No War But Class War

This post is not for babies

There.

In a previous post I made passing mention that we are the kind of people that would be up in arms (figuratively) if half of the money used to kill Iraqis were offered as reparations or used to build Iraqi infrastructure (legitimately and competently). I think a similar phenomenon is at work with the presently debated Wall Street hand out.

So there's some debate about compensation limits, the degree and nature of oversight, how or whether to address housing issues, and just how we will own what we are about to own. But that's it. We have, "Give us a blank check," on one side, and, "No, no blank check for you," on the other. For many of us, these are legitimate points of debate. This is what we must hammer out in order to pass this legislation. They are legitimate points of debate because we are idiots.

You've probably heard the $700 billion price tag- that's an imaginary number. Imaginary because it's 700,000,000,000 but also because it's only meant to address the outstanding moneys owed at a single time- ("The Secretary’s authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time") It is not how much this will all cost us in total related expenditures. That limit is fixed (on paper anyway) in the trillions. But let's pretend that is the number. Let's pretend that $700,000,000,000 is how much money we will ultimately shell out, give or take a million. That's how much we say would give to these companies, and when I say companies I mean the people that created these "hybrid instruments" and insurance schemes that deliberately and predictably orchestrated this meltdown.

You've got that, right? This wasn't an accident.

This was not the result of Free Market capitalism. You must put out of your head the idea that anything called "The Market" exists anywhere but in high school economics texts. This was the result of actual people seeking the legal allowances and avenues for systems of mergers and lending machinations to make themselves and their cronies very rich. There is nothing "Free Market" about lending out $1000 when you only have $10 in hand. That is an artifice, it is a created possibility. We built the world that allowed this to happen.

And we say we don't believe in magic anymore. Pfft.

And now? Now we are willing to give at least hundreds of billions of dollars to this "emergency".

This should echo. We should have in our memories the USA PATRIOT Act and the congressional authorization to wage a war on terror. Both were legislative moves we had to make else we would meet certain ruin. Both were sold as necessary for our protection, necessary for our safety- just like the notmurder and nottorture done for our protection.

So we will let it happen. We want it to happen. And it says a lot about who and what we are.

Idiots.

Just as we'd be upset if we considered giving $250,000,000,000 to Iraq to rebuild their country, I'm sure we would consider it out of the question to devote even half of the proposed bail out one time limit ($350,000,000,000 to give it a name) to a single payer health care system, as an investment in educational infrastructure and resources, as a housing subsidy disbursement, or to even fix our screwed-up roads.

But this is happening. It will happen. We can efficiently and quickly create the means for a successful and well orchestrated bail out. Rich people, you don't know, are too rich to be left hanging. But people you do know with medical debts, people you know who are a paycheck away from foreclosure, people you know who are squeezed out of the housing market, people you know that have to forego college?

Fuck them. Perhaps you should tell your neighbor next time you see them.

I'm sure we could cynically say, "This is simply the nature of power, and there it goes looking out for itself." Or we could look at our national financial priorities and rationalize it as a matter of "personal responsibility" that we don't take care of each other. Sometimes we get a glimpse behind the veil and see someone's turning the screws. That's an eye-opening moment, and we feel our cynicism is justified. But this isn't that. There's also nothing exceptionally revelatory to say we don't care much for poor people however we rationalize it. No, here we are confronted with something far worse than those things; here we realize we have been cowed into participating in our own destruction. I'm sure we call it something else, though.

Our hands are not clean in this. We are not ignorant. We see exactly what's happening. We're eager for it to happen, to borrow a metaphor, like asses in heat, sniffing the wind. We are damned idiots. Really idiots; it's strong enough and perfectly appropriate.

Look it up.

Anyway...

Goddamn #1:
Pretty much all of Section 2, b. but especially:
(2) entering into contracts, including contracts for services authorized by section 3109 of title 5, United States Code, without regard to any other provision of law regarding public contracts;

Goddamn #2:
In exercising the authorities granted in this Act, the Secretary shall take into consideration means for--

(1) providing stability or preventing disruption to the financial markets or banking system; and

(2) protecting the taxpayer.
[I'm sure this is put here as a joke at our expense]

Goddamn #3:
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
[This makes actions outside of the law within the law. That's magic for you- the kind of magic that makes torture nottorture. Hooray.]

Hopeless.
These are the strangers we love.
It's after them we will go.

You could call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 to contact your representatives, but what could you say about this? I guess you could at least ask them to [redacted 'cos I'm a baby too sometimes] and say your name before it's over.

So what's the phenomenon at work? I think we call it freedom.

Sighs all around.