Tea Party: Are You Serious or Just Bitching?

The Tea Party stands for a few principles that are shared by others. Others they may not like. If they are serious about achieving their goals, or at least some of them, they will need to work with other political groups because this is still a democracy and they don't have a majority.

Some discerned ideas of the Tea Party:

Anger at the banker bailout
Anger at both Republican and Democrat parties
Restoring limited government
Free market boosterism.

Some discerned ideas of Market Socialism:

Anger at the banker bailout
Anger at both Republican and Democrat parties
The means of production are publicly owned, managed, and administered
Democratic socialists do not want to create an all-powerful government bureaucracy. But they do not want big corporate bureaucracies to control our society either. Rather, they believe that social and economic decisions should be made by those whom they most affect.

I propose that the Tea Party, the Market/Democratic Socialists and the Progressives get together to push their common ideas: that the bank bailout was just welfare for the few at the expense of the many, that both the Republican and Democratic parties are owned and controlled by corporate money, therefore neither are really representing us.

If the Tea Party is serious, really serious, about achieving its goals they will be open to this idea of teaming up with other people who don't share their perspective. As long as this is still a democracy, they will have to do that to get anything done at all. That's if they want to in the first place.

America Returns

And none too soon. In the end, the right-wing nut jobs who tried to reverse the New Deal, have failed.

I can't wait for the new President to set the Wall Street recipients of the bailout right. You can't take billions of our money and then decide your going to use it to buy other banks instead of making loans. Oh, and give yourselves economic bonuses. That, too.

Or at least I hope he does.

The America of my youth has returned. And I can't wait.

Executive Compensation Under the Bailout Bill

Reclaiming Executive Bonuses

If the executive of a failed financial institution received a bonus based on information later proven to be MATERIALLY INACCURATE, the U.S. Government could go after the bonus money. But not the base salary.

Put another way, if upon valuing a firm's statement of earnings, the federal government decides it is materially inaccurate for 2005 because the value of the mortgage-backed securities was wrong, then the executive bonuses, based on the statement of earnings, can be "recovered."

This bill allows the U.S. Government to go after executive bonus or incentive pay that was based on "materially inaccurate" information. There is no limit on who that applies to. So the executives from two or four years ago who made "materially inaccurate" statements can have their big bonuses taken from them, too, as long as their firm later requires federal rescuing.

So, to get the bonus money back (and not the salary), there would need to be MATERIALLY INACCURATE information from the company, which could be made in a number of ways that Congress has not decided to fully list. And it would not need to be materially inaccurate at the time. It could be "LATER PROVEN TO BE MATERIALLY INACCURATE." The information could be statements of earning, gains, or OTHER CRITERIA. The last item is capitalized because it leaves an open door for interpretation. It could be taken to mean, conceivably, anything a bonus is based on, including media interviews that caused the stock price to move. Yes, it is rather a stretch. But still a possibility.

In short, it is more than I expected in terms of socking it to Wall Street fat cats.

Golden Parachutes

All financial firms that need U.S. Government bailout will not have "golden parachute payments to their executives while the U.S. Government stills holds stock in your firm. The least they could do, I'd say.

See the exact language below.

(B) a provision for the recovery by the financial institution of any bonus or incentive compensation paid to a senior executive officer based on statements of earnings, gains, or other criteria that are later proven to be materially
inaccurate; and
(C) a prohibition on the financial institution making any golden parachute payment to its senior executive officer during the period that the Secretary holds an equity or debt position in the financial institution.

Glenn Beck and the Right-Wing Idea Machine Respond to Financial Crisis Blame

You're not going to believe this. This one will go down in history.

Glenn Beck calls for cutting money for the poor, elderly and the disabled, during this financial crisis, to get a hold on U.S. Government debts. When he calls for reduced government spending, it's the elderly and disabled that need to be cut. Yes, indeed. Let's throw our elderly and disabled citizens into the jaws of the marketplace. How clever! Maybe we can roast them and feed them to each other as well. Think of the cost efficiency! Great timing.

Not the thieves of Wall Street. Not the Republican "the marketplace can do it better" types. Not the lying mortgage holders. Not the "get rid of regulation" fiends. He blames the elderly, poor and disabled for our government debt.

Underlying these distinctly Republican arguments is the belief that none of these guys will ever need help one day themselves.

Hey! I've got an even better idea! Let's make it so. Let's not cap the income of incompetent CEOs to that of the U.S. President. Let's take everything they own. And let's include every talking head jerk who has called for reduced government regulations, too. And let's go back in history to include previous CEOs and Board members.

Or maybe we should just shoot them.

Rise of the Know-Nothings

Have you noticed young women starting to wear their hair in Sarah Palinesque hair buns? I have.

Fashion is a language. Women are speaking with their hair. But what are they saying? "I can see Russia from my back yard"?

A national leader should be aware of a few things. Just a few. Among them are the current foreign policy they are supporting. Even if they are not supporting it, they should at least know what it is. Or that when Russia sent troops into Georgia, it was in response to something Georgia did. And that would be called "provoked" rather than "unprovoked." After all, she can see Russia from her back yard. Didn't she notice something amiss?

It is the rise of the Know-Nothings all over again.

The American electorate has chosen the deliberately and delightfully ignorant to lead our nation in the past. Why not again? What is the appeal of a person who doesn't know and doesn't care that she doesn't know?

The President doesn't know all the answers. People don't expect him to. In fact, they don't expect any knowledge at all.

Maybe because most Americans don't know these answers, they don't expect our Vice President to know them. Or maybe a candidate that is too well informed makes them feel stupid.

It could be the appeal of the "just nuke 'em" camp of political beliefs, which spares us all the grief of looking at America's role in some of these world conflicts. Remember when the only criteria for U.S. support was anti-Communism? The United States was one of the last countries on Earth to support apartheid South Africa. Even the Queen of England tossed South Africa out of the Commonwealth of Nations decades before the United States reluctantly acceded that apartheid was wrong.

So what does the bun mean? Possibly - "We voted a Know-Nothing into office twice before, let's do it again!"

Bhutto Backlash

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto surprised me, although I can't think why that would be the case. The terrorists dominating the Northwest Province in Pakistan have been promising to kill her for a long time.

What al Qaida may have done, instead of eliminating a political enemy, is to create an invincible foe. A dead person can't say something stupid. A dead person can't make political miscalculations. A dead person can't get caught stealing or cheating. Benazir Bhutto has become a flawless symbol of the desire for democracy.

What Pakistan is looking at now is the unifying effect of Bhutto's assassination on the entire country. Knowing this, the purpose of postponing elections would be the hope that time would erode some of this effect. Let's hope they don't. It would be better to forge a new government when some unity can be fashioned out of this terrible event.

You Have To Want Democracy

"Sobriety is for the people who want it, not for the people who need it," is a well-known 12 step cliche. Econo-Girl believes the same idea applies to democracy and many other things in life.

Iraq must WANT democracy. The neo-conservatives wanted it for them. And maybe, in their own minds, Iraqis thought they wanted democracy too. But look at how they are acting.

The United States cannot make Iraq into a freedom-loving state. We cannot force democracy where people are not willing to compromise to get it. If you are not willing to do what it takes, you will fail. Econo-Girl will go as far as to say this is a spiritual truism.

So then the question becomes: what does America do now? Do we pull out and let them figure it out? Do we establish order first and then turn things over to the Iraqis? Can 0rder even be established there? What will neighboring countries do if we suddenly leave? Will we be handing the Middle East to Iran on a platter? A lot of thinking needs to go into this choice. Thinking that wasn't done beforehand.