As reported by davidsirota it seems the U.S. Treasury Department is redacting--read hiding from us commoners--the sweetheart deals that the Wall Street bailout firms are receiving. Of course, you may ask, how do I know they are sweetheart deals if they've been redacted? Simple, if they were on the up and up the numbers would be public and not hidden. A part of the Wall Street bailout package included guarantees about transparency but, apparently, if you are good buddies with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and his young protege Neel Kashkari--the man-child who quoted Rush and AC/DC lyrics on the full page ad he bought in his yearbook next to a picture of a Ferrari: the ultimate sign of all flash and no substance--you do not have to play by the rules, which is the exact sort of underhanded cronyism and suspect dealings that created the mess on Wall Street in the first place.
Now, the people chiefly responsible for this disaster who promised us no golden parachutes and full accountability are already slipping back to their 'old school everything as usual we're going to do things our way and reward our friends with sweetheart deals' antics. This is utterly unacceptable. It's time to contact them and let them know that they are not going to get away with business as usual for business as usual is what led us into this disaster.
Obviously, notifying the media about this upsetting development is a key first step. Email as many news outlets as you can. Secondly, contact your elected officials in Washington to tell them that if they do not remedy this egregious matter there will be electoral consequences. Also contact the members of Senate Finace Committee and the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. Finally, contact the Treasury Department directly and let them know that their employers, as in the millions of taxpayers in America, are wise to their sweetheart deals and we are not going to tolerate such fiduciary malfeasance. This is our money, we are placing our nation into even deeper debt to rescue Wall Street, which means we will be making economic sacrifices but the cadre of people who assisted in or orchestrated the decimation of our economy get secret pay packages. They must hear loud and clear that this corporate giveaway will not be tolerated and that if they continue to carry out such clandestine efforts with our money we will ask for their termination. And, more importantly, with the economy teetering upon the precipice of further destruction such wildly inappropriate behavior questions their capacity to actually effectively implement the measures needed to restore faith in the markets. If people think that the Treasury Department and Wall Street are merely playing lip service to the concepts of accountability and restructuring they will not believe any other of their assertions or assessments regarding the markets because their judgment will be suspect and their integrity compromised.
I know everybody is stretched thin as it is with GOTV efforts but that is exactly what these miscreants are expecting, that we will be too busy to stand up to the final (Please, if there is a God make it final) cash grab (read spreading the wealth around socialism style) by Bush and McCain's cronies. They need to know that there are consequences for such shady dealings, that the Citizens of America are sick and tired of this business as usual of them raiding our money and their profiting off of disasters instead of countering and mitigating future disasters. We demand an end to disaster capitalism! (If you've never heard the term disaster capitalism be sure to check out what Naomi Klein has to say about it, it's quite shocking.)
Well, I tried to blockquote the stuff below but I got a billion error messages so I don't know what to do to fix it and, oddly enough, in preview mode they displayed perfectly but publish mode and I got a dozen+ errors.
Check out davidsirota's original diary regarding this matter--he was on CNBC this Friday morning! http://www.dailykos.com/...
The Department of the Treasury
Office of the Treasurer
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Room 2134
Washington, DC 20220
Fax: (202) 622-6464
Press Office at (202) 622-2960 or press@do.treas.gov
General Information: (202) 622-2000
Fax: (202) 622-6415
Office of Assistant Secretary
(202) 622-2200
Assistant Secretary
Phillip Swagel
for contacting your Congressional member http://www.house.gov/
U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs http://banking.senate.gov/...
U.S. Senate Committee on Finance http://finance.senate.gov/
for contacting your senator http://www.senate.gov/...