 |
|
Add to My Group
|
September 23, 2008 at 11:00:19
Promoted to Headline (H2) on 9/23/08: by Rob Kall Page 1 of 1 page(s) 
|
|
 
|
As the members of congress explore solutions-- and I hope they are really exploring, not just working from the the proposal Paulson has submitted-- they should be keeping one thing foremost in their minds-- "How will this help taxpayers and stabilize the economy-- not "How will this help the failing financial entities?" We're not just talking about the $700 billion bailout. There's also the $50 billion loan to the auto companies and now the auto loan companies have started to come begging too. The fact is that We the people are in the drivers seat, negotiatons-wise. The question is, who are the members of congress taking care of? Nowadays, when you buy or sell a house, you have a realtor who must identify his or her self as performing just one of those functions. Well, we need to be really clear that our legislators are representing the taxpayers, not the massive corporations. When it comes to the $700 billion bailout, which many are beginning to predict could be more like three or four trillion dollars, the negotiations should be aiming to keep the loans flowing and the dollar up, not getting the most money to the corporations that gambled away their right to profits or stability. 
We're seeing scavengers like Barclays and Nomura buying up parts of Lehman bros. We need to make sure that as this bailout unfolds, the Fed is not left with the most devalued, worthless parts. Naomi Klein was half joking the other day, on the Bill Maher show, when she said that instead of socializing the losing parts, we should nationalize Exxon. Well, maybe not Exxon, but at least, let's grab and governmentalize the strongest, most valuable parts of these companies that are drowning in their own debt. Allowing Barclays and Nomura to cherry pick is another way of giving corporate gift handout.
Let's look at the bailout as a way to help taxpayers from the bottom up. That means that those hundreds of billions of dollars must flow through taxpayers hands to reach the banks. Use coupons that taxpayers can use to help themselves with their problem mortgages-- or to help them consolidate their debts. Why punish the people who were more cautious and responsible, saddling them with the debts the whole nation will be carrying.
Put out coupons for borrowers who meet the credit criteria and let the borrowers decide where the money goes. This is what Jeff Howe describes in his book, Crowdsourcing, or what James Surowiecki described in Wisdom of the Crowds. What, you want to go with the experts-- the ones who got us or allowed us to descend into this mess? Trust the tens of millions of Americans to invest their money in a smarter way than any group of capitalists. We have faced the time where the wisdom of the market-- trusting capitalism-- has passed. Now we need to trust our own people.
When it comes to the Auto Manufacturers and now, the auto financiers, we need to get tough with them and do the same thing-- help them through the bottom up-- coupons or programs that American consumers participate in-- and require that those programs only apply to vehicles that provide at least 35 MPG fuel efficiencly. They're coming to us begging. Don't give them a handout without getting anything back.
The big corporations that have been ruining America, corrupting the political process, despoiling the environment, globalizing our economy at the price of American Industry, is coming to congress now on bended knees. Bush and Paulson are trying to pull another rush job like they did with WMDs, using them to sell the Iraq war. The members of congress, at least some of them, are smarter this time around. And we have better tools for raising our voices and letting them know, NO FUCKING WAY!
The democrats who have been rubber stamping just about everything George Bush has thrown at them have an opportunity now to play hardball. They should be not only looking at ways to approach this from the bottom up, really taking care of the American people, but they should be agressively figuring out how to use this moment of crisis and opportunity to make something magical happen-- and give the American people something they really deserve-- universal single payer health care. There's an economic reason for it too. The current system, with insurance companies-- and it looks like even the non-profit "Blues" are converting to for-profit- are in the process of parasitizing and bankrupting the country from another direction.
If the congress is smart it will come back to Paulson, Bernanke and Bush and DEMAND that they put the Auto Maker Loan and Universal healthcare into this package, and put all of it into a bottom-up model that gives the taxpayers a real share of the benefits as well as the risk this disaster capitalist assault on America has inflicted.
Chris Dodd, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Dem senators need to really show that they are covering the taxpayers backs. Bernie Sanders has taken a solid stand, saying that any business so big that it can't fail is too big to exist. That's the way all the senators need to be thinking-- the smaller the better. It's one thing to make sure CEOs don't take golden parachute payouts or outrageous salaries for doing bad work, but that's small change. The big picture must include the senate and house totally revising the Paulson plan so money for corporations flows through the taxpayer. It's the best, smartest, fairest way to keep the taxpayer in the loop.
Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people:
put taxpayers first in the bailout. Use bottom up money distribution
Click here to see the most recent messages sent to congressional reps and local newspapers
Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and site architect of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, more...)
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
 Contact Author |
Contact Editor |
 View Authors' Articles |
|
| 10 comments |
|
If we were in the driver's seat....
this debacle wouldn't have happened, Rob. Congress doesn't represent the taxpayers and we have no way to force them to do so. Thanks to rigged election, which Congress itself mandated through HAVA, they don't even have to worry about how we vote. We have no way to hold them accountable, Rob. All we can do is ask them to stop doing what they're doing, and since what they've been doing has been very profitable for them (but not for us), they're not likely to stop. We have no way to remove them during their terms of office and no way to undo the damage that they do. All we can do is vote in the next rigged election after the damage is done. And it wouldn't help if we had honest elections, because we still have no Constitutional way to hold Congress accountable. They are the sole judge of their own elections and only they can remove themselves from office for bad behavior -- we cannot. It's the system that's corrupt, Rob. It never gave us any control over our government. In a democracy or even in a republic, we would have that control and we would be in the driver's seat. This is tyranny. That's why Congress can keep deregulating, authorizing bailouts, and spending a million dollars every two minutes on wars that most Americans don't approve of -- because we're not in the driver's seat. by Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments) on Tuesday, Sep 23, 2008 at 11:28:41 AM  (0+)
|
|
Reply: The states still have power, but are struggling...
...to attain enough political will and momentum to use the Jefferson Rules to call for a Constitutional Convention. And I agree, we are limited in our ability to make our case. We desperately need our very own Constitutional Amendment that sets limits on corporate behavior (setting a single corporate-chartering standard across the country that details what the corporation is and what it does "for the common good," would be a good start), eliminates corporate lobbyists or at least prohibiting them from having offices in the District and limiting how much the members of Congress are allowed to interact with them, requires that our votes be administered by a nonpartisan office in each state that cannot by law have any connections to any campaign, either replaces the Electoral College or at the very least makes it proportional nationwide as it is in Maine and Nebraska (we can only do either through a Constitutional process, and better to do it nationally than at the state level), replaces the Federal Election Commission with a body that is designed similarly to the U.N. Security Council, with states instead of countries on the council (NONPARTISAN representatives elected by popular vote), only with no permanent members, all seats would revolve on some kind of timetable (perhaps concurrent with each two-year session of Congress, but with either four- or six-year terms so that organizational continuity is protected) and the chair would change annually on an alternating large state/small state/regional formula based on size of delegations or TBD), prohibits campaign ads on TV (as they are prohibited in almost all other western democracies), and, most importantly, establishes a requirement that the people can recall Members of Congress at ANY TIME during their terms. (Assuming we don't want to change the nature of Congress entirely, this would be the "sticks" we would apply to the system, our votes being the carrots. But consider how fast they would have considered doing their damn jobs if they thought their districts could fire their asses if they failed to do them at any time during their term. And remember Madison's two year formula was based on two four-month-long sessions by people who had to travel days to get to the Capitol, wherever it was going to be - something he did not yet know. We need adjust that playing field too.) Some basic petitioning & referendum guidelines will be required that can then be administered by the People's nonpartisan election officials in each state. And we also need to amend Article Five to make calling a Constitional Convention a non-Congressional activity that is initiated by people at the state level. (Because we've seen how well the framers' vague suggestions based on archaic demographics have served us in that area. The House will never call for a Convention because they see it as taking their power away.) Lord knows I don't have all the answers, this can only be done synergistically (and I seriously doubt I'm the only one thinking about this), but this might be the time to start considering how we start a process of making offices non-partisan wherever possible, and then increase it over time. (And offices that remain open to parties must be made equally accessible to individuals, i.e., independents or other parties). The founders didn't even trust party politics (they called them "factions"), which is why no parties appear in the founding documents. Parties are necessary in parliamentary