A Rant: The Bank Bailout/AIG/Economy

At this point, I'm just waiting for hyper-inflation.

The way I understand this, it seems like the Masters of the Universe took over our government and tore the laws to pieces. President Obama went on Leno and told us the "dirty little secret" that "most of the stuff that got us into trouble was perfectly legal". How is that possible? Because the uber-rich paid to put their guys in office, their moles changed all the rules for their friends, the enriched made huge fortunes but eventually took so much that the rest of us noticed, and since they paid themselves with our government, we now have have to pay back their debts. They keep their huge houses and salaries, of course. It's the rest of us who will suffer.

We seem to be in a civil war in this country that most of us can't yet put our finger on, but the headline Firms Giving out Bailout Money to Politicians as Campaign Donations seems to explain it all.

We know we're pissed that our 401K's are disappearing. We know it sucks that our tips don't go as far. We know it sucks that we can't afford vacations. We know it sucks that everything is getting more expensive.

But are we mad at Bernie Madoff? Are we mad at AIG? Are we mad at Tim Geithner? Are we mad at Hank Paulson? Are we mad at Goldman Sachs?

What about Citibank? What about Bank of America? What about Wells Fargo?

What about George W. Bush? Or Ronald Reagan? Or Bill Clinton? or Alan Greenspan?

Are we mad at those people? A little, but each individual person or company is just part of a bigger problem. It's the thing that connects these people and companies that we really need to focus on. In my mind, they are connected by being super-rich, upper-level management, and committed to the redistribution of wealth towards themselves. The rest of us are not in their circle of friends.

George W. Bush warned us that he was going to run the country like a business. It was the truth. That's exactly what he did. Our government is now a big company that works for other companies. Profit, not people, is its purpose. Now the people who own the banks, who own the Wall Street firms, who own the oil industry, who own the military-industrial corporations... those guys effectively control our Congress and Executive. Now they own us. That's why all we can do is watch while our bank accounts are getting raped. They've got us tied to a chair.

We need to take our government back.

It's not going to happen though. Not fast enough to prevent whatever kind of economic collapse is on its way. We don't get new people in Congress for almost 2 years and only Jon Stewart has come close to articulating the existance of the new Civil War on the almighty television. It's really tough to fight a war if most of your side doesn't understand that they're in it. After all, it's American Idol season! And Twilight is out on dvd! Life's still good.

The rich bastards in charge are using their power to print up money at a crazy fast rate and using it to refill their own accounts. I'm no economist but I do understand basic supply and demand. If you create a lot of pieces of paper, each of those papers becomes worth a little less. Those papers, unfortuantely, are dollars. Eventually, we're going to need more of them to buy us our bread.

My next step is to invest in euros, Aussie dollars, and yuan. The dollar is going down. That's as far into the future as I can see.

Infrastructure Bill

Well, Bush's reign is over, but precedent is set. Congress is out of control.

I can't get behind the "Stimulus Bill". It's just not good enough and its so full of bribes.

But I want the infrastructure money it promises. I want it bad.

I live in Honolulu. We need levees, and storm walls, and roads without sinkholes. We need bike paths that don't compete with TheBus. We need buses that aren't always full. We need cars that don't choke walkers with exhaust.

We want better health care access but having jobs would at least put us back in the crappy employer paid system. Planning, supplying, constructing, designing, operating, managing, cleaning, feeding, housing, transporting... jobs and health... the Infrastructure Bill is two birds with one stone. From there we can improve.

I want the bill that's 100% infrastructure. Give money to everybody for physical, buildable things that they need. President Obama needs to give up on "The Stimulus". That lemon has failed. The squabbling will never stop. But if Obama gives us the infrastructure, he could actually win this politcal war.

Logisitically, he could use that $350 billion leftover from the "Bailout" to fund the Infrastructure Bill. The current plan seems to be to give that money to the gamblers and the banks. Wall Street and the Big Bankers are crazy. For once... screw them.

