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Bail Out Your Own Damn Self! Time for a Tax and Mortgage Strike
The calamari salad was world-class. Still, my friend the CPA's face screwed up. "You know what still has me pissed off? The bailouts. All wasted on CEO bonuses. But nobody cares!"
I told him I thought people cared, but they didn't know what they could do about it.
"I'll tell you what we should do," he fumed. "Stop paying our taxes. And our mortgages. They can't throw us all in jail! They can't evict us all!"
What should we demand?
"The bailout money. Make 'em give back every cent to us, the people who need it."
How would the money from The Mother of All Clawbacks be distributed? Equally? Should people in foreclosure get more? Or those who pay higher taxes? He didn't know.
So some details need to be worked out. But the point remains: it's time for a revolt.
The economic collapse began eight months ago, in September 2008. The Bush and Obama Administrations have since racked up $12.2 trillion in commitments and spent $2.5 trillion on bailouts: AIG, Bank of America, Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, TARP, purchases of debt and derivatives issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, discounted overnight lending to banks, purchases of toxic commercial paper, and all manner of other high-flying fiscal shenanigans that you paid for when you could least afford it.
Why didn't they bail out the homeowners whose mortgages backed the troubled securities that sparked the crisis? Helping them would have been a three-fer: the banks would gotten paid, consumer spending wouldn't have fallen off a cliff, and government would have restored some of the faith lost after Katrina.
Sadly, the trickle-down approach is easier than a good plan. Issuing checks to a dozen big financial institutions doesn't require the creation of a new federal agency to analyze requests from millions of distressed homeowners. It's the same reason lazy presidents support dictatorships abroad instead of democracies: all you need to strike a deal is one handshake. Besides, presidents and cabinet officers spend more time hanging out with bankers and dictators than they do with average citizens.
Trickle-down never works. Consider what happens when parents die. Their will may instruct their children to divvy up the estate equally. In practice, however, the son or daughter assigned as trustee somehow ends up with more than his or her fair share. That happened on a massive scale with the bailouts. Congress wanted banks to loosen credit but didn't put it in writing. Banks instead used the cash for new mergers and acquisitions, executive bonuses and remodeling their offices.
Well, what would you do if someone gave you $98 billion (Bank of America), no strings attached? You'd keep it for yourself--and maybe a couple of your bestest friends.
Anyway, here we are $12-plus trillion in the hole--$40,000, plus compound interest paid to Chinese and other foreign investors, for every man, woman and child in the United States. That's more than the national debt was at the beginning of the current mess. What have we got to show for it? Zip.
Unemployment is still soaring. There is no real estate market. The stock market is puttering along at 50 percent of last year's value. Two million Americans faced foreclosure last year. Eight million more are on the chopping block. The bailouts haven't done anything to help Americans who have been laid off, subjected to furloughs and pay freezes, seen their retirement benefits fall along with the stock market and been gouged by voracious health insurance costs.
Check out this statistic: according to the Fed, the total net worth of American households fell by $11 trillion last year. That's almost exactly the amount--$12 trillion--that Bush and Obama spent on bailouts. Think about what that money--$160,000--would have done for the average family of four.
Well, it's not too late to get back our money. We need it a hell of lot more than AIG.
We should withhold our taxes, mortgage checks and credit card payments until the banks, insurance companies and other assorted Wall Street dirtbags who stole it give it back.
Unrealistic? That's what my girlfriend thought when I led a rent strike. The landlord hadn't provided heat, so I organized the tenants in my building to pay their rent into an escrow account until things improved. My girlfriend doubted that everyone would participate. "That's OK," I said, "we don't need everyone." We didn't. A 60 percent income drop was enough to get the landlord's attention. The heat came back on and a judge awarded us several months free rent.
We don't need everyone either. If millions of Americans were to pay their taxes, mortgages and debt payments into escrow (to show that we're not deadbeats), it wouldn't take long before we got some action from Obama and his gang of bank-loving technocrats.
- Posted in
67 Comments so far
Show AllTed, great article. Right to the point and so very correct about 'lazy presidents'. Add a general strike to not paying taxes and let's see some real Democracy in action. People may view this a extreme but it is not. It is an appropriate, measured response to the insane bailouts. If households are insolvent, how can the guv'mint be whole. This cannot be anything other than a wholesale ripoff with a smiling Obama at the head of the pack-of all things. How disconcerting.
