Why rush to throw another $350 billion of taxpayer money at the Wall Street bandits and their political cronies who created the biggest financial mess since the Great Depression? And why should we taxpayers be expected to double our debt exposure when the 10 still-secret bailout contracts made in the first round are being kept from the public?
We don’t have time, President-elect Barack Obama’s key economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, insisted in a letter to Congress on Monday, promising that the new infusion would not be squandered as was the first installment. But given that Summers is personally as responsible for this meltdown as anyone, why should we trust him on this? Yes, it sounds wonderfully bipartisan that Obama is backing President Bush’s request for spending the money now, short-circuiting congressional inquiry, but it was just that sort of bipartisan politics that created this nightmare.
How insulting that we must now accept Summers’ assurance that the Obama administration will “move quickly to reform a weak and outdated regulatory system to better protect consumers, investors and businesses.” This from the guy who, as President Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary, pushed the deregulation legislation making the subsequent financial crimes of Wall Street legal. The “toxic derivatives” that we taxpayers are now forced to purchase from the Wall Street hustlers were deliberately shielded from all government regulation, thanks to the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which Summers got Congress to pass in the closing days of the Clinton administration with the same urgency that he now pushes for the new Wall Street handout. Read the rest of this entry ?
It is a testament to the filmmaking and propaganda skills of Frank Capra that even a grown male atheist like me will weep like a schoolgirl whose puppy just died when, at the very end of It’s a Wonderful Life, George’s brother raises a glass and says: “To my brother George, the richest man in the world.” The New York Times article I reference in the video, well worth the read, is right below the video.
Wonderful? Sorry, George, It’s a Pitiful, Dreadful Life
WENDELL JAMIESON • NYTIMES
The classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” stars James Stewart as a man who can see the world as it would be if he had never been born.
MR. ELLMAN didn’t tell us why he wanted us to stay after school that December afternoon in 1981. When we got to the classroom — cinderblock walls, like all the others, with a dreary view of the parking lot — we smelled popcorn.
He had set up a 16-millimeter projector and a movie screen, and rearranged the chairs. Book bags, jackets and overcoats were tossed on seat backs, teenagers sat, suspicious, slumping, and Mr. Ellman started the projector whirring. “It’s a Wonderful Life” filled the screen.
I was not a mushy kid. My ears were fed a steady stream of the Clash and the Jam, and I was doing my best to conjure a dyed-haired, wry, angry-young-man teenage persona. But I was enthralled that afternoon in Brooklyn. In the years that followed, my affection for “It’s a Wonderful Life” has never waned, despite the film’s overexposure and sugar-sweet marketing, and the rolling eyes of friends and family. Read the rest of this entry ?
Alex W • Operation Itch Contributing Writer
more posts from Alex
The executive branch went forward with the automaker bailout without Congress’s approval. The Republicans in Congress demanded that union wages, benefits, and pensions be reduced in exchange for bailout money, and the United Auto Workers refused to cooperate.
The executive branch gave the same requirements, but instead of being a prerequisite, it’s a vague requirement they have to meet by the end of March. They have to prove to the Obama administration that they have made the necessary changes to return in time to profitability, and if he uses George W. Bush’s criteria, the necessary changes are reducing union wages, benefits, and pensions to match the foreign automakers with U.S. factories. Barack Obama has left it unclear what he plans to do, stating that he agrees with and respects the president’s decision, but also saying that the brunt should not be exclusively on the workers. Read the rest of this entry ?
America for Kids • Operation Itch Video For the kids, so they know what kind of hell we’ve been through over the past nine years. “He who does not know the past…etc., etc..”
In his testimony before congress Friday, the head of General Motors announced that GM, Ford and Chrysler would push themselves toward financial solvency in 2009 by closing Ohio.
Rick Wagoner’s announcement came in response to harsh criticism from Congress toward the Big Three for not explaining how a federal bailout would help the companies compete in the world market.
