Iconoclastic

reposted from All Spin Zone
How do you get Americans to care what their government is doing?
Friday, September 26, 2008, 11:34:41 AM | E in MD
Americans have been through a lot of hardship in the last decade. The really sad part is that most of the hardship could have been avoided if we’d made better choices in leadership. But we allowed the guy we wanted to have a beer with to take control over the country rather than giving it to a better candidate. Whether or not the 2000 election was stolen is a separate issue. The bottom line is but WE allowed Bush to take office and WE allowed him to stay. Now as they say, we reap what we have sown.

You’ll have to forgive my amusement at all this. You see, I feel as though I have been screaming at the maelstrom for the last six years or so trying to get people to care about what their government is doing. First the election, then 9/11, then the PATRIOT act, then the invasion of Iraq, then untold billions of dollars sucked out of our nation by companies like Haliburton and Blackwater, the FISA legislation, the unconstitutional powers that the Bush regime has claimed. The list goes on. We kept quiet as more and more abuse piled on. Like the puppy that has been kicked since birth and knows no other way we just sat there and took it.

Now however, we have of course we have the economic meltdown occurring because Wall Street got a little too greedy. I’ve heard many right wing commentators talk about how ‘giving mortgages to coloreds’ is what caused this mess. Racism aside, that’s a cop out. The average citizen doesn’t have a multi million dollar legal or accounting department to tell them when something they’re about to do is a bad idea. So if I come to you with no job, no savings, no prospects and a ton of already bad debt it’s up to you to look all this over and say “no, I can’t give you this loan”. If there was some sort of protestation about it, the documentation stating: “no job, no savings, no prospects and a ton of already bad debt” are absolute proof as to the reason for rejection. That’s part of what all those fees you pay mortgage brokers are for.

The fact is that Wall Street, like some 1970’s cartoon bank robber saw an opportunity and couldn’t see past the big green dollar signs in their eyes. Wall Street made bad decisions and Wall Street should have known better. In truth they probably did know better, but decided to take the money and run anyway. Which makes them doubly at fault and even more certain that they should’t be reaching into our pockets to fix their mistakes.

So now we have our supposed representation sitting up in Capitol hill getting ready to give almost a trillion dollars as a first increment to Wall Street. Make no mistake, it will start off at $700 billion, but since the original plan said that they could only have $700 billion at a time there’s nothing to stop them from selling bad mortgages at a loss and then gobbling up another hundred billion a pop. Funny thing is, that figure was just picked out of a hat:

Press Gaggle Via Conference Call With Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto On The Economy

MR. FRATTO: With respect to executive pay, again, I’m not going to get into specific, point-by-point details on what our views are on that, other than the Secretary of Treasury said it would make more difficult to make this plan work and effective if you provide disincentives for companies and firms out there who are holding mortgage-backed securities and other securities from participating in the program. You have to remember, these are not all weak or troubled firms that own mortgage-backed securities. A lot of them are very successful banks and investment houses that have done very well, have been responsible, are holding performing assets that have value. They were not necessarily irresponsible players, and so you have to be careful about how you deal with them.

This represents nothing less than a callous plundering of the US economy to benefit those one percent people who already have all the money. Nothing illustrates this more than our representatives don’t give a fig about us then the arguments taking place about whether or not the CEO’s of these failing companies should still keep their multi million dollar golden parachute packages on our dime. “A lot of them are very successful…have been responsible, are holding performing assets that have value”. If they have assets that have value, then they don’t need our help. If they don’t have performing assets then they should be made to at least partially clean up their own mess before digging into Joe Taxpayer’s pocket is even contemplated. It’s not MY damned fault that these idiots gave loans to people who couldn’t pay them and if I fail to pay my own electric bill or mortgage Uncle Sam isn’t going to give ME a handout.

But now, our countrymen have had enough. Things are, as they have always been. How do you get an American to care about what it’s government is doing? Sucker punch them in the wallet.

I first heard about the protests here:
Protesters Take Their Outrage to Wall Street | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet:

Enraged by the prospect of $700 billion of their taxes going to reimburse Wall Street speculators for their dubious investments, about 500 protesters paraded through Lower Manhattan’s financial district Thursday afternoon, their chants of “You broke it, you bought it” reverberating through the narrow office building canyons and off the flag-draped wall of the New York Stock Exchange.”I’m outraged,” said Linda Greco, a 40-ish Brooklyn woman. “People are losing their homes. There’s homeless people all over the city. The schools are falling apart. And they want to bail these pigs out? It’s about time the people of this country woke up and took this country back.”

Like many others, Greco learned about the protest from an e-mail tree that sprouted like kudzu on methamphetamine. “I must have gotten 10 to 20,” she said.

The demonstration originated with an e-mail sent out Monday afternoon by Arun Gupta, an editor at the leftist Indypendent. “They said providing health care for 9 million children, perhaps costing $6 billion a year, was too expensive, but there’s evidently no sum of money large enough that will sate the Wall Street pigs,” it read. “We need to act now while we can influence the debate. With Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie, AIG, the money markets and now this omnibus bailout, well in excess of $1 trillion will be distributed from the poor, workers and middle class to the scum floating on top? Let the bondholders pay, let the banks pay, let those who brought the ‘toxic’ mortgage-backed securities pay!”