Although, if more of of us had money, we might pay more of our mortages, loans, credit cards, and bills. Infrastructure could actually be a win-win.

Those bastards always win.

Infrastructure. Non-gas/dirty/coal/oil based energy. Jobs. Paychecks. Congressmen and Senators would have a hard time being against those things.

And at least we'd get half of our stolen "Bailout" money back.

Infrastructure. Show us Yes We Can.

Impeachment On the Table... or Under the Tree

Did you guys see the "give us the bike!" clip from the Daily Show this week? If not, here's the clip titled, "Clusterf#@ the Poor House: President Goofus and President Gallant"

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=212889&title=clusterf#@k-to-the-poor-house

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Crazy part is how easily we could have our bike/new president. President-elect Barack Obama could start working right now if it weren't for the blindness of Congress.

For me, the story of the Bush administration will not have a happy ending unless George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are removed from office early. In the end, do they really get to finish their term? Do they really get away with it? If that happens, doesn’t the Constitution lose? Don’t we lose?

Is that the ending we want? We elect the good guy in the election and that’s it? Really?

Barack Obama has done his part. He won the election. It took two full years. He beat the Clintons. He beat the Republicans. Come on. He has done his fair share.

This last step is on Congress. There is no other way. But they don’t seem to get it.

Frank, who has been dealing with both the bailout of the financial industry
and a proposed rescue of Detroit automakers, said Obama needs to play a more
significant role on economic issues.

“At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he
says we only have one president at a time,” Frank said. “I’m afraid that
overstates the number of presidents we have. He’s got to remedy that
situation.”

Oh, and how should he do that? Military coup? Ignore the Constitution? How should the President-elect best overthrow the sitting president? Do tell.

Reality is that no one can blame Barack Obama for what is happening now because he is not the President. But he could be in practice if Congress would remove Bush and Cheney from office. Only the House of Representatives can file articles of impeachment (or use the ones that Dennis Kucinich already filed). Only the United States Senate can remove the president and vice-president from office.

Good news. They could do it in just a few hours if the votes were there. The hard work (the presenting of evidence and proof) is already done. Lets pick an easy one.

Torture = Proven and well known = war crime = impeachment.

In reality, it's not hard anymore. It's a matter of changing Congressional minds.

If Congress were to do the happy ending thing, Nancy Pelosi - the Speaker of the House -would become President, and she could work with President-elect Barack Obama to get started on fixing this mess now. Before we lose everything.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney? Well, at least they wouldn't be in power any more. Although it lost a lot of battles, at least the Constitution would win the war.

I like that ending. And I love the added bonus that the race for the first woman president and the first African-American president would end up a beautiful tie in 2009. A happy ending for the primary race story too.

To get this happy ending though, we need the people in the media, the people with the biggest microphones, to step up and remind the country that impeachment is an option. They need to help the word "impeachment" get into the heads of our Congress. They must do it quickly.

Rachel Maddow. You're the best we've got. I’m calling on you.

Meteor Crash Caught on Tape

This video was taken from a police car camera in Edmonton, Canada.



Pretty sweet.

An Example of "Sunshine and Rainbows"

gloriousnoise,com

Derek Shearer, our former ambassador to Finland and overall Clinton guy, wrote a blog post today at HuffintonPost. I didn't read it. I only needed to see these two lines:

"Obama was not elected by the world's citizens. He is the American President after all"

"George Bush was worse."

These statements are fundamentally wrong. Barack Obama is not the American President. This is something that might happen in the future (I say "might" because it's in the future). George W. Bush is the present-tense President. George W. Bush was nothing. He is the President with nothing to lose who is rapidly speeding up his process of destruction.

This guy, Derek Shearer, and many people like him who are high rankers in the Democratic Party, are thinking and writing in a reality that exists only in their heads. The problem is that while they are waxing poetic, George W. Bush is planting moles in our government, raping our land, and hording our Treasury.

