Thursday, October 2, 2008

From The Nation

"We need a November electoral mandate rejecting reckless unregulated free-market capitalism as a model for our century. Every minute we carry that message in these days before the election, we are building that mandate. We need a peace mandate, too.

If I had a vote, I would vote "no" on the bailout package because it remains completely weighted to Wall Street's interests. Just look at Wall Street's calculation: they will get $750 billion with no new strings or conditions they haven't managed to live with, or circumvent, before. There are no performance standards for reducing foreclosures, bankruptcies and job losses. There are no penalties for failing to achieve those performance standards. There are no oversight mechanisms with new teeth, like a public monitor on private investment bank boards or inspectors-general with subpoena powers within.

Democrats at least should have posted a bill that would contain real countervailing powers, and posed the question whether Wall Street really wants the money, or only public money for private use. "

I agree with Tom Hayden from The Nation. Without effective oversight and careful administration, this bill just becomes a free handout to the CEOs involved in these deals. I believe it is just the final gift of the Bush administration to his wealthy supporters. They have already fleeced the nation with their repeal of all effective regulation. This would be fine if we lived in a perfect world and we could have free markets without regulation but unfortunately, this is not a perfect world at this point and we seem to be moving further and further away from it at this point in history. Greed dominates this society...and the greed of the rich really dominates it to the point where the impact is being felt all over the world.

I fear this "bailout" plan will backfire and not work and they will be back in six months "needing" even more. And if we don't end this terrible war, it will finish bankrupting us. I posted this comment months ago and it still is true:

"The problem with us in Iraq is not just Iraq. This war and the insurgency is the result of a number of things, not the least being that we have supported Israel against Palestine for a very long time. We should, in fact, be neutral on this issue and attempt to help build a Palestinian state as well.

As infidels, we are occupying their Holy Land on the Arabian Peninsula.

US support for Russia, India and China against their Muslim populations.

US pressure on Arab energy producers to try to lower oil prices.

US support for apostate, corrupt, and tyrannical Muslim governments.

Another problem is that we do not understand the culture and find ourselves as infidels on Iraqi and Afghanistan holy ground.

Then there is the fact that the insurgency are simply common people who want us gone because we are occupying their country. Anyone who reads and studies anything knows by this time that this war is all about oil. If someone came here and invaded our country, all of us would be an insurgency. In fact, when we were a British colony, our "patriots" were the insurgency.

As far as rebuilding their country...we've tried that and received shoddy construction and wasted millions and millions of dollars. Let's get out of there if we can't provide some decent construction...and let the Iraqis rebuild their own country with all that oil money. I bet they would be happy to do that just to get rid of us.

As far as Afghanistan is concerned, the Russians fought there for decades and could not win. They finally got out of there but not until after the cost of the war ruined their economy.

To understand the Iraqi and Afghan point of view, it is necessary to put ourselves in their place. Keep in mind that none of the 9/11 attackers were from there. This plan for war was already in place long before 9/11. The Project for the New American Century proved that. The attack just gave the administration reason to get congress to allow them to go to war. They blamed it on 9/11 but it was really all about oil.

Again, we need to get out of there before the cost of this war finishes wrecking OUR economy."

5 comments:

Sylvia K said...

Amen! I'm not wise enough to know all the pros and cons or all the answers obviously, but I do know where and what we should be doing and it is not handing a free ticket to Wall Street, or staying in Iraq, or promoting more prejudice against Muslims for all the wrong reasons and the Jewish population should understand that better than anyone. We are all human beings, who walk on two legs, have the same hopes and fears and we are NOT that different from one another.

Margie's Musings said...

True...very true, Sylvia.

Linda said...

Wow, what a post! There's enough in it to keep me thinking for a week.

I agree with everything you said. I'm also glad to have found somone I think might understand my feelings about Israel.

This is really good Margie.

Sansego said...

It's funny to read about your view on Afghanistan, 9/11, and PNAC...yet you seemed to have put down my view of 9/11 as a government inside job as being outlandish. Why believe one but not see the connection all the way through?

Margie's Musings said...

The Obama campaign has announced it will respond with its own counterattack, beginning today. In the immortal words of LaFontaine - "Cet animal est tres mechant - Quand on l'attaque, il se defend" (This animal is really mean - When you provoke it, it defends itself.")

Ads will remind the public that in the Keating Five scandal McCain himself was accused by his Senate colleagues of improper transactions with the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which engaged in recklessly risky mortgage investments - the same kind of thing that led to today's financial crisis. The Senate Ethics Committee found three of the five senators guilty of improperly interfering with a Federal Home Loan Bank Board investigation of Lincoln S&L. Senator John McCain, who reportedly was the closest friend of Keating among the five senators, and another senator were found guilty only of "poor judgment".

The person who gave his name to the scandal is Charles Keating, Chairman of the Lincoln S&L. Unlike Bill Ayers, Keating was actually convicted of a crime. He led a push among the S&L's managers to get Lincoln depositors to replace their FDIC-insured deposits with higher-yielding paper from Lincoln's parent. When the parent went bankrupt in the $500 billion S&L meltdown of the late 1980s, some 21,000 unsophisticated Lincoln depositors lost their life savings. FDIC Chairman Bill Seidman called it a "heartless and cruel fraud". Keating went to jail for five years.

Lincoln S&L was based in the same Orange County, California, that gave us New Century Financial and Countrywide, the two large mortgage brokers whose aggressively loose lending practices led the way to the sinking values of subprime paper, to foreclosures and to the financial fiasco now eating away at the heart of America's economy.