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September 29, 2008

Bush's Great Bailout is Merely Fear Du Jour

By Frank Ranelli

Bush's bail out of Wall Street is a leap into Robber Baron-style tyranny. Congress must reject this absolutist, radical proposal outright. Rewarding bad behavior on Wall Street, by theft of money obtained through taxpayers on Main Street, is more than perverse it is an insidious act of vile turpitude.

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Bush’s bail out of Wall Street is a leap into Robber Baron-style tyranny. Congress must reject this absolutist, radical proposal outright. Rewarding bad behavior on Wall Street, by theft of money obtained through taxpayers on Main Street, is more than perverse it is an insidious act of vile turpitude.

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Unfortunately, President Bush has once again fiendishly wielded fear as a bludgeon to subjugate and savagely browbeat Congress into handing him a blank check – a $700 billion blank check. In the fall of 2003, it was for the now unmitigated debacle in Iraq. Today, it is a diabolic attempt to seal the deal of The Treasury Department’s proposed bail out, which is a naked and obscene nod toward the largest transfer of wealth in human history.

As Americans, we have a diseased nation. It is sick with avarice and struck down by false flag fears. Today’s “fear du jour” is the transparent canard presented by President Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson – that our economy will collapse if we, as a nation, do not act with enormous haste and waste billions of taxpayer’s dollars – immediately. This “me first” malignancy has infected everything over the past eight years from science and religion, to common sense and dignity, and now, fiscal restraint and legislative prudence. It is akin to a malignant cancer that grows exponentially until it kills off the host – society itself.

The revised bill Congress is crafting is simple another product built on a propagandist platform put forth by another breathtaking power grab by Bush – this time to aid Wall Street after it has plundered America; it is a distinction without a difference. This plan is not a $700 billion bail out for Wall Street, and it does little, if anything, for Main Street. It is an outright heist borne of an ostensible, yet untrue, exigent initiative that is purely a measure to exploit a coerced, stressed Congress and to extort American’s of our money and our future.

This is a dangerous, plenary power grab by the Executive Branch and would simply be legislative-approved despotism if passed in any form or fashion of its current incarnation. Congress must reject this absolutist, radical proposal outright, regardless of how it is larded up or whittled down. True patriotism and real reform must begin with each of us understanding we must help one another for the greater good of the nation. It is not bailing out irresponsible and reckless, colossal-sized corporate institutions that have insatiability fed at the trough of unregulated greed and avarice over the last eight years of Bush imperatives. Rewarding shocking and irresponsible behavior – to the tune of $700 billion – is a formula that emboldens, not condemns, more of the same financial plunder and excessive negligence.

We have seen this act before when America was wrongfully handcuffed into Bush’s war of choice in Iraq – a now six-year old, trillion-dollar abyss. The last time Congress rushed recklessly headlong into a dire demand from this administration, we were saddled with the Iraq war and false claims of total annihilation by a Third World, tin pot dictator who was thoroughly contained and never an imminent threat. This time, however, the smoking gun is purported to be an economic disintegration of America’s financial market, and the foreboding smoking gun will come in the form of another Great Depression.

The same eerie similarities between Bush’s run up to the Iraq war in 2003 – and the alleged 2008 meltdown on Wall Street are uncanny – the evidence is thin and the lies are obvious. The mushroom cloud never appeared, no weapons of mass destruction were ever found, and Saddam was never in cahoots with Al Qaeda. In fact, the fuzzy logic behind this proposed blatant money grab for the rich can be summed up by what a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com last Tuesday: “It’s not based on any particular data point, we just wanted to choose a really large number.”

As evidence of the preposterous notion behind this ruse has caught the attention of many, the Washington Post reported on Friday, almost 200 academic economists "have signed a petition organized by a University of Chicago professor objecting to the plan on the grounds that it could create perverse incentives.”

Moreover, clarion calls from many notable experts are sounding the alarm and asking Congress to reject this bailout bill. To wit, NYU's Nouriel Roubini, the prophetic thinker who forecasted this meltdown, says “The Treasury plan (even in its current version agreed with Congress) is very poorly conceived and does not contain many of the key elements of a sound and efficient and fair rescue plan.” Harvard's Ken Rogoff, a Former Federal Rerserve and IMF official, insists that the prospect of this bailout is, unto itself, taking a manageable problem and making it into “a more intense crisis.”

It took us years to get this deep into our now-financial abyss; hence, we must be vigilant and exercise sound judgment in getting out. This is not a time for rapid-fire, extemporaneous reactions to a boiling-over pot that has been slowly simmering unwatched and headed toward disaster for years.

This cannot stand or America will certainly fall into the hands of further greed for a few, while the continuing diminishment of the prospect for a better future ahead for most will suffer dire, if not deadly, consequences. Therefore, we are all equally under attack and must not stand alone, but together in unanimity against Bush’s socialism for the rich at the expense of the American taxpayer.

It’s time we, as a nation, put people over profits and bail out the real victims – homeowners and families – and not the wealthy moguls on Wall Street.

Authors Bio:
Frank J. Ranelli is an independent scholar, skeptic and critic, author and essayist. His erudite and iconoclastic style of provocative writing has been extensively published in a variety of news outlets and across the Internet. These include the Naples Daily News, The Online Journal, Information Clearing House, Alternet, The Smirking Chimp, and the former progressive journal of thought, Wicked Philosophy.

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