Arkansas Blog

Right now people are so concerned with how to make ends meet and so overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness that this will not matter. If the D's don't get it together and start talking about these hidden issues then they are going to lose the media battle again. Pelosi should be standing at a press conference talking about this section and showing the American people exactly what this means...not telling them. In real language...we have to get approval for loans but some person sitting in Washington is going to have absolute permission to spend TRILLIONS of tax dollars without having to account for it....Where is the outcry and where are the riots in the streets....we can't raise a stink cause we are too busy trying to figure out how to stay in our houses...Rove/Chaney have us well trained don't they???

Your arguments are exactly what I wrote our Senators yesterday.

I rarely bother with that Bush-bot in Rogers who cannot deliver $20 million
to Springdale for a much needed connection the interstate 540.

Think Patriot Act.
Think OVERSIGHT
Think Restructuring Mortgages

THINK NO BONUSES FOR CEO's BEING BAILED OUT.

>>Now, the Bushies are branding anyone who asks a single question about Paulson's plan a threat to the nation's existence.<<

You know that worked for a few years. But now 73% of Americans realize Bush and Cheney are the real THREAT to the nation's existence.

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WRITE OUR SENATORS Today ! bluename.

Write YOUR Congressman Today http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.shtml

Together we can help them find their strength to resist.

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Here's the latest from Majority leader Senator Reid. almost four minutes.

Morning Edition, September 23, 2008 · The White House is pressuring Congress to pass a $700 billion rescue package for the financial sector. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Bush administration's proposal is a starting point but by no means is the final product. Democratic lawmakers say they want to include more oversight, bankruptcy changes and executive pay caps.

clik name

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We've seen this movie before. The worst humans on earth used 9-11 to invade Iraq to steal oil. Now they're using the same techniques to use the Wall Street 9-11 to rush more neo-con legislation WITH NO OVERSIGHT in order to do something else......what are they doing? We won't know their true purpose unless we lay down and let them have their trillion with NO OVERSIGHT and by then our gooses will be cooked.

You can bet the farm on one thing.....they do NOT have our best interests at heart. When they own all pieces of the pie those of us not willing to goose-step will be rounded up and dealt with. Be afraid!

A few advanced thinkers in San Francisco think the worse is not over,
the big hit will come when Bush leaves office.
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Tsk tsk, Haryy Reid and the feckless Dems.. The entire Paulson Bush proposal should have never been called a starting point without calling it a gun to our heads and sending Paulson packing.

Consider for one moment that Paulson is worth 700,000,000.00.. and Goldman's made that possible along with one other extremely important point.

When Paulson accepted the job of treasury Sec. there is a law on the books (passed during Bush Seniors term which allows folks to sell stocks they hold which may be considered a conflict of interest, TAX FREE.

Paulson probably made a hundred million dollars by accepting the Sec of Treasury position because he could sell off his stocks tax free.

http://www.forbes.com/2006/06/01/paulson-tax-loophole-cx_jh_0602paultax.html

Allowing Paulson to keep his position now..while treating him with a modicum of respect for writing that "gun to your head" patriot act of a financial "shock doctrine" proposal.. is tantamount to a coup.

Grover Norquist has always said he wants to shrink our government down to the size it can be drowned in a bathtub... what better way to do it without firing a shot than what we are seeing now?

THE MUST READ of the year is NAOMI KLEIN'S "THE SHOCK DOCTRINE"

This is right out of their playbook, use the moment after a catastrophe to ramrod ideological policies through Congress.

"Democratic lawmakers say they want to include more oversight, bankruptcy changes and executive pay caps."

It's a feeding frenzy to see who can cram in the most extras to the bill while our backs are against the wall. Why not solve global warming, gay marraige, papparazzi control, food to fuel and other important issues while we're all huddling in fear hoping somebody can keep the sky from falling?

Oh yes we've seen this before...and if this plays out like before we'll see our Dems bluster/give soundbites decrying the horribleness of the plan and that they're going to fight all the way. Then, we'll wake up one morning and Monkeyboy et al will have everything they asked for...plus a few perks the Dems through in 'cause...who the hell knows.

Eureka...hubby's been following Norquist's stirrings since 2000 (thus I hear regularly about how EVERYTHING, including so-called negatives. is part of the plan to undo the the New Deal. But I have given up saying 'Nah...they're not really trying to destroy government...they live here too.'

This is a stick up. Do what we say and no one gets hurt. Right. But we aren't helpless and we don't have to accept the terms of the bailout if it doesn't protect tax payer's best interest. After all, it's our money that's bailing them out. If Bush refuses to sign, then it exposes his true intention of using public money for private gains and he gets to look like the bad guy. You'd think that this would be the death knell signalling the end of fundamentalist free market capitalism, but you'd be wrong. It will be the same old business as usual after Wall Street gets their asses saved.