Wagoner told Congress that he, along with the heads of Ford and Chrysler, got the idea as they looked out their car window at Ohio while on their way to Washington.
“This is the first time we drove through the Midwest,” added Alan Mulally, head of Ford. “When we saw Ohio, we all had a real eureka moment. We thought, ‘do we really need all of this?'”
The massive restructuring has already begun. “We have already shut down many of Ohio’s smaller cities, and by the end of this year we plan to take Columbus entirely offline,” said Chrysler Chief Robert Nardelli.
Allison Kilkenny • Operation Itch Contributor The New York Times lead story is U.A.W. Makes Concessions to Help Automakers. The article is pretty aptly titled because the NYT chose to focus entirely on the evil UAW parasites that are sucking the poor, helpless automakers dry through ludicrous demands such as job security and pension/health care payments.
The Big Three claim their industry is tanking not because of their refusal to change their big, heavy, gas-guzzling car designs, but because evil workers are demanding their contractually promised benefits. The Big Three are failing not because the rest of the world is building fuel-efficient cars, but because the UAW demands that CEOs pay their salaries between the time their jobs get shipped to Mexico, and they find new sources of employment.
You see, all the blame can (and should) be pinned on the workers. At least, that’s what the Big Three claim, and the NYT seems to agree, which explains why so many horrifying facts are splayed across the Gray Lady’s pages without examination, analysis, or comment from workers themselves.
Ford’s chief executive, Alan R. Mulally, said in an interview Wednesday that Detroit needed the union’s help to speed its transformation, particularly in replacing current workers with entry-level employees who will be making $14 an hour in wages under the terms of the 2007 labor agreement.
That’s a pay cut of almost half for the Big Three. In addition, union members aren’t guaranteed their old job security or health benefits. Now that they’ve made concession after concession, there are still no strings attached to the automakers to stop them from closing their plants and shipping jobs to Mexico after everything has been said and done. Read the rest of this entry ?
Michael Moore • MichaelMoore.com I drive an American car. It’s a Chrysler. That’s not an endorsement. It’s more like a cry for pity. And now for a decades-old story, retold ad infinitum by tens of millions of Americans, a third of whom have had to desert their country to simply find a damn way to get to work in something that won’t break down:
My Chrysler is four years old. I bought it because of its smooth and comfortable ride. Daimler-Benz AG owned the company then and had the good grace to place the Chrysler chassis on a Mercedes axle and, man, was that a sweet ride!
When it would start.
More than a dozen times in these years, the car has simply died. Batteries have been replaced, but that wasn’t the problem. My dad drives the same model. His car has died many times, too. Just won’t start, for no reason at all.
A few weeks ago, I took my Chrysler in to the Chrysler dealer here in northern Michigan — and the latest fixes cost me $1,400. The next day, the vehicle wouldn’t start. When I got it going, the brake-warning light came on. And on and on.
Allison Kilkenny • Operation Itch Contributor Written beside the American creed of hating terrorists and loving the Irish and Italians should be the footnote and we ignore poor people. Poor people always get the shit end of every deal usually because they can’t get the attention of politicians or pundits, and because of this the poor people in New Orleans and India have a lot in common.
India has more than 100,000 millionaires, and is creating new ones at a rate rivaled only be Russia. Meanwhile, nearly half of Mumbai’s 14-18 million residents live in slums. In the United States, poor people suffer under a specialized caste system that masquerades as a functioning democracy. In the good ole’ US of A, the top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.
Softening up, crashing, going down, failing to launch, losing firmness — it seems sex and money, or at least libido and the economy, have more in common than language.
In “Sexual Recession” in Forbes this week, Dr. Ruth cautions that people anxious about diminishing investments or “looming pink slips should turn their attention to a side effect of the present economic tsunami: the way it’s washing away the love lives of couples caught up in the rushing waters. Stress, depression and anxiety all wreak havoc on the libido.”
Wars, bases, and money. The three are inextricably tied together.
