I have no problems with the House vote today even though the conservative Republicans probably had some philosophical reasons for doing it – you know, like let the market work. You can’t fix stupid+stubborn. And I resist this notion that is being sold by everyone everywhere that something has to be done soon. That’s the same rationale that got us the USA Patriot Act and the Iraq war. I doubt that caution and prudence will make things worse.

A couple of ideas are out there, but not seriously considered. They have to do with making the people caused the mess clean it up. One would be a surtax on high income taxpayers to pay for the bailout. The second idea is a small tax, say a quarter percent (.0025) on all stock transactions. It would raise about $150 billion per year, and would make Wall Street pay for Wall Street’s problems.

These are reasonable ideas that address the idea of personal responsibility. But so powerful is our financial sector, so much influence does it wield on the hill, that they are not even considered.

We’re a long way from out of this mess. As Ravi Batra suggests, the current bailout package could make our economy even sicker than it is by increasing interest rates for all borrowers. And anyway, it is probably just enough to get us through the election. Then it happens all over again.

Note: If your 401K has taken a big hit, remember that John McCain wants to privatize Social Security. He wants equal distribution of misery (Churchill’s definition of socialism).

Note: Hank Paulson, while at Goldman Sachs, collected $38 million in bonuses while his company increased its leveraged debt from $20 billion to $100 billion. I’d say his pocket is a good place to start when looking for money for this fix. Why not just give it back to us?

From the Thom Hartmann Program, Friday, Setpember 26, guest, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont):

Caller: I just wanted to ask you if you share my anger at the Democratic leadership and Dodd and Frank. The way I’m seeing it, they have embraced the Paulson bailout plan, with modifications, but basically, they’ve embraced the urgency of it and that that’s the only way to do it, even though there’s a whole slew of economists saying there are other ways and let’s put the brakes on this and slow down. And now I see the Republicans have taken that and said “Let’s stop”. I think this is the worst thing the Democrats have ever done. Is it just me?

Sanders: No. As a matter of fact I just made that point to Chris Dodd within the last hour. My wife in Burlington is a very good observer. She doesn’t get caught up in the turmoil, and she’s sitting home watching the TV, and her perception is that in fact it is now that Democrats are identified with Bush’s bailout program while the right wing Republicans are out there saying they’re going to protect taxpayers from Wall Street.

There’s going to be some meetings today and I will continue to voice that perspective. Number one, we should be thinking thoughtfully about this. It is not clear that we have to move in quite the time frame that Mr. Paulson has suggested. And number two, bottom line is if a bailout is to occur, then the people, the class of people, who caused the problem, pay for it.

Barney Frank, to his credit, has supported the concept and has been vocal. On NPR the other day he repeated his thought that there should be surtax on the very wealthy. But we are not seeing that in the plan.

In the House Peter DeFazio is proposing a stock transfer tax of a quarter of one percent that would raise about $150 billion per year, and in that sense we would let the stock market bail out the stock market.

Either of those ideas makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, the Democrats have not embraced them yet.

There’s been an immense capture of wealth by the upper classes during the Bush Administration. Now’s the time to give back. But the idea that the people who benefited from Wall Street’s malfeasance should pay for it is never even broached. It’s eerie.

Debate moderators are chosen for their ability to project gravitas, but their real job is to keep the candidates from veering into substance. Journalists don’t become moderators without selling their souls, internalizing the sellout, and then believing in their phony selves. Jim Lehrer is a professional sycophant whose audience is comprised of higher IQ patrons of public television. He’s a good moderator.

But Jim Lehrer accidentally asked a good question the other night – it didn’t get the answer it deserved – that would not be proper. But it was a good question, nonetheless. Addressing Obama:

As president, as a result of whatever financial rescue plan comes about and the billion, $700 billion, whatever it is it’s going to cost, what are you going to have to give up, in terms of the priorities that you would bring as president of the United States, as a result of having to pay for the financial rescue plan?

The reason why we can’t fix our problems, why we don’t have a health care plan, why college education sinks our kids into lifelong debt, why our infrastructure is crumbling underneath us, why we don’t have a national rail system … is that we use our surplus wealth to take care of our wealthy. Obama is talking about doing something about some of these problems (I don’t know how serious he is) and is also talking about offering some tax relief for ordinary citizens, burdened as they are by two onerous income taxes. But if he is elected, he’ll not be able to do anything, and Lehrer made it perfectly clear why – the money is to be spent rescuing the wealthy sector, and won’t be available.

