last year, when obama said in speech after speech “if you want change, please make a few phone calls for me, knock on a few doors for me” in his unique and compelling cadences, i took him at his word.
i made phone calls. i knocked on doors. i sent money.
but not for him to hand wall street and the banking industry carte blanche over government (taxpayer) funds. tim geithner? are you fucking kidding me?
not so that we could leave it up to spain to prosecute bush administration officials for the role they played in legitimizing torture.
not for this in afghanistan and iraq.
and not for this at home.
i would’ve voted for obama no matter what — a mcpalin administration would’ve been a disaster this country probably couldn’t survive. but i didn’t just vote for the man, i FOUGHT for the man. i talked to strangers and debated with coworkers and wrote post after post about why he should be president.
not that he hasn’t already done a lot of good things. he has. healthcare reform, guantanamo shutdown plans, legalization of stem cell research. etc. but war & the economy are long-term deals; any missteps on either account will be with us for a long time to come.
using taxpayer dollars to fund wall street and the banking industry could well be the domino that kicks off total collapse of our financial system. and we’re going in the wrong direction. dead wrong.
too sad to rant.
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Wonderful, wonderful blog today, Ms. Sheeler…. I happen to know what you did for the campaign- you approached it like everything else you believe in, with a full heart and soul….and action, because you are never just blogs…you walk the walk. I hope people realize this about you.
I suppose i am so jaded I didn’t have high expectations for ANYONE coming into the White House. I wanted him in because I figured he was younger, not as much a part of the
‘Boy’s Club’
and would understand more of what the average American needed. I still have some hope, but I never had a full bucket like you had.
It’s quite sad, isn’t it, when you have to keep your expectations low so as not to be crushed. That’s where we have come at this time in American politics. I find it heart breaking.
What are the alternatives to saving Wall Street? Letting our financial industry collapse? Having the government take over the banking system? The former is unacceptable economically. The latter is unacceptable politically.
Remember that FDR saved the banking system before he did anything else. Obama must do the same.
Joe Markowitzs last blog post..The Emperor’s New Budget
How about we (gradually) close down the Federal Reserve? There’s a great video I watched last night about how they operate. They just create more debt out of money. It’s like a mafia. I have to get the link and post it to you Jackie. It’s very eye opening.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLAA7Y0ompY&feature=player_embedded
At this point I wish I could feel sad; I am in fact terrified. If the United States had never gone through a depression, I might feel differently.
I remember when they repealed Glass-Steagall, and have been expecting this kind of dread since then.
responding mostly to joe, but also in general: sadly, i think this financial system NEEDS to collapse, and i say that with a fairly full understanding of what that would lead to in terms of human misery. but anything else is simply putting off the inevitable. the system DOESN’T WORK. it’s based on the fallacy of eternal growth, and therefore has no other course BUT to collapse. why put it on life support to the tune of taxpayer’s billions? we’re just throwing potentially good money after bad. yes, it’s going to get much much worse before it gets better, but trying to keep wall street and the “too big to fail banks” propped up and hobbling along for another year or two makes for nothing but a very long, very exhausting goodbye. it’s already all over but the shouting.
jackie sheelers last blog post..too sad to rant
It is sad that our president seems to want to be accepted by the ruling class, just as Bill Clinton, who signed off on repeal of Glass-Steagall, did. Whatever happended to working-class heros like Big Billl Haywood, the fierce labor radical who said, “The working class haven’t got anything. They can’t lose anything,” in urging a general strike, or Eugene Victor Debs, who, like Haywood, went to jail for his radical politics. Whatever happend to the word “radical,” that “root” word that the corporate press used to chastise any labor leader with fire in his belly? Given that we can’t depend on government, even led by the seemingly benevolent Obama (and Paterson), we need to radicalize ourselves and our protests against the ruling class, who continue to sit comfortably on their nest eggs and hold the reins of power.
The collapse of the financial system would bring terrible suffering to most workers and even more degradation to the impoverished and the homeless, with no end in sight. An alternative would be to regulate markets to curb high-stakes gambling in securities, to encourage investment in a “green” economy, and to help us in downsizing to an environmentally-sound society in the new world of scarcity.
Jackie, I understand your pain and disappointment. That said, the world cannot allow the banking system to fail. It would send us back to the dark ages and we would all be bartering for everything we have, including our homes, electric power, internet service, you name it. That isn’t somewhere any of us wants to go because bartering for such basic services will not work. The modern world depends on a monetary system.
Nationalizing the whole banking system isn’t a good choice right now because many banks are successful, and nationalizing them would negatively affect small businesses that provide a lot of jobs and will be the first to higher the millions of people who have been laid off. I know all our local banks and credit unions here are doing just fine and didn’t need bailing out.
It is true that there should be no bank that is too big to fail, so new regulations have to be formulated and enacted as laws to split up these megacorporate banks. This will take time and patience because instead of the system of the 1930’s we have an interactive world system. New regulations are needed, not just reenactment of the old ones. The Fed should also be able to go in and take over individual investment banks, financial institutions and insurance companies like the FDIC does now for local and regional banks when their capitalization fails. That would allow a bank to fail and the Fed to take it over without having to take over the entire megasystem.
I know the bailout is unpalatable. But the alternatives are far worse. Our President is stuck between a rock and a hard place and our senate seems to have few balls.
Obama has only been in office about 3 months. He is not a Messiah or a magician. He’s a man facing a lot of very tough problems. I say take some deep breathes and allow him to continue to get things done. He’s done more in this amount of time in office than any President in our history. He also faces more challenges than any other President in our history. He is going to make mistakes and do things we don’t always like or agree with, but he is moving forward and doing a far better job than McCain could have even dreamed of doing.
You’re heavily invested in Obama. Go to the White House site and tell them your opinions, good and bad. The administration does read all of them, and the President reads some of them. That he keeps making trips outside the DC bubble encourages me that he isn’t forgetting about us out here and that he doesn’t ever want to forget about us. I’m encouraged that he cares, even if I don’t agree with him or his policies sometimes. He does listen and is capable of changing his mind. So let him know what is on your mind.
I agree with Rachel Maddow here. Don’t marry yourself to any one candidate. Help because you agree more with someone’s ideas and policies than the other candidate, but don’t think that means your candidate is perfect and won’t throw you under the bus from time to time.
Being the Change I Wish to See – Sherris last blog post..This Is Me–Girls and Self-Esteem
just a heads up to Sheri–one of our local banks seems to be doing fine here, but a look into the bank that owns the bank reveals a holding company full of toxic assets, leaving the local bank with less than a two-star rating over at BankRate.
Lots of research is called for here, which is not a bad thing.
The banks I’m talking about are state chartered and are not owned by other banks. I’m talking about truly local banks and credit unions. We have the big banks here (Chase, CapOne), but we also have several small local ones. The small local ones are doing fine.
Being the Change I Wish to See – Sherris last blog post..There is a CIA torture manual
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