We do have to act to get the credit markets up and we do have to do so quickly but there are some things we must demand be included within any bailout agreement before it goes through. Namely, we must insist on having equity in any firm that gets bailed out and selling it when the values increase after the crisis has been diverted.

Obviously we have to insist on reforms to re-regulate Wall Street and also demand that any executive in charge of a bailed out firm doesn't receive an astronomical severance buyout. Section 8 would have to go.

If we were prudent buyers, we'd first go in and examine the firm's assets and their solvency to determine the true value before we doled out a dime but time constraints won't allow that. Besides, how do you determine how much junk costs? But that's exactly what we have to do beacuse to not do so could mean that we pay a bloated price, which I'm certain is what firms are lobbying actively for right now, and lose money while they get to walk away with the profits. All along Paulson has underestimated this problem because it was in his best interest to do so. But this former CEO of Goldman Sachs might just be inflating the price now.

We don't have to accept whatever is forced upon us. They want the money so bad, they will have to give tax payers something before we agree to hand it over.

Thanks, eLwood, for the link.

Bush To Put FEMA in Charge of Wall Street Rescue
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Called and emailed Sen's Lincoln & Pryor:

OPPOSE the outrageous Section 8 of the "bail out" legislation - providing carte blanche to the criminals in the Bush administration!!!! I generally don't support any more government bail-out of the corporate robbers, and recognize something must be done.

The Senator has supported entirely TOO MANY of the Constitution-stomping proposals of Bush/Cheney and (s)he needs to grow a backbone and STOP now.

Please provide a specific response to this request.

Thank you.

Emptywheel has an interesting post up (clicky)

Bush Mouthpiece Admits: They've Been Sitting on this Plan

Hidden in an article reporting that Cheney's going to go hunt up some support for the $700,000,000,000 bailout is this admission that the Bush Administration has been sitting on it for some time:
>>>>>
Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough. [my emphasis]
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Snip

They have known this was coming.. in truth they enabled/made it happen! We should be in no rush to settle things without assurances it might actually work. We should be taxing the rich who royally profited from their crimes creating revenue to pay for their own bailout hostage crisis.

Also, why oh why are Mike Ross and his Blue Dogs still screwing the little guy by refusing to consider reversal of the ghastly bankruptcy bill.. at a time when we are baling out the con loan artists to a tune of 1.5 trillion and counting so far? Help the average tax payer fight predatory lenders, such as credit card industry and those sub prime mortgage's.

"Sarah Palin's husband has refused to testify in an abuse of power investigation in Alaska. He was given a subpoena, and he is ignoring it. ... So it looks like this guy's going to have no trouble fitting into Washington. He seems to pick it up right away. It's like second nature" --Jay Leno

Barack Hussein Obama says he'll crack down on fraudulent sub-prime lenders. If he really means it he can start by firing his campaign finance chair, Penny Pritzker. Before taking over Obama's campaign finances, she headed up the borderline shady and failed Superior Bank. It collapsed in 2002. The bank's sordid story and its abominable role in fueling the sub-prime crisis are well known and documented. It engaged in deceptive and faulty lending, questionable accounting practices, and charged hidden fees. It did it with the sleepy-eyed see-no-evil oversight of federal. It made thousands of dubious loans to mostly poor, strapped homeowners. A disproportionate number of them were minority.

Obama's home state, Illinois, ranked near the top of thee states in the percentage of sub-prime mortgages. Nearly 15 percent of home loans were sub-prime according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. But that only tells part of the tale. According to the Woodstock Institute, a Chicago non-profit that studies housing issues, the sub-prime fall-out was far higher in the predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods of South and Southwest Chicago.

The predictable happened when many of those lost their homes. When the bank collapsed Pritzker and bank officials skipped away with their profits and reputations intact. Aside from the financial and personal misery sub prime lenders caused the thousands of distressed homeowners, sub-prime lending has been a major cause of the housing crisis in many areas, and has dealt a sledgehammer blow to the economy. Obama has said nothing about Pritzker, Superior Bank, or their dubious practices.

Instead, there was a touching, even teary eyed photo op, moment during one of Obama's Texas campaign swings. There was Obama talking to a group of San Antonio residents and lambasting the CEO of a sub-prime lender for greedily snatching at a $100 million buy out package while thousands of home borrowers that his company snookered into loans at below market rates faced foreclosure or the threat of foreclosure.

The problem with the staged scene in Texas and Obama's words to the residents is that he left a couple of things out. One is Pritzker's name. He's also been mum on what the bank that she once headed up did.

Other than Obama's quip about the greedy sub-prime lender CEO to San Antonio residents, a Google search found no Obama statement on Superior Bank, no detailed statement on the sub-prime crisis, or what he did as Illinois legislator to deal with the crisis helped along by his finance chair's bank. There was a length list of topics on Obama's official campaign website that detailed the candidate's position on everything from the environment to the Iraq war. Yet there's not one sub-topic on housing, or the sub prime crisis on his campaign website.

