Concerning the specifics of the famous Bailout

[a friend alerted me to this, thought I'd share]


Glenn Beck Show Thursday, Oct. 2nd

There is huge, huge trouble, and we are told by the people in Washington that the whole thing's going to collapse if we don't do something. If we don't do anything, the whole thing's going to collapse. I happen to agree with that, but I don't agree with the "Just do something." But let me ask you this: If you were asked to save your country and you were asked for $700 billion, the largest program of its type ever, $700 billion and they said we have to have it right now, where the whole thing's going to collapse, if you believed it, would you do it. No matter what your constituents said, if you believed it, would you do it. I would because you can go ahead and tear me apart. You can throw me to the dogs. It will be the last time I serve. I get it. This is a republic, and I will vote against if I think the public is wrong because it's a republic. You have hired me to look into this. I will do my best to explain it, but if my back is against the wall, the clock is ticking, somebody has to make a decision, I don't think you understand it because you may not have access to information that I have. As a senator I'm going to make that and I will be held responsible. You can pillar me, you can tear me apart, you can throw me out of office, you can impeach me. That's okay. I've got to do what I think is right for the country because that's what you hired me to do.

If I don't think that our country is falling apart or if I don't think that a bailout is right, I'm going to do the same thing. I don't care what your opinion is. I don't care what happens. If I don't think it's right, if I think this is a lie, if I don't think this will work, if I think this is the wrong course of action because I love my country, I will not do it, and I won't do it in your name. Even though you said something else, you put me in that place to make a decision. However, the one thing I will not do is I will not go to Washington and vote for something that I don't believe in, because it has a wool subsidy in it, because in my state I have a toy manufacturer that makes wooden arrows for children and I can get a subsidy for the company that makes wooden arrows for children. It's not enough to vote for the bill to save your country? You need an incentive? You need something to convince you besides your sacred duty, besides our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor? This bill last night that was passed is the size of a novel. I'm a pretty fast reader. I couldn't read 435 pages in one night, let alone 435 pages written by attorneys! Section 325 provides essential tax breaks for the wool research fund. What else do we need to know! Could we make sandwiches out of wool? No! Sweaters! What else do you need to know about wool! Section 503 gives tax breaks for the manufacturer of wooden arrows used in toys for children. Price tag, $6 million. Wooden arrows? Aren't you the same people that are telling me that it's politically incorrect to play cowboys and Indians!

Try this one. Try this one, and this one I'm going to need. This one I swear to God I'm going to need soon. Puerto Rican and Virgin Island rum producers get $192 so they can make more booze! I need some booze right now! Sorry, not $192. $192 million. Section 309, tax credit for economic development in America. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You hear that? That's good. I thought the whole thing was freaking. No, no, no, listen carefully. Section 309, tax credit for economic development in America, defined as American Samoa. Section 316, a tax break for railroad track maintenance. Well, good thing we got Joe's Amtrak in there! Section 317, a tax break for racetracks. I am tracking down the senators that these -- that their states profit from. I want to know the names of somebody who said, gee, I can't go for the bailout bill unless you help with the racetracks! Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. Section 502, qualified television and film productions given an extension of favorable expensing rules, $10 million. We're helping out the TV and film people now. Section 111 provides for the expansion and modification of advanced coal project investment credits. Section 112, expansion and modification of the coal gasification project. Section 113, increased funding for black lung disability fund. "Look, man, I'll give you what you're never going to get through if you'll just give this to me." It's insulting. It's insulting. If I were a senator -- did anyone, did anyone, or am I just too frank, did anyone say get the hell out of my office; you want to talk to me about why this is the right thing to do, you want to talk to me about why I should be on board because the economy will collapse if we don't have it, if you want to talk to me about those things, come in, friend, sit down, let's talk. But if you want to talk to me about getting money in my state for wooden arrows, get the hell out of my state. Get the hell out of my office, get the hell out of my sight. This whole place needs to be fumigated. I'm so disgusted. I mean, I thought I was -- I really thought we had hit the bottom of the barrel when we saw that they were giving money to ACORN, an organization that is stealing elections, that is engaged in voter fraud. When they are trying to give 20% of the beloved profits that they keep touting to America that we're going to get which you know and I know we're never going to get. 20% of the profits that belong to you and me! We're the ones taking the risk here! We're the ones playing by the rules! We're the ones doing our job every day! We're the ones being pissed on every day by the people in Washington. And you're going to take my money, my risk, the money that I could use to send my children to college and you're going to give it to ACORN! I thought we had hit the wall, but no, no, no, they had so much more. To stab us repeatedly in the chest and think that we won't do anything. Get on the phone. You tell those -- you know what? They say there is no honor among thieves. Well, now I finally know what that phrase means. Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. You call those senators from both parties: How dare you insult me. How dare you take this and turn it into wooden arrow bailouts. http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/16075/