Ted is being way too politically correct in labelling the Obamafia as "Obama and his gang of bank loving technocrats".
This is white collar organized crime of a magnitude the world has never before seen.
Illegal organized criminals must be very jealous of Obama's organized criminals who are legal only because they have the power to legislate and enforce laws.
Wonderfully said.
Sioux Rose
RAY: Exacto!
Ted and Ray,
You rock!
NATIONAL BOYCOTT
NATIONAL STRIKE
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
I don't want anyone to lose their job, but I have been vehemtly opposed to these bailouts. I, too, wondered who was going to help the victims of the financial world.
I hoped against hope that the Obama administration would be different..would be about change, real change. But so far, all I see is token action on issues such as opening up relations with Cuba. That appeases the masses who have been in favor of this for years. But if you look closely, really scrutinze what is said by his administration, we have been fooled again, and not very well. Revolution is what it will take but my biggest fear is that the government will use the military against the citizens of the US. The military and our security departments are about killing anyone who gets in the way of corporate profit.
Right on, Ted Rall!
/cm
Helping them would have been a three-fer: the banks would gotten paid, consumer spending wouldn't have fallen off a cliff, and government would have restored some of the faith lost after Katrina.
----------------------
Make it a four-fer.
Had the cramdown legislation passed (giving homeowners the ability to renegotiate mortgages with bankruptcy judges) the value of the mortgage back securities, currently worth anywhere from 1 cent to 30 cents on the dollar might actually have risen substantially. This could've helped to open up credit markets and allow banks to clear out their debt ridden balance sheets.
Obama made no effort to get the cramdown legislation passed and predictably it did not.
The bankers must own the rights to park benches. Because that's where millions of Americans may end up sleeping.
Stop blaming Obama for the systemic corruption of the USA.
The germ is in the ethic.
No one is "blaming Obama for the systemic corruption;" we are blaming him for ENLARGING IT, and for his many lies during the campaign. We got change all right--as in NO CHANGE.
Here's what we're being told to do by O'Bummer:
Stand on the corner with our hats in hand, and HOPE that somebody will drop some CHANGE in.
And Ted, just as an aside, won't the banksters end up holding our escrow accounts? Knowing whom we're dealing with, that part of your plan seems a tad risky.
Point taken.
Good thing Broke OweBombya took a break from the campaign trail right before the election to pressure his fellow Dems to support the first round of bailouts... Along with his voting record to fund wars and FISA and Patriot act II... And his pledge to escalate and expand the occupation into Pakistan, and saber-rattling with Iran... He showed the whole world what kind of a president he would become...
But at least it is not McCain...!
Sioux Rose
GOLDEN: In the passion play of politics in the USA today, they must roll the dice to determine who will assume the role of democrat and who will wear the insignia of the "other" team. Imagine their fun knowing the plot line all along and watching as the public actually expects each "side" to design different agendas!
Proof once again that when we vote, we vote for the "least worse" or maybe the "leastest worsest". Our government is 'of the rich, for the richer, by the richest". Aristocracy is a disease in the USA.
It's a virus. We need to nuke the virus and reboot. Start our own currency and stop using theirs. Start our own banks. Imagine; if all their money became worthless???
Thanks, Ted. You're a reliable loose cannon, and we need more like you.
Let me extend your idea: I think the Obama/Dem Party plan to subsidize the insurance companies and require us to buy their lousy product is going to pass. That calls for the same response:
Just Don't Pay Them. Don't buy the insurance, don't pay the penalty, and send letters to the companies and, mainly, your Congresscritters to tell them why. Maybe they'll get the hint.
Oregoncharles
I have been saying this for years! All i want to know is how do i help organize this? Where do i sign up? Organization is everything! That's why they have been dumbing everyone down for the past 30 years.
One more thing, they won't be able to keep this out of the news because too many pigs, I mean, banks will be screaming.
Lets go America! For this is something to get excited about.
Oregoncharles
If the money goes into escrow, the IRS can still get to it. And the government doesn't need our money. They can print more.
