Addressing the US bailout plan, Arianna Huffington calls it "economic shock and awe" ... and asks:
Now the same folks who brought us those no-bid, profit-guaranteed, crony-friendly, war-and-disaster-profiteering boondoggles want us to hand them control of a $700 billion Wall Street slush fund -- with no strings attached. How dumb -- or frightened -- do they think we are?
Paulson and his Republican crew want to reward the bad actors out of the pockets of the American taxpayer. Warren Buffet got it right when he described Wall Street as home to "madmen" who were planting "financial weapons of mass destruction" - and now Americans are supposed to pay for the madness.
When are Americans going to say enough of these crooks and liars with their hyped-up free market gospel that has been an object of worship over the past three decades?
When are Americans going to say enough of these crooks and liars with their hyped-up free market gospel that has been an object of worship over the past three decades?
This juiced-up market system serves the interests of a small minority who have been reaping huge rewards. Meanwhile free market evangelists have been selling Americans a bill-of-goods, convincing them that free market voodoo holds the secret to prosperity and greatness - even as the US staggers under a mountain of debt, and the middle class loses ground.
Arianna Huffington tells it like it is, and it needs repeating:
Over the past 30 years, Americans have been bombarded with sermons evangelizing for the free market religion of the Right, and the supposed correlation between unregulated markets and progress. In the process, the American people have been demoted from citizens to consumers, and sold a bill of goods (rather than a Bill of Rights) about how the almighty market was the essential foundation of democracy.
In the course of selling us on buying, the market-worshippers shredded the modern social contract, the hard-fought consensus that had emerged since the New Deal, which ordered our political priorities, and expressed both our communal concern for the most vulnerable members of society and our disapproval of huge inequalities. We were now supposed to believe that all could be left up to the soulless, self-correcting calculus of supply and demand. Government involvement was an anachronism, regulatory oversight an impediment.
The last few weeks have demolished that notion. In the battle over the proper role of government, the forces of the Right, the high priests of the church of the Free Market -- including Bush, Paulson, and the Masters of Wall Street -- have suffered a monumental defeat. So why are we allowing them to dictate the terms of their surrender?
Frankly with everything that is known about McCain's history of collusion with bad actors it is insane that his campaign is pulling in the numbers it is. McCain is part of the problem, not part of the solution. If America buys his "reformer" act, get ready for more of the same once the dust has settled.
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