Economy

The American people will get President George Bush’s unpopular $700 billion bailout bill shoved down their throats today primarily because of the nation's major television stations and newspapers, which serve as the current propaganda ministry for dead right-wing ideology.

Corporate media businesses, not surprisingly, are almost uniformly in favor of the bailout package, which will pay Wall Street bankers for their self-serving mistakes about the housing bubble. Still, it is frightening to witness how robotic, how goosestepish, the media businesses have been about the issue. Unfortunately, the lies and omissions of the mainstream press still have the ability to shape public opinion.

Let us be clear that reporters, editors and columnists are giving cover to those corrupt men and women who have been wrong about every domestic and foreign policy decision made on the national level in the last eight years. These journalists do so because they are paid—some quite lavishly--by corporations, which support the right-wing modus operandi of shifting wealth to a relatively small group of rich people. Everything they write and say is framed within this right-wing corporate rubric, within the confines of their paycheck. Their faux, tepid criticisms of the Bush’s bill are only a part of the frame. They exist, they “are,” because of corporations. It has always been that way, and it will be that way for the foreseeable future.

Let me state it once again: The Republican mythology that the corporate media is liberal is our era’s Big Lie. It is demonstrably false. It is not based on evidence or logical reasoning. Corporations exist to make profits for a small group of rich and powerful people, who then use their money to influence the political system.

So now that taxpayers have been saddled with a $700 billion debt to pay Wall Street corporations, which essentially employ most of our country’s paid journalists, watch the major media outlets attempt to get John McCain elected president.

Look, for example, at the prevailing media narrative about last night’s debate between vice presidential candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. It was obvious that Biden won the debate overwhelmingly, and a CNN poll even reflected that people thought so. But the media spin is not that Biden trounced Palin, which he did. The spin is that Palin “delivers” and “outdoes herself.” These are lies. She is incredibly unprepared to become vice president or president. She proved that virtually every time she spoke last night. Most of the time, she did not even answer the debate questions. Again, look at the ridiculous, absurd Biden/Palin debate coverage. There is no rationality, no discernable center or substance to it. It is a fiction, a calculated lie designed to get McCain elected president.

So I ask you to take a moment to imagine a world in which John McCain is president and Democrats do not have enough veto votes in the Senate to counter his agenda. The economy collapses even further. You lose your health insurance. You lose your retirement. Your children and grandchildren cannot afford college or cannot get a job. The Iraq occupation continues. Meanwhile, rejecting diplomacy, McCain opens a new war against Iran. Oh, yeah, taxpayers remain saddled with a new $700 billion debt to ensure investment bankers keep their extravagant salaries.

Perhaps those Democrats who voted in favor of the bailout bill, and this includes presidential contender Barack Obama, believe November will give them a sweeping mandate to change things in Washington and thus a new economic plan that helps middle class people can finally win approval. This would mitigate the effects of the bailout bill. I hope this happens. I want Obama to win in a landslide. Obama is absolutely the best presidential candidate the Democrats or any political party have offered in decades. His presidency would be groundbreaking and signal to the world that the United States has come back from the brink of utter disaster.

Yet one cannot help but wonder if it will take a complete financial collapse, one that brings with it soup lines and massive poverty before people wake up and the fiction writers in the mainstream media can be supplanted as the arbitrators of our national reality.

This much is for sure: No matter what the election results in November, progressives need to continue to move away from the mainstream media and develop new ways to distribute information directly to the people.

(Protect your retirement, income and an opportunity to buy a home at a fair and real market price. Sign U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders' petition against the Bush bailout of Wall Street. Also, listen to Glenn Greenwald's interview of Pulitzer-prize winning reporter David Cay Johnston on how the corporate media has once again failed the American people.)

A House Democrat has presented a pragmatic plan—the No Bailouts Act—to help solve the country’s current investment banking and financial crisis.

The Democratic leadership, including presidential contender Barack Obama, should get behind this plan, help to improve it and then work to pass it. Essentially, the plan shifts the burden and risk of saving Wall Street to those people who made the bad decisions that led their companies into insolvency.

There is some government help and guarantees, but nothing along the lines of the $700 billion plan pushed by President George Bush and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to further enrich the GOP political base on Wall Street.

Here is what the corporate media is not reporting: There are many established economists who believe the Bush/Paulson bailout plan will not even work. Can you imagine giving a $700 billion gift to Wall Street bankers without any real sense or guarantee the money would settle the market and help regular people with credit, retirement and mortgages? But that is exactly the real risk of the Bush/Paulson plan. The corporate media coverage of the Bush bailout is similar to its coverage of the run-up to the Iraq occupation. It takes every utterance of the Bush administration as the truth, fails to fact check hysterical and outrageous claims and mocks and dismisses anyone who has a different opinion.

