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Archive for the ‘Bailout’ Category

Before you view the video below, please allow me to ask a simple question.

If these tea parties were taking place across America in protest of policies set forth by a Republican President exactly what do you think the news coverage would be like?

Here’s what I think: wall to wall television coverage, including interviews with anyone they could find who would talk down the administration. Front page newspaper coverage, complete with as many pictures as space would allow.

Talking heads informing Americans how dire the situation is in our country and how we must move to reform Washington before its too late..after all there is that image thing, you know.

What we hear now are crickets chirping..a smattering here or there which generally includes not much more than numbers in attendance pulled out of thin air. Local news stations might make mention of those who are peacefully executing their right to dissent, but only if they need a filler.

Thank goodness for the internet. It provides those of us who are not into thisworship phenomenon an outlet to not only read but express our views.

What these folks are organizing is what has made this country great.

Debate and dissent (peaceful) only creates more viable solutions for all of our citizens. I’d think these tea party folks deserve at least as much attention as Code Pink or say, Cindy Sheehan, don’t you?

It is guaranteed if Lloyd Marcus had performed the following, and the administration in Washington was controlled by one with an (R) after his/her name, it would have been the closing for every evening newscast for as long as they could milk it:

The lopsidedness of our media is turning many away from politics altogether. How is it that so much that was so bad for eight years is now the best thing since rye bread?

Can they justify never vetting the man who now sits in the Oval Office?

Sure they can, after all, they are the media and they believe they do no more than regurgitate the true feelings of our citizens.

Funny, I know a lot of people who were never asked.

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How about this for picture of the week?

Senator DeMint has shown great courage lately through his actions in the Senate. Calling for a vote on the Fairness Doctrine as early as next week would be another moment worth watching:

Sen. Jim DeMint announced that he will force a vote next week on a bill that prevents the Federal Communications Commission from reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.

The South Carolina Republican’s bill, the Broadcaster Freedom Act, is cosponsored by John Thune, R-S.D., and 27 others and will be offered as an amendment to the D.C. Voting Rights bill…

Let’s get it out in the open. America should see how each of their elected officials lean on this matter.

Cowards, huh? That’s a heck of a thing for a Attorney General of the United States to say.

Here is the best take down of Holder’s statement I have read to date.

If anyone can tie coffee, the courts and the porkfest legislation into one neat package it is Alfonzo Rachel..just watch:

Have a good weekend all. Hopefully by Monday this bug will have departed altogether. Maybe then this exhausting, exasperating monster will allow me to post something original and intelligent.

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Now that the election is over and many Republican senators have nothing to lose anymore, the bailout package for the auto industry died Thursday night.

As a former union officer I always feel bad when a person loses his or her job or faces that prospect, but the American people are fed up with these bailouts. All that was being discussed was $14 billion of the $25 billion the auto companies said they needed to make it to the end of the year. I say all as though $14 billion is not much money, and with the sums of money being bandied about Washington these past couple of months it does seem small.

Lawmakers planned to move ahead with a procedural vote on a Democratic-sponsored bill negotiated with the White House that Reid admitted would not succeed.

“There is too much difference” between negotiators to reach an agreement,” the Nevada Democrat said.

The late night development followed intense discussions on a possible compromise that participants said fell apart over proposed wage concessions by the powerful United Auto Workers.

“We were three words away from a deal,” said Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican who proposed the alternative and led the talks.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, said the main issue of disagreement was the date to require the Detroit autoworkers’ pay parity with foreign auto manufacturers.

The union may have negotiated itself out of business along with the companies that employ its members.

The companies need someone who can produce cars Americans want to buy. They need to create a need for their product, and so far they have just done the same old things, like when every Chevy looked like a block of cheese back in the late eighties and early nineties.

Because the union is so strong in Detroit they have been able to drive a hard bargain by taking people from one company out on strike while the other companies work. After the negotiations with the targeted company were completed they used the agreement as a template for contracts with the other companies or they would strike those companies.

Along with the mismanagement of the companies the unions and the workers need to be agreeable to some cut backs. Lord knows I hate the idea, but I hate people losing their jobs even more.

