57 Thoughts to “Bailout Bill Blowout”

  1. great news – white nationalist Maureen Wood removes her McCain yard sign.

  2. IVAN

    I’m sure she got approval from her fearless leader before taking such a bold step. BTW, when are these people going to realize that they are just a fringe group? I’m sure Senator McCain is not going to suspend his campaign to deal with this crisis.

  3. Moon-howler

    Well, isn’t that special?!!! {best Church Lady voice} I guess she also held his feet to the fire.

    I guess Frank Wolf is also wearing a horse hair shirt after being chastised by so many of the black velvets. Probably throwing in a little self-flaggelation also.

    Does anyone ever feel foolish after saying stuff like this in public?

    Now lets get serious…who else do they have to vote for?

  4. Why did she take down her McCain sign? Is it Sarah or is it his immigration policy?

    I’m sure McCain is weeping in the woods as we speak….

  5. “Now lets get serious…who else do they have to vote for?”

    MH, they have any number of people they could write it, people who are probably just as qualified, wise, intelligent and dignified as Ms. Palin!

    1. Greg Letiecq
    2. John Stirrup
    3. Corey Stewart
    4. Robert Duecaster
    5. Maureen Wood

    And if HSM doesn’t want any of those folks on the ticket, they could always resort to their old favorite candidate, Ham Sandwich.

  6. IVAN

    It’s too bad that Eric wasn’t around when the sign came down. We could have had a new 9500 Liberty film. He could preview it at a HSM meeting. No…..I would immagine that he would want an audience of more than 15 or 20 people. Maybe at the next PWC economy party at one of the local Hispanic restaurants.

  7. Is this kind of like the Berlin Wall coming down?

    Oh No!!! I mentioned Germany!

    SCHPANK me!

  8. Okay, let me say something moderately intelligent about the bail out.

    Did anyone notice there was an add-on to the bill (so to speak), that insurance companies must now provide better mental health coverage?

    Now, what does that have to do with Wall Street? How can Congress get away with tacking on these non-sequitur pieces of legislation? If I tried to pay for my credit card and my kids’ school lunches with one check, could I get away with it?

  9. Incidentally, I think mandating mental health coverage is good. I’m just questioning the time and place.

  10. Moon-howler

    The added pork was to sweeten the deal. Translation: Some of our congressmen and women are such political whores that they wouldn’t have voted for the recovery bill unless they got something in return.

    So the very people who were howling, bitching, pissing and moaning about putting the American people into further debt willingly do so for their own earmarks….or ….pig’s ears.

  11. Yeah, gotcha on that one MH! I just don’t understand how it’s legal to do that with ANY bill, however.

    Here’s my new bill: starting tomorrow, we have the authority to relieve any bigot from our local government. Furthuremore, whereas said bigots have been removed, we give ourselves the right to have our houses repainted for free.

    HUH?????

    Do you see what I mean? It just doesn’t make sense! It’s like a bad paragraph without a topic sentence! It’s like an essay without a thesis, a story without a theme! ARGH!!!!

  12. We’ll see just how funny you will all find the events of this past week in about 12-24 months. I doubt if any of you will be doing much laughing.

  13. Alanna

    AWCheney is right, I don’t think we are out of the woods.

  14. IVAN

    We’re not out of the woods by any means, but at least we know which direction to go to get out. It was reported on Fox Business Thurs. that in the last three months, 700 car dealerships in the U.S. had ceased operations. That’s alot of jobs lost. That is what this Rescue Bill was designed to address. Like it or not, we need this. 12 to 24 months from now we not be laughing, but at least for now we won’t have 10% or more unemployment and possibly double the foreclosures we have now. Nobody wants taxpayer money to be used to bail out Wall Street fat cats. Would it be better to use this money to operate Soup Kitchens like we did in the 1930’s.

  15. Moon-howler

    My thoughts exactly Ivan. I still see a lot of trees.

    And AWCheney, I dont think anyone is laughing. I am breathing a tentative sigh of relief.

    I think we are in for some very serious times. However, I am curious what some of the extreme conservatives saw as an alternative when major banks were failing.

  16. AW, if you don’t laugh, you might cry.

    Your choice.

