DebateGate

This was sent to me, and I think it is a wonderful idea!.  Think what you could do with that money. Whether you spent it or saved it, it would help the economy.  You wouldn't have to play the Lotto anymore...  Elizabeth
 

 

Hi Y'all,
 
I'm against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.  I'm also against the $700,000,000,000++ bailout being proposed in Congress right now!
 
Instead, I'm in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a We Deserve It Dividend.
 
To make the math simple, let's assume there are 200,000,000 bonafide U.S. Citizens 18+.
 
Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up..
 
So divide 200 million adults 18+  into $85 billon -- that equals $425,000.00.
 
My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a We Deserve It Dividend.
 
Of course, it would NOT be tax free.  So let's assume a tax rate of 30%.  Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes.  That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam.
 
But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket.  A husband and wife has $595,000.00.
 
What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family?
   Pay off your mortgage – housing crisis solved..
   Pay off credit card debt.

   Repay college loans – what a great boost to new grads
   Put away money for college – It'll be there for Junior.
   Save in a bank – create money to loan to entrepreneurs.
   Buy a new car – create jobs
   Invest in the market – capital drives growth
   Pay for your parent's medical insurance – health care improves
   Enable Deadbeat Dads to come clean – or else
 
Rememb ER this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+  including the folks who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company that is cutting back. And of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces.
 
If we're going to re-distribute wealth let's really do it...instead of trickling out a puny $1000.00 ( "vote buy" ) economic incentive that is being proposed by one of our candidates for President.

For those retiring this year, the one good thing is that Juniorbush did not manage to get people's Social Security money invested in the stock market.

Because of his and the GOP's towering ineptitude at mismanaging the economy, I doubt we'll be hearing any more about that clever plan for several decades.

Cal Thomas: Jeb Bush's Rx for Republican revitalization
Article Launched: 09/13/2008 05:41:03 PM PDT

Cal Thomas suggests that what we REALLY need is a new Bush.  By the way, Jebbie cut revenues back so much that the schools cannot pay contracted raises to teachers and they are proposing to sell the Alligator Alley Toll Road to private clowns.

We need Jeb Bush like a spelling bee needs a hang glider.


SOME political pundits have said that if it were not for his last name, he might have been the Republican nominee for president this year. But former Florida Governor Jeb Bush tells me he is happy to support the McCain-Palin ticket, which he predicts, perhaps predictably, will win. Of Gov. Sarah Palin, he says, "She has generated so much enthusiasm, which was the one element of the campaign that was completely missing."

I ask him what he thinks Republicans must do - regardless of the election outcome - to win back a congressional majority and the trust of the public. Noting that House Minority Leader John Boehner has confessed to "mistakes" by Republicans when they held the majority, Bush says, "I guess admitting you're a sinner is the first step on the road to redemption." He still believes too many of the party leaders are "in denial" about why they lost their majority. So what must the Republican Party do now?

"I think the Republican Party needs to stand for reform," he says, "within the context of our ideology, which is limited government." Bush thinks too many institutions are stuck in "the 1950s, 1960s, or maybe 1970s. They're not relevant in 2008." He mentions job training. "We have billions of dollars of job training programs, but world and corporate structures have been radically altered. ... If you walked into a job training center now, it may not have Formica, or a 1970s look, but it would have a 1970s feel in terms of the services being provided
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... same thing with education and health care, entitlement programs, common sense environmental policy. There should be a zeal for reform. And I'd look outside Washington for those models, typically led by governors."

Bush wants to revive the model of the Grace Commission used by Ronald Reagan to eliminate wasteful and unnecessary government programs. "Some states - and Florida is one of them - have sunset reviews. Why can't every (federal) government agency be sun-setted?" This, he says, would allow people to ask if the program or agency is necessary and "I think it would generate enormous enthusiasm outside of Washington."

