E-Mail I sent to my ENTIRE mailing list - including the GOPPERS - re: NO BLANK CHECK FOR WALL ST.

[Krashkopf]

I hope you will all send something similar to your friends.

Krash


Hey, Everyone,

It has been a long, long time since I sent out a political e-mail to everyone on my mailing list. But I have to do it this time, because the stakes are TOO HIGH to worry about offending some people's political sensitivities.

The "Paulson Plan" to bail out Wall Street - proposed by Bush administration, and endorsed by its corporate cronies - is about to be ram-rodded through Congress (much in the same way the Authorization for Use of Force, and the "Patriot Act," were ram-rodded through Congress in the days after 9/11).

That "Paulson Plan" is nothing more than an attempt by the Bush Administration to use the economic shock caused by the financial crisis on Wall Street as a "smoke screen" to hide the fact that Bush and his cronies are trying to drain the U.S. Treasury - into their own pockets - before they get uncerimoniously booted out of office in November.

This is not a "crack pot - tin foil hat" conspiracy theory. It is reality.

To my Republican friends, this may sound like "class warfare" talk to you - well, it IS! What you need to realize is that, unless you make more than $500,000 a year (and I don't think there are too many of you who fall into that catagory) you are actually on OUR side in the war.

I have enclosed an article, which spells out the danger much more coherently than I can. I hope you will ALL read it - and other articles on the topic - and then tell your members of congress to say NO to a seven hundred billion -$700,000,000,000! - BLANK CHECK for the crooks who got us into this mess in the first place!

Krash

Bailing Out Wall Street: Another Front in the GOP Economic War Against American Working Families

by Meg White

Republicans like to paint themselves as champions of the free market, but only when it makes them money.

After years of bad investments and wild spending, the government is asking <1> Congress to give $700 billion of our tax money to a former CEO of Goldman Sachs <2> for him to spend however he wishes with no oversight or legal accountability <3>. And this is after taxpayer money was granted to save the hides of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as AIG.

The money, which works out to more than $2,000 per American <4> according to WashingtonWatch.com <5>, will be used to secure failing investments on Wall Street, but it's clear that this is a boondoggle. Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi <6> (D-CA) can see that.

These bailouts are part of the ongoing GOP economic war on working Americans. Republicans are working to redistribute wealth from working people to CEOs and investors. Taxpayers are being forced to take on risk and debt from the people who justify their huge profits and salaries by claiming they take on such huge risks and debt.

Or, as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) put it in a public statement <7> about his proposal for holding those to be bailed out accountable:

"The Bush administration, six weeks before an election, wants the middle class of this country to spend many hundreds of billions on a bailout. The wealthiest people, who have benefited from Bush's policies and are in the best position to pay, are being asked for no sacrifice at all. This is absurd. This is the most extreme example that I can recall of socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor."

While some are telling it like it is, most Republicans are doing everything in their power to distract the American people from the man behind the curtain. The GOP strategy to mask the war on working families has recently relied on two particularly effective weapons in their arsenal of obfuscation.

First, the embrace of tax cuts is an attempt to distract the American people. The government puts a few hundred dollars in one pocket, while taking thousands out of the other. The Bush tax cuts were a clear example of this; in fact, this strategy has been working quite well for Republicans since at least the Reagan Administration.

McCain's lies about the difference between his tax plan and Obama's is merely the latest episode of this tired story. The nonpartisan FactCheck.org has three pages <8> devoted solely to debunking McCain's "bad pattern <9>" of lies about taxes this election season. The truth is, Obama will cut more taxes <10> for working Americans than McCain. But that's just a smokescreen for the larger issue.

Another way that the GOP tries to blind Americans to this "socialism for us, free market for you" economic plan is by scaring the daylights out of everyone. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warned that the financial system will collapse if Congress doesn't hand over taxpayer money as soon as possible. While we hope lawmakers won't fall for this, it's clear many on Wall Street don't believe the hyperbole <11>.

This scare tactic is part of a larger scheme author Naomi Klein calls "disaster capitalism." On Bill Maher's HBO show "Real Time" this past weekend, Klein explained <12> how the GOP passed the debt and risk onto the American people and how the talk of financial calamity will allow them to push more of the same in the future.

"The disaster is far from over. They have actually just relocated the disaster. The disaster was on Wall Street, and they moved the disaster to Main Street," Klein said. She added that if McCain wins the presidency, this financial mess we're in will give him the perfect excuse to privatize Social Security, cut aid programs, and ramp up deregulation. "You need a disaster to rationalize pushing through these very unpopular policies. So the real disaster has yet to come. The real disaster is the debt that's going to explode on the American taxpayers. And then they do economic shock therapy."

Some estimates of the cost of solving this financial problem reach $1 trillion or more. But hey, $1 trillion isn't that much, really. Hell, the Pentagon lost that much <13> in their couch cushions.

Links:
<1> http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/09/20/treasurys-financial-bailout-proposal-to-congress/
<2> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Paulson
<3> http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/21/bush-legacy-taxpayer-funds/
<4> http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/09-21-2008/0004889261&EDATE=
<5> http://washingtonwatch.com/
<6> http://thepage.time.com/pelosi-statement-on-legislation-to-address-crisis-in-financial-markets/
<7> http://www.sanders.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=303313
<8> http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/there_he_goes_again.html
<9> http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/a_new_stitch_in_a_bad_pattern.html
<10> http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=411693
<11> http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/21/no_one_believes_henry_paulson_1/
<12> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/22/naomi-klein-discusses-dis_n_ 128157.html
<13> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/05/18/MN251738.DTL
<14> http://www.buzzflash.net/submit.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzflash.com%2Farticles%2Fwaronfamilies%2F004
<15> http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzflash.com%2Farticles%2Fwaronfamilies%2F004&title=Bailing+Out+Wall+Street%3A+Another+Front+in+the+GOP+Economic+War+Against+American+Working+Families
<16> http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzflash.com%2Farticles%2Fwaronfamilies%2F004&title=Bailing+Out+Wall+Street%3A+Another+Front+in+the+GOP+Economic+War+Against+American+Working+Families
<17> http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzflash.com%2Farticles%2Fwaronfamilies%2F004&t=Bailing+Out+Wall+Street%3A+Another+Front+in+the+GOP+Economic+War+Against+American+Working+Families
<18> http://technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzflash.com%2Farticles%2Fwaronfamilies%2F004
<19> ht tp://technorati.com/tag/War On Families
<20> http://technorati.com/tag/war on workers
<21> http://technorati.com/tag/ GOP
<22> http://technorati.com/tag/ republicans
<23> http://technorati.com/tag/ mccain
<24> http://technorati.com/tag/ economy
<25> http://technorati.com/tag/ financial crisis
<26> http://technorati.com/tag/ wall street
<27> http://technorati.com/tag/ bush
<28> http://technorati.com/tag/ disaster capitalism
<29> http://technorati.com/tag/ tax cuts
<30> http://technorati.com/tag/

[Krashkopf]

1. Kickin' myself!

[YellowRubberDuckie]

2. Dude, A lot of the republcians are against it too!

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080923/D93CKBG01.html

[Krashkopf]

3. That's why I'm reaching out to them . . .

this could be a true bi-partisan issue.

[avaistheone1]

4. Superb. I will email it far and wide. Thank you for doing this.