Obama has not publicly called for a moratorium on lending, or tough civil and criminal penalties for lenders that engage in deceptive lending practices, or called for an interest rate freeze. Former Democratic presidential contender John Edwards and Clinton called for a moratorium, and providing generous aid to strapped homebuyers face with foreclosure. Obama's rescue plan has been roundly criticized as tepid, cautious and not much better than what Bush has called for to deal with the crisis.

Obama blew off questions about Pritzker and the Superior Bank fiasco with the terse (through a spokesperson) quip that he'd crack down on fraudulent lenders. So again, the two ways he can prove that he means business is to dump Pritzker as his finance chair and then retool his campaign pledge to support a full moratorium on sub-prime lending, tighter regulatory oversight over lending practices, and debt relief for the thousands of homeowners that have already gotten the boot from their homes. Obama boosters will try to muddy the water by fingering Pritzker's brother, Jay Robert Pritzker, who heads up a campaign committee for Hillary Clinton. That's irrelevant. Jay Robert did not head up Superior Bank when it ran roughshod over homeowners in Illinois and nationally. He does not head up Clinton's campaign finance committee. The campaign committee he started is one of dozens of Clinton campaign committees that operate in many states.

Obama's message is one of hope and especially change. He can prove it by changing his finance chair, and doing it now. And then telling the public what he will do to stop bank's like the one his financial point person headed from bleeding needy and desperate home buyers dry.

Just got off the phone from a friend who's NOT voting for Obama. She wasn't going to vote for McSame, either (just staying home); until she heard that Obama had the American flags (two of them) removed from his plane...and that 'Snopes' said it was true. (No, she didn't know why he'd done it...it was enough he'd done it.) Anyone heard this one?

It's become a full-time job debunking OUTRAGEOUS Obama rumors. But I'm not letting anyone within shouting distance get away with this crap. Told her I'd get back to her on this one.

Zelda, as I understand it, it was an airplane that had flags on it and when he had it repainted to have his "Obama 08" put on it they covered up the flag. McCain doesn't have flags on his plane either....
Silly and too stupid for words...

Kind of reminds me of Halter's lottery initiative... just trust me, vote it in, & we'll work out all of the details later.

CiCi...it's the daily Internet rounds of OUTRAGEOUS Obama crap. Nothing policy wise...just stuff like the flag nonsense. I hadn't heard this one, though. I will go back with facts and she'll believe me...ABOUT THIS ONE AND UNTIL THE NEXT ONE...

I honestly feel sorry for Obama...and every other minority who's had to fight so much more than just the battle at hand. I knew racism/ignorance were alive/well...but I had no idea until Obama's candidacy that it was still so entrenched. (And I was--am--pissed at the racism card that was falsely played against the Clintons.)

last week's assertion by the Democratic Party's nominee for Vice-President, that for the wealthy, paying higher taxes should be considered a "patriotic act", was labeled "dumb" by the Republican Party's nominee for President. But this week, the Bush Administration's Treasury Secretary and the Federal Reserve's Chairman are asking Congress to fund a buyout of the financial sectors biggest mistakes.

A public debt incurred is a tax imposed. So now the American people are all being asked to pay higher taxes in the future to "save" the economy from a "financial armegeddon" ?

Could that not be considered, ahem, ... a "Patriotic Act" ?

zelda and Ci.Ci,

If them black folk would just keep in "their place," - you know, likes the gays "in the closet" does, we wouldn't have all these here problems. If those activist judges had left well enough alone we'd still have good prayin' goin' on and them blacks would be better off in their OWN schools and such...and they could even pray there if'n they wanted to!! We could just keep electin' them good Christian MEN and all would be jes fine. Gotta get out to the outhouse before dark now...ya' never know what kinda riff-raff will show up after dark!
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I love how you demos are so quick to point the finger at the private sector and everyone else. Your social engineers are responsible for this mess. You forced banks and lending institutions to make irresponsible loans to people who couldn't afford them without any reasonable requirements and now you bellyache about the consequences as if you had no responsibility. You wanted minorities to own homes and you didn't give a damn if they could afford them or pay back the loan. Now this country is screwed and you don't have the guts to admit your responsibility. I hope that they totally repeal the Community Reinvestment Act of 1995 and label it for the irresponsible people who pushed it. You can tell the idiots Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Hillary Clinton that we really appreciate their irresponsible and incompetent contribution to the downfall of this country.

I would be satisfied Larry if they just paid back their loans like the rest of his common folks or not take them out in the first place. We have to hold our end up and we expect them to do the same. By the way, it would be nice if you could be man enough to recognize your fellow liberals contribution to the destruction of this nation.

I would be satisfied Larry if they just paid back their loans like the rest of uscommon folks or not take them out in the first place. We have to hold our end up and we expect them to do the same. By the way, it would be nice if you could be man enough to recognize your fellow liberals contribution to the destruction of this nation.

"Thanks, eLwood, for the link."

Ditto.