One issue on which Jeb Bush believes Republicans dropped the ball was Social Security and Medicare reform. "I was disappointed that the Republicans didn't rally around (the president)," he says. It wasn't just Democrats being opposed to it. I think it was the gutless nature of a lot of Republicans in Congress. This was the beginning of what I saw as the demise. When they had a chance to unite behind the president to advance a solution to this ticking time bomb, some did, but many blinked." Still, he thinks that because his brother touched the notorious third rail and didn't blink, it will be easier for a new president to enact meaningful and necessary reform of Social Security and Medicare.

Bush thinks whoever wins the presidential election will have an opportunity to institute reforms, though he says McCain would be the better reformer. "Senator Obama hasn't proved himself capable yet to take on one of his core constituencies. His is an orthodox candidacy wrapped in an unorthodox campaign. The veneer is amazingly new and eloquent, but he won't upset one of his core constituencies of the Democratic Party and people are becoming aware of it."

Jeb Bush, the brother of one president and the son of another, is proud of both men. And he thinks history will treat Bush 43 far better than opinion polls do now: "I think when people look back on this period they are going to admire his resolve and they're going to say he was right. They'll also say that after Sept. 11, 2001, there was the feeling that it was the first of a series of attacks on our country and it didn't happen. That is a heck of an accomplishment (and while) no credit will be given now, in the long run he will get credit for it."

Jeb Bush says he has no "burning desire" to be president and didn't "before, during" and now after being governor. History, however, has a way of igniting such desire and his day may yet come. He could very well be the next member of the "Bush dynasty" to become president.

tmseditors@tribune.com

Cal Thomas is a syndicated columnist with Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, N.Y. 14207.

A Nation of Village Idiots

Don't let them tell you this economic meltdown is a complicated mess. It's not. Our national financial crisis is readily understood by anyone who has seen greed and hypocrisy. But we are now witnessing them on a profound, monumental scale.

Conservative Republicans always want the government to stay out of business and avoid regulation as long as they are making lots of money. When their greed, however, gets them into a fix, they are the first to cry out for rules and laws and taxpayer money to bail out their businesses. Obviously, Republicans are socialists. The Bush administration has decided to socialize the debt of the big Wall Street Firms. Taxpayers didn't get to enjoy any of the big money profits on the phony financial instruments like derivatives or bundled sub-prime paper, but we get the privilege of paying for their debt and failures.

Let's just consider the money. The public bailout of insurance giant (becoming a dwarf) AIG is estimated at $85 billion. According to one report, that's more than the Bush administration spent on Aid to Families with Dependent Children during his entire time in office. That amount of money would also pay for health care for every man, woman, and child in America for at least six months.

How did we get here?

That's pretty easy to answer, too. His name is Phil Gramm. A few days after the Supreme Court made George W. Bush president in 2000, Gramm stuck something called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act into the budget bill. Nobody knew that the Texas senator was slipping America a 262 page poison pill. The Gramm Guts America Act was designed to keep regulators from controlling new financial tools described as credit "swaps." These are instruments like sub-prime mortgages bundled up and sold as securities. Under the Gramm law, neither the SEC nor the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) were able to examine financial institutions like hedge funds or investment banks to guarantee they had the assets necessary to cover losses they were guaranteeing.

This isn't small beer we are talking about here. The market for these fancy financial instruments they don't expect us little people to understand is estimated at $60 trillion annually, which amounts to almost four times the entire US stock market.

And Senator Phil Gramm wanted it completely unregulated. So did Alan Greenspan, who supported the legislation and is now running around to the talk shows jabbering about the horror of it all. Before the highly paid lobbyists were done slinging their gold card guts about the halls of congress, every one from hedge funds to banks were playing with fire for fun and profit.

Gramm didn't just make a fairy tale world for Wall Street, though. He included in his bill a provision that prevented the regulation of energy trading markets, which led us to the Enron collapse. There was no collapse of the house of Gramm, however, because his wife Wendy, who once headed up the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, took a job on the Enron board that provided almost $2 million to their household kitty. And why not? Wendy got a CFTC rule passed that kept the federal government from regulating energy futures contracts at Enron.

