fulminate all you want, your comment about the Democrat-controlled Congress is still wrong.”
It is wrong, because…? Because, you said so?
OK let’s go back to your earlier post,
“The republicans have had more control of Congress then the Dems over the past eight years.”
So they must give your taxpayer money to the millionaires because over a certain period of time in the past the Republicans had more control?
OK, finally you say the proposal is coming from the Republicans, so…what? For example, if Bush proposes that America attack another country on the other side of the planet for no valid reason does that mean that the Democrats have to….Oh wait, we know the answer to that don’t we?
So is the Democrat-controlled House gonna vote for this bailout?
My Republican Congressman is 'emphatically' against it.
Given that they easily caved in to Big Oil and just about every Republican legislation for the past 8 years, my bet is yes. By the way, the recent news already shows that they're planning to now do the bailout in "easy installments" starting with $250 billion and then Bush getting to bat at another $100 billion and if Congress doesn't like it, then the rest of the $350 billion doesn't pass but my bet is they'll give it all away just like they did on tax cuts for the wealthy and war spending.