I don't know if this constitutes a diary or not, but let me explain. The Saturday we were first hit with the Paulson plan -- what feels like ages ago -- I called & sent e-mails to a long list of Senators. Today I received a response, with updates, from Senator Feinstein.
While I share everyone's concerns about the plausibility of the basic premise of the bail-out, I am also concerned about what's not being spoken to, in general, by our representatives.
I've included the note I sent back to Senator Feinstein, which I plan to send to the same Senators I originally contacted.
Thought there might be something there for some of you to work from, if you wanted to continue to make yourselves heard in this way too.
Dear Senator Feinstein --
Thank you for the note and for the attached statement.
There's something vitally important missing here, and, in our respective roles as citizen and representative, I think it's worth speaking to that absence.
These last eight have been tremendously difficult for the majority of this country's citizens. Corporate and government betrayals -- and graft -- waste, wars, torture, the depredation of our constitution, the suppression of climate change science, Katrina, job losses, skyrocketing costs, rigged health care industries and unethical pharmaceutical industries, and blatant, multiplying inequities have caused this country and its citizens to list terribly. The way we've come to treat our soldiers, our children, our elderly and our sick is an unmitigated and undeniable travesty.
Americans understand the stated consequences of not stepping in to shore up the financial sector, Senator Feinstein. And while we have no choice, it seems, but to trust an untrustworthy, dishonorable administration, we reserve the better part of our trust -- and the accountability to that trust -- for you.
But what no one seems to hear us say, and what no one addresses, is this:
The cause of this situation, the "fix" and its consequences are demoralizing and heartbreaking for the millions of us who have been holding on in hopes of a new administration, new priorities, new solutions, and new chances. That now effectively disappears, Senator Feinstein -- because Wall Street, government, and lobbyists conspired through their shared offices of power to exploit our future, to trade on our future from one quarter to the next, and, finally, to gamble it away.
In order to step up and alter the course of the economy, in a bid to avoid a worsening disaster, we are effectively pushing further out any hope we have as a country to redress these long years of derailed investment, institutional neglect, and domestic dereliction. The cost for us, in our daily lives, far far outweighs the proposed 700 billion dollar bailout; the necessity of this rescue is the insult, and the next five to ten years of our lives is the injury.
If we accept this bail-out (and if we don't accept this bail-out), we do it at great cost, individually and collectively. We postpone our own already long-postponed hopes and possibilities and potentials because we have been driven into this corner. It's a shame. And it's a crime. And if these companies aren't held to account for that, and if our representatives don't speak to this daily, prolonged fact, I believe the wound will fester, even as (if) the economy is slowly stabilized. The fact that at some indeterminate point in the future we might see a "profit" from this injury in no way addresses what will have been lost, delayed, and sacrificed in our daily lives in the intervening years.
Due to the shameless profit and graft of these corporations, and those who conspired with them, and now for the stabilization of the economy they've brought to the brink of ruin, we who have waited so long for so little, really, must now wait how many more years for this country to work for us again? Someone must speak to that. They really, really must.
Respectfully,
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