  17. Ask me that when the Dollar is worth less than the Peso was worth 40 years ago; ask me that when we are cut off from all imports because other countries refuse to deal with us; ask me that when the price of food has gone out of sight, but it doesn’t matter because you can’t get it anyway; ask me that when the government declares martial law and suspends Congress because of the food riots; ask me that when all the emergency powers of the Patriot Act have been activated against the American people under that martial law and we have headed full tilt into a Fascist society. Let me know if you can laugh then. The choice will not be between laughing or crying…the choice will be between crying or fighting.

  18. Chris

    I want to know if all these self proclaimed conservatives will be pulling up there McCain signs.

    Ivan,
    Well said just above. This is still far from over.
    MH,
    The extreme conservatives did some bitching, but did they offer an alternate solution? I sure don’t recall hearing any.
    FYI- Gilmore & Warner debated last night in Roanoke, and it will run on Channel 4 tomorrow morning at 7am. Set your TIVO or DVR.

  19. ShellyB

    Maureen who? Why is she on that list with the other four? Please explain.

  20. NotGregLetiecq

    Dean Baker: Bush Provokes Fear to Push for Bailout

    http://www.truthout.org/100408Y

    Dean Baker, The Center for Economic and Policy Research: “This is the first time in the history of the United States that the president has sought to provoke a financial panic to get legislation through Congress. While this has proven to be a successful political strategy, it marks yet another low point in American politics. It was incredibly irresponsible for President Bush to tell the American people on national television that the country could be facing another Great Depression. By contrast, when we actually were in the Great Depression, President Roosevelt said that, ‘we have nothing to fear, but fear itself.'”

  21. Marie

    Shelly B – Read this article that was posted as “Immigration polarizes small-town America” on Sept 25 here on anti bvbl. Link follows. Maureen is a very active member of HSM and has run for City Council several times. She was cited in this article.

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-anxiety-immigrationsep25,0,5799873.story

  22. Marie

    Chris – Copied from BVBL

    Maureen said on 3 Oct 2008 at 6:35 pm:
    Why does our government, whether local, state or federal, think that they don’t have to listen to the citizens of this country? Frank Wolf can kiss my vote good-bye!

    BTW- My McCain sign is going in the trash!

    Guess Maureen will be pulling up her sign.

  23. ShellyB

    Well I am glad at least she has someone new to be hateful about. Better elected officials than ethnic groups. There are plenty of us ticked off at public officials.

  24. ShellyB

    Does this mean BVBL is against the bailout?

  25. AW, you’re jumping the gun. “Remain calm! Step away from the television!”

    Seriously, if we panic, it will be worse.

    And if there IS a disaster, it will be a disaster for everyone which means, wow! We’ll all have to pull together for once, won’t we?

  26. NotGregLetiecq

    Katherine, you hit the nail on the head. Now that we can no longer ignore the economy and how policy affects the economy, there will be fewer and fewer Corey Stewarts and Tom Tancredos, politicial opportunists who take advantage of racial divisions. Once we begin to see we are all one people with common goals and common fortunes, the politics of hate just won’t provide the same boost. Stewart and Tancredo will either change their tune, resign, or get voted out of office.

  27. Moon-howler

    The American people will not allow that kind of doom and gloom to happen, AW. I have faith in us.

    No Chris, I have not heard any solutions, I am sorry to say. Bitching and moaning without a solution just doesn’t cut it with me.

  28. Moon-howler

    NGL,

    I wonder if Cory is still talking about what he has done for PWC running off his ‘illegals,’ and how much money he has saved everyine. I guess he can tell that to the people losing their jobs and to those people whose houses have dropped another 100k.

    I hope this economic crisis has sure taken the wind out of his sails.

  29. Kgotthardt, this has nothing to do with panic, on the contrary…I’ve been predicting this for quite some time, although the current insanity is accelerating the process. The combination of artificially depressed interest rates, artificial economic stimulus provided by the government to maintain a steadily climbing Dow, unbridled spending and debt, a corporate welfare state, all over a period of decades, could not be sustained by ANY economy.

