Like Piping Hydrogen to the Hindenburg

See, the economy and the money moguls' management of it--the alleged "free market"--are like the Hindenburg just as it docks in Lakehurst, New Jersey. And the hydrogen is the money you've invested. And what Congress is proposing to do by ramming this rescue, i.e. bailout bill through is to run a pipeline directly from your future earnings and your children's future earnings and their children's future earnings right into that flaming mass. Meanwhile, they're filling their own zeppelins with nonflammable helium so they can float away after the rest of us have plunged to earth.

And now we learn that this "urgent" bill that the Senate already passed and which the House may pass tomorrow is larded with $100 billion in pork projects. What I want to know is why can't the Congress pass a bill that deals ONLY with this alleged crisis in liquidity?

Secondly, I want to know why absolutely no lead story on this matter was available on the Google's main news page. You'd think that it would rank somewhat higher than Joe Biden's debate with a demonstrably airheaded governor of Alaska who thinks the earth is 6000 years old and that men road dinosaurs to their jobs on the rockpile.

I can guess the answer to the first one. The combination of stupidity and greed that collects in Washington and Wall Street is so resistant to common sense or shame that if you put a gold Krugerrand inside the spleen of his or her mother, any senator or stock broker would ask to borrow your Swiss army knife to cut it out of her and then wipe his hands on her shawl afterward.

The answer to the second makes me sound like a conspiracy nut, but it smells pretty goddamned funny.

Are they rioting in the streets at home yet? It sure seems like a logical result of this week's proceedings.

Instead of using taxpayer money to bail these bastards out, how about seizing the assets of all the failing banks and liquidating them to finance the bailout, along with the punitive taxation of all insane consumption like third and fourth and fifth homes, big yachts, $100,000+ automobiles, giant jewelry, etc. If it's a real crisis, then take from those who can most afford to sacrifice, not the ordinary schmuck who is two paychecks away from homelessness.

Until I see legislation like that, I don't think there's a true crisis, only the propaganda about one to loosen what little we have left from our weakening grip.

P.S. My favorite sign at the protests over the Wall Street bailout: "Jump you fuckers!"

Let the "Free Market" (stifled laughter) Sort It Out

I don't want to see taxpayer money used to save Wall Street. I want Wall Street's fucking CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and brokers who walked away with uncountable billions to kick the cash in to save their precious "free market" system that seems desperately to need a government titty to suck on. Bullshit. If the extreme free marketers (and I actually respect the ones in Congress who voted against the bailout, because at least they think that the system should live or die by its own logic) are true believers, then the market needs to sort itself out.

Of course, the myth is that there was ever an unfettered free market. Look, Congress sells the tax laws to firms and individuals who can afford to lobby them every year. Why is the tax code bigger than the Encyclopedia Brittanica? Because it contains exemptions and exceptions and loopholes up the wazoo and even exempts employees for the Internal Revenue Service for liability in its interpretation.

Let me put it to you this way--if you can't afford your own personal tax lawyer, you're getting fucked.

The system is a rigged game between government and corporate America (which are essentially indistinguishable these days--just ask where Henry Paulson comes from) and is played to extract as much wealth as possible from hardworking but naive people while avoiding revolution or even true reform. Thanks to a compliant (or perhaps complicit) media, we are kept distracted or lied to or prevented from discovering information that might create a balance of power, but which has concentrated power and wealth into fewer and fewer hands.

And the seams of this wicked operation are finally showing.

By the way, I and many others lost more than 7 percent of our worth yesterday. That hurts, believe me (I was hoping for a nice retirement someday), but if the system has to crumble a bit more before Americans start paying attention to the real problem, so be it.

Oh, by the way, isn't it interesting that while banks/investment firms (Glass-Steagle's repeal erased the distinction) get bailed out, if you are in danger of defaulting on your student loans or your mortgage, no such luck. And claiming that somehow this will benefit the average schmuck like me is a flat out lie. And as I said in an earlier post, when someone is pressing you on time in a deal, walk away and get more information. Never negotiate in haste. And I don't give a shit what even Barack Obama says about the urgency, never mind "Crash" McCain's idiotic rantings. This whole thing stinks.