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My goal is to post liberal talking points to combat those from the right.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Who Could Have Seen This Coming?

On May 6, 1999, on the Senate floor, Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan-ND said in reference to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, “This bill will, in my judgment, raise the likelihood of future massive taxpayer bailouts”.

Later he said, “I think we will look back in 10 years [2009] time and say we should not have done this….”

See what Rachel Maddow has to say:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_hbezbsJ8s

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

How Did We Get Into This Mess

Seems like no one in the so-called “liberal” media wants to talk about how we got into this economic mess.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was enacted Nov, 1999, written by Phil Gramm (repub) repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act. This republican sponsored bill allowed commercial banks to get into the investment services game (read gambling). The bill passed in the republican controlled Congress and after considerable pressure from Congress, was signed by the president.

Then in 2000 the republican controlled Congress passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. This bill repealed the Shad-Johnson jurisdictional accord, which had banned single-stock futures in 1982. The legislation also provided certainty that products offered by banking institutions would not be regulated as futures contracts.

These two laws unregulated the banking industry allowing the banks and insurance companies to literally gamble with the money they were, up until then, supposed to keep for emergencies. These unregulated banks and insurance companies literally gambled away all the money they had plus money they borrowed. Now they want us to repay their gambling debts.

This is explained a lot better at Democratic Underground:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=8278459 and

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=8278475

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

The Party of Lies

The mouth pieces for the republiCon party, like Glen Beck, Hannity, Rush, etc. are favoring bankruptcy for auto makers but not banks. Why? Because bankruptcy for auto makers will help the wealthy execs and harm the blue collar employees. But for banks bankruptcy would hurt only the wealthy execs. The republiCon party is all for the wealthy.

The republiCon talking point for justifying reducing the pay for the auto maker workers is that they supposedly get paid $70 per hour. This is a republiCon lie aimed at harming the workers. No worker gets paid $70 per hour.

According to Johnathan Cohn at: http://www.uaw.org/auto/11_25_08auto2.cfm

Here is how the $70 per hour breaks down:
$28 actual wages approx
$10 approx benefits bring it up to about $38 per hour
The remaining $32 per hour is money that the current employees DO NOT GET. It is money that is being distributed to retirees. Money that the automakers ALREADY PAID to employees but kept it “safe-keeping” for their for retirement. republiCons want to steal the employees retirement money and give it to the execs.

In any case the republiCon talking point is to lie and state that current workers are paid $70 per hour. I believe the pay for the non-workers (execs) is approx. $5000 per hour.