The No Bailouts Act ((Bringing Accountability, Increased Liquidity, Oversight, and Upholding Taxpayer Security) is sponsored by Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio, a Democrat. According to media reports, the plan is based on ideas presented by former FDIC Chair William Isaac, who wants to help banks get enough capital to weather the current financial crisis. A similar program during the 1980s banking crisis only cost the federal government $2 billion.

The idea is to lend help to the short-term banking crisis while allowing political leaders time to develop a more comprehensive economic plan that helps all Americans. This plan will probably have to be implemented after the November elections because of the possible political fallout.

Media pundits from all sides of the political spectrum, including Paul Krugman and George Will ("Congress should disconnect from a public" that cannot comprehend the nuances and complications of high finance), have now arrogantly mocked anyone who wants to respond to the so-called financial crisis outside of the Bush/Paulson rubric. The prevailing hysterical mantra in the corporate media is “we have to do something right away,” and if you do not favor the Bush/Paulson plan then “you do not get it.” But no one has offered a shred of compelling evidence that Bush is somehow right on this issue given his administration’s past failures.

As I have said in earlier posts, this is a carpe diem moment for Democrats. Now is the time, as the country focuses on the abject failure of right-wing ideology, to reclaim our economic system for regular people after eight gruesome years of the Bush program, which has rewarded the rich at the expense of the middle class. The bottom line is the Wall Street crooks will squander your income and retirement money as their media lapdogs, some of whom disguised themselves as liberals, openly laugh in your face. What else is new, right?

House Democrats should unite and defeat the massive $700 billion financial bailout of Wall Street.

Not only does it make sense to refocus the bailout on middle-class taxpayers it would also ensure sweeping Democratic wins in the November elections.

President George Bush and the members of his ruling junta, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, are proposing taxpayers put their money on the line for Wall Street investment firms and banks. This committed money will mean fewer programs for the middle-class in the future. It will almost certainly jeopardize the government programs Social Security and Medicare.

It will also affect state government budgets, as well, because the federal government will have to slash funding to state programs that help the vast majority of Americans.

Those who support the measure, and this includes many leading Democrats, say the measure has safeguards, that Americans are actually buying a stake of these financially insolvent companies. If the companies rebound, then taxpayers could benefit, they argue. Do you actually believe this?

But the bottom line is the people who were wrong about the subprime mortgage crisis and housing bubble are the ones now pushing this radical solution. Why do it so quickly? What are the political bigwigs and investment bankers trying to hide from the public? How will this bailout affect you in years to come? No one can answer that.

Here are some issues and questions raised by Ohio's U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich about the bailout:

The $700 billion bailout for Wall Street, is driven by fear not fact. This is too much money in too a short a time going to too few people while too many questions remain unanswered. Why aren't we having hearings on the plan we have just received? Why aren't we questioning the underlying premise of the need for a bailout with taxpayers' money? Why have we not considered any alternatives other than to give $700 billion to Wall Street? Why aren't we asking Wall Street to clean up its own mess? Why aren't we passing new laws to stop the speculation, which triggered this? Why aren't we putting up new regulatory structures to protect investors? How do we even value the $700 billion in toxic assets?

Why aren't we helping homeowners directly with their debt burden? Why aren't we helping American families faced with bankruptcy. Why aren't we reducing debt for Main Street instead of Wall Street? Isn't it time for fundamental change in our debt based monetary system, so we can free ourselves from the manipulation of the Federal Reserve and the banks? Is this the United States Congress or the board of directors of Goldman Sachs? Wall Street is a place of bears and bulls. It is not smart to force taxpayers to dance with bears or to follow closely behind the bulls.

In a press release today, state Sen. Andrew Rice, a Democrat running against U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe in Oklahoma this year, said, "This bill gives too much away to the people who created these problems without guaranteeing that it won't happen again. Any bill would need to require much tougher consequences for Wall Street in order to earn my support."

That is a good stance for Democrats, though I would go further and suggest party leaders completely shred the Bush plan and start over. First, we should implement a bailout for the middle class, then we can worry about Wall Street. We should work from the bottom up, not the top down.

The House is supposed to vote on the measure today. Watch as leading national Democrats capitulate one-by-one to Bush’s last bit of thievery and then actually try to take credit for it.

Public opinion is against the bailout. Democrats should seize the day and create a bailout plan that forces many Wall Street investment firms to face the consequences of their own reckless decisions and greed as it helps ordinary Americans keep their homes. Democrats are risking the viability of their party if they go along with the Bush plan.