http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/02/bailout.pork/index.html "The Senate's financial rescue plan may have a better chance of passage because it's padded with pork that may be tasty enough to get reluctant House members to bite. Most of the $110 billion in additions..." What's an extra $110 billion between friends? Some highlights from the article... "an excise tax exemption for a very specific type of arrow used by child archers." Are you serious? "Creation of a seven-year cost recovery period for construction of a motorsports racetrack" Wonderful. "Provisions related to film and television productions" Woo hoo. Maybe we can keep the new Knight Rider on tv. "Transportation fringe benefit to bicycle commuters" I am a bicycle commuter and I think this is BS. The benefit already is you don't use gas and you get healthier. "A refund of excise taxes to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands for rum" While we are gong to need a stiff drink to go along with it, the only thing I didn't see in this bill is the one thing that really should be...a coupon for every American for 1 free tube of KY Jelly.
not to mention the brilliant idea of spending 700 billion we dont have, NOT cutting elsewhere to balance the spending but giving out tax cuts...makes sense....its not like any of that 700 billion is my tax money, it will be my great grand childs or HER great grandchilds.
I am totally disgusted with the whole thing. Everyone I know is totally disgusted(limted to spanish, white and christian middle eastern working class to upper middle class) Yet the media is still doing its proganda that it has to be done and done right away, why teach journalism in schools anymore, and our elected leaders are ignoring the people of this nation for lets face the majority of them do not represent us. I think we are seeing the final thongs of the death of democracy in our nation. Perhaps that is part of the new world order.
purhaps a very large protest as several locations is needed. kinda reminded me of the french revolution a bit lol. the high n mighty not paying attention to the needs of the less fortunate only to realize to late the mob is a lot bigger then they thought it was n their coming for a visit n isn't interested in tea and small talk
The scariest thing is...this is probably not going to work. We are going to put this 700 billion or more out there and it is not going to work. I read that Warren Buffet said this may not 'be enough'. I don't think we can buy our way out of this. There may be certain things we have to do as far as intervention but not with a blank check of this magnitude. We have already seen that the market will often take care of its own. There are financial and banking companies that are doing ok and will eat up some of the ones who made stupid decisions.
An odd perspective I just got to thinking about this a bit more and decided to compare it to where I work. Most of my time is spent at the coin shop as many know. The store is an old bank. We do business on the first floor that includes a vault. Since I've been there the second floor has always had a leaky roof. Nothing of value up there but it leaked badly. Now eventually this would work it's way down of course. To the point where it might affect his real livelyhood. I like the boss. He gave me work when I needed it, treats me well but is CHEAP. It's a flat roof and been "band-aided" too many times. Now you have to realize this guy is probably worth a few million, getting up in his years but does NOT want to spend money on stuff like this. We had 12 inches of rain a few weeks ago. Unheard of here. It was basically raining on the second floor. After 5 months of working for him I finally (with the help of a few friends) convinced him he had to pry open his wallet and fix it PROPERLY. He did. The roof no longer leaks. I'm still working on another roof area and getting it under control. I also told him it was a band aid that should last till next summer. Then I'll go through this again. Hey, I get paid so I do it. Sell coins, fix roofs whatever. MY REAL POINT HERE is it took me a while but I convinced him to repair his own building correctly. Think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had NO clue they were in serious trouble? Of course they did. They just ignored it and now we bail them out with amenities. Like they didn't realise there was a problem? Think it was ever pointed out? Hell, yes they knew it was and this ain't politics here. It's a matter of poorly run businesses and it's up to us to bail them out. I'm not on their payroll. Are you? If I bail them out like millions of others do they now work for us? Perhaps we should get dividends. Not from the government but from the companies we help bail out. Now THAT'S some Pork I could live with. Make them pay back everyone with interest. How cool would that be?
People within the morgage industry have known for a number of years that this was going to happen (repos have been steadaly going up over the past 3 years) and those in charge have done nothing at all about it, over here we knew early last year that Lehmans was in trouble so if people like me (and I am not a big banker or anything like that) knew there was trouble on the horizon then how come no one interviend to head it off. Well the big companies coudnt admit there mistakes as it would affect the profit sheet so a number of them tried to hide it and failed. Goverments could and should have introduced legislation to curb the giving of morgages that were many times over a persons salery leval but did not after all they say let the market decide LOL Forget blaming Obama & McCain they are not big players in this and never have been the big players were and are the Ceo's of the banks and morgage companies and those that run the finacial institutions including the Fed & Bank of England as well as other central banks. Companies over here bought and sold your sub prime morgages in the same way your lot bought and sold ours, they were traded across the globe and big bucks were made, then the bubble burst and those who thought they could make a fortune were caught out. Most of these transactions were insured by AIG now they found that they coudnt meet the demand for losses incured by this collapse and so it goes on. If the goverment buy's up these toxic morgages then they are going to be sitting on a rather large chunk of real estate with the expectation of selling the morgages or property on when and if the financial situation improves, so theoreticaly they might well make money on this deal, but the situation has to improve first LOL Also I doubt if they will remember whose money they used in the 1st place so dont expect a dividen from the goverment over this affair LOL
When I saw the part about about the children's wooden arrows, I was floored. The house is on fire and we are concerned about wooden arrows. No wonder we are in such a mess. There is a solution to the Congress mess though. On November 4th, when you enter the voting booth, automatically vote for the challenger and not the incumbent. If only one fourth of the bums were thrown out, things would change. Can you imagine the panic in Congress if all 33 Senators up for re-election were defeated?
Wooden arrows? Film makers? What happened to McCain's promise to name names? At a time like this, anyone who would even suggest additional $$ in the bail out proposal should be exposed & be forced to explain their reasoning!!
Now is a great time for the media to start asking this question: http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/04/news/economy/will_it_work/index.htm?postversion=2008100408
All I want, is a MILLION. Just kindly slip that into the legislation for the next pork barrel project. Actually just credit my account at Stacks, since if I had a million to blow that is where it would go.
