The Great American Rip Off

By now, even if you live in a hole, you should have heard about and are hearing about United States' and the world's financial crisis. Within the last couple of weeks our President has got on the boob tube and pleaded with Congress and the American people for a $700 billion bailout for the fat cats of Wall Street. This had to be done as soon as possible meaning days, not weeks, giving no time to have hearings or research what the problem was, what caused it, or what would be the best way to go about trying to fix the economy.

Within days of Congress agreeing to spend $850 billion on the financial rescue (bailout), there has been hearings with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform where we are learning that high executives and CEOs of Wall Street financial companies have left these companies with hundreds of millions of dollars that were paid to them, some of these fat cats were paid such amounts as a million of dollars per month having them on retainers. On top of the already tens of millions they were already getting, they took home millions of dollars in bonus or a form of severance, or retirement packages. Then as some at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform heard yesterday and the day before, even as taxpayers were bailing these companies out, some such as AIG were holding week long events at posh hotels that charged up to $100,000.00 a night for rooms, spending $440,000.00 for these events.

I'm sure that the American tax payers are just happy that their representitives voted to bailout these Wall Street companies at the cost of over $2300 for every man woman and child to save companies that paid their officers hundreds of billions in salaries and bonuses as they left their jobs before pleading to the American people to bail them out. There are many families that live on under $20,000 a year, it is just wrong that some of these guys were making a million a month, no one is worth that much.

Bailing Out Wall Street

It's the politicians that just don't get it, or maybe they did but they decided to milk any available money they could from the populace any way. Let's look at it in a different way.

Say I buy a car from a dealer, the dealer wants to make big money off me so the price has been jacked up to the point where it is really over-valued. I drive it off the lot and it's price devalues a couple of thousand dollars, but that's not all. It turns out that the car is a real lemon requiring lots of money to be constantly stuck into it to keep it running, it gets to the point where I can not afford to keep the car because it has ate up all my money keeping it running, and if I sell it I will have to take a big loss because I can not recoup what I have stuck into it. Eventually I lose my job cause my car is not dependable and I'm late too often.

But it's not just my car with these problems, it's everyone's that has bought this particular make and model. Eventually word gets out and everyone quits buying this particular make and model. The dealer, having bought this make and model in huge numbers, even though he knew of the car's short comings, because he figured that he could make the most money from selling such high priced cars, is now stuck with a lot full of them and they are not selling. The dealer now is losing money and decides to file for bankruptcy. The government now steps in and says, "Oh this is bad, this dealer is really going to lose money and probably will have to go out of business. He will have to lay off mechanics, sales people, other people working in the office all of which have benefited from the high price of the car and the high commissions. This is going to have an effect on everyone, the people at the car washes, the people selling gas, people who sell tires and service, not to mention all the people who get money from the dealer and his employees like when they go to the bar, grocery store, buys a house, etc. We have to do something to protect the dealer's interests because it will affect all these other people and wreck the economy."

So the government comes up with the idea of collecting money from all the broke people who have been taken by the dealer's bad cars and they give that money to the dealer so that he can stay in business selling over priced crappy cars to other unsuspecting customers. At the same time the government, even though they know the car is over-valued and crappy, doesn't do anything for me, the person who is stuck with an expensive car that is not worth anything. This does nothing to make my car not a lemon, it doesn't get my job back, and it doesn't get my money back from all the repairs etc.

The dealer has a big fancy home, vacation home, mobile home, boats, ATVs, cars, SUVs, eats out a lot, gets paid vacations, and bonuses. I am stuck, broke from making repairs, no job, no 401s, and no running car........

Ok, it's maybe not quite the same thing, but in many ways it is. Wall Street has got itself in a bind. It's not because they didn't know it was coming, it was because everyone thought they could make their ungodly profits and get back out before the shit hit the fan. The financial people in Wall Street knew this, the president of the United States knew this, but everyone thought they'd be long gone before the ship went down, or maybe they figured that the government would not allow them to fail and bail them out. The president thought that he'd be out of office before the pumped up markets fail and he would leaving this mess on the next president (most likely a Democrat) and then the Republicans could use it against them in the next election. The failing market happened a bit too early, so now the Bush Administration comes up with this plan to give the very people who took advantage of deregulation to gouge the American public 700 billion dollars, from the very people that were taken advantage of, so that they can stay in business as usual.

