Remember the Patriot Act….?
Sharon September 22nd, 2008
Ok, anyone remember the Patriot Act, you know that thing that Congress signed because we’d just had a great big disaster and everyone was scared and accomodating because they didn’t know what else to do? Remember how nobody really even read it, and it didn’t do jackshit to reduce the problem of terrorism, but it did do a whole lot to reduce democracy in the US? That is, it worked out to ensure that we and our grandchildren will be suffering from the undermining of every principle we valued, but did nothing useful. Sound vaguely familiar? Guess what - we’ve got a new Patriot Act.
It is called the Federal Bail Out. And guess what - it hands to Hank Paulson and a few other unelected people huge powers, destructive powers, that, of course, we know that they will use for good. Now where does it get those powers? Through the abrogation of the constitution and the ripping them out of your hands.
And we’re getting the same message that went with the patriot act - pass it now, or disaster will befall us, we’re all doomed if we actually read it, and don’t just sign it into law. It comes with an appropriate “scaring the shit out of fairly dumb political figures” bit (remember Hillary saying that if we knew what she knew about WMDs, we’d be for the war too?) Christopher Dodd and my own Senator Schumer were practically drooling with fear after their private viewing of the Wall Street situation. They won’t, of course, tell us what they were told, but it was so horrible that we should definitely allocate untold billions more to bailing out the rich.
Now here’s the thing - bailing them out won’t fix the problem. The markets lost 3 trillion + last week - 700 billion isn’t going to fix the problem. Neither is the next 700 billion. It won’t cover the losses in the housing market that is still declining, it won’t make your house worth what it was, it won’t do much except send foreign investors running for the exits. In short, it won’t save us from a Great Depression. Whatever Chuck Schumer is waking up in a cold sweat about, it is too late to avoid it becoming reality.
But what we’ve got here is more Shock Doctrine economics, more destruction, more rapine stealing of democracy at the moment that things are falling apart. And we can go into this crisis in one of two ways - either with all the power that we can hold in our hands, the memory of what is good about America, and a vision to put those pieces back together and with what remains of our country’s assets used to build something new, something that could potentially last us for generations. Or we can go in to our homemade disaster with less power, fewer resources, more thrown down the drain, less of America left. Our choice. Actually, odds are there is no choice - this will pass, and it will be too late, and besides making do with what we’ve got less in a massive Depression, in an energy poor society, we’ll also have to try to reclaim what we’ve got. But the thing is, it isn’t passed yet, and we honestly have no choice about trying to resist - because it will only be worse later.
Read about it now here (please read the posts for the last 3 days) www.theautomaticearth.blogspot.com, and here: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/20/153952/268/395/603713 and this http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/587-The-Mother-Of-All-Frauds.html and do what you can to stop it. You know who to yell at.
And since it does look like the damned thing will probably pass, you could also get in on Verde’s 21 day preparation challenge - http://www.justicedesserts.blogspot.com/. It might not be such a bad idea to imagine that your world will change dramatically in a very short time - after all, it already has.
Sharon