In the 1980s, for example, American support for jihadis like Osama bin Laden waging war on (Soviet) infidels who invaded and constructed bases in Afghanistan, a Muslim land, led to rage by many of the same jihadis at the bases (U.S.) infidels built in the Muslim holy land of Saudi Arabia in the 1990s. That, in turn, led to jihadislike bin Laden declaring war on those infidels, which, after September 11, 2001, led the Bush administration to launch, and then prosecute, a Global War on Terror, often from newly built bases in Muslim lands. Over the last seven years, the results of that war have been particularly disastrous for Iraqis and Afghans. Sizable numbers of Americans, however, are now beginning to suffer as well. After all, their hard-earned taxpayer dollars have been poured into wars without end, leaving the country deeply in debt and in a state of economic turmoil.
It’s just human nature that some calamities register in the brain and others don’t. The train engineer texting at the throttle (“HOW R U? C U L8R”) and missing the red light and 25 people die in the crash — oh God, that is way too real — everyone has had a moment of supreme stupidity that came close to killing somebody. Even atheists say a little prayer now and then: Dear God, I am an idiot, thank you for protecting my children. Read the rest of this entry ?
How dare you throw that tea into Boston Harbor! Such is the anti-democratic arrogance of the fear-mongering pundits and politicians who tell us if we taxpayers don’t instantly give the Wall Street banking bandits a $700-billion bailout, we are destroying America. Instead of applauding representatives from both parties who, for once, heeded the public rather than the fat cats, the established pundits blasted those who dared get out of line.
It was a time for some of the best commentators to fail and, as much as I hate to admit it, for Lou Dobbs, and even Newt Gingrich, to shine. Dobbs called it correctly: The sky is not falling, there is time for reasoned debate, and why isn’t the public being listened to? Gingrich put it best when he said short-circuiting serious congressional oversight over an enormous transfer of taxpayer dollars to an industry is “un-American.” Others, with whom I typically am in far greater agreement, just rolled over to give the bankers what they demanded. Read the rest of this entry ?
Is it possible that in this historic election that the first debate featuring McBama was actually overshadowed by other news? As lawmakers prepare to vote on the $700 billion dollar bailout (and McCain maneuvers to take the credit), the House approves a trillion dollars in spending- not for the bailout, but to expand the empire.
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Previewing a McCain campaign message for the days ahead, top strategist Steve Schmidt claimed Sunday that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is partly responsible for the tentative agreement on a mortgage bailout that congressional leaders announced shortly after midnight.
Schmidt was appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s chief strategist, who ridiculed the McCain claim as “a little bit of fiction.”
Obama, asked on CBS’s “Face the Nation” if McCain deserved credit for bringing lawmakers together, replied “No,” according to AP.
McCain himself was modest, saying on ABC’s “This Week” that congressional negotiators deserve “great credit” for the bipartisan deal. “”It wasn’t because of me,” McCain said. “They did it themselves.” Read the rest of this entry ?
Yes, I know that you and other European friends are, as you put it, “totally
confused” by what’s happening here in the U.S. right now. Welcome to the club.
I wish I could answer all your questions about America’s current
political/economic crisis with definitive certainty. But the situation is moving real
fast, with one disaster after another, and with politicians flip-flopping all over
the place.
As a result, it’s difficult to know precisely what’s going on, but I’ll do
the best I can. Here are my responses to your italicized questions about McCain,
Obama, the financial crisis and bailout, and electoral corruption: Read the rest of this entry ?
Aemilia Scott
“This is the first time we drove through the Midwest,” added Alan Mulally, head of Ford. “When we saw Ohio, we all had a real eureka moment. We thought, ‘do we really need all of this?'”
Previewing a McCain campaign message for the days ahead, top strategist Steve Schmidt claimed Sunday that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is partly responsible for the tentative agreement on a mortgage bailout that congressional leaders announced shortly after midnight.
OPERATION ITCH 