If John McCain gets elected and chooses Phil Gramm as his Treasury Secretary, which many politico types see as likely, they will be able to talk about the good old days when Gramm was in congress and McCain was in the senate and they were in the midst of the Savings and Loan crisis.

The S and L scandal, which may look precious when compared to our present cascade of problems, isn't hard to understand, either. But it is impossible to take John McCain seriously on our current financial Armageddon since he was dabbling in the historic collapse of 747 S&Ls that occurred during Ronald Reagan's era. In the early 80s under the Republican president, congress deregulated the savings and loan industry in much the same way that Gramm made sure there were no laws hindering our current financial malefactors on Wall Street. S&Ls simply lobbied until they had less regulation and then began making rampant, unsound investments.

The guy who was going the wildest with financial freedom was Charles Keating, who headed up Lincoln Savings and Loan of California. Because the S&L industry had managed to get congress to increase FDIC insurance from $40,000 to $100,000 on deposits, the irresponsible investing of people like Being began to put taxpayer insurance funds at great risk of loss. Keating placed money in junk bonds and questionable real estate projects and because so many other S&Ls started acting the same way the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) began to push for a regulation that limited these dangerous speculative "direct" investments to 10% of an S&L's assets.

And Keating didn't like it; he called on a private economist named Alan Greenspan, who promptly produced a study saying that there was no danger in "direct" investments.
But that didn't convince the FHLBB and as further scrutiny showed Lincoln Savings and Loan was making even more historically bad investment decisions, a federal investigation was launched.

So Keating called his home state senator John McCain.

McCain and four other US senators (known to history as the Keating Five) met with Edwin Gray, then chairman of the FHLBB. McCain had been hesitant to attend but had reportedly been called a "wimp" behind his back by Keating. The message to the FHLBB and Gray from the Keating Five was to lay off Lincoln and cool the investigation. Gray and the FHLBB did not relent but Lincoln stayed in business until 1989 when it collapsed with the rest of the S&L industry. The life savings of more than 20,000 elderly investors disappeared with the failure of Lincoln. Keating went to prison for five years.

Charles Keating was John McCain's pal. They met in 1981 and Keating dumped $112,000 in the McCain campaign bank accounts between '82 and '87. A year before McCain met with the FHLBB regulators, his wife Cindy and her father, according to newspaper reports at the time, invested about $360,000 in one of Keating's shopping centers. The Arizona Republic reported McCain and his wife and their babysitter took nine trips on Keating's private jet to the Bahamas to stay at the S&L liar's decadent Cat Cay resort. The senator didn't pay Keating back for the plane rides until years later when he was under investigation.

McCain wasn't found guilty of anything but bad judgment, which is an historic understatement. Republicans, who led deregulation of the S&L industry, delayed the bailout until after the 1988 election to make sure George H. W. won the White House. The cost to taxpayers for helping these 747 bad actors in the S&L industry was finally estimated at $1.4 trillion. If the bailout had begun in 1986 instead of after the presidential election, the cost would have been contained at $20 billion.

And now the Republicans who engineered our present crisis and got us into the S&L debacle of the 80s are before us saying the markets need regulation. No, actually, they don't need regulation. Why don't you Republican capitalists who believe in the free markets get out of the damned way and let them work and allow these various financial nuthouses be crushed by the weight of their own stupidity? When it is all over, we'll have sane and sober people create laws to make sure it doesn't happen again, assuming we survive this chaos.

Also, while you are handing out our tax money to idiots on Wall Street, save a little of the long green for the unemployed auto and construction workers and all of the other people who have lost their jobs because you were too stupid to notice what Phil Gramm was doing and you were convinced everything was going to be just fine because the markets work.

These, then, are the people -- the Republicans -- who want to run our government for four more years. John McCain isn't just one of them. He rides their jets. He takes their campaign donations. He makes them his campaign advisors. And he tells us to trust him.

He must think we are a nation of village idiots.

http://www.farleftside.com/2006/02-10-06.html

http://postaroni.com/2008/09/13/rap-freestyle-battle-translated-into-proper-english/

http://awesomepedia.org/apathy/alternate-universe.php