    If you look at economic history, there is always periods of highs and lows, ideally with minimal peaks and valleys, with a smattering of mini-recessions when extraneous factors such as geo-political upheaval (war, natural disasters, etc.) impact the economy…it’s the nature of the beast. But when government and industry collude in ARTIFICIALLY manufacturing a continuing upward trend in the economy, the line MUST eventually plummet…infinity is not an option on the graph. We have traded those little peaks and valleys and mini-recessions for a massive crash and, as the saying goes, the hens must come home to roost. You can’t spend yourself out of debt; you can’t expect a currency to provide value with nothing behind it; you can’t continually float businesses and businessmen who, through greed and incompetence, have outlived their usefulness to the economy…nature MUST be allowed to take its course. [Sidebar: Are you familiar with the Peter Principle? Well, Corporate America has now adopted it for itself.] I said last year already (on BVBL, as a matter of fact) that we were standing at the abyss. Well, welcome to the abyss.

  30. NotGregLetiecq

    I think that FAIR and the national hate group networks are going to have a hard time selling the Prince William County syndrome elsewhere in the US, as handsome as their poster boy Corey Stewart is.

    Before, they could saw look! less brown people (but we trashed the local economy). Now, the same words will be heard as WE TRASHED THE LOCAL ECONOMY (but we have a few less brown people). And they won’t even hear the second part because they’ll be too busy running the other direction.

  31. Red Dawn

    The federal Government told us to go jump in a lake

    This is what I thought when I heard another analogy today, that this buyout/bailout was the same as going to one side of the lake collecting water and running to the other side pouring the water back in and expecting the water levels to rise.

  32. Red Dawn

    I can’t figure out how to place a video about “Congressman Doggett Questions Fed Chairman Bernanke on Bush Bailout ”
    So here is the link to click for the video.

    http://www.house.gov/doggett/

    REMEMBER in the above videos, he questions the idea of going into a closed session and concern for not being able to disclose the information in the future- in anyway shape or form…this how conspiracy theories start…lol ( insert x-file theme)

  33. The Peter Principle implies people work until they reach a position in which they can no longer succeed. I don’t think this has happened in corporate America or in Congress. I think they have done a fine job of using our government, our economy and our people to take what they want and flip the rest of us the bird.

    I agree this latest fiasco has been artifially manufactured. But then our entire system is artificial and is manipulated by whomever is in power at the time.

  34. NotGregLetiecq

    “say” less brown people not saw!!!

  35. Red Dawn

    NGL,

    I am not sure what you are saying but I will play along and say less greenbacks held.? 🙂

  36. I don’t know which book you read kgotthardt, but the one I read was “The Peter Principle.” You know, the one which points out that incompetence floats to the top and position is maintained by building a larger and larger buffer underneath? It’s called bureaucracy…and that is what Corporate America is becoming. Not innovative; not interested in servicing the consumer; only interested in building a massive machine which spits out money with the least effort possible (offering less for maximum return) and, when the gears jam, successfully demand to get bailed-out (the machine is, of course, greased by politicians dependent upon their share).

  37. Red Dawn

    Peter Principle=complacency?

  38. Consider for a moment how many massive corporate entities exist in this country that have been gobbling up all the smaller ones…each industry has them. Once upon a time they would have been broken up under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, but no more. Monopoly is becoming the wave of the future and, as so many of our laws are only enforced when it suits, this one seems to have fallen by the way as well. The consumer is the loser…just as the taxpayer is the loser when it comes to a government bureaucracy. What’s worse, now the taxpayer has also been forced into the position to pay for getting “expletived” (begins with a s and ends with a d, and has a crew in the middle) at both ends.

  39. This is the definition I’m referring to, AW (though I completely understand and agree with what you are saying):

    The Peter Principle is the principle that “In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.” While formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1968 book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise which also introduced the “salutary science of Hierarchiology”, “inadvertently founded” by Peter, the principle has real validity. It holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their “level of incompetence”), and there they remain. Peter’s Corollary states that “in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties” and adds that “work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence”.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

  40. Red Dawn

    KG,

    “Peter Principle=complacency?”

    I did a quick search on wiki as you and that is where my question above came in.

    “The Peter Principle implies people work until they reach a position in which they can no longer succeed.”

    The possibilities are endless. They could be complacent, aged or expensive to keep on board and ultimately fired or outsourced.

