Corporate Welfare
Rainer Hachfeld, Neues Deutschland[T]o crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed
corporations, which dare already to challenge our government
to a trial of strength,
and bid defiance to the laws of our country
--Thomas Jefferson
[T]he sheer power of corporate capital . . .
makes it difficult to even imagine what
a free and democratic society would look like
(or how it would operate) if there were publicly
accountable mechanisms that alleviated
the vast disparities in resources, wealth, and income
owing in part to the vast influence of big business
on the U.S. government and its legal institutions
--The Role of Law in Progressive Politics,
Cornell West
Roughly speaking, I think it's accurate to say
that a corporate elite of managers and owners governs
the economy and the political system as well,
at least in very large measure.
The people, so-called, do exercise an occasional choice
among those who Marx once called
"the rival factions and adventurers of the ruling class"
--"Government in the Future,"
Noam Chomsky
Freedom and Unity
--Vermont State Motto
____________
Before Congress approves the $700 Billion bailout for the nation's profligate and exploitive financial institutions, "leaving the firms, its shareholders and executives free to reap the benefits of public assistance," we should consider other national needs.
"The price tag for the bailout is stunning considering the wrangling Vermont's congressional delegation had to go through to get $2.5 million in federal heating assistance for the state that was already authorized. What other programs that serve ordinary Vermonters and other everyday Americans must be sacrificed in order for Washington to come up with the $700 billion?"
The Monday Free Press reported a Republican filibuster blocked passage of the "Warm in Winer and Cool in Summer" Act (Sanders, Welch Push for Heat Aid.)
"The bill would help poor Americans across the country by nearly doubling federal funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program from about e$1.3 billion a year to more than $2.5 billion a year. In addition to helping families heat their homes in cold states such as Vermont, it would help people cool their homes in states with extremely hot summers.
"Current federal funding for the program is down 23 percent from just two years ago, the Vermont lawmakers said.
"Heating oil prices are up 35 percent from last year, while applications for help from the federally funded Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, are up 25 percent."
In Florida, eligible residents may apply for assistance one time per year for a one month credit, with the maximum fixed amount allowed being $135. So each eligible household may receive a maximum of only $135 per year energy credit. Funds for the LIHEAP program are usually depleted before the end of the year.
Another program aimed at reducing the burden on the needly, the Section 8 housing program, which provides funds to assist eligible households reduce their monthly rent payments is now working on the 2003 rolls. So Section 8 in Tallahassee, Florida, is a mere 5 years in arrears. They are not taking any more applicants.
They open their books for registration a couple of times per year on an unannounced schedule. If one is fortunate to make it onto the list during the brief and unscheduled sign up days, one can be assured of waiting several years before one's application will see the light of a bureaucrat's day. It seems attrition is the order of the day for the common man.
For them that has, Mr. Bernanke is advocating for expediency.
Labels: burlington free press, energy assistance, LIHEAP program, public assistance for the wealthy, pwot fallout
posted by Lisa at 9:25 AM
24 Comments:
And the Senate is still stalling about voting a funding bill to stop pedophile sex predators, too. But we can afford to bail out Wall Street? If we could afford that, why couldn't we simply afford to save the homeowners...you know, all the failed mortgage holders themselves? They would at least gratefully pay the money BACK!
here is the short form of bush economic policy:
wall street assholes:
hey! we need to be deregulated so that we can loan lots of money to our buddies.
bush: Okie Dokie Smokey.
wall street assholes:
hey! our buddies won't pay us back!
bush: here's some more money.
Good news for LIHEAP, Rep. Obey, Chair of the Aprop. Committee, in the continuing resolution for the annual domestic Budget, doubled the appropriations for LIHEAP, and the bill sailed through...!
The big D came under Clinton, then snowballed from there. Congresscritters will go for the burney plan which makes us serfs. Then when I think it can't get any stranger.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/24/army/print.html
If you have time Glen does a job with the $ thing.
jo6pac
CT,
Thanks for the further on LIHEAP.
I see where Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) sent a letter to Obey, among others, urging passage of increased LIHEAP funding, but I didn't see where the measure was actually approved.