Maybe now the companies will consider Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which means they get a second chance to come up with a business plan, renegotiate union contracts, and hold off their creditors until a plan approved by the bankruptcy court and trustee are formulated.

It needs to be iron-clad in order to make the plan viable, but to also protect the workers as much as possible.

Yes, it’s nice if you get laid off to be able to collect up to 80% of your wages for a few months at a time, but it’s money that is being used for unproductive purposes.

As in any other business the workers need to save to be prepared for lay-offs and for strikes.

The management teams need to be replaced with real business people with common sense and new ideas.

This will trickle down to other businesses until the trickle becomes a broken dam.

People say no one would buy from a bankrupt company because buyers would be afraid the company would go out of business and they couldn’t get their warranty work done.

If a car company files Chapter 11 bankruptcy and I were in the market for a new car I would seriously consider buying from them. They are just reorganizing and not going out of business.

May God help America during these times and always. May a reasonable solution to a huge problem be found. Strikes and office shut-downs are no fun. I’ve been through both. Closing the entire business is even worse.

The federal government needs to stop giving away our money to save these companies when the unions won’t cooperate and give a little to save their jobs. It’s easy for the union presidents and other officers who work full-time for the union to be confident because they get their pay even if the members are out on strike or lay-off.

Except for workplace harassment the unions have become too big for their own good and the good of the workers they are supposed to represent.

There is no painless solution I can foresee.

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I figure with all the money we have loaned out over the years without repayment my husband and I should start a bank so we can get some bailout money to help us out since all our retirement funds are in mutual funds. That should make us whole again and we’ll promise Congress we’ll be sure to give more money away to people who don’t need it.

Or we could start an auto manufacturing plant. We already have three vehicles off the assembly line and sitting in the driveway. We won’t give rebates or zero percent interest, but then again we won’t buy several corporate jets and we’ll tell Congress we have no plan. We’ll just beg for the money with our tin cups out and explain how all the people down the line from the cafe next door to the steel workers and rubber workers will all be out of jobs if we don’t get enough money to last another month. We’ll be back next month again with the same story.

We’ll be sure to let the unions strip us of all money we get and we won’t bother to try to design a vehicle the public would want to buy with the quality they want. All we need to do is scare everyone and they’ll give us the money.

Never mind that our government is having to borrow the money from China and other countries or just print money to pay for the bailouts of failed businesses. That’s their concern and right now they don’t seem too concerned. We’ll all start eating rice and drinking contaminated milk before this is over.

I was always taught not to borrow money to invest it. If you don’t have it you can’t invest. Now we live in an upside-down Alice in Wonderland world of economics. We borrow to lend and the people we lend to keep borrowing and not paying it back.

I’m not an economist and don’t pretend to be one, but I’m tired of all the panic I hear on the news. What did the people in Adam’s day do for money? They traded goods and services, right? I guess I could plant a garden and get a few goats and cows to trade for services if I had to. It might be nice to get back to a simple life.

All I know is Jesus said if God takes care of the birds in the air who do nothing for a living how much more will He take care of us. It’s in God’s hands in our household, even as we watch a couple of years of retirement money disappear in one month. Pretty soon we’ll have to pay the companies to hold their stock.

This is such a temporary situation when compared to eternity. This is a time to try men’s souls and faith. Ours is strong and we know God will provide for us. We will continue to tithe our money each month and if the money runs out and we have to go to livestock we’ll tithe that too by selling off the livestock.

The point is, quit worrying. It isn’t going to make anything better anyway. Thank God for your blessings. Count them up and you’ll be surprised. We have shelter, food, clothing, health, family, friends, a church we can count on for moral support and financial too, if need be. We are rich! Compare it to the people in third world countries or even in poorer parts of our own country.

Our God is sufficient for all our needs. That’s all that matters.

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As Detroit’s Big Three auto makers continue to clamor for more aid from Washington and Congressional leadership works to make it happen, the plan appears to be facing significant resistance.

The auto makers — General Motors (GM: 3.16, +0.24, +8.22%), Ford Motor (F: 1.90, +0.10, +5.55%) and Chrysler — have been meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, (D, Calif.) and others in Washington to ask for additional help on top of $25 billion in low-interest loans they’ve already received, including billions of dollars in loans already granted. They’ve also been speaking in dire terms about their ability to survive without additional help.