I don’t think that’s an accident. George Bush came to office in 2001 faced with a huge problem – an accidental budget surplus brought about by an unforeseen flurry of economic activity and a stock market bubble. He set out to eliminate it as fast as he could by giving it to the wealthy in the form of tax cuts. It was a dangerous time, and he faced the challenge with resolve and courage. Had the surpluses been allowed to go on, Americans would have demanded the things listed above, and there would be no good reason to say no.

Deficits are intentional. Surpluses are accidental and problematic. We are an enormously wealthy country – we have money to provide for a reasonable retirement for everyone, health care and public transportation and education of our youth, but these are not the things that the owners of the country want for us. These things are egalitarian – they have a leveling effect. So our leaders present us with an endless series of hobgoblins – imaginary monsters to fight – and fighting them absorbs all of our surplus and redirects it at the military industrial complex. Much of the debate last Friday was dedicated to reinforcing the notion that we must fight these imaginary monsters.

It’s been that way all of my life. We fought a massively expensive Cold War with the Russians that lasted from the early 1950’s until 1991. We never actually fought them, but they were the reason why we invested our surplus wealth in missile systems and aircraft carriers. Every time we wanted to attack someone, it was the really the conspiring Russians that were causing the problem.

But the Russians never really threatened us in any meaningful way. We threatened them with missiles, they responded. We occupied West Germany, they occupied East. But they mostly stayed in their sphere, we in ours, and both were happy with that system.

It was a good system, a good way to assure that our surplus wealth was directed at Eisenhower’s military industrial complex. Russia was useful. But then she went and collapsed on us, catching everyone by surprise, and we had no enemy to fight, and no justification for misuse of that surplus wealth. Our leaders frantically searched for enemies, even settling on little Libya at one point. Who to fight? Who to scare us with? For a time during the 1990’s (there’s still some residual) they said we were involved in a global war on drugs, but that didn’t really resonate the way Russia did – foreign substances did not really take the place of really evil foreign people. It was hard to put a face on that enemy. But it was all we had.

We were adrift, having no real enemies, and along came that surplus, and the problem was apparent to all in power – there was a real threat that our wealth would be used to force some kind of equality upon us – health care, educational opportunities, infrastructure – we were starting to dream.

And along came terrorism. Finally, a new and permanent enemy – one to last generations, one to justify the continued squandering of our wealth in such a way that ordinary people do not benefit. Warfare, the GWOT, the counterinsurgencies, Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan are really part of a bigger war, class warfare. We ordinary Joe’s who produce the wealth of our land are the enemy.

The bailout is a massive wealth transfer, and as always, it is directed upward. It, along with military spending, will preclude any spending on ourselves for things we want for ourselvesfor decades to come. It is being presented to us as a fait accompli, and will be driven into us like a spike by both Democrats and Republicans.

Whenever there is “bipartisan” agreement in Washington, there is going to be a massive screwing. The job of politicians and the media right now is to garner public support for the latest wealth transfer. That’s been the push for the last few weeks – not to fix Wall Street so much as to con the American public into accepting the idea that we owe Wall Street anything; that keeping them healthy will keep us healthy. That’s why Lehrer’s question was so appropriate.

It’s never been a perfect system. The bailout may not pass. Occasionally we win a thing or two. There is still some residual of the New Deal and Great Society in our land – Social Security and Medicare and unemployment insurance and the like – those are ways that we use our surplus wealth to help each other. Those programs really work and we can easily afford them. But they interfere with other objectives, so we are told are too costly, that they must be reined in. The object of a successful McCain presidency will be to turn these programs into profit centers for the wealthy, and to squeeze ordinary people out. If Obama is elected, there will be a full court press to keep him from implementing anything he has espoused.

My money is on McCain. I’m not far away from Social Security. I’m feeling unlucky.

h/t: Dr. Peter Rost

You’ll be missed.