politics, but we are limping, bankrupt proof that they do not work well in Congressional legislatures for large countries with complex demographics. The days of a homogenous voting population spread out over an area that took weeks to travel rather than hours are long gone and we need protect our voting interests accordingly. I want to protect in spirit what the founders created, but to assume that privileged men (who only wanted men like themselves to vote) - remembering that it is just human nature that privilege is always blind to itself - would foresee our situation is to think they had supernatural prescience. The fact that they made the Constitution so general to begin with - essentially a template - is, many political scientists argue, the very evidence that they EXPECTED us to have Constitutional Conventions, to tweak for the times. Even without Constitutional Conventions, consider that the abolistionists did it, and the suffragists did it. Legally, Constitutionally, and bloodlessly. (Well, maybe not bloodlessly, if you count the Civil War, but suffragists did do it bloodlessly. It just took a while.) Now we have to do it. (We even have a name, "Populist," from Vox Populi, the voice of the People.) And perhaps a time like this can be an opportunity to continue what the populist movements of the 20th century started. To paraphrase Jay Leno, we have the worst congress in history dealing with the worst administration in history to bailout the worst businesses in history. (What on earth could go wrong?) But "the shock doctrine" can work both ways. First we push back HARD to shut this nonsense down for a week or two until reason can prevail over blatant greed. Make people understand that this is the neo-con end game and the fact that the chips fell when they did may have been happenstance,. but they are still chips, they were deliberately set and betted, and they still fell, as chips always do. This is a little break in the crust of politics, and people are paying a bit more than the usual attention. We need to yell at them that its time to take our country back. We need to leverage the will of every American break the crust open. Not Congress, because Congress has only betrayed us over and over again for, in my estimation, a minimum of six years now. Freud - in one of his few real contributions to society - warned us that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Let's stop the insanity. Now is the time for every single state legislature to meet in special session. AND WE CALL A CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. Keep in mind that it wasn't Congress that won the Revolutionary War, it was individual patriots (and matriots) fighting to save their homes and farms and communities. Congress SUPPORTED THEM (materially when they could, morally otherwise). Call your governor's offices in droves people, demand special sessions! The minute a couple of states call sessions, the rest will follow. by ear (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 49 comments) on Tuesday, Sep 23, 2008 at 6:53:07 PM (0+)
|
|
Isn't this new taxpayer debt just making the problem worse?
How can we keep the dollar from being further weakend by adding even more enormous debt to what we already had with the Bush tax cuts and the two wars? By adding more trillions onto the existing debt, we make ourselves an even worse credit risk to foreigners, who will see all this red ink and flee our capital markets. The bill is coming due for the overborrowing we did before this bailout was ever pushed down our throats. By borrowing even more, we just weaken the dollar. It may temporarily bail out the investors who lost money on the subrpime mortgage crisis, but it makes the US debt problem worse. There was a book written in the 1990's by of all people a fundamentalist Christian pastor, called 'The Coming Economic Earthquake" in which the author predicted this derivatives-based meltdown. I remember at the time remarking on this book and now its predictions have come true. And I'm not even a fundamentalist but this book really foretold this whole mess. But back to my point: how is borrowing more money to fix our already excessive borrowing going to solve anything? We just lived too high on the hog for too long and now there is nothing to cover our bad debt and our house of cards. by JOHN LORENZ (23 articles, 117 quicklinks, 118 diaries, 313 comments [25 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Sep 23, 2008 at 2:07:16 PM (0+)
|
|
If a bailout is necessary, the only way to make it work is
by bailing out those who need help keeping their homes. This would bail out the bankers and investors, too. The bankers and investors should shoulder most of the losses instead of the taxpayers, and this can be done without crashing the financial system by adjusting reserve requirements temporarily. Unfortunately, the Neo-con plan seems to be to just give away billions to bankers and investors while letting the people lose their homes. The big question is whether there are enough members of Congress who are willing to put the best interests of our country and citizens ahead of the Neo-cons who seem hell bent on taking as much as possible from all of us and leaving us all out in the street. by Mark Adams (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 312 comments [39 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Sep 23, 2008 at 2:41:10 PM (0+)
|
|
There's no such thing as too big to fail.