We can work out the details. Here's a short list:
We need to get serious.
We have to drop our fear and expect this to be our greatest adventure!
We need millions on board.
We need to get together with the tea baggers and find some common ground.
We need to avoid being stuck in a moveon charade or a UFPJ march around in the streets with music and drums. It's all akin to begging on our knees - it only makes us shorter.
About health insurance .... cancel your policy. Live on the edge for a while. Soon it will be illegal not to purchase health insurance from a private corporation so we might as well stick it to them now because they are sticking it to us. Playing nice isn't working. It's making things worse. As my son once said. "Evil will always win because they have twice the tools as the good side."
Why didn't they bail out the homeowners whose mortgages backed the troubled securities that sparked the crisis? Helping them would have been a three-fer: the banks would gotten paid, consumer spending wouldn't have fallen off a cliff . . .
In a functioning, dynamic democracy this may very well have taken place. The United States, however, is perhaps the world's truest kleptocracy; it is a nation eating itself alive. There can only be one outcome and the word justice won't describe it.
M O R D E C H A I,
I understand and have deeply felt the same, and more …
Today, I look to an unprecedented future as starkly contrasted as form to formless, sound to stillness, mass to space, reptilian to consciousness, lifeless to living.
It is an act of faith, in a Noahinian tide outcome that floats the best and sinks the worse. The battle cry is to be "Hoisted by thy petard", which means to me to cast away my soulless bombs of negativity, and rejoice in connection to source's warrant.
Shall we live and die, sword flashing ego's snobbery -- or take plowshare to Earth's bounteous gifts ?
The ONE outcome, is perhaps not a singular precipice, no -- it bodes us to the enfolding of what we can only now dream of -- as in heart we are those wisps of dreams realized all together.
Namaste
Sorry to be a pessimist, but Americans are too afraid to do anything, too unemployed, broke, and lacking affordable health care to even think about not paying taxes in the tradition of Thoreau.
However, I get the feeling that the government's answer would be to build more prisons. I'm sure Wackenhut and other greedy companies of the Prison Industrial Complex would be happy to house some more.
Thanks for being a realist...
The crash was intentional...
Gutting the middle class was the goal...
Now with rampant homelessness and joblessness...
the military or prison guard industry looks like a better and better option for more and more people...
And with the invasion of Pakistan, and the drug war at home, there will be job security for generations to come...
Mission accomplished...!
Heck of a Job, Brownie...!
America Uber Alles...!
well said golden
let's just throw in the oil and gas of the middle east and the picture is complete
"the military or prison guard industry looks like a better and better option for more and more people..."
At least for another 5 years until they bring the prison guard robots out. These will be followed by the soldier robots. Now consider, what do the elite do with people when they can't impoverish them into joining the military to die in wars if a robot is cheaper? I guess you start funding more infectuous disease reasearch for taylored culling.
We are in trouble, folks. Soon they won't need us. Stop spending like a hedonist or you are contributing to your own destruction. Frugality is the ONLY way to stop the finacial predators that buy our politicians and make wars. It goes from toothpaste to nukes. It's all of a piece. If you don't get it, you aren't paying attention. Once all this was done to the native Americans. Now they are doing it to the non-elite. Check the population in the U.S. while the native Americans were getting slaughtered and/or caged. Now look at the present population of the upper 10% of the U.S. NOW do you get it? Do you want to die because you can't avoid buying a new TV or car? Go ahead.
This makes me shudder but it's BRILLIANT sarcasm.
‘Tailored culling’....gee, that's another way of describing it.
Read ‘Collateral Damage’ part I&II.
*** www.scribd.com/people/documents/2169400-ep-heidner ***
I've seen the $12-13 trillion price tag for the various bailouts posted in numerous places, but haven't seen the documentation. I absolutley believe it to be true, but could somebody please post a relaible documentation link?
Thanks to all.
I've seen the $12-13 trillion price tag for the various bailouts posted in numerous places, but haven't seen the documentation. I absolutley believe it to be true, but could somebody please post a relaible documentation link?
Thanks to all.
Looking at the long term, it looks like people in the US could either attempt to change the system now by putting payments into escrow, or they can always wait until they don't have any money with which to make payments.