  41. Moon-howler

    Foxnews had a very informative program on the subject of this blog called “Saving our Economy.” It pretty much told the history of what went wrong– an extremely complex issue that cannot be broken down into sound bites.

    I feel confident the program will be repeated. And of course, it is only one perspective.

    How many people here would take economic collapse of country rather than the rescue package? What it it wiped out everything you had worked and saved for? What if you lost your job, your savings, your pension, your 401k’s, your house? I don’t think most folks are willing to do that.

    I don’t think anyone likes it. I don’t think banks should fail and America should go in to decline when there are alternatives. I think many people knew things weren’t right. Just looking at what was going on around here really put things under a microscope.

    Again, what are the alternatives?

  42. The humorous nature of the original Peter Principle disappeared into the reality of the example offered by government bureaucracy. When the Civil Service System was created it became virtually impossible to terminate a government employee, regardless of their level of competence. It was, however, very easy to transfer an incompetent employee “out” to another parallel, or higher, position in another agency…so this was done often. More often than not, however, in the haste to rid themselves quickly of the most incompetent of these employees, they were “promoted” out. Consequently, over time, the most incompetent tended to be passed around until, suddenly, they found themselves in charge, where their primary accomplishment tended to become “growing” the bureaucracy below them in order to justify their existence and “buffer” themselves. Interestingly enough, the competent employee, more often than not, found themselves stuck at a certain level because their bosses (who most likely rose out of incompetence) couldn’t afford to let them go. And you wondered why government can’t seem to get anything done…or at least done right, right?

  43. Red Dawn

    Moon-Howler,

    I watched the show too. It was a good narrative and I AGREE it is extremely complex and the ONLY thing I can say and this is being SELFISH, that the vote bought more time-for the criminals and US to prepare for the ULTIMATE FAILURE.
    You ask what are the alternatives? They don’t even know or do they? Saturday night music

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkZYTg5iM18

    🙂

  44. Red Dawn

    Michael,

    I have a question for you ( in the middle of the night, I am up-DH SNORING and my pillow fight to silence him lost)

    With ALL the debates you and I have exchanged, do you feel that this vote ( bailout/rescue/payoff) was right and if so why? Is it constitutional?

  45. Moon-howler

    No one here has offered up an alternative or has said they are willing to lose everything they have to ‘not bail the fat cats out.’

    Red Dawn, I am not going to worry about criminals. That’s what we pay the FBI for. I don’t think we will have the ultimate failure. I just don’t think it will happen. And economists will never agree on what to do to save the country or prolong the agony. I did like learning more about some of the root causes which would probably be agreed upon by people with all economic views.

  46. Actually Moon-howler, what some of us have said is that we are NOT willing to lose everything we have to “bail the fat cats out”…but obviously no one is listening. Also, you haven’t been paying close attention because some have also posted possible alternatives (Marie, for one, from an expert she heard on FOX news). I’ve also stated my opinion on that particular point on numerous occasions, as have others. You just don’t chose to listen, which is your prerogative.

  47. I think the bailout was an emergency effort. Unfortunately, I think that’s where it will end and we won’t see justice which is even more important than emergency actions. We won’t see the kind of reform implied in the legislation that does seem to include more oversight. I’m not the least bit confident that the government has any intentions of regulating the people that pay them (off).

    AW, interesting application of the Peter Principle. Generally, when I think of it, I think of incompetence, and Red, not aging (which certainly doesn’t necessitate incompetence). I also think of it from the corporate viewpoint (since this was the context in which I learned it) in which the promoted no longer can contribute to revenue making; hence they are viewed as incompetent.

    Higher-ups use the PP as validation to “can” anyone for alleged incompetency even when it’s not the competence of the employee that should be in question–it’s the competence of the higher ups who have set faulty internal policy (or no policy) and expect groups of employees (usually middle management) to perform in self-defeating environments.

    So while the you-can’t-fire-me dynamic in government is perhaps one extreme, ruthless corporate America is another. What I wouldn’t give for some balance: functional government and ethical capitalism!

  48. Moon-howler

    AW, perhaps we just have different ideas as to what constitutes a solution. I guess we will all find out fairly soon.

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