The closest we can come is too big to survive, and failure quickly brings such an entity down to size. I agree that goverment must support the bad loans through the homeowners. This is the only way to stabilize the housing and credit markets at the same time, with the same investment, and no doubt less of an investment than the Wall Street welfare queens are begging for. This would also stretch out the process saving some strain on the taxpayers, as opposed to throwing a trillion dollars at a gaggle of morons who have already demonstrated a propensity to mismanage and lose sums that big and bigger. Too, foreign banks like Barclays and UBS and sovereign wealth funds are and will continue to cherry pick assets of the American companies to see if they can get in line to loot some American largesse. Many of the American companies are not legally qualified to receive these funds from Treasury or the Fed because they are not actually banks. Investment banks are not the same thing, and hedge funds and most derivatives are simply investment clubs writ large with no regulation whatsoever. Go bottom up and stabilize the economy. Let the banks fail if the stabilization is not enough for them. Henry Paulson's scheme is simply a way to loot our money before the collapse happens. by John Sanchez Jr. (9 articles, 0 quicklinks, 25 diaries, 1791 comments [148 recommended, 3 rejected]) on Tuesday, Sep 23, 2008 at 6:42:12 PM (0+)
|
|
Reply: Well Said!
It seems to be unanimous among every economist and every "money" person without a direct stake in the bailout that this is exactly how to do this. You have said it about as well as I've seen it said. by ear (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 49 comments) on Tuesday, Sep 23, 2008 at 7:01:35 PM (0+)
|
|
Primary Bailout Guideline Should Be Bottom-up For Tax Payers
My take on this $700 Billion bailout... Let Wall Street bark at the moon and die. A whole lot of very wealthy people have played the markets irresponsibly. Now they are in trouble and they expect that the average working American should just pony up with the dinero so that they can be absolved of the consequences of there own stupidity. We are being victimized by unrestrained capitalism; just as bad as unrestained socialism. We can no longer have the remotest hope that our government will ever exercise a modicum of control on the taxpayer gouging fat-cats. It is time for each American taxpayer to remember WHY this country came about in the first place. We are in an era where the only lobby the taxpayer has is the armed individual. It may well be time to march on Washington and demand, as forcefully as neccessary, justice for those of us who work for a living! by RitaB (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments [3 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Sep 23, 2008 at 10:52:44 PM (0+)
|
|
Hmmmm
How do they publicly oppose loan modifications and bankruptcy law while at the same time advocate a huge taxpayer bailout is beyond me. Actually, not it's not. They actually favor foreclosures. Thats how our financial system under the Fed works. Profit by default and foreclosure. Exchange fictitous assets for real assets. Obama to his credit voted against the 2005 bankruptcy law, but he chose as his VP somebody who voted for it. by pft (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 601 comments [7 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, Sep 24, 2008 at 12:04:57 AM (0+)
|
|
And Stop the Immigration which is a partial cause
I agree with everything that Rob has to say. But we have to understand that the outsourcing of jobs/industry and the insourcing of both Legal and Illegal Immigrations (done through disingenuous enforcement) have also greatly contributed to the problem. It seems to me we need to look from the other end of the microscope and figure out what it is really going to take in order for the American Worker to enjoy a dignified life, through retirement. Transparent, accurate econometrics need to be developed in order to meet this goal. For more perspectives on this issue please watch the following video: Where is the Bailout for the American People? and check out this website: by Bruce Cain (21 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 99 comments [11 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, Sep 24, 2008 at 12:10:33 AM (0+)
|
|
Bottom up bailout
Hey! I think Naomi Klein has the right idea. Nationalize the oil companies! Energy is too important strategically and for our well being to leave in the hands of crooks and speculators. But also, if we wanted to bail out stressed wage earners and help the auto companies and many small businesses we need to have a universal, single-payer health care plan. So many people would have better luck paying their bills if they didn't have disastrous health care payments hanging over them. General Motors says it can't compete with European car manufacrurers because they have to include $1,800 for health care in the price of each car they make. by Bryan Emmel (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 415 comments [32 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, Sep 24, 2008 at 2:17:14 AM (0+)
|
Want to post your own comment on this Article? 
|
||||
|
||||||||||||||
Must Read (0) 
Well Said (0) 
News (0) 
Touching (0) 
Funny (0) 
Supported (0) 
Interesting (0) 
Inspiring (0) 
Valuable (0)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tell a Friend:
|
Copyright © 2002-2009, OpEdNews |