“It tapped into an enormous reservoir of anger,” Gupta told the crowd that gathered at the bull statue on Bowling Green. The e-mail inspired similar protests in almost 200 cities and towns, from Greensboro, N.C., to Henderson, Nev. Though phone calls and e-mails to Congress have been running nearly 1,000 to 1 against the bailout, he added, “it’s clear that the fix is in.”

Here’s there best part! The Wall Street billionaire types LAUGHED AT THEM:

Many Wall Street types greeted the protesters with contempt. “Just look at these people,” sneered one broker as the march neared the Stock Exchange. Another group held a “Get a Job” sign in an office window, and one man dropped a few dollar bills out of his. They fluttered down short of the marchers, landing in a construction site.

This is all a big joke apparently. I imagine it would be to someone with twenty million dollars in their bank account when the rest of us are barely able to scrape by each month. “Get back to your hovel proles! Shut up and give us your money!”

You want to talk about class warfare? We don’t have paid lobbyists up in Congress trying to get bills passed to favor us. We don’t have millions of dollars socked away in secret Swisse and Cayman accounts. We’re just the regular working joes who get crapped on in every corrupt regime. We had jobs, at least until greedy morons decided to ship them over seas so you could give themsevles CEO’s another diamond studded gold plated Caribbean island without figuring out if they’d actually earned it or not. This is the 21st century of ‘Let them eat cake!”. The fact that more people aren’t out on the street protesting is just an example of how effective their brainwashing has become.

Gothamist: Wall Street Protest Over Bailout Plan:

Aside from lawmaker protest over the government’s $700 billion bailout plan, there were a number of protests across the country over the bailout. Labor unions organized a protest on Wall Street yesterday. AFL-CIO president John Sweeney said, “The Bush administration wants us to pay the freight for a Wall Street bailout that does not even begin to address the roots of our crisis. We want our tax dollars used to provide a hand up for the millions of working people who live on Main Street and not a handout to a privileged band of overpaid executives.”United Federation of Teachers head Randi Weingarten said, “We know that he economic situations has to be solved. But we want a a responsible rescue, not an opportunistic bailout.” And Reverend Jesse Jackson said afterward, “The homeowners need long-term, low interest rates and the restructuring of loans, not the repossession of homes.”

Bailout protesters plan day of action Thursday - Sep. 25, 2008:

“People all over the country are up in arms about this,” said David Elliot, a spokesman for grassroots advocacy group UsAction. “Our members are livid, and they’re hitting the streets.”TrueMajority.com, an online forum for activists, said its members had organized 251 events in more than 41 states to protest the bailout.

AFL-CIO NOW BLOG | On Wall Street, Union Members Protest Corporate Bailout:

Near the New York Stock Exchange this afternoon, more than 1,000 union members and other activists rallied against giving Wall Street a blank check in a financial bailout that leaves Main Street taxpayers deserted.Speaking at the rally, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said:

Our nation is facing a real crisis and we should move swiftly, but we cannot afford to compound our problems with bailout legislation that is hasty at the expense of thoughtfulness and common sense.

We want our tax dollars to provide a hand up for the millions of working people who live on Main Street and not a handout to a privileged band of overpaid executives on Wall Street.

Even now, your representatives, are sitting in back rooms somewhere debating your future. Debating your children’s future and their children’s future. We’ve already lost almost a trillion dollars to the Iraq war. We’re about to lose another trillion dollars to keep the Rockefellers in caviar and Faberge. Yet we can’t provide health care for our children, our bridges are falling down, and we are still vulnerable to hurricanes and floods and terrorist attacks but what gets our representatives up in arms to the point where McCain has to ’suspend’ his campaign despite the fact that he hasn’t voted on anything since April isn’t any of these things. What gets them motivated is that Edward S. Lampert ( who made $1.02 billion in 2004) has to buy one less Lamborghini this year. Oh my, the scandal!

My fellow Americans, if you did not stand up against torture or kidnapping or war or the gutting of the Constitution then ask yourself when will you stand up? What line is too much for them to cross? Do the jackbooted thugs of Wall Street employ need to actually be standing on your throat before you bother to defend yourself? This is no different than if some guy in a ski mask pulled you into an alley, put a knife to your throat and demanded your wallet. At least in that case you can go to the police. These guys will make sure that this robbery is all perfectly legal because they have the capitol and enough of Congress in their pockets.

If you did not stand up before then now is the time, people. Now is the time to take the advice of the late Molly Ivins:

“We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war…We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, ‘Stop it, now!’”

Call your representatives and tear them a new one. Get out there on bridges and highways and protest. Contact your local radio station. Drop by your Congressman’s office and give their staff an earfull. Call up CSPAN. Write your newspaper editor. Blog post this everywhere you can think of. If you do not choose to stand then you choose to kneel. Our founding fathers and mothers would have not tolerated this and neither should you.