Friday, October 3, 2008

Say "No Deal" to the Raw Deal: Wall Street Bailout Blows Bigtime

Wall Street’s Billionaire Blowhard Bailout “Rescue”


The long-anticipated and overhyped Palin-Biden debate has come and gone but today, Denver based columnist and author David Sirota has hit one out of the park, resurrecting his pull-no-punches "Great Labor Shortage Myth" journalistic street cred as he artfully paints a grisly, domestic crime scene picture of the Wall Street Bailout in all of its naked truth.

Saying No Deal to the New Deal offers a shocking and sickening portrait of the raw deal we got today, comparing it to what spousal abuse must look like behind the gilded, closed doors of corporate elites and beltway politicians:

“The marriage of American capitalism and democracy has always been stormy and erratic. But during the debate over a Wall Street bailout, we watched that matrimonial knot unwind into a tangled tale of terror.”

Sirota reminds us that although the marriage of American democracy and capitalism has “always been stormy and erratic”, but today, democracy has died and in one month, people will elect a president from a whopping one big money party pool of candidates, McBama, both whom voted for this bill and killed democracy along with it. Is this what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi meant when she famously declared that “Americans get the government they deserve?”



It did not have to go down like this. There were many sound alternatives presented to Congress and the Senate and yet, this husband-and-wife spat escalated into a full-blown, “grisly crime of passion” that proved how corporations have hijacked democratic deliberations, as if government resources now rightfully belong exclusively to Wall Street:


“By the time the fight hit Congress' upper chamber, senatorial morticians were embalming democracy's corpse. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., permitted consideration of just one alternative, and he rigged parliamentary procedure to guarantee its defeat.”


Today, capitalism took democracy's life by killing it “through a perverse legislative process” only to then rob its grave with the bailout bill's "lack of substance" or protections for the American people. American democracy is dead. What we have now, effective today, is a system that is no longer defined by vested government power in rules and systems, but by elitist individuals and their personal whims:

“Instead of responding to this meltdown by updating regulatory institutions or investing in job-creating infrastructure, the bailout proposes giving one unelected appointee — the Treasury secretary — complete authority to dole out $700 billion to bank executives, with little oversight. And here's the scary part: That lurch toward dictatorship was motivated not just by crony corruption, but also by a deeper ideological shift.”



WHAT party of FDR? Why does the Democratic candidate, Obama, keep insisting that it is “unpatriotic” to oppose this bill? In another article this week Sirota describes this bipartisan “bubble” mentality in which corporate elites and lawmakers, including (McBama) live in that keeps them about as far away from reality as the rest of us are from Mars:



“O'Neill and Joseph Stiglitz, both bailout critics, are top advisers to Barack Obama on this bailout issue, but the Democratic nominee keeps insisting that it is unpatriotic to oppose this bill. John McCain is even crazier - saying that the bill is going to "put us on the brink of economic disaster" right after he voted for it. And worst of all, both Obama and McCain are insisting that the bill just hasn't been sold properly as a "rescue" instead of a "bailout" - the implication being that public opposition is borne out of stupidity rather than sanity.”



Gone are the days of civility and respect for democratic governance, as Sirota paints the bleak, post-mortem picture of an autocratic aristocracy of grotesque, blowhardy feudal lords like billionaire Tom Friedman and legions of sycophants riding roughshod over a pillaged empire of the beleaguered with a fine brush across the canvass of, well, this country’s sorry derriere:


“This bailout, marketed as a speed enhancer, is an aggressive attempt to discard democracy's checks and balances and pantomime that kind of autocracy.”



How did we the people get such a raw deal this week? Does this come as any surprise?



“This week's spousal killing wasn't random. It was the beginning of a systematic assault on our Constitution and a radical departure from Franklin Roosevelt's original covenant — a dangerous "new deal" we must say "no deal.”



David is right. We must say “no” to this colossal raw deal, as there are plenty more of them to come. Maybe the plebes will finally vote the bums out in November?

When pigs fly.

-2Truthy

2 comments:

Citizen Carrie said...

Thanks for doing a post about Sirota. He's been writing some excellent columns lately. The bailout package seems to have re-energized him, and he seems more like the David Sirota of old.

2Truthy said...

Yay, Sirota is back!

This bailout drama reminds me of the scene in Wall Street where Michael Douglas as Gecko dresses down Charlie Sheen as Bud for confusing democracy with free market capitalism...It's not like the tragedy of this meltdown is playing out because we didn't see it coming, but that the people in this country allowed it to happen or worse, are powerless to stop it. So far, it looks like the latter.