This 700 dollar bailout does nothing to cure the problem at hand. All it will do is bring the market back up temporarily to give share holders a chance to get their money back and jump ship. After the share holders jump ship the country will be back to this same spot it is in now, except that the tax payers will be 700 dollars poorer. I believe that we need to demand from our leaders to let the market adjust itself back to responsible financial policies and reinstate regulations to keep this from happening again.

Got Lipstick?

What a sad state of our times when we reduce the presidential elections from platforms from which to preach solutions to our country's biggest problems, to the point of arguing about lipstick on a pig. I kind of doubt that my life will change much either way whether that pig, or pit bull, has lipstick or not.

I think that there are many more, more important issues than lipstick on a pig. Maybe the legalities of fighting a war in Iraq, illegal wiretapping, with holding and destroying evidence before they can be subpoenaed, picking people off the street in foreign countries without that country's knowledge or permission, keeping prisoners in foreign prisons, and we still don't know about the illegal firings of prosecutors or the big one, torture of prisoners in the war against terrorism. These are past failures of the present administration that no one wants to tackle.

Instead of lipstick on a pit bull or lipstick on a pig, why don't the candidates tell us about how they are going to tackle the problems we face in our government and the problems that are affecting the American people? I could give a rat's as* about lipstick on any kind of animal, doesn't strike my fancy, but apparently it's high on the Democrat and Republican list of important things that the American people need to know. How about letting me know how I'm going to afford to heat my house, or put gas in my car, how are they going to improve our infrastructure, how will we move into the future as a provider of high paying technology jobs in our own country instead of providing low paying jobs for people in third world countries? Apparently none of these things are very high on either candidates list as being important to the American people.

I would think that the first candidate that comes up with a workable budget plan for our country, the first candidate that speaks truth and shows out unfounded lies, the first candidate that promises to run the government openly in front of everyone for all to criticize and debate, that candidate should be our clear choice for president, not the candidate who tells the biggest or the most lies.

The Push for Oil

The Northwoods Politic

President Bush today has lifted the executive ban on offshore oil drilling. He's been pushing Congress to allow for the drilling of offshore oil deposits on the U.S. continental slopes. There are both executive and Congressional ban on drilling offshore, but he's hoping that by lifting the executive ban he can push Congress into lifting theirs.

There are two parties that both have fundamental differences in opinion on how this will affect energy prices. One party says this will bring the high cost of fuel prices down. The other side says this is mostly hype and it is just a matter of the first party taking advantage of people's fears that we need to do anything and everything to bring these prices down, because they just can't afford to pay these prices for fuel. What the true facts are is hard to tell. If you read about the companies that make these big drilling platforms needed to extract the oil from our continental slopes, they state that they are already backlogged 5 years on orders for other countries so it would be 5 years before they would even be able to start building the oil platforms to use in the U.S. On top of that, some say that the oil companies hold leases on all kinds of land with viable oil reserves that they are not drilling already.

Again as always, this is an issue that runs along Republican and Democratic party lines, with mostly Republicans wanting the drilling and Democrats not wanting drilling. This is one of the biggest problems in our government. We can't seem to have all these people sit down, look at the facts, and come up with what they think is good or not good. After deciding what their stance is, they should go back to their districts and try to persuade their constituents to what they think is right, but their main job after that is to take what views their constituents decide back to Washington and reflect that in their vote on the issue before Congress. Instead the top person, in this case the president, decides what he wants and all the rest of the people in their party fall in line behind him, they say this is what they want too, and they vote on the issue in Congress to reflect their party's will. Most of these people that we are talking about are addressed as Representatives, the reason they are addressed by that title is that they are supposed to represent the people from their districts. The way this has been working is a major flaw in the way our government is supposed to work.