The Bush Administration wants to pass the proposed bailout bill in Iraq-like fashion – that is, to create a sense of urgency, as if doing nothing right now, this instant, will result in catastrophe. In this scenario, reluctant Democrats, and some Republicans as well, are merely cattle to be stampeded into a plan that will subsidize some of our wealthiest citizens. All for the public good, of course.

Suppose the Bush people met and concocted a strategy to get this bill passed, and it went something like this:

1: URGENCY URGENCY URGENCY – everything must happen now. If we don’t act now, this crisis will only get worse.
2: Darth Vader goes down to capitol hill to emphasize URGENCY. It’s only the second time his lying honorable self has been down there, the first time to tell lies about Iraq.
3. Emphasize that everyone agrees in principle on what must be done. There is no debate about that.
4. Throw some morsels to opponents to give them strategic cover for their votes – limits on executive pay, oversight committees, that sort of thing. Focus the debate on trifling side issues.
5. Have John McCain threaten to cancel the forthcoming debates because of the URGENCY of the situation.
6. Give Democrats more strategic cover, allowing them to outsmart McCain by coming to agreement in time to thwart his plan to thwart the debates.
7. Salute the spirit of bipartisanship that results in a colossal screwing of the American public.

Politics is not random, and the events we are witnessing occurring by happenstance. The enemies here, the people against whom all of this action is directed, are recalcitrant Democratic and Republican legislators who want to take it slow and be cautious, and, of course, the American people. In the end we will get a very bad bill, and another huge wealth transfer to our wealthy classes. Like Iraq and the Patriot Bill before, it will all have been done so fast that it will be law before we have a chance to think about it.

That’s how politics works. It’s how very smart people manage to get what they want, again and again and again, and why we are wrong to place our hopes in Democrats. They do not stand for the common good or the common man. They are merely the vessel in which false hope resides.

The current economic crisis is rather big and complex, enough so that we mere mortals might have a hard time grasping it. I found this useful.

Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it. – Theodore Roosevelt

The Wall Street Journal is a good source for no-nonsense news. The reason is simple – its readers are sophisticated and accept nothing less. They are the true ownership society, and as owners of most of our wealth and as people having large investments all over the globe, they need straight talk.

So when Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation took over ownership of the Journal, I wasn’t worried that he would ruin it. I expected that its news would still be the best in the country, and that its right wing editorial page would stay right wing. But odd things are happening – the Journal has opened up its pages. It is allowing opposing views in the editorial room on a limited basis.

Thomas Frank, author of “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” is now a regular contributor. Today he has a piece called “It’s Judgment Day for McCain“. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would read such a screed in the hallowed pages of the Journal.

Speaking of McCain, Frank suggests that in advocating for a commission to find out what went wrong on Wall Street, that he pull over the “Straight Talk Express” and interview the people aboard. He suggests that he interview 1) himself, 2) Phil Gramm, and 3) Phil’s wife, of Enron fame, Wendy Gramm. Each of these people have been part of the deregulatory mania that has gripped this country since Jimmy Carter set the airlines free in the late 1970’s.

Frank also suggests that McCain interview one of his senior economic advisers, Kevin Hassett, who in March of this year declared that the financial crisis was the result of “out-of-control government regulation”.

Frank also mentions the unmentionable, something that should be part of our campaign dialogue, and is not for reasons that are unfathomable:

Maybe the McCain Commission on Deregulation can kick off with a statement from the candidate himself. It will be helpful for the public, if painful for the senator himself, to hear about Mr. McCain’s own close brush with one of the towering figures of financial deregulation, Charles Keating, the master of Lincoln Savings and Loan. Keating had a special, urgent interest in getting Big Brother off our backs: in 1986 some meddlesome agency suspected him of massive violations of S&L regulations. Keating fought back by recruiting a handful of legislators, including Mr. McCain, to pressure S&L regulators to leave his S&L alone. A few years later, Lincoln became one of the largest financial failures in U.S. history.

John McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five scandal is not part of the current campaign discussion. That’s a monumental failing on the part of the Obama people. What scares them?

John McCain is a deregulator, and has been for all of his time in Washington. He’s attempting now to change his spots now for the LIV’s – low information voters – who don’t know his past. Thomas Frank’s piece in such a prominent publication as the Wall Street Journal is a big boost for Obama. It’s not a great piece, it doesn’t cover new ground. It’s just that fact that it is carried now in the most prominent and prestigious newspaper in the country.

