Fire Henry Paulsen

Fire ‘im.  Can his ass.  $350 billion (with a “b”) of my tax dollars are gone…simply gone; disappeared into the gaping maw of the banking industry.  Why?  Because Sec. Paulsen got his way, and got billions of our dollars, and got to spend it as he saw fit.  Out of $350 billion, did I see a single dime of it placed anywhere that would help me or my family?  No.  Hooray, bank CEO’s can keep their yachts and personal chef’s.

I say if you want to help America, divide the bailout money between the Americans.  Instead of the laughable “trickle-down” theory we’ve been saddled with for so long, let’s try the “trickle-UP” theory…give the money to the average guy, let him spend it, or save it, or pay bills with it, and watch the money make its way UP the chain to the large institutions.

What does Henry Paulsen say?  He’s gone on record as saying the last bailout didn’t work, because Americans didn’t go out and blow their checks on tv’s and fru-fru, but (god forbid!) spent the money on bills, necessities and paying down debt.  Henry Paulsen has said that if there is another bailout it should NOT go to the American people, because we “did it wrong” last time.

Sounds to me like the American people had more sense than our Treasury Secretary, the Federal Government, or the entire banking industry.  In the words of Ann Richardson — “Henry Paulsen…you ARE the weakest link…good bye!”

Yes We Did

It’s been a month since my last post.  The big budget bugaboo hasn’t put me out on the street or starved my cat to death or anything.  We’re actually doing better now — the price of gas dropped from $4.29 to $2.11 / gallon.  I filled up the car yesterday for $35…a month ago it cost nearly $70.  Now our family budget is merely elastic-waistband tight, not snare-drum-head tight.

So that huge bailout plan passed about a month ago…and we haven’t seen a single benefit from it yet.  The economy still reeks.  The news this morning said the NYSE dropped 10% in the past two days — yet another record drop.  Those record drops happen so often now that I’m blase’ over the whole tanking-economy thing.  Isn’t that sad?

And we elected Barrack Hussein Obama as our next President of the United States.  I’ll say it right up front: I never thought I’d see a black man elected to the presidency in my lifetime.  I sincerely thought that the combined prejudice of Americans would never let that happen, and I’m elated to have had that stereotype shattered.  Obama’s acceptance speech, given at midnight on a Chicago stage on Election Day, moved me to tears — not just through the power of his words, but from the realization that I may soon become proud to be an American once again.

The past eight years of Bush have severely shaken my pride in America.  The mere act of having him *appointed* by the Supreme Court in 2000 shook my faith in Democracy.  Another thing I’d never thought I’d see…I saw:  a president who was not elected, but appointed…and contrary to the popular vote, as well.  I could not believe that in 2004, the American people simply handed the country back to him.  My wife actually cried.  “How could they just do that?” she cried, “we just gave the country back to the super-rich.”  She was right, look at us now.

After eight years of Dubya attacking anyone and anything that farted sideways at the U.S., playground-bully style, the world views us as just that — playground bullies.  They’ve called the Bush presidency a “regime,” something we reserve for people like Saddam Hussein or Communism.  The world views Bush as a dictator, a despot, an unstable tyrant…and via a sort of “trickle-down” theory…they view the American people as some mixture of sad victims, spoiled brats, vulgar cretins and ignorant hicks.  Americans abroad are not greeted warmly, nor welcomed with open arms.  We’re the loudmouthed, tackily-dressed buffoons ruining everyone else’s quiet breakfast.

Well, the world has welcomed Barrack Obama with open arms.  It’s amazing.  I’m glad I’m here to see it.  Yes, I voted.  Yes, I voted for Barrack Obama — we voted for Barrack Obama.  Yes We Did.

Listen To The People, Ya Morons!!

The big, bad bailout plan failed yesterday.  So far, we the people are not on the hook for $2,300 each to pay for Wall Street’s boo-boo.  I, for one, say “Woo-hoo!”

Listening to Anderson Cooper last night, it struck me that the only people who really want this $700 billion bailout to pass are the wealthy — because they’re really the only ones worried about this problem.  The wealthy live off their stock dividends and mutual funds, and they’re all tanking right now.  By my standards, they’re still raking in the dough, but by their standards they’re watching their incomes plummet.  Heck, they might have to postpone buying that new Bentley, and keep driving their V-12 Mercedes for a second year — could you even imagine that horror?

All the “party line” keeps saying is that Wall Street needs bailed out, and they keep waving the boogey-man of recession at us.  I now dearly hate the catch-phrase “From Wall Street to Main Street,” by the way.  It’s on the lips of everyone in the news now; it’s like a white-collar version of “Git’R Done,” and I dearly hate that mindless phrase, too.  Regardless — the White House is blatantly trying to scare the American people into knuckling under and agreeing that we each have to pay thousands of dollars that we don’t have.  The “experts” keep bleating that “the people don’t understand.”