Clean Air Interstate Rule of 2005

The Northwoods Politic

Today's news speaks of a decision of a federal appeals court that effectively cancels any air pollution regulations the Bush Administration implemented to cut down the levels of greenhouse gases, by stating that the EPA overstepped it's bounds when it established the Clean Air Interstate Rule of 2005.

Shortly after that, the same day, the E.P.A. Administrator, Stephen Johnson, announced that he wasn't obligated to regulate greenhouse gases saying that it would be an unprecedented expansion of the agency's authority.

Between these two actions, any new reductions of air pollutants during the Bush Administration has been canceled out. This basically is what the administration's, Transportation's, Agriculture's and the Commerce Department's want. Their position all along is that they didn't want to place air pollution controls on these industries anyway.

I think this is no accident, the Bush Administration's has all along used legal points to battle and effectively stonewall any attempts of getting any information needed by oversight committees to do their investigations. Do you think it's possible that the Bush Administration could have accidentally overlooked how their controls set up to reduce greenhouse gases could be deterred by the courts? I think it was planned all along.

Bush and his administration has played this country like a chess game, as the country's attention has been drawn from one contested issue to another in other unrelated areas, attention is always being shifted so as to never give enough time for people or agencies to act on or follow through with oversight or arguments against the earlier issues. In this way he has used his time in office to promote republicans,, that he can count on to go along with him, into just about all areas of government. Republicans have infiltrated all areas of the government and they use that power to promote their agendas not the people's. How many times have Bush and Cheney stated that public opinion isn't important to policy, what's important is that we stay the coarse on their agendas because they know what we need, even if it's not what we want.

Iraqi Government Does What U.S. Government Can't

The Northwoods Politic

I get most of my news from the Associated Press and The New York Times. Today I noticed that the Iraqi Government appears to be doing something that our Congress can't seem to do. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is standing up to President Bush in regards to the Iraqi/U.S. agreement that Washington was trying to get approved by July 31st.

According to what I've read, the UN agreement for troops being in Iraq ends at the end of December, but the Bush Administration has been pushing Iraq for an agreement to allow U.S. troops to stay in Iraq before the end of July. The reason for this is obvious, Bush wants to get a concrete agreement with Iraq before he leaves office at the end of the year. According to the Bush Administration, they claim that they don't need Congress approval even if they decide to have full status of forces agreement with Iraq. The administration has been pretty mum about what the points of the U.S./Iraq agreement not wanting to have a bunch of resistance from Congress until after the agreement is signed.

Most of what we hear about the proposed agreement is coming from the Iraqi side, our government won't inform us of what they want with Iraq for stipulations. Some of the points that the Iraqi government has taken offense to are:

1.) The U.S. authority to carry out military operations within Iraq.
2.) The ability to arrest Iraqi citizens without Iraqi government's permission.
3.) Getting legal immunity for private security contractors.
4.) Control of Iraqi air space.
5.) Setting a time table for U.S. troop withdrawals.

It sounds like Washington might have dropped the immunity stipulation in regards to the private contractors, but nothing is set in stone yet. Washington has been pretty secretive about what it wants compared to what the Iraqis want. The Iraqis want control of their airspace and basically want the U.S. out of Iraq as soon as possible it sounds like. Even with Iraq talking about wanting withdrawal timetables, U.S. Ambassador Crocker has said, "We are looking at conditions not calendars, and both sides are in agreement on this point. So it doesn't appear like anyone in the U.S. is listening to what Iraqi leaders are wanting. I guess that they are just supposed to trust our government not to infringe on Iraqi rights just like we are supposed to trust our government to follow our constitution. Washington continues to say withdrawals would only be linked to conditions on the ground.

