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Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Ebert, again
Roger Ebert is honked, personally insulted it appears, because McCain didn't look at Obama during the debate. Gee, Roger, if I thought that where McCain looked was important enough to devote an entire column to, I would have counted number of times that Obama said, "Uh."
And the public wins!
Not so fast on that bailout package
By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune
The American public on Monday stuck it to the "knowledgeable and sophisticated" elites who warned that without the $700 billion federal financial bailout plan all hell would break loose.
The House vote, 228-205, was a rejection, for better or worse, by "regular Americans" of the Hobson's choice presented to them by the upper echelons of government, politics, Wall Street, media and others.
Either:
Write a blank check for $700 billion, $350 billion or whatever, in the most drastic U.S. government intrusion into the private sector perhaps ever, or at least since the Great Depression, with unknown consequences; or, live through another Great Depression, with unemployment of "20 percent," loss of homes and other horrors.
We who hesitate are lost. On top of that, the public was asked to pick its poison immediately, without congressional hearings, extensive public debate or any other accouterments of a democratic republic. The public was required to accept the edict. No look before you leap.
That an upstart public would flood Congress and the administration with unscripted, immediate and overwhelmingly negative reaction was, itself, considered a disaster of unprecedented proportions. You could read in the faces of the Wall Street types on CNBC and elsewhere their astonishment that anyone would dare defy their wisdom. Jim Cramer, the popular stock guru, expressed it best when he stated that the folks who opposed the deal are "not knowledgeable or sophisticated." As if everyone who disagreed with him is stupid.
Rant and rave all they want about how the 95 Democrats and 133 Republicans who voted against the package were cowardly hacks genuflecting to the populist rabble, the truth is their vote was courageous. They are the ones taking the risk in a belief that a more sensible, middle-ground position can be worked out; they are putting their chips on the belief that the nation won't go belly up by stopping for a moment to have more debate.
They aren't the ones who dumped a 110-page bill on top of everyone the night before the vote. After the vote, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of her gang accused the Republicans of being ideologues who couldn't depart from harebrained, free-market notions, while seeming to forget that 95 members of her own caucus would be guilty of the same sin. This is the same Nancy Pelosi who after the vote bizarrely blamed Republicans for a failure of bipartisanship, when, during the debate leading up to the vote, she let loose with a nasty partisan attack totally inappropriate for the quality of the debate. You had to see it to believe it: There was rational debate on the House floor, indeed in a spirit of bipartisanship, and then she comes along blaming President George W. Bush for everything.
It sure put a damper on the debate. But if turned off Republicans were mad enough to switch votes from aye to a nay just for that reason, Rep. Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who managed the legislation, was right: Putting personal affront ahead of the national good is ridiculous.
Easy for me to take shots from the sidelines; as much as I dislike the legislation, I might have voted for it, because I'd be scared stiff about the consequences of no bailout. But in the few short days of debate, I also know that other possible routes are available for addressing the "seizing up" of the credit markets. Among them are accounting-rules changes that would allow banks to keep good mortgages on their books at their face value, instead of deeply writing off their value, thereby strangling the ability of banks to make loans.
How about the involvement of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which in the past week managed to salvage the assets of two major financial institutions without endangering a dollar of taxpayers' money?
So, rack up another congressional failure in what seems to me to be the most unproductive legislative session in my memory. Here's a Congress whose public approval ratings are lower even than Bush's. The markets, of course, will spin wildly out of sight, offended by this public uprising. But things will settle down, Congress will work it out. Take the word of someone who don't know nothing.
Read more comments on this column at RealClearPolitics
By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune
The American public on Monday stuck it to the "knowledgeable and sophisticated" elites who warned that without the $700 billion federal financial bailout plan all hell would break loose.
The House vote, 228-205, was a rejection, for better or worse, by "regular Americans" of the Hobson's choice presented to them by the upper echelons of government, politics, Wall Street, media and others.
Either:
Write a blank check for $700 billion, $350 billion or whatever, in the most drastic U.S. government intrusion into the private sector perhaps ever, or at least since the Great Depression, with unknown consequences; or, live through another Great Depression, with unemployment of "20 percent," loss of homes and other horrors.
We who hesitate are lost. On top of that, the public was asked to pick its poison immediately, without congressional hearings, extensive public debate or any other accouterments of a democratic republic. The public was required to accept the edict. No look before you leap.
That an upstart public would flood Congress and the administration with unscripted, immediate and overwhelmingly negative reaction was, itself, considered a disaster of unprecedented proportions. You could read in the faces of the Wall Street types on CNBC and elsewhere their astonishment that anyone would dare defy their wisdom. Jim Cramer, the popular stock guru, expressed it best when he stated that the folks who opposed the deal are "not knowledgeable or sophisticated." As if everyone who disagreed with him is stupid.
Rant and rave all they want about how the 95 Democrats and 133 Republicans who voted against the package were cowardly hacks genuflecting to the populist rabble, the truth is their vote was courageous. They are the ones taking the risk in a belief that a more sensible, middle-ground position can be worked out; they are putting their chips on the belief that the nation won't go belly up by stopping for a moment to have more debate.
They aren't the ones who dumped a 110-page bill on top of everyone the night before the vote. After the vote, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of her gang accused the Republicans of being ideologues who couldn't depart from harebrained, free-market notions, while seeming to forget that 95 members of her own caucus would be guilty of the same sin. This is the same Nancy Pelosi who after the vote bizarrely blamed Republicans for a failure of bipartisanship, when, during the debate leading up to the vote, she let loose with a nasty partisan attack totally inappropriate for the quality of the debate. You had to see it to believe it: There was rational debate on the House floor, indeed in a spirit of bipartisanship, and then she comes along blaming President George W. Bush for everything.
It sure put a damper on the debate. But if turned off Republicans were mad enough to switch votes from aye to a nay just for that reason, Rep. Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who managed the legislation, was right: Putting personal affront ahead of the national good is ridiculous.
Easy for me to take shots from the sidelines; as much as I dislike the legislation, I might have voted for it, because I'd be scared stiff about the consequences of no bailout. But in the few short days of debate, I also know that other possible routes are available for addressing the "seizing up" of the credit markets. Among them are accounting-rules changes that would allow banks to keep good mortgages on their books at their face value, instead of deeply writing off their value, thereby strangling the ability of banks to make loans.
How about the involvement of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which in the past week managed to salvage the assets of two major financial institutions without endangering a dollar of taxpayers' money?
So, rack up another congressional failure in what seems to me to be the most unproductive legislative session in my memory. Here's a Congress whose public approval ratings are lower even than Bush's. The markets, of course, will spin wildly out of sight, offended by this public uprising. But things will settle down, Congress will work it out. Take the word of someone who don't know nothing.
Read more comments on this column at RealClearPolitics
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