If we allow this to continue for 60 more days, Barack Obama might end up President of a hollow shell.

Nothing Has Changed

November 4th has come and gone but the Bush administration and the Republicans are still in power. It's cool that Barack Obama won the election. I'm happy about it too. But we need to stop pretending that everything is fixed and it's all sunshine and rainbows. The truth is that on November 4th, we received a better chance of future change. Nothing has changed yet.

Here are two new examples of how painfully true this is.

Utah Land Grab

The Bush administration used the fact that we were distracted on Election Day to hide their plans to hurt our country for their own gain...again. On the afternoon of November 4th, while we silly citizens were all voting and waiting for the results of the election, the Bush administration's Bureau of Land Management announced a December 19 land auction that will put oil drilling platforms around a National Park so beloved that it is pictured on Utah's license plates.


Here's how AP described it:

SALT LAKE CITY – The view of Delicate Arch natural bridge — an unspoiled landmark so iconic it's on Utah's license plates — could one day include a drilling platform under a proposal that environmentalists call a Bush administration "fire sale" for the oil and gas industry.

Late on Election Day, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced a Dec. 19 auction of more than 50,000 acres of oil and gas parcels alongside or within view of Arches National Park and two other redrock national parks in Utah: Dinosaur and Canyonlands...

In all, the BLM is moving to open 359,000 more acres in Utah to drilling.

They’ve been using the Department of Defense to steal oil profits from the Middle East. They’ve been using the Environmental Protection Agency to stall any progress towards alternative methods of energy. They’ve been using the Justice Department to cover up their crimes. They’ve been using Congress to allow the purchase of legislation by companies. Now they are using the Bureau of Land Management to steal land.

Missing: 2 Trillion Dollars

They are also using the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve to steal every last dollar that they can from our government. We thought the “bailout” was the first time that they had handed out massive amounts of cash. That was a $700 billion shock (to compare, those “stimulus checks” we little people were bribed with back in May only cost $150 billion). Now we find out that an additional $2 trillion has been handed out without our knowledge or permission.

To whom? Who the hell knows? The Federal Reserve’s Ben Bernanke and the Treasury Department’s Henry Paulson refuse to tell us what they did with the money. We only know that it's gone.

This was never approved by Congress. It also appears to have started well before “the bailout” was passed on October 3rd.

These people got balls.


From Bloomberg (who filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for this information):

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return...

Total Fed lending topped $2 trillion for the first time last week and has risen by 140 percent, or $1.172 trillion, in the seven weeks since Fed governors relaxed the collateral standards on Sept. 14. The difference includes a $788 billion increase in loans to banks through the Fed and $474 billion in other lending, mostly through the central bank's purchase of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds.

How much more damage has to be done before we stop these guys?

It’s like our house is on fire, but we tell the firemen, “Hey, just wait it out. It'll rain in January.”

The lame duck Congress needs to come back and impeach these guys now. Unfortunately, especially with the money grab, a scary number of Democrats might be in on it too.

(Photo taken by AFP/Getty Images on October 3rd, 2008 - the day the "bailout" passed)

Stay awake, my friends. We're still in big trouble.

President Obama Homework Assignment: #1

Share your stories about the work that you're doing:




Here's my first story.

I worked the at the Kaimuki High School polling place on Election Day, November 4th.

I woke up at 4:15am. I sometimes don't get out of work until 4am so it was not my normal schedule. I was originally supposed to work at the Ala Wai Community Center but I got switched at the last minute to Kaimuki High School because they were understaffed. Kaimuki is closer to me distance wise, but the Ala Wai Canal, a dirty river with a billion toxic fish, is between me and the school, so even though I can see the high school from my window, it was a 2 mile route. I don't have a car but I just got a bike.

