Note to OBAMA: Your vote for the "bailout" is the loss of my vote for you

I am one of those people who has on many occasions, disagreed with others on whether or not they should make their voting decision based on only one major issue, whether it be the environment, abortion, religion, or any other issue. I've always touted the idea that one's decision should be based on a very broad spectrum of criteria, and only after analyzing all of them individually and then collectively, can you effectively decide whether a candidate is worthy of office.

Well, I am now prepared to throw all of that out the window. If Barack Obama votes yes on this bailout package, I will withdrawal my decision to vote for him. Why? This is the wholesale sellout of the American people being handed to the world on a golden platter. But don't take my word for it, read the proposal for yourself: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/28/bailout-legislation-full_n_130063.html

In the words of Dennis Kucinich: "When a jeweler's eye is applied to this bill, this bill is about Wall Street." He went on to say that Goldmann Sachs has a hell of lot to gain in this bill too, since our man Henry Paulson - the Secretary of the Treasury - has massive holdings in his past employer. If this doesn't reek of a conflict of interest, you need to have your nose checked. Paulson is literally bailing himself out with this bill.

Even beyond the conflict of interest, and the general worry that we should all have about any massive bailout that does not include some kind of dividend check given to every American tax payer below a certain income (because those above a certain income barely pay taxes in this country anyway, and they have most likely benefited from the fleecing the people), the most frightening thing to me is the overuse of words like "may" and "shall", and "encourage to" in regard to helping homeowners. The word "mandate" or "shall" appear far too infrequently. "So there's no help for homeowners in this bill", according to Kucinich. Additionally, there is no requirement to revisit the bankruptcy laws that the Bush Administration has passed during the past 8 years. Even Obama himself has said that should not be in the bill. He's made a case for it, and it is somewhat sound, but the fact is, if the American people are footing the bill for these banks, who cares if it fits within the confines of legislative manners! Damn the rules and the past precedents on this one Obama!

Basically, this whole bill, and I read a good majority of it early this morning, is simply a bailout for the rabid, greedy bastards who got us into this mess in the first place, otherwise known as speculators. They are the reason home prices became criminally over-valued, making the banks do whatever they had to in order to get more loans out to more people, so that they could collect more interest rates. By inflating the value of these homes on the market, they were able to loan more money with increasingly ridiculous interest rates that were "flexible." In the end, what this meant was lower to middle-income people deciding to take a risk by getting a "sub-prime" mortgage. There are only two reasons why a person with an income of like $40,000 made the silly choice to buy a $200,000 house: One, the bank pretty much guaranteed them they would get the loan, even though the payment would be nearly half of their take home pay every month. And they probably didn't say a damn thing about the bubble which they all knew was about to burst. Two, they were consistently reassured that real estate is the safest investment one can make. Usually, it was a combination of the two things that made folks want to buy when they shouldn't. Hell, we have been told for a century that real estate is the most solid investment. If you are a poor or lower-middle income person, you want in on that, because you might actually see something for your investment, something you can't say about anything else you spend money on, right?

Anyway, point is, we got had on a multitude of fronts. And we are about to bend over and take it again, unless enough Democrats and Republicans for that matter, decide to vote against this thing. Obama is wrong when he says "the consequence of doing nothing is more dangerous than the bill we have on the table." To hell with that logic. The reality is, there is nothing in this bill that MANDATES that the American tax payer is truly going to gain from this package. The only thing that is mandated is that the bankers, speculators, and fraudulent real estate investors are going to get out of this one just fine. Meanwhile, the American tax payer is going to enjoy the worst economic situation since the Great Depression.

In conclusion: This bill IS important. It is something that we should be negotiating. However, we should be utilizing these negotiations for a much larger effort: To completely reform the entire banking system in the United States. And while we are at, instituting some real controls on the capitalist market. The fact that we are even debating a bill like this is evidence that nothing but fraud "trickles down" and the dream of "free market capitalism" became a nightmare a long time ago. We are only seeing the effects now.

If Obama votes for this bill, he is simply saying to the American people that the fatally flawed economic premise under which we all suffer is more important to save than the soul of the American people. There is no guarantee, and in fact far from a guarantee, that this bill will keep us from entering a full-blown "depression". Multiple Nobel Prize winning economists have already come out and said we are there, and there is no turning back. We ought to listen to them, and in the meantime, rethink and rebuild the socioeconomic foundation on which this country operates.

