Over the last few days we've been subject to the latest use of the Shock Doctrine by the Bush administration. The plan this time is to launch yet another corrupt war. On the american worker.
And it worked.
We have the Democratic party aligning with George W. Bush. (Just in case the Onion had at least ONE potential headline left) to push a plan to force the american worker to pay for open corruption and incompetance on wall street.
Bernie Sanders isnt standing for it.
(more below)
The current plan as outlined by the whitehouse is this:
We create a fund of 700,000,000,000 dollars. We hand it to Paulson. We create law which states there can be no oversight. That no other law applies to its use. And that should some of this money be used up we replace it. Paulson then uses the money as he sees fit.
Thats the plan folks.
Senator Sanders has other ideas.
Senator Sanders petition demands the following:
1. Ensure that middle income and working families are not the ones who are paying for this bailout by
* Imposing a five-year, 10 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year for couples and over $500,000 for single taxpayers. That would raise more than $300 billion in revenue over five years;
* Ensuring that assets purchased from banks are realistically discounted so companies are not rewarded for their risky behavior and taxpayers can recover the amount they paid for them; and
* Requiring that taxpayers receive equity stakes in the bailed-out companies so that the taxpayers’ assumption of risk is rewarded when companies’ stock goes up.
Taken together these three provisions will substantially reduce the likelihood that this bailout will end up on the backs of average American taxpayers.
2. Include a major economic recovery package which puts Americans to work at decent wages. Among many other areas, we can create millions of jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and moving our country from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. Further, we must protect our must vulnerable families from the very difficult times they are experiencing.
3. Repeal the disastrous de-regulatory legislation that facilitated this crisis.
4. End the danger posed by companies that are "too big to fail," that is, companies whose failure would cause systemic harm to the U.S. economy. If a company is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. We need to determine which companies fall in this category and then break them up.
This isnt the best solution. The best solution would be to create a (likely much smaller) plan, a plan financed by a wall street transaction tax that served this country and others well to create bridge loans for those people tricked by skyrocketing mortgage rates. But that is unacceptable in this nation. Instead we reward the wall street thieves responsible. But it is far better than the Bush solution of a historic handout to wallstreet. It is far better than the McSame plan of using the collapse of capitolism to further the deregulation that caused it along with a bailout.
Go there now and sign Bernie Sanders Petition