Rights and Bailouts

"If I knew for a certainly that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are suffocated, for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,-some of its virus mingled with my blood"

- Thoreau

As I consider the ultimate effects of our governments continuing bailout of various business interests in the country I am disheartened by a few facts. One, We have no idea what it will ultimately cost. Two, we have been convinced that is imminently necessary. Leaving aside the economic arguments for and against for a moment let us consider the ominous effects of ceding so much of our rights to the government. We Americans guard are right jealousy, in times of peace and prosperity no one can generally shake us from an understanding of what is our due as citizens. It is only in times of trouble, when the mass of people is frothing at some nameless fear, can the government, with all the best reasons, rapidly grow in size and potency. In the infancy of our Republic the threat of war with France gave us the Alien and Sedition Acts. Our Civil War brought about the rise of a grand bureaucracy, the draft, and the first income tax in the victorious North. World War I gave us a modern standing army and the Sedition Acts With the Great Depression, which the government  and prolonged through tariffs and interference, we saw an attempt to pack the Supreme Court and a massive expansion of Government power which brought us everything from redlining to the Farm bill. During this same period the crime wave that came with government enforced prohibition was used to justify the creation of the FBI headed by Mr. J. Edgar Hoover. This dreary list continues on to present day, and I would continue, but who wants to get a file started at Carnivore? The point is that the consequences of these programs and infringements generally far outstrip the urgency with which they were called for. What will be the consequences of large portions of the banking world remaining under government control?  (Some of these banks, it should be noted, accepted Government funding against their will.)  Who can say with any certainty? But mark well where the benign hand of our government flits and tarries in these days of panic. 

Bailout Law Seen as Politically Risky Measure

Regretfully, even as the Bailout plan is slowly being carried out, the voters are more than ready to punish their elected officials at the polls. Yesterday saw many representatives make the risky vote of their entire political careers. In a meeting between officials, Treasury Secretary Paulson and President Bush; they all knew one thing: the plan had to pass – there was and is no Plan B. Even as President Bush was signing the plan into law last night, there was big news: the sale of Wachovia Bank to Wells Fargo.

"There is no joy," said Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.), a rock-ribbed conservative who switched her "no" vote to a "yes" yesterday, even though a Democratic surge in North Carolina is making her once-easy district look increasingly dicey. "I don't like the bill. I'm not going to defend the bill . . . I had to do the right thing, even though, politically, it might kill me." ~From an Interview by the Washington Post (10/4/08)

Even faced with resistance by voters, it brought out political selflessness and courage, bipartisan cooperation and ultimately a triumph of sorts. Representative Myrick wasn’t the only one who changed their votes, below is a few others from that same Washington Post article:

• But in the end, none of these people proved decisive. Instead, for Myrick, it was the Charlotte banker who told her the night before the vote about how the credit market in North Carolina was heading toward rigor mortis.
• It was the woman in Cleveland, Tenn., infant son in arms, who looked into Tennessee Republican Rep. Zach Wamp's eyes and said, "I appreciate you voting no, but please don't come home and leave things the way they are."
• And it was Drew Greenblatt, president of Marlin Steel Wire Products in Maryland, who walked into Rep. Elijah E. Cummings's office Thursday to tell the Maryland Democrat's staff that his company had just landed a major contract for wire baskets, but when he went to the bank to get cash to meet the demands, he learned his credit line had been frozen. "I decided late last night," Cummings said yesterday, just after he switched his vote. "I prayed on it, because this is a difficult situation. I needed to allow this moment in history to sink in."

Now all we can do is wait and see if the bailout will make any difference or if the economy will continue to spiral further and further into a possible depression.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/03/AR2008100303849.html?hpid=topnews&sub=new&sid=ST2008100303976&s_pos=

Mr. McCain Goes to Washington

Last Wednesday, John McCain threw the political and media establishments on their ear by announcing he was planning to suspend his presidential campaign and return to Washington, D.C. to help broker a deal that would stave off the seemingly imminent collapse of our financial infrastructure.

The next 24-72 hours of McCain's campaign may well turn out to be among the most disastrous of his political career. Consider:

• McCain cancelled his appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman. Letterman invited outspoken McCain critic Keith Olbermann on in his stead and then spent the vast majority of the program raking McCain over the coals. A YouTube clip that distills Letterman's assaults has been viewed over 2.3 million times.

• Rather than head straight back to D.C., McCain stayed in New York, gave an interview to Katie Couric, spent the night, then spoke at the Clinton Global Initiative on Thursday morning.

• The 24-hour delay between his announcement and his arrival in D.C. proved costly, as it allowed the Dems to get their ducks in a row and turn McCain's plan against him in the following ways:
  

• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank (D-MA), seemed to ink a compromise deal with enough support before McCain showed up, leaving the Arizona Republican to look less like the cavalry riding in to save the day than a superfluous attention-seeker whose only way to remain relevant was to throw the deal off track.

  
  

• When it came time to meet with leaders from the two parties and President Bush at the White House, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) handed over role of lead negotiator to Barack Obama, who then pressed McCain to choose between siding with the conservative base in the House that had revolted against the original bailout on the one hand, or with the bipartisan agreement supported by Dems, Bush and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Reports indicate that McCain would not respond to Obama's repeated requests for him to say which plan he supported. Eventually, the notoroiously tempermental McCain left the meeting a few minutes early, erasing any chance for the big bi-partisan presidential photo-op with him, Obama, Bush and other congressional leaders.

• When McCain announced he was suspending his campaign, he also indicated he would not attend the debate if a deal had not been reached. Because he took so long getting to D.C., he wasn't part of brokering a deal but of breaking the deal. With no agreement in place, McCain had to find a way to justify attending the debate without losing face. The answer from his campaign: Senator McCain believes progress is being made and he will return to D.C. immediately after the debate and remain there until a deal emerges.
  

• McCain's running-mate Sarah Palin's disastrous interview with Katie Couric meant she continued to be hidden from the press, allowing Joe Biden to make the rounds in the hours after the debate while McCain's VP was conspicuously MIA.

• McCain's temper seemed to show in the debate, in which, despite maintaining that he likes to reach across the aisle, could not even look across the stage at Obama. This bit of body language has featured prominently in post-debate coverage and will likely result in an awkward bit of over-compensation in the second debate.

• With no deal in place, and McCain having sworn he'd return to D.C., the Maverick spent all day Saturday holed up in his Arlington, VA condo. This will have some repercussions, to be sure. With only five weekends left before the election, weekend events allow candidates opportunities to draw the largest possible crowds while also ensuring that they don't have to compete with other news. For instance, instead of trying to maintain the appearance of putting country first, Obama hit the trail in the battleground state of North Carolina, where he hammered McCain on the economy in front of 20,000 people in Greensboro.

All in all, not a great couple of days for the Straight Talk Express.