The bike paths here are horrible. They are in spotty places and never seem to connect. They are not lit at night, or when it's still dark in the ridiculously early morning. There are tree stumps popping out of the ground. There are tree branches that hit you in the head. The paths (and sidewalks) themselves literally disappear underneath your tires.

Perfect Hawaiian weather and riding a bike sucks. That's gotta change.

But they are constantly fixing the 6 lane roads.

What's cheaper to fix? A six lane road or a bike path?

Just saying.

Anyway, I got to the high school at 5:30 am and met my new co-workers. I took a quick tally: 2 people under 18, 2 20-somethings, 5 boomers, 2 "experienced" workers.

For most part, I'd say that everything went smoothly. We had 10 paper ballot booths and one voting machine. Over the course of the day, people overwhelmingly wanted the paper ballots and I didn't see anyone use the evil machine. The paper ballots were put in a scanner and collected. Everything seemed legit and nothing was sketchy (unlike in my last hometown of Los Angeles County, where the entire system is a mess).

The most common problem was registration, but they had a great communication system between the Chairmen and the Office of Elections (Chairmen were all issued pre-paid cell phones). People were being added to the ballot all day, instead of being turned away.

As it should be.

My favorite part of the day was handing a ballot to the couple who were voting for the first time. They wanted to be sure that they were filling the ballot out correctly. The man beamed when he told us they were just approved for citizenship. They were so excited. It was the first of a lot of unforgettable moments from Election Day.

I didn't know that Barack Obama won until after I got home at 7pm, but I had heard enough to be really hopeful. In Hawaii, we are 2 hours behind the West Coast and 5 hours behind the East Coast. The sun was still up when I heard Obama took Ohio. By the time we got our next update, the polls were closed and I no longer wanted to know. I wanted to find out at home.

I raced back and got a call from my boyfriend. He couldn't hide the excitement in his voice. But I still told him, "Don't tell me!" because I was just locking up the bike downstairs. I walked in and the guys had paused the tv on the beginning of John McCain's concession speech and tried pull the "It went badly. Oh, just kidding!" gag, but it was too obvious. Obama had won. In a landslide. Took Colorado, 37,000 registrations purged and all. We overwhelmed the fraud and took our elections back. I didn't realize it until now, but I really wasn't expecting logic to win. I was expecting another 2004.

All I felt in that moment was relief. I didn't jump or cheer or celebrate. I grabbed some food and collapsed, exhausted from a long day and a long two years. A long eight years.

I no sooner hit the couch than Barack Obama began his acceptance speech. The first time I cried was when Barack said, "I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree". I'm so glad he said that.

What a difference 2 terms makes.

Since the election, it's been hitting me in waves. Little waves of happiness come over me when I think of the now possible opportunities. My boyfriend is a mechanical engineer with a passion for energy efficiency. This meant pushing paper during the Bush years, but his opportunities will grow exponentially in a time when the government isn't holding us back. Waiting tables might not be our best option for long.

Maybe I can work somehow towards getting a bike path system in Honolulu. Oahu voted "Yes" to installing a rail transit line from Pearl Harbor to Waikiki. They advertise an integrated system of rail, buses, boats, biking and walking paths on the buses. It's definitely possible in my community.

It's been a few days since the election and I'm still feeling my happy waves, yet still the anxiousness I felt before the election has not completely gone away. There will be a President Obama and the list of opportunities is growing by the minute but the start line is not until January 20, 2009. The Dark Side still has the ring of power. I won't be comfortable until they are completely sidelined.

I want this new Congress, with the support we've given them despite their failures, to use the momentum they now have to get Bush out of office. Don't let him finish his term. For the wars, and the economy, and the bad reputation, and the Constitution destruction laws, and the overall Dickishness. Let's fire these guys once and for all, and turn the historical page a little early.

As a bonus, the removal of Bush and Cheney would give us our first woman President in 2008. The primary battle of "First Woman" vs. "First African-American" would end up in a tie. How beautiful would that be?