General Motors, in particular, seems to be in difficulty. The company is burning through cash so quickly that it might not be able to fund its operations past the end of the year. Ford is in trouble as well, though it said last week that it should be able to survive in the near term. Link

How many more of our dollars is Congress going to spend to bail out every industry that hasn’t kept up with the times? First the financial institutions and now the auto industry.

AIG is taking extravagant trips everywhere for their big shots and we are footing the bill.

Now Detroit wants us to pony up more money for an industry that can’t stay afloat on its own for more than a few weeks at best.

It’s time to lay the blame where it belongs. Detroit has not designed products that are desirable or even great quality. I haven’t bought an American car since I bought a 1974 Plymouth Scamp. We have bought Nissans and then switched to Toyota many years ago because we got more quality and a bigger bang for our buck.

The UAW has finally priced themselves out of a job and should join in with the managers of the auto companies in accepting the blame. Let them cut wages and benefits. Who gets laid off with almost full pay these days except this union that dominates the city of Detroit?

Congress calls for more environmentally safe cars and gives the auto industry $25 billion to re-tool, and yet they have the nerve to come back with their hand out and Pelosi and soon the Obama administration will give them what they want.

When my office closed no one offered a big package to save the company, which ultimately was bought by a French company.

We helped our landscaper start his business. If he went out of business he wouldn’t have the government bail him out from his foolish mistakes.

It’s time to put the brakes on these greedy companies and let congress stand up to their special interest unions. Make them renegotiate their contracts downward to save the company. It’s better to take a pay cut than to have no job.

And, yes, we are talking about a lot of jobs. My husband and I lost 2 1/2 years of income just in the month of October. This is the money we planned to live on for the rest of our lives. We retired thinking we had enough money to last us and leave something to our children and grandchildren.

We were responsible. We paid our bills on time, we didn’t go in over our heads, we paid off our house and now we have to sacrifice our future to bail out companies that didn’t act as responsibly as we and most people on a budget act.

We need to write to congress and make phone calls, send emails or whatever it takes to show we are no longer willing to mortgage our future with dollars that are worth less and less, all so the elite can keep up their lifestyle.

Hopefully, these high paid employees of the auto industry have saved money and will get good benefits and pay from their union to tide them over until they can be trained for a different job. It may not pay what they are used to, but that’s life anymore.

Maybe I’m too jaded, but I have no sympathy for any industry so stupid as to be behind the times for the past thirty or so years.

Watch the Obama administration and the democrat Congress give them your hard-earned dollars and raise your taxes. Otherwise, they would lose a big bloc of voters.

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It could also be Obama’s tax plan:

Clear now?

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Right now the vote in the House shows 399 ayes and 0 nays and 39 no votes. A couple of minutes still remain, but it has more than enough votes to pass.

Nancy Pelosi made a more reasonable speech, which may have given her heartburn, but it is a bipartisan bill.

It is expected the leaders of Congress will sign the parchment today and get the bill to the White House for the President’s signature.

The bill is not expected to make an impact for anywhere from two weeks to four weeks.

Right now the Dow doesn’t seem to be changing much.

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After trashing the President, the administration and the Republican party on the floor of the House yesterday, the Speaker is rethinking her position. She’s decided to play nice:

Dear Mr. President:

Yesterday’s defeat of the Economic Emergency Stabilization Act resulted in additional severe economic impacts both on Wall Street and on Main Street. The consequences of yesterday’s vote – an historic drop in the stock market and the loss of $1.2 trillion in savings, investments, and retirement funds – had a major impact on American families, small businesses, and others that demonstrated the imperative for Congressional action.

We have already made much progress in improving the plan originally sent to Congress. After many days of discussions, we reached bipartisan agreement on key additions, including strong measures to protect taxpayers from the costs of this program; to impose tough accountability on Wall Street through strong oversight and transparency; to limit excessive executive compensation and golden parachutes; to reduce home foreclosures to help families remain in their homes; and to sequence the funding of the program to ensure appropriate cost controls and independent reviews.

Read the rest. Maybe we can guess her next move before she makes it.

