Democrats Back Bailout

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I just saw this New York Times headline:

Does anyone remember the late Representative Henry B. Gonzales (D-TX)?

I remember him fondly. I adored the man.

I used to watch his after-hours speeches on C-Span. He was the head of the Banking Committee and he accurately predicted and warned Congress about the dangers of deregulation, the savings and loan failures, the bailouts -- everything that Congress is now saying has taken them by surprise.

But he was talking to an empty room. And he didn't have the support of his party. The Democratic Party's congressional leaders ignored him because they were too busy supporting the Republican Party's agenda, even when we had a Democratic President in the White House.

The Democrats don't need "greater legislative oversight." They're Congress. They're charged with oversight. They had all the oversight they could have possibly needed. They simply didn't use it because they weren't going to stop themselves from voting for deregulation.

In return for the bailout, the Democrats are also asking for "more direct assistance for homeowners and limits on the pay of top executives whose firms seek help." Sure. They'll let homeowners have some more loans that they'll never be able to repay due to our declining economy, for which the Democrats are directly responsible because they didn't fulfill their duty of exercising oversight in the first place, and they'll cap executive salaries, but not their perks, stocks, benefits, and golden parachutes -- and the cap will probably force executives down from a thousand times what a worker earns to only nine hundred and ninety-nine times what a worker earns. And they're certainly not going to tax the rich because every single one of them is rich.

Meanwhile both McCain and Obama are backing the bailout and saying that it won't interfere with their commitments to increase the defense budget.

If I didn't read openews, I would never in a million years believe that people who call themselves progressives plan to vote for these crooks.

They've been stealing us blind. And they've been doing it in a bipartisan manner. All you're doing when you vote is giving your consent to them to keep right on doing it (or if you cast a protest vote, allowing your vote to be flipped to somebody you didn't vote for and consenting to allow the winner of the election, who you know won't be your candidate, to keep right on stealing us blind).

Asking Congress to exercise oversight is like asking the Mafia to fight crime.

THEY are the ones robbing us. Giving them oversight is putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.

When will we ever learn?