For once I find myself in complete agreement with the Archbishop of York, who commented:
"One of the ironies about this financial crisis is that it makes action on poverty look utterly achievable. It would cost $5bn (£2.7bn) to save six million children's lives. World leaders could find 140 times that amount for the banking system in a week. How can they tell us that action for the poorest is too expensive?"

And now the UK government has suddenly found that it can somehow afford the odd £50bn to prop up the banking system...

Really now...was anybody REALLY surprised??!

.Exec's Posh Retreat After BAILOUT Angers Lawmakers
"WASHINGTON - Days after it got a federal bailout, American International Group Inc. spent $440,000 on a posh California retreat for its executives, complete with spa treatments, banquets and golf outings, according to lawmakers investigating the company's meltdown.

AIG sent its executives to the coastal St. Regis resort south of Los Angeles even as the company tapped into an $85 billion loan from the government it needed to stave off bankruptcy. The resort tab included $23,380 worth of spa treatments for AIG employees, according to invoices the resort turned over to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee."

Weirdly, tho one would think this news story would be the top story across the board I had to really hunt to find this link. Hell, before turning off the "debates" last night, after watching both guys repeatedly answer most posed questions with variations of the same 4 or 5 answers, I would've figured someone would've asked them about this and asked for their take on it.

Nope!

Bottom line: for all their lame public speech skills, the Feds are going to do what they wilt with the nation's tax money in spite of public outcry.
If there was a real push to solve the crisis I would figure politicians would start by finding THE TOP economists and accounting types our land has produced and handed over the details for them to sort out.
Instead we get a bunch of guys (and gals) who all profess to the unwashed multitudes to be "outsiders" and, essentially, amateurs handling this.



Congress to the Rescue!...lol.

The one thing I do like about the British bailout is that if banks want the government money, then the government gets to tell them how much they are allowed to pay their execs.

Of course they will find a way to squirm around that, that's the advantage of being an invertebrate.

A friend mentioned something the other day that I hadn't even thought of.
Why did we bail out the banks? Why not the folks that can't pay their debts to the banks, I mean, that was the problem, wasn't it? Do the math and find out that for the same amount of money, you could have given each of them $40,000.00 (to be used for their debt, specifically, not just a blank check for the casinos, because we know cash would be misspent without provisos) which would essentially get all of them out of debt with real property that they could use to establish credit and set out about spending money on things they need to spend it on to make the economy work rather than just their mortgages. In the process, the banks would recoup their money, and the crisis would end - plus all the increased spending from putting $500+ towards consumer goods rather than payments and bank fees would give us an immediate and sustained source of tax money which could actually work towards paying off that huge debt (I'm not really clear on our current plan for paying it off).

They didn't do that. They paid money to the banks, rather than the people who were in the banks' debt.

It looks kind of off-kilter when you look at it from that angle, don't you think?

I don't think it's an evil conspiracy on the part of the banks and government - just a slip up - but the effect is the same. We had lots of drowning people out there, so we sent a fleet of airlift helicopters to pull the remains of the Titanic out of the water - leaving the folks behind.

The town I live in used to be thriving because of the air force base- when a certain president ordered for a large number of bases to be closed the town and the one next to it who housed all the employees of the air based collapsed. The economy is still trying to get its feet back under its self and it's been about ten years now. Every month most retail stores fear that they will get the call that they'll be shut down and with the economy getting worse it's starting again- Mervyn's is closing it's location here, Linen's and Things' entire company just declared bankruptcy and its 600 stores are being closed, Cresent Jewelers is going out of business and every Mom and Pop shop that has struggled to survive Wal-Mart is dropping like flies. We already have the highest unemployment rate in the central valley and it's growing by the minute. We're seeing a trend where companies aren't buying the stock they used to due to banks not giving them credit to make the purchases needed to keep running and the banks are not giving credit to the people who are out there shopping to keep these stores open. I have a fear that any day now they'll pull the plug on my store and I'll be left without a job in a town that doesn't have much left- and I wont work Wal-Mart. Surely with all the money being thrown around the government they can come up with a better solution to towns falling apart like this