Either way, sooner or later, the system has got to change, because a system that makes a huge and rising number of people poor can only last so long.
China and other foreign lenders will only prop up for so long a system where the percentage of people who are poor relentlessly rises. (In China and other moving forward countries the percentage of people who are poor is going down year after year.) Sooner or later, China and the other lenders will begin to put a lot more of their money in something other than US treasuries.
When the foreign lenders finally react, the dollar will drop off the cliff, and then interest rates and inflation will go through the roof, and then people will have no choice left about whether to pay larger tabs, because a far higher number than now will not have the resources to pay much of anything.
I don't see how the system could go on at all at that point.
The fastest and more effective way is an overall approach which would be much more effective: Don't spend. That's right, don't spend. Get down to the very basics. No movies. No videos. No vacations. No new cars. No fancy prepared foods. No call-out for pizza. No nuth'n. Every little bit counts.
Advantages: Its legal and everyone can help.
No one has to break the law. Not paying taxes won't matter. The taxes they get from us don't amount to much anyway. They borrow most of what they need to finance their little financial and warring "adventures" anyway.
Besides, companies that you work for aren't going to withhold taxes from the fed anyway.
Tighten up!
Won't this affect the pizza man more than the banker?
Joe
No. The banker is the one that buys the politicians for war profiteering and other pollution generating businesses. The thing about the pizza man is the pitch big business and government uses to stop you from being frugal. Remember that the profits on consumer goods are used to purchase politicians. NO PROFITS, NO BRIBES. Get it?
Sure, they'll print money and pretend we're cutting off our noses to spite our faces. It's a lie. We destroy the predators by not spending. They'll put tear jerking stories in the press and resort to every kind of low down ad technique to make you feel guilty for not spending. But it's all for the purpose of keeping you enslaved in a kleptocracy disguised as a democracy. Stop being a fool. This is not a temporary thing we need to do. It must be permanent and ingrained as a lifestyle if we are to survive as a species. Having your cake and eating it too is wall street bullshit pie in the sky. Sustainable behavior is not optional for intelligent creatures. We, unfortunately, don't have the proper instincts that the rest of nature's flora and fauna have. Get real, folks. We are humans. Start acting like a member of the planet earth's ecology. All those old fairy tales about the ant and the grasshopper honoring frugality were right on. The killers in wall street and madison avenue have twisted our brains in putrid, unsustainable knots. Time to return to reason and harmony. When someone says, "You've worked hard and deserve the luxury of pigging out on CARS, CRUISES, MANSIONS AND OTHER ASSORTED BULLSHIT", they're taking you for a ride.
Remember Cable Guy?
Damn!
Also, if you need something, barter with friends. Stay out of the system as much as possible.
Good article. We should withhold every payment we can. Go on a credit strike. We have already cancelled our credit card.
On PBS I saw a timeline reprise of the meltdown last September and the demand by agents of the bankers (aka our goverment) for huge piles money without any accountability. It featured a collection of the most entitled men you could imaginge.
Meanwhile, foreclosures continue unabated. Job loss continues unabated. The husband of a friend just lost his job when the refrigerator component factory he works in closed. Where is the bailout for honest little businesses like this?
But how do we get what is ours? We don't know yet for sure, but we must try, try and try....
For inspiration, see Jimmy Cliff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGE4dnrPPZQ
Or a whiter, but fine, version with Willy Nelson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYYGK6hGTbU
Hopefully our share will have more to do with a chicken in every pot than with pot in every ... never mind.
Joe
Pipe? WWWD? What would Willy do?
I suggest a website where people can sign up for these actions - withhold 'withholding' - change W-2 to 'exempt'; other tax resistance, and national "No Shopping" Days. "No Shopping Days could be a warm-up to a General Strike.
No real sacrifice involved, as they would be planned in advance, so necessities could be bought ahead. They wouldn't be targetted at hurting businesses, at least not at first, so small business owners could perhaps join in, too, and if they did, by taking the day off, we'd reward them with our subsequent business.
The website would allow a plebiscite to agree on demands.
I suggest asking Catherine Austin Fitts for advise on the escrow account problem.
"No Shopping" days could serve the purpose of a threat, show UNITY, and warn the powers-that-be that we have the power to bring off a General Strike.