Sorry, I have no kind words for the Speaker of the House. She has proven herself arrogant and untrustworthy as the Karl Rove interview of yesterday aptly points out.

If the Democrats remain in control of the House following the November election they should consider a challenge and attempt to replace Ms. Pelosi. Not only Congress but the country would be better for it.

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Another school of thought (in plain English) on the current Wall Street issues:

Pouring 700 billion of our money into failing financial institutions seems akin to throwing spaghetti against the wall. Keep throwing until something sticks. They tell us that credit will dry up if we don’t inject cash. No credit would be disastrous for the economy, but they have not explained well enough why the banks have failed so suddenly and drastically that emergency room surgery is required. Knowing why would help us poor taxpayers feel better about how the problem should be solved. Ever wonder how many other bank failures are out there waiting behind the curtain to take their bows? Are we going to throw even more money at them too?

Should we consider a solution that requires no money, or at least a lot less? Here’s one. Have the SEC suspend the accounting rule called mark-to-market. By a relatively simple accounting adjustment, troubled banks’ assets and capital could be increased and credit kept available. Accounting purists, cover your ears. Eyes glaze and minds wander when I say balance sheet, so let’s use the acronym BS, a more appropriate description. BS’s have two sides: assets on the left, liabilities and capital on the right. Banks are required to maintain certain levels of capital (the difference between assets and liabilities) in order to make loans. When assets shrink, capital shrinks. When the ratio of capital to assets drops to a certain level, (think ten-to-one), banks are not allowed to make loans. And if it drops too low, they can be classified as insolvent. This can happen overnight, and it did.

[emphasis-mine]

Perhaps the highlighted section is one of the major problems Americans have with this entire concept.

Check out the rest of the article at American Thinker.

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To see a complete list go here.

By the way, the sun is still rising in my neighborhood today.

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I’ve got to hand it to those Democrats and Speaker Pelosi. They sure knew how to game this whole issue on the Wall Street bailout.

First, they come out smiling and announcing how they have reached a deal:

House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., center, and
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., left, Secretary of the Treasury
Henry Paulson, second right, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-
Nev., right, announce a tentative deal. (AP)
HT: For the photo above toGateway Pundit

Then, after 40% of their own members do not vote in favor of the legislation, they blame everyone but themselves:

So now Barney Frank answers for the Speaker of the House? His tone and demeanor towards his fellow House members will certainly make it easier for dialogue to begin again..sure it will.

The Speaker used a tone and showed a disdain for both the President and the opposing party today in her remarks prior to the vote (not at other times on the House floor) which I do not believe I ever remember seeing in all my years of observing Congress.

Why would she want to sabotage this legislation? In my opinion, the answer is simple. The longer this remains an issue in front of the public and the press is hammering away at it, the more she believes it helps Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress running for re-election.

Frankly, I am reaching the point where I just don’t care anymore. Will it really make any difference who is elected to any of these offices come November?

Obviously, all the decency and honesty is evaporating faster than a bowl of jello set over an open flame.

I concede, Obama good, McCain, bad..Democrats, perfect..Republicans..unpatriotic, crybabies.

Think I’ll just go off and have a good cry now and maybe take down my American Flag. After all, wouldn’t want anyone to think I really jumped ship.

What shameful behavior on the part of our elected officials (and The Speaker in particular),when they hold the future of so many Americans in their hands.

Update: An Absolute Must Hear!! HT:Johnny Dollars Place

The best explanation on this vote I have heard yet! Listen to Karl Rove explain how the legislation was killed on the floor of the House.

Welcome, Anchoress readers.

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After calling House Republicans unpatriotic for not attending a meeting they never knew about and then getting on the floor today to make a partisan speech, it seems the “unpatriotic” Republicans joined quite a few of the “unpatriotic” Democrats in opposing the bailout bill. Final vote total: 205-228. Seems the extra dozen votes she could have received if she hadn’t been so partisan would have passed it for her.

Opponents said part of the reason for the opposition from Republicans was what they termed a partisan speech by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said one GOP source. House Minority Whip Roy Blunt said he thinks Republicans could have provided a dozen more votes had Pelosi not given her speech. [Emphasis mine.]

