Jan 2009
Paulson's Big Gift to the Banks
Jan 28, 2009 22:06 Filed in: Economics
During the bailout crisis in Congress, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson secretly amended a tax regulation that resulted in a $140 billion windfall to the big banks. Wells Fargo immediately took advantage of the break by acquiring troubled Wachovia.
What’s worse, it appears that the change was illegal and in contravention of the statute upon which the regulation is supposedly based. If this is not a crime, it ought to be.
Via Citizens for Tax Justice, the American News Project made a six-minute video explaining the giveaway.
http://americannewsproject.com/videos/paulsons-140-billion-surprise
This is outrageous behavior from a treasury secretary, but, alas, there have been so many outrageous acts by the Bush administration that the public’s organ of outrage has just about been worn out. One more theft, one more brazen transfer of taxpayers money to the well-connected--a mere droplet of corruption in a veritable ocean of official theft and corruption that has been inundating the nation the past eight years ...
Call your senators and representative if you still have the energy, and tell them to close the loophole.
By the way, the aforementioned Citizens for Tax Justice has posted a comparison of the Democratic and Republican proposed bailouts. It’s worth reading.
Tax Cuts in House Democratic Stimulus Plan Better Targeted Than Those of House Republican Plan
What’s worse, it appears that the change was illegal and in contravention of the statute upon which the regulation is supposedly based. If this is not a crime, it ought to be.
Via Citizens for Tax Justice, the American News Project made a six-minute video explaining the giveaway.
http://americannewsproject.com/videos/paulsons-140-billion-surprise
This is outrageous behavior from a treasury secretary, but, alas, there have been so many outrageous acts by the Bush administration that the public’s organ of outrage has just about been worn out. One more theft, one more brazen transfer of taxpayers money to the well-connected--a mere droplet of corruption in a veritable ocean of official theft and corruption that has been inundating the nation the past eight years ...
Call your senators and representative if you still have the energy, and tell them to close the loophole.
By the way, the aforementioned Citizens for Tax Justice has posted a comparison of the Democratic and Republican proposed bailouts. It’s worth reading.
Tax Cuts in House Democratic Stimulus Plan Better Targeted Than Those of House Republican Plan
Comments
Obama to Palestinians: Tough Luck
The president made a speech at the State Department the other day outlining his policy priorities.
It had already become obvious with his appointment of Rahm Emmanuel as his chief of staff that his policy towards Israel would offer little change from that of the Bush administration. Now the inhabitants of Gaza know that they can look forward to more of the same.
According to Obama, the carnage inflicted by the overwhelming military superiority of Israel was an appropriate response to the Palestinian provocations:
Consequently, we should expect no satisfactory resolution of the Palestinian problem during Obama’s administration. Israel has made Gaza into what is, for all practical purposes, a concentration camp, and the next time the inmates become restless, the Israeli military will again deliver a vicious and indiscriminate punishment to everyone living there, irrespective of civilian status, gender, or age, as it has just done. And it will be done with the blessings of this administration.
It is becoming clear that there is no room anywhere in Greater Israel for the indigenous people who live there now or who once lived there. Given the progressive strangulation of Gaza and the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, it seems as though the Israelis are planning their own Final Solution to the Palestinian problem.
Do we really want our nation to be the enabler for this?
Tom Lowe
It had already become obvious with his appointment of Rahm Emmanuel as his chief of staff that his policy towards Israel would offer little change from that of the Bush administration. Now the inhabitants of Gaza know that they can look forward to more of the same.
According to Obama, the carnage inflicted by the overwhelming military superiority of Israel was an appropriate response to the Palestinian provocations:
Obama’s failure to mention that the rockets were a response to Israel’s refusal to open the borders as agreed--people were dying of starvation in Gaza as a result--demonstrated that Israel, in the eyes of this administration, can do no wrong.For years, Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at innocent Israeli citizens. No democracy can tolerate such danger to its people, nor should the international community, and neither should the Palestinian people themselves, whose interests are only set back by acts of terror.
Consequently, we should expect no satisfactory resolution of the Palestinian problem during Obama’s administration. Israel has made Gaza into what is, for all practical purposes, a concentration camp, and the next time the inmates become restless, the Israeli military will again deliver a vicious and indiscriminate punishment to everyone living there, irrespective of civilian status, gender, or age, as it has just done. And it will be done with the blessings of this administration.
It is becoming clear that there is no room anywhere in Greater Israel for the indigenous people who live there now or who once lived there. Given the progressive strangulation of Gaza and the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, it seems as though the Israelis are planning their own Final Solution to the Palestinian problem.