It might allow the normally docile to get their feet wet in a direct action. If it got the right attention, perhaps more people would be encouraged to join a real strike.
If Reverend Billy names the dates, that would help focus the stopping shopping.
Joe
Right On!, C A Fitts has a radio segment with Dennis Bernstein on Flashpoints radio on KPFA and Pacifica (KPFA.org). She has great analyses and advice
Excellent idea. What about a class action lawsuit of some sort? I can imagine a website where a family can go list their total debt. Whatever the grand total is, that would be the bailout We The People demand. We're too big to fail!
"I'll tell you what we should do," he fumed. "Stop paying our taxes. And our mortgages. They can't throw us all in jail! They can't evict us all!"
This would be like herding brainwashed cats, but worth a try.
"The bailout money. Make 'em give back every cent to us, the people who need it."
"How would the money from The Mother of All Clawbacks be distributed? Equally? Should people in foreclosure get more? Or those who pay higher taxes? He didn't know."
Binding popular referendums should decide this, not sold-out politicians: http://ni4d.us/
Who cares about bonuses? I'd like to know how the net worth of the Bush, Cheney, Rockefeller etc families have held up. People with ties to oil, guns and money (i.e. banks).
Along with not paying federal taxes, do not spend money at any national corporate chain, like Walmart, Netflix, McDonalds (even the franchises), and Safeway. Instead, buy as much from local businesses as possible. Use a debit card and nothing else. Stop drinking soda and "soda pop beer." In other words, stop the mindless consumption of junk--both food and mechandise. Yes, this will slow the velocity of money and will hurt any weak business--large or small.
Madison Avenue waged a war on the ethic of frugality to the point where being frugal is seen as selfish or worse. But during the time when frugality was held in high regard, it was no problem for local merchants to prosper as most NEEDED items were produced by local artisans, so money spent locally stayed within the local economy. And that is perhaps the whole key: How much of the money you spend stays within your locale? Local currencies are a big help keeping the capital base local. Use local ISPs!! even if they cost a few dollars more. Cook meals from scratch instead of buying already prepared foods. Grow a garden. Advocate for the local Chamber of Commerce to cut its ties to the national organization that works against local interests. And the list could become longer. When you go to buy something, think of where the money goes you're about to spend. It may seem that buying local costs more money, but the reality is that not buying local is far more expensive and does lasting damage to your locale.
Exactly.
People should realize that this whole farce of the bailouts has been planned for quite some time, right down to the day it happened.
Not only that, but plans have already been completed to cope with any kind of revolution that the public might engage in.
It's common knowledge that there are over 800 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States and all it would take is a presidential signature on a proclamation and the attorney general's signature on a warrant.
In addition, an entire brigade of the Army is on standby to cope with any public uproar or demonstretions which might be initiated against the "elite." George Bush saw to that.
So, the fact is, they're ready for any "revolution." Moreover they probably expect something just like what people in these posts are talking about. And they won't feel the least bit guilty about shooting anyone who attempts to take the upper hand.
USA uberallas hail hail hail
snydly
That's why you revolt invisibly.
Drive past exxon.
Eat right.
Stay healthy.
Help others.
Share stuff.
Make your own list and go for it. Stop supporting what you don't like.
One more time, Bubba Clinton doublcrossed the working classes
with his Nafta and the outsourcing or our industrial base to China. Obama was the lesser of two evils. We had not choice.
Obama is also doublcrossing the working classes like Bubba did.
The Republicans might just win the next election and control for the next twenty years. Watch out for Halliburton and the
Detention Centers.
Today I applied to work for NACA, about the only group looking out for the "mythical little people" Does anyone know they are offering 4.??% 30 year fixed rate refi and new loans with no down payment and closing costs?
I'd like a new bank! Richard Branson is threatening to start a new bank. I'm all for it esp. after flying his airline. It has some class although the seats are like a sarcophagus... but hey! If we insist on some bloody customer care, we can move mountains. Like Pete Seeger said on his 90th birthday, that if we face a mountain and all we have is a spoon - we will have to enlist others who only have a spoon, if we have a million - we can move the mountain. What a guy! I agree with the CPA!