Thank you, Rupert.

I haven’t been putting up anything substantive lately – I go by my own standards, so I decide what has substance, what doesn’t. Lately I’m not much into deep thought. After all, it’s the political season, and we are surrounded by stupidity as the candidates try to gain the votes of those people who pay the least attention, who are most susceptible to the 30 second sound byte. It’s rather discouraging.

Do check this out – there’s a good deal of heat and not much light, but it was fun. Carol and Friends at Missoulapolis are defending Sarah Palin, well, sort of, and get this – Carol thinks that Barack Obama, who was a highly accomplished student who graduated from Harvard Law School Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude and who edited the Harvard Law Review, might be the beneficiary of affirmative action. I think that might be a tad racist. Further, she thinks his degree is “mushy”.

I pointed out Sarah Palin’s academic credentials to help the grasp the high absurdity of this:

In 1982, Sarah Palin enrolled at Hawaii Pacific College but left after her first semester. From there she transferred to North Idaho College, where she spent two semesters as a general studies major. From the community college she then transferred to the much larger University of Idaho for two semesters. During this time Palin won the Miss Wasilla Pageant beauty contest, then finished third (second runner-up) in the Miss Alaska pageant, at which she won a college scholarship and the “Miss Congeniality” award. She then left the University of Idaho and attended Matanuska-Susitna College in Alaska for one term. The next year she returned to the University of Idaho where she spent three semesters completing her Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism, graduating in 1987.

Mush, doggies. Mush!

It gets better. Her grades are not available.

You can’t make this stuff up. This is what we have become. This is who they admire.

I know what it is – I know why the dense stupidity. I can be frank here – this is a blog and we bloggers are not accountable. It’s the fundamentalists. They are not smart people and are easily fooled, easily led from point A to point B by any charlatan who claims to be one of them. The reason why they are so enamored by Palin is that she thinks the planet is 6,000 years old, that people walked with dinosaurs, and that a man who made his name by assailing people he accused of witchcraft is a good role model. (That’s her pastor, Thomas Muthee.)

These people are of low intelligence, and they are such an important part of the Republican Party’s voting coalition that the party leadership, who are not stupid, have to throw them a bone. Sarah Palin is that bone. She’s nothing more. She’s nothing. But they are circling the wagons around her.

I spent some time in the mountains this past weekend, and had a chance to read the words of a wonderful cynic with better-than-average writing skills, Mark Twain. The following passages are from Letters From the Earth, where the narrator is Satan, and he is enthralled by us:

This is a strange place, an extraordinary place, and interesting. There is nothing resembling it at home. The people are all insane, the other animals are all insane, the earth is insane, Nature itself is insane. Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the “noblest work of God.” This is the truth I am telling you. And this is not a new idea with him, he has talked it through all the ages, and believed it. Believed it, and found nobody among all his race to laugh at it.

Moreover — if I may put another strain upon you — he thinks he is the Creator’s pet. He believes the Creator is proud of him; he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes, and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to Him, and thinks He listens. Isn’t it a quaint idea? Fills his prayers with crude and bald and florid flatteries of Him, and thinks He sits and purrs over these extravagancies and enjoys them. He prays for help, and favor, and protection, every day; and does it with hopefulness and confidence, too, although no prayer of his has ever been answered. The daily affront, the daily defeat, do not discourage him, he goes on praying just the same. There is something almost fine about this perseverance. I must put one more strain upon you: he thinks he is going to heaven!

He has salaried teachers who tell him that. They also tell him there is a hell, of everlasting fire, and that he will go to it if he doesn’t keep the Commandments.

In America, our base Christian fundamentalist instinct has ebbed and flowed. These are not unusual times. We have had Great Awakenings in the past, and Christians have spilled over into our public lives. It is never good – they are not a force for good. Underneath their pieties and preaching lay an ugliness. They want control. They want the reins of government, and when they have it, they will quash the one thing that bothers them most: personal freedom.

Fundamentalist Christians are dumb, and Republicans have had their way with them. I take solace in their dumbness, and would fear them even more if they were smart. As it is, they can do great damage in their ignorance, but at least it can be said that most of them are not malevolent. They are just misguided fools.

Have a nice day!