Pelosi had said that Congress needed to pass the bill, even though it was an outgrowth of the “failed economic policies” of the last eight years.

“When was the last time someone asked you for $700 billion?” she asked. “It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush administration’s failed economic policies — policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system.”

House Republican Conference Chairman, Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., said “he was disappointed that the process that yielded a bipartisan approach took a very marked, partisan tone at the end of the debate.”

This is not a partisan crisis, this is an economic crisis,” said Deputy Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor, who said that 94 Democrats also refused to go along with the bill. He described the vote as the result of “Speaker Pelosi’s failure to listen and failure to lead.”

Pelosi said that Republicans have not received the message from the White House that bipartisanship was needed.

“We delivered on our side of the bargain,” Pelosi said, congratulating Democratic leaders for getting 60 percent of the caucus to support the White House bill. “We extend a hand of cooperation to the White House, to the Republicans so we can get this issue resolved”

95 of her Democrats voted against the bill, along with 66 Republicans.

With all the documentation we have given you over the past couple of days as to how this mess began in the first place, it seems we don’t want the same people who got us here to try to get us out.

Pelosi made a mistake of gigantic proportions if she wanted this bill to pass. She should have stayed in her office and not said a thing and could have picked up enough votes to pass the legislation.

Her whip should have counted noses. She has enough Democrats in the House to pass anything she wishes to get passed, but even her own party went against her. Maybe they don’t trust Barney Frank to do the negotiations now either.

It is ludicrous to try to blame the president for the financial mess this country is in as far as this crisis goes since the record clearly shows it was Democratic House members who put in the faulty rules and refused to regulate Freddie and Fannie as long as seven years ago.

I think her days as Speaker are numbered, whoever is in charge of the next House.

I get no satisfaction from this outcome, except I hope the next bill will be negotiated by different people and be a truly bi-partisan bill from beginning to speeches in the debate.

Let’s see how they spin this now. I started to watch when she was speaking and got so disgusted I just turned it off and walked away.

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This is scary. My husband has a degree in accounting and could never explain so I could understand why the market crashed in 1929.

After the last couple of weeks I’m learning more about economics than I care to know.

The AP notes the President spoke to the nation today and Senators Dodd and Gregg appeared on some morning shows to explain the package as written.

By the way, if you want to read all 106 pages of the bill in PDF format you can get it here. I’m going to try to save it to my desktop so I can absorb it as I go along. Here’s hoping nothing else gets thrown in during conference.

Bush argued that jittery U.S. taxpayers will benefit from a number of safeguards that lawmakers wrote into the pending legislation during weekend negotiations on Capitol Hill, including checks and balances on the operation of the program.

The president spoke shortly after two leading players in the Hill bargaining went on television news shows to urge passage, even as both acknowledged the necessity of this action represents a sad day for the nation.

Asked if the compromise bill indeed will go through Congress, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., replied: “We hope so.”

But the Connecticut senator, chairman of the Banking Committee, also said the bill is not a panacea for all the problems that have bedeviled the U.S. financial markets. He also said, though, that failure to act would spread the contagion of frozen credit markets even further. “This is not just about Wall Street,” Dodd said. He said that it’s “potentially going to hurt other people across the country.”

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who represented fellow Republicans in the weekend talks, called it a “tourniquet” for the ailing financial industry and slow-moving economy.

The latest assessments of prospects for passage came as investors worldwide and in early trading in the United States continued to show doubt about whether the bill would go through, much less go a long way toward curing the systemic problems that have unnerved financial markets across the globe for weeks.

The House was slated to vote later Monday on the deeply unpopular rescue package for the stressed financial industry. Bush on Sunday conceded this was a difficult vote in an election year – and repeated that sentiment in his statement Monday morning.

But he called a vote for the bill “a vote to prevent economic damage” to communities across the country.

He also said the legislation addresses the root cause of the problem – “assets related to home mortgages that have lost value during the housing decline.”

And the president noted that under provisions of the pending bill, “the federal government will be authorized to purchase these assets” and said that will help financial institutions to resume lending to individuals and businesses.

“I know many Americans are worried about the cost of the bill,” Bush said. But he also said the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the federal Office of Management and Budget expect that the “ultimate cost to the taxpayer” will be much less.

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