MB,
That's what happens when you own the printing presses.
What do you expect from Bush? These are billionaires that need help...he can understand their supposed pain.
why are you all constantly on the rag about everything?
Arkhamite,
The things I write about don't lend themselves to happy talk. Occasionally, I will recognize something good that someone is doing. We'll be doing one of those soon.
But if you're looking for happy talk, you won't be finding too much of it here,
jim
Arkhamite Offtopic Challenge '08:
***Prove to me that the war in Iraq has not achieved the goals stated before the invasion as critical to success.***
How can Iraq be considered a failure just because the Iraqi people have insurgent elements who don't want us there anymore? Regime change was the primary goal (done,) and secondary was a democratic government (done.) As much as I hate to give the Bush administration credit for anything, I say "Mission Accomplished." America has won the Second Iraq War.
"America has won the Second Iraq War."
Garsh. And heer ah figgered lahk a goober thayt "winnin'" meant yew didjn't have tuh fight no more!
Look, dummy. Nobody seriously pretends that we couldn't throw Saddam out on his can. Empires do this to little polities all the time. What Dirty Fuckin' Hippies like me told Smart People like you before this all started was that the problem wasn't getting your boot stuck into the tarbaby's ass. It was getting OUT hat was gonna be the problem.
So we "won" the war. Whoopie shit. That was about as tough as kicking a six-month-old baby's ass. It got us rid of an annoying tinpot dictator who represented a mild annoyance to the U.S. at worst (lethally annoying to his own people, but that as never part of the original war deal). And replaced him with a chaotic multisectarian mess that is VERY likely, IMO, to throw up another military dictator in another decade or so. After being the Black Hole of Middle Eastern instability and conflict until then. An impoverished, disrupted, semi-failed "state" where the only options for an occupier are to go Roman or go home. Which we can do neither.
Democracy? If what's going on alongside the Tigris says "democracy" to you, let's talk about democratically handing me over your PIN number. We've effectively handed power to the Kurds (okay as ar as that goes) and Shia (who are friends with that Axis of Eeeeeevil, Iran). And since identity politics are the soul of the Middle East this insures that Iraq will be a very unstable "democracy" for a long, long time.
So the return for our investment of blood and treasure? Has Iraq become the beacon of Israel-lovin', free-market-havin', America-huggin' George W. Bush-statue erectin' libertarianism that Dickie Perle said it would?
?
So no, Einstein, the point isn't that we "won" the war. The point is that, as Pyrrhus once said, some "victories" aren't worth the cost.
Just like this "bailout". What are we getting for this $700b? And why are we suppose to believe that GWB & Co. isn't lying about the bailout, since, after all, since a war longer than our Civil War, WW1, WW2, the Warof 1812, the Mexican War and the War of Jenkin's Ear Iraq is now a peaceful, prosperous, contented stable democracy where an American virgin can walk down the street naked with a bag of gold and reeive nothing but the respectful and gentle hugs of a grateful populace?
Chief,
I always ask: What do you win and what do you lose in any given situation? Your points are lost on the folks still clinging to Pearle's fantasies, they ; however, they are as sharp as a rapier.
Yes indeed we've won. Save me a front row seat at the victory parade.
Speaking of WW1 & II, there were victory medals issued; did I miss the Iraq Victory Medal? What would be on it? A monkey fucking a goat, or would it be a camel humping on the American Federal Reserve Bank building?
jim
FD Chief you just laid the biggest turd of defeatism I've ever had the pleasure to denounce. J'accuse! You hate the ongoing war effort in Iraq so much that you create elaborate dystopian fantasies not about how bad everything is in Iraq, but how bad it WILL be. Send me a link so I can buy one of those time machines you have. Except I'd go in the opposite direction and screw Ingrid Bergman after I kill Hitler when he was sleeping on benches in Vienna.
Getting out of Iraq will be a piece of cake when the CINC says the word. The big problem of pulling out will be reintegrating combat veterans with limb loss or PTSD or a desire to continue the war in the "homeland." Or write bitchy little blogs about how the sky is falling.
