This is somewhat in response to our friend Chip's recent diary: No such thing as too big: Congress should pass a strong stimulus bill ASAP
http://www.bluejersey.com/show...
What is quoted below is a cross post from something I submitted to the NYT yesterday (before I got around to reading Chip's diary).
On the one hand we all must support Barack Obama and back him, on the other we also need to take care not to blindly/robotically march in lockstep when the administration may be doing too little, too late and/or going in the wrong direction. Obama needs to be constructively critiqued also. It's a delicate balance, that is required.
Frankly, the Republican's have now publicly adopted Rush line "I hope he fails." as their modus operandi. (They've been sabotaging/raping the economy from September on in as it became clear that McCain would lose....none of this is accidental.)
The Republican agenda is to put the American people through hell just so their big business patrons can keep on stashin their cash and buying up cheap assets until 2012 when the country is in such a shambles that they can then make their "big con" a complete "success" when they blame it all on Barack and pick up the pieces (which they'll own at bargain basements rates). That's their script.
We don't have to let that happen.
Obama needs to understand that he's not dealing with honest decent people. He needs to seize the bully pulpit and lead a couple of hundred million Americans in a radically new direction. He has that potential. But, frankly, I don't see him doing it unless there is a call for it from the ground up.
Anyway, here's the cross post.....
http://community.nytimes.com/a... (that goes to the page the comment # 79 is on)
January 29, 2009 1:21 pm
Passing this bill is, at best, marginally better than doing nothing at all, but that's about it.
The stimulus needed to be 4 times larger and structured in a radically different manner.
It also needed to be part of a radical (yes there's that word again) omnibus electoral and ethics reform package that would take the dirty money out of politics and criminalize the "legal" behaviors that have enabled the theft of our economy.
This current mess was not caused by any normal/healthy "market forces"; it is the pathological result of the cumulative effects of legalized corruption. Our political and economic infrastructure are legally corrupt from the branches right down to the roots.....and that's why the solutions must be radical and wholistic.
No shallow "single shot" remedies will work. The same corrupt infrastructure that caused the problems in the first place, are simply feeding off of what's being done to correct the situation. What we're doing now is like pumping intravenous antibiotics into a in infected person with peritonitis without performing emergency surgery to first clean out the fecal matter that is the cause of the infection. There isn't enough money on the planet to "bail out" this sinking ship.....we must repair the leak as we bail.
The Republicans are right to oppose; but they are doing it for all the wrong reasons.
Arguably, the Bush administration perversely left Obama this "poison pill" of an economy just to sabotage his presidency. Arguably the Republicans started talking down the economy as soon as it became evident that there was no way they could win the presidency.....that's how low our politics has become.
The financial "services" industry is rotten to the core and deserves to be allowed to go bankrupt. We need to nationalize enough banks to keep depositors confident that their money is safe and to start sane lending to worthy applicants at great rates.
All, and I mean all, of the rich folk at the top of the corrupt food chain need to be "let go". The recent disclosure that 4 billion dollars of taxpayer money was given away as "bonuses" to Goldman Sachs employees is one more instance of the gang raping of ordinary working Americans who simply play by he rules and pay their taxes and have no special connections. Further, we need to implement policies that will track the stolen wealth and tax/confiscate it.......there are way too many rich powerful people who see democracy as a threat to their wealth and power. They won't just "go away".
Sadly, Obama, in a well intended good natured wish to compromise and be a nice guy is being taken for a ride. For all of his great intelligence and obvious talent....he's being conned.
Unfortunately, the people in charge will not listen to common sense. For the most part they owe their own jobs/power to the legally corrupt pay to play system that is American politics and governance....so this horrendously costly charade will go on until the bottom really falls out and so much stuff hits so many fans that we finally wake up.
I just hope our democracy survives the shock.....as no doubt, the next phase of the con job will be to try to "capitalize" on the disgust and disillusionment that most people will feel when things begin to really get bad.
We need deeply intelligent and wholistic/radical solutions to these systemic problems; not emergency measures patched together in a few days/weeks that just dig us deeper into the pits. I realize that the picture I've sketchily outlined here is so ugly that most of you will reject it out of hand.....that kind of denial is understandable.
Obama has it right when he talks about us not "Republicans or Democrats" etc; the problems that beset us now are, in a divinely comic/dramatic way a great opportunity to become dis-illusioned with unsustainable policies of the past that can only lead to more waste, war, pollution and generalized human misery.
The relatively small number of rich and powerful parasites who think they are somehow "getting over" will all grow old and die in a poverty of spirit so profound that one would hope that there is no afterlife lest they be condemned to an eternity in ".......... that place [where] there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth."
I realize that this "message in a bottle"/"song and a prayer" isn't likely to make much difference against the tsunami of current events....but this is just an opening salvo. I suspect that there are many others who see what I'm pointing at...and it's up to us to have hope and to become active.
If you "catch my drift" you know that the long term stakes here go ***way**** beyond whether or not we experience an economic depression or we avoid one; let's get busy folks!!!
Nick Lento, New Jersey
I am very encouraged that President Obama (it still feels great to jst say that! :-) was outraged with the wall street scammers who stole 20 billion dollars from taxpayers by using bailout money as "bonuses". http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01... There's great video embedded in that article.
Frankly, these people are de facto criminals. We need to pass laws that will legally confiscate the billions they've stolen from the American people......and we need to let these failed (corrupt or inept take yer choice) institutions die.
We can nationalize enough banks to provide services and keep the local tellers and managers etc employed; but the bastards at the top who scammed us must not be "bailed out".
Not ONE PENNY MORE to bail out millionaires!!! If these people didn't earn a penny for the next 5 years they would could still survive at a level of comfort that most ordinary Americans never achieve. We must not let the poor become destitute and the middle class become poor just to keep the filthy rich people, who mis-led us into this mess, living from suffering any real losses/consequences!!!
What we are doing now is like giving a junkie heroin in order to make him "behave"; it doesn't work for long.
It's time for a wholistic and thoroughly integrated/thought out plan that can address all of these economic issues. The problems are all connected to each other and the solutions must be equally connected. Obama has the potential to actually do this. President Obama (and our whole NJ Congressional Delegation) just need a lot of toughly loving nudges from 50 million active progressives.
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