In the last couple days Iraq leaders have made headlines in their standing up to Washington against their perceived danger of turning into indentured servants of the United States. Some of the headlines are:

1.) Iraqi Raises the Idea of Timetable for U.S. Withdrawals
2.) Iraq Demands Pullout Timetable in U.S. Defense Pack Talks
3.) Iraq Insists on Withdrawal Timetable

The United States might bring the Iraqis factions together after all, but it will probably be done by pissing them off about us so much that they will unite against us.

While Iraq and the United States are trying to make some sense out of what to do with the agreement, Israel, the United States, and Iran are having a pissing contest in the gulf. First Isrial carried out maneuvers showing that they could feasibly get to Iran to start a war, then the U.S. and Iran both announced that they would do maneuvers in the gulf with a chance of starting an international incident. Iran stated that it would close out the traffic from the gulf if attacked, so the U.S. sent a convoy to the area to show that they would attack if any sign that the Iranians would put up a blockade. It's kind of like watching a bunch of young boys playing in a playground except that the stakes are much higher.

It's All About the Oil Baby

The Northwoods Politic

Before the end of his presidency Bush is doing what he can to advance his agendas in Iraq and Iran. New news is that one of President Bush's buddies Hunt Oil went ahead and made a Kurdistan deal, by ceding responsibility for writing contracts directly to a regional government instead of the central government in Iraq. A move that has seriously infuriated members of Iraq's central government.

In advance of the news that the Bush Administration knew about the deal ahead of time, and did not try to discourage the deal, Bush is on record as saying, "I know nothing about the deal." Hmmm, sounds an awfully similar to, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman.", doesn't it? If not in the words, it's familiar in the actions and intent of another leader trying to bullshit his way out of trouble, and again it didn't work, or did it? Also trying to back up their failure to tell the truth the State Department is trying to say that they discouraged the deal, even though there are a string of Emails backing up the information that the Bush Administration and the State Department knew of the dealings of Hunt Oil before anything was signed. Bush has his fingers in so many places trying to push things through for his friends that he slipped getting rid of this Email electronic paper trail. It's no surprise that the president has said something to the effect that he doesn't use Emails any more because of security reasons. Although he doesn't say it, I think the security reasons he refers to all the time is not the security of the nation, but the security of his own ass. Perhaps he's just not afraid any more what news comes out, after all he can always say any such information is internal communications and then claim executive privilege.

There is good reason to believe the Bush Administration has had it's hands in the dealings with Iraq that allows five major western oil companies non bid contracts to come in and start getting the oil flowing in Iraq. Makes a person wonder after hearing of some of the successions the U.S. wanted in their deal with the Iraqi government before the UN agreement expires July 31st. Could be that our government set the sights high so we could later drop some of them in exchange of some of these non bid contracts with western oil companies? I would imagine that we will eventually hear something like that, and it will be another thing that we will not impeach Bush over. It's starting to look like there isn't going to be any holding Bush and his Administration accountable for things at least while he's in office. The way he has setup his supporters all through the government's agencies would have to be fixed before any action on Bush himself can take place.

Now the Bush Administration says it's almost imminent that Israel is going to invade Iran to bomb Iran's nuclear facility. I'm sure Israel just came up with that idea on their own, just like they did in Syria, but it's kind of interesting how our government seems to know all the details as soon as that kind of thing happens. You can be sure that somewhere there is a wink and a nod to Israel from people in our government, some help like satellite images and the like, maybe even some extra money in aid or something too. It would also be a way of eventually getting the U.S. into a war with Iran. We couldn't after all let one of our allies be threatened by a war with Iran. This might be one way of Bush making sure that we eventually get involved with Iran even if he can't get us into it with Iran before he's out of office this fall.

The list just goes on and on about the departments of government that the Bush Administration has Bushtardized. The State Department lieing that they discouraged oil deals, a Justice Department that won't work with oversight committee to find out the truth about the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity. Even in the Environmental Protection Agency, Bush has his puppets who will advance his agenda over the sound science and advice of advisers. It is going to take quite a while and a lot of work to fix the government and our rights from the damages of the Bush Administration.