If Obama loses this election as a result of folks like me refusing to vote for ANYONE who is in support of this bill, let it be a lesson to us all.

- Christopher R. Cox

On Assassinations, Blackwater, and Other Ruminations

I had a strange conversation the other day. I was on my way to work and I ran into a professor of mine smoking a cigarette on the street. After the mundane bass player jabber of which I will kindly spare you, we drifted into talking of politics and Obama's chances of getting elected. Unprompted, my professor commented off-handedly about how their is fear in his mind that Obama might get assassinated sometime during the future.

Oddly enough, this wasn't the first time I've had conversations that followed these lines. When I first started hearing people elaborate on this idea, I dismissed it as a conspiracy theory young people like me like to twiddle with to entertain ourselves. But the idea stuck with me, and I decided to do a little research on the idea on this newfangled interweb machine.

After flowing through a few entertaining blog sites, (Check out Bob Geiger's blog. It's very funny and not related to this post at all, but it's in the citations anyway. (1) ) I stumbled upon an interesting article toying with the idea of what the likelihood of an Obama assassination would be. (2) Although much of the article is what-if scenarios, Palermo struck a chord with me when he started talking about privatized military forces and the lack of control the federal government really has over them.

Enter Blackwater. According to their website, Blackwater could be any corporation on the face of the earth. Their "Company Core Values" (3) is hilariously vague, and could be used unchanged to describe anything from a private equity firm to a donut shop.

In reality, they are a private military firm employed as mercenaries in the Iraqi war. (5) They train their own forces and do not present any numbers publicly over the deaths they have caused or sustained during the course of combat. Palmero says that during the course of Bush's tenure, federal support of Blackwater has grown from 27 million dollars to over 1 billion dollars. For those of you doing the math, thats a 3700% increase in budget over the course of merely 8 years.

Check out what they're doing with their extra scratch too. This year, they spend 30 million dollars countersuing the families of four of their dead soldiers. (6) The US Army gives money to surviving relatives of dead soldiers. (7) They even give the dignity of sending a note to the relatives thanking them for their service to their country. Blackwater sticks these grieving Americans with a 30 million dollars tab.

Blackwater is also recruiting and deploying troops within the United States. They were stationed in New Orleans during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and they have brand new training facilities in both Mt. Carroll, IL and San Diego, CA. (4) (5)

So will Obama be shot just like Malcolm X, JFK, and Martin Luther King Jr.? I can't answer that. My crystal ball is out of order. 50 Cent seems to think it could happen, and Bill O'Reilly thinks 50 Cent is a "pinhead" for entertaining the possibility. (8)

I for one don't think Curtis James Jackson is all that dumb. A privately controlled military funded by the federal government is awful scary to me. Especially a privately controlled military that sues its own widows and avoids paying taxes. (9)

I certainly hope Obama isn't shot. I don't think I could handle the press, the conspiracy theories, and the general media stupidity that would ensue. But as the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Looking at an increasingly privatized military and a president with the newfound power to cancel the elections in the event of a "national security crisis," (10) I can't help but be a little bit scared. This is the kind of stuff nightmares are made of. My hopes and prayers go out to you Obama. I sincerely hope you won't need them.

Dan Choma is a bassist, drummer, and composer in the Minneapolis Saint Paul area. After doing the research for this article, he stole some of his roomates tequila to help him sleep. He can be reached for comment at newconvert1@yahoo.com.

Citations

(1) http://bobgeiger.blogspot.com/2006/08/blogger-confesses-to-kennedy.html

(2) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/barack-obama-rfk-and-bl_b_79751.html

(3) http://www.blackwaterusa.com/company_profile/core_values.html

(4) http://www.blackwaterusa.com/contact_us.html

(5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqM4tKPDlR8

(6) http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1201169145676

(7) http://www.usmilitary.com/1586/veteran-death-pension-benefits/

(8) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/05/50-cent-endorses-hillary-_n_85120.html

(9) http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1562

(10) http://freepress.org/departments/display/19/2007/2722