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POPSScience and Technology is our Future not the Auto Industry Mr. Lyons brings up an interesting point. We are throwing away a lot of money at banking and the automotive industry, neither of which shows much interest in changing the methods that got America into this mess. That money could and should be better spent on the one industry sector that has repeatedly brought the world to our doorsteps. The market will either make or break the automotive industry depending on how they adapt to what Americans want. The financial industry will find a way to survive and hoarding their share of the bailout money is not the way to do it. America’s brainpower is where our future lies. Science and technology needs a greater influx of scientists and engineers and that can only come from a better system of education. Once again America is getting its priorities wrong.
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POPSBailout is a Windfall to Bankers, not Borrows TARP does not dictate what banks do with the bailout money, but many of us outside the loop were hoping banks would actually participate in the recovery of our troubled economy. Do the banks care whether defaulting homeowners receive assistance? No, because the banks will get their collateral back to be re-sold, they get to keep their tidy windfall package, and the remaining defaulting homeowners will eventually be bailed out by the federal government so the banks get their payments on these loans as well. They are playing us, big time. I can’t help thinking that someone in the federal government is benefiting from this freely flowing money.
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POPSShale Oil Development, Eco Disaster & Taxpayer Rip Off Dollar signs fill the heads of oil companies and politicians, while visions of ecological disaster fill the minds of everyone else. Oil company execs say it would be ‘unconscionable to forgo exploiting oil shale's potential’ while dismissing the ‘unconscionable’ destruction of land and the ‘unconscionable’ pollution and depletion of water resources. Shell Oil spouts sound bites like ‘safely and responsibly’ ‘getting at’ this hydrocarbon resource simply because it is considered a ‘huge’ resource while at the same time acknowledging that the technology required to ‘get at’ this shale oil is unproven. What is known about this technology is that it would take 10 barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil and that could possibly use all of the remaining water in upper Colorado River Basin.
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POPSIMF warns of economic riots Hopefully, this is nothing more than necessary contingency planning, but a separate recent article stated that the Department of Defense plans to deploy 20,000 troops nationwide to help state and local officials respond to ‘nuclear attacks’ and ‘emergencies’. I can’t help but think the emergencies referred to could be riots over our deflating economy. There have already been food riots in Haiti, Bangladesh, and Egypt (http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/04/14/world.food.crisis/) and the way our government uses our money to bailout the banking system without any oversight, and the numbers of jobless and homeless keep increasing, civil unrest is not farfetched. I only have my faith that Americans will not go to this extreme but my faith in Americans have been shattered before.
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POPSPirates to get what they want This is very discouraging news. These lawless bastards are going to get their money. Whatever happened to governments not negotiating with terrorists? Have we lost the backbone to stand up to these criminals? Law abiding citizens around the world are barely scrapping by (and some can't) while thieving pirates get paid off. This decision, along with the bailout of irresponsible CEOs, is sending the wrong message to those of us who would like to still believe that crime does not pay.
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POPSAuto rescue bill in peril, opposed by GOP senators What truly bothers me about fast-tracking a vote on this deal is what Sen. Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader, said Wednesday afternoon "Everybody is still kind of poring through it, trying to figure out exactly what it does." This sounds to me as though the vote has more of an emotional basis rather than the actual wording of the measure, Scary stuff. Yet Bush says he is supporting it. Deputy Chief of Staff Joel Kaplan told reporters at a late-morning briefing that the administration had yet to read the fine print of its "conceptual agreement" with congressional Democrats How can anyone who hasn't read this thing be for or against it? Another problem I have with this, and I know it is common pracitce, is that included in the bill is an unrelated pay-raise for federal judges. Why is this part of this vote? What does this have to do with the Big 3 bailout? Someone please explain.
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POPSBailout Demands Increase Now states are asking to be bailed out. Is there no end to this? Taxpayers are overwhelmed enough without having to bailout everyone affected by how one industry screwed us all in the name of profit. We need to prosecute everyone involved with throwing caution to the wind to allow loans without collateral, everyone who looked the other way while these institutions raped us and foremost we need to stop the government from raiding that great ATM called the American taxpayer to reward everyone involved. We are in a recession because our government relaxed regulations and did nothing while the banking industry irresponsibly created this economic nightmare. And where in the long line of handouts are we? At the very end, if we are allowed to join the line at all.
5
POPSLet's Pay Detroit to bring their gas sipping cars home to the U.S. Great idea! The Big 3 have been making fuel efficient cars for Europe for years, why not bring them here? Detroit needs money, and we need efficient vehicles. Let’s make a deal: We taxpayers will provide the funding to retool their factories to build just the specific models that are in the Common Good. We’ll fund retooling to build any models that help solve the climate crisis by getting better than 50 mpg, right now. It’s a win-win.
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POPSAll Fall Down Willie Sutton (prolific bank robber) once said "You can steal more money with a pen than you can with a gun". Bankers have learned taken this addage to heart. And who are these guys stealing from? Ultimately, those purveyors of materialistic bourgeois middle-class society, the bottom-rung dwelling engine of all that is capitalist America, the lowly taxpayer. Once again, we foot the bills of that pay for the greed and irresponsibility that so plagues humanity from all sides.
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POPSBailout? What Bailout. Does acting quickly have the desired effect of appearing to know what you are doing? In the case of the $700B Wall Street bailout, the answer is apparently, No. The fact is Henry Paulson doesn’t have a clue how to best use this money and the program that was originally passed has changed. It is down right scary to know that Congress will vote for a plan without details of that plan and place unprecedented power in the hands of a man who has now clearly shown does not know what to do with the money. People are still loosing their homes and jobs, and our faith in our future is being badly shaken. CEO’s and big oil are walking away with record profits. Politicians grasp at any glimmer of hope to keep things working and no one is truly in control of anything.
0
POPSA. I. Greed No wonder main street looks down their noses at Wall Street. No wonder the average, hardworking, taxpayer, playing by the rules, to make ends meet look with upon corporate CEO's with such disgust.
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POPSThe bailout is a sham favoring foreign investors There isn't any provision to prevent Secretary Paulson from defining any other financial asset as "promoting financial market stability", and while he must notify Congress, they cannot block his purchase. Why is the cut off date for mortgages to be helped so far in the past? March 14, 2008 seems a bit arbitrary to me.
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POPSWhat makes these millionaires worthy of a bailout? More from the article: "I've been hearing from Republicans all my life about the virtue of capitalism and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps -- but it turns out the bootstraps have to come from the government and the government also does the pulling up? How is that capitalism?" I want to know why the government turned its back while the American auto industry was loosing its shirt to foreign automakers? And why didn't the government step in to stop our industries from moving overseas and leaving nothing but minimum wage jobs behind? These corporate welfare recipients who took advantage of a federal government that allowed an unregulated wholesale ripoff of their fellow Americans deserve to loose everything they own. American ingenuity will get us through this, but it will be a lot easier to do so without Bush and his gang digging the hole deeper while we are digging our way out.
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POPSSocialism Coming to America? Senator Jim DeMint said: “This plan does nothing to address the misguided government policies that created this mess and it could make matters much worse by socializing an entire sector of the U.S. economy. This plan fails to oversee or regulate the government failures that led to this crisis. Instead it greatly increases the role for Secretary Paulson whose market predictions have been consistently wrong in the last year…” So far, there has been no discussion about what got us into this mess and the only solution being talked about is more of the same failed monetary policies. If passed by Congress, Paulson would assume the dictatorial power and authority to designate financial institutions “as financial agents of the Government” and order them to perform “all such reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as may be required of them…” Having so much control over a so called 'free market' negates the very idea of "free".
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