Do we really want our nation to be the enabler for this?
Tom Lowe
Thoughts on Saturday Evening 3 Days Before the Inauguration of Barak Obama
We are in the last days of the most evil and dangerous presidency this country has ever experienced.
To begin to repair the damage wrought by the right-wing wrecking crews over the past 28 years, our nation will require far more than a savior. Obama alone cannot get us out of this mess. The Democrats cannot do it by themselves.
We, the citizens, enabled our presidents, congresses and courts to bring us to this point. We will have to stop the enabling.
The habit will be hard to break.
We voted for men (and a few women) who told us what we wanted to hear.
They told us that greed was good. We eventually came to believe it.
We paid no attention to their crimes--and their crimes were numerous, from Iran-Contra to the looting of the financial industry.
We refused to notice the militarization of our police forces, and the gutting of our constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Without questioning, we allowed ourselves to be terrified by whatever our elected officials told us we should be terrified of, and gave them free rein to do whatever they wanted to do to free us from the fear du jour.
We let them instigate wars and conflicts that we had no business fighting.
We allowed our manufacturing industries either to close or to move overseas.
We spent all our spare time watching television, where we slowly became transformed from citizens into consumers who have consequently almost completely forgotten the knowledge of how a citizen is supposed to act.
And, worst of all, when the nation experienced the trauma of 9/11, which happened because our bozo of a president ignored repeated warnings of the attack, instead of impeaching him for criminal negligence, we bestowed upon him the powers of a Roman emperor, which powers he used to invade a nation that had nothing to do with the attack on 9/11, to torture prisoners, and to reward his political allies by paying them huge sums of money in connection with the Iraq war, much of which they promptly stole.
And nearly half of us who cast ballots in 2008 voted for an elderly half-wit, who, along with his vulpine running mate, promised to carry on the very same policies (if he could only remember what they were) that brought us to this point.
It is enough to deeply discourage anyone who loves his country.
With Obama as president and the Democrats with a majority in Congress, there are grounds to hope that our nation is in somewhat more responsible hands that it was before. To preserve the republic, however, will take more than responsible caretakers. It involves changing the fundamental direction of the ship of state, away from a nation completely controlled by large corporations, banks, mass media, and the military, all of which have demonstrated conclusively that they cannot be trusted on their own to act in the public interest.
A formidable task, indeed. Let the work begin.
Tom Lowe
To begin to repair the damage wrought by the right-wing wrecking crews over the past 28 years, our nation will require far more than a savior. Obama alone cannot get us out of this mess. The Democrats cannot do it by themselves.
We, the citizens, enabled our presidents, congresses and courts to bring us to this point. We will have to stop the enabling.
The habit will be hard to break.
We voted for men (and a few women) who told us what we wanted to hear.
They told us that greed was good. We eventually came to believe it.
We paid no attention to their crimes--and their crimes were numerous, from Iran-Contra to the looting of the financial industry.
We refused to notice the militarization of our police forces, and the gutting of our constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Without questioning, we allowed ourselves to be terrified by whatever our elected officials told us we should be terrified of, and gave them free rein to do whatever they wanted to do to free us from the fear du jour.
We let them instigate wars and conflicts that we had no business fighting.
We allowed our manufacturing industries either to close or to move overseas.
We spent all our spare time watching television, where we slowly became transformed from citizens into consumers who have consequently almost completely forgotten the knowledge of how a citizen is supposed to act.
And, worst of all, when the nation experienced the trauma of 9/11, which happened because our bozo of a president ignored repeated warnings of the attack, instead of impeaching him for criminal negligence, we bestowed upon him the powers of a Roman emperor, which powers he used to invade a nation that had nothing to do with the attack on 9/11, to torture prisoners, and to reward his political allies by paying them huge sums of money in connection with the Iraq war, much of which they promptly stole.
And nearly half of us who cast ballots in 2008 voted for an elderly half-wit, who, along with his vulpine running mate, promised to carry on the very same policies (if he could only remember what they were) that brought us to this point.
It is enough to deeply discourage anyone who loves his country.
With Obama as president and the Democrats with a majority in Congress, there are grounds to hope that our nation is in somewhat more responsible hands that it was before. To preserve the republic, however, will take more than responsible caretakers. It involves changing the fundamental direction of the ship of state, away from a nation completely controlled by large corporations, banks, mass media, and the military, all of which have demonstrated conclusively that they cannot be trusted on their own to act in the public interest.
A formidable task, indeed. Let the work begin.
Tom Lowe