You know what?  That doesn’t help.  Trying to scare people and call them stupid isn’t the way to get their blessing — anyone with children should know this.  “Hey, dumb-ass!  Vote for the bailout or I’ll kick your ass!”  How’s that sound?  Good?  No?  That’s essentially what Dubya, Paulson, et al are saying on the TV.  “Submit or suffer, you weak-minded fools!”

I, for maybe the first time in my life, am GLAD that the elections are a month away.  The politicians are actually listening to their constituents right now — mostly out of fear for their jobs, yes — and their constituents are not just saying, but screaming at the tops of their lungs, “NO, DON’T PASS THIS THING! WE CAN’T AFFORD IT! WE DON’T WANT IT!”  CNN polls run 20 to 1 against the bailout.  Online message boards get 2,000 angry messages in an hour.  Chicago radio shows get five people in the entire week in favor.

Yet, the politicians keep trying to push it down our throats…again, threatening us with plagues and boogey-men, and telling us we don’t understand.  I think that We the People understand more than Congress thinks — we understand that no matter what the market does, or is supposed to do, or didn’t do, they’re asking US to pay for it. Is this any different than Dad gambling away the mortgage payment at the casino, then asking 8-year-old Timmy for the money?  No.

Hello, Congress?  We’re not buying it.  Literally.  Enough with the “bailout.”  Find something different.  Or don’t.  Whatever, we don’t care.  We’re just not paying for it.

Bailout? My Ass!

Our economy is failing.  That’s the buzz from all the newsmedia.  Major national banks are failing, home values are plummeting, foreclosures are skyrocketing.  The price of gas has doubled in the past year, the price of groceries has tripled.

Why?  The blame seems to be placed squarely on the housing market, more specifically on financiers allowing unqualified borrowers to borrow — and borrow big — and buy not just houses, but outlandishly lavish homes that nobody would ever expect to be able to pay for…if they had any common sense at all.

I only blame these home-buyers a little, and I blame the mortgage lenders a lot.  The average pipe-fitter, or appliance repairman, or (insert high-school-education-qualified occupation here) simply hasn’t spent time researching mortgages.  That’s what they trust the banks to do.  When a bank tells them that they can get a $50,000 shack with Mortgage A, or a $250,000 Tudor with Mortgage B, and their payment will be the same…they’re going to choose Morgage B.  Nevermind phrases like “ARM,” or “interest only,” or “balloon payment.”

So the mortgage lenders have been handing out mortgages by the truckload to people who frankly don’t understand what they’re getting themselves into.  Now that the various clauses and terms are coming to fruition, and these people’s mortgage payments are doubling or tripling…these banks are getting a sharp dose of reality:

“You mean, these people aren’t paying the doubled and tripled payments they signed for?  They’re letting us have our house back?  What?  Where’s our $250,000?”

Now our president wants to take $700,000,000,000 of our money and hand it to the very institutions that have caused this problem.  That’s what $700 billion looks like — that looks like a lot of zeroes to me.  That’s over $2,300 in taxes for each and every one of us 300 million Americans.  I have six Americans in my house, four of them under the age of ten, and that puts me on the hook for $14,000 to bail out greedy banks that have already gotten rich from the money of people like me.

That’s my argument.  These banks have already gotten our money once, and now that they’ve mismanaged it or, quite frankly, squandered it, they want our money again.  I’ve looked at this story on the websites of several news sources, and seen it on my local news, and what interests me is the public’s reaction.  It matches mine.  Every website poll shows 90% of citizens against this bailout.  Every person interviewed says “no, don’t use my tax money for this.  I don’t want this.”

Yet I’m sure that this bailout plan is going to pass, despite the overwhelming opposition from American citizens, and our taxes are going to go up.  We threw tea into Boston Harbor for this kind of thing.  It’s called Taxation Without Representation.  When the people say no, lawmakers are supposed to REPRESENT us, and carry our our wishes.  Our elected officials are NOT supposed to tell us “you people don’t know what you’re talking about…we’re going to do what we want.”

I saw the tail end of our president’s address last night.  I found myself looking at his face and thinking that eight years of presidency hadn’t aged him a bit.  He still looks the same as when he was appointed eight years ago.  Bill Clinton, say what you will about his dalliances, looked like hell when he stepped down.  He looked like he had been carrying the weight of the free world’s worries on his shoulders.  He looked like he had spent eight years worrying about the U.S. and caring what happened.

George Dubya Bush doesn’t look like he’s worried about a damn thing in the past eight years other than his Halliburton stocks.  He had the same blank, vacant, “nobody-home” stare as he did in 2000.  This is a man who simply doesn’t care; a man who is NOT being affected by this economy.  This president has run this country into the ground, and is going to retire to a life of leisure while the rest of us pay for it.