Arkie - You need to find your way out of the fantasy world of H.L.P.'s Arkham and join the real world.
duhhh ! HPL not HLP. Maybe I need a dose of reality also.
"FD Chief you just laid the biggest turd of defeatism I've ever had the pleasure to denounce. J'accuse!"
Accuse all you want, dummy. When you figure out what this famous victory is good for let me know. I'll be happy to crack open a tallboy to toast the triumphant arrival of peace, prosperity and cooperation in the rat's-ass post-Ottoman ghetto that's been the ck end of butt-jump nowhere since the Mongols trashed the property values back in the 13th Century.
If you're not posting this from an FOB somewhere near Ramadi, you have no better idea of how terrific things are in Six Flags Over Nothing than I do. Time machine? Dude, you need one of those electroshock machines to jump the battery in your brain.
And, speaking of time machines, kill Hitler? Screw Ingrid? Like you're in Iraq right now killing muj and screwing the public treasury? Suuuuure. Send my your DD214 or your DA2, slick. Show me you've walked the walk. Then we'll talk who's the "defeatist".
"Yes indeed we've won. Save me a front row seat at the victory parade."
Y'know, maybe that's the solution your your, mine, GWB's and Arkie's little problem. Have a nice parade, some patriotic blah-blah n a speech or thre, give everyone a medal (after all, it's today's Army of One: medals for everyone just like the Special Olympics) and we can all go home. The wogs will happily sink back into their tribal and sectarian feuding, we can go back to "Lost" and dancing with the stars and the Treasury...well, OK, the Treasury will be pretty much fucked.
But, hey, we will have Won The War!
We're Number One! U! S! A! U! S! A!
One last snark:
“This is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade…it’s not war with a simple slogan.” GEN D. Petraeus
So who you gonna believe? The guy from the D.C. Comics asylum? Or the guy with the fancy stripe on his trousers?
We report. You decide.
EOM, Out.
You're just throwing out a bunch of straw men and insults, FDC. We both know you haven't shown me that Iraq War has not achieved its stated objectives.
Petraeus is talking about the status of Iraq in the greater War on Terror when he says that it's not about planting a flag. He's right about that; the War on Terror is like the War on Drugs in that it's theoretically endless and only winnable in degrees. But Petraeus was not talking about the success of the objectives of the invasion of Iraq when he produced that quote.
Let me just say this: FDC's comments are the worst thing about blogs like this. They're essentially a form of political ranting that pretends to be debate or discussion. You all don't discuss anything, you just compete to see who can use the most buzzwords, military jargon, and the flashiest turns of phrase in support of your collective singularly simplistic perceptions of world affairs.
And - assuming "DD214" and "DA2" are records of military service - I don't care if you're a war veteran or ex-soldier. In fact in that case I think less of you intellectually because your military service required you to be thoroughly indoctrinated in the military paradigm. Any sufficiently objective civilian scholar would have instantly recognized that my challenge to you all was unwinnable, which is why I find your reaction extremely silly.
The Iraq war was won a long time ago: Saddam was overthrown, Iraqis voted for and established a constitution and representative assembly, and denying that is either a symptom of stupidity, ignorance, or, most likely, childish spitefulness. You are not political or war-veteran dissidents, you are quixotic malcontents tilting at windmills, just like you did at my challenge.
Whether or not Iraq as a nation has a lot of problems is irrelevant to the point. There were worse problems in the United States when Washington was president, and I say we turned out well short of perfect but relatively speaking just fine.
Alarmism on the economy and defeatism on the war...gag me. Grow up, old men.
And the beat goes on!
***Prove to me that the war in Iraq has not achieved the goals stated before the invasion as critical to success.***
I'd say that when the target of your invasion is still seeing as many as 20 to 30 acts of violence a day (over and above the, you know, plain old regular violence), has tens of thousands of DPs, cholera epidemics, little functioning water, sewage or electrical service, a government based on sectarian kleptocracy, as many as 40,000 guerilla fighters only restrained from open warfare by payments and promises of jobs as armed thugs (sorry, "soldiers"), little industry beyond petroleuom production and a government sector that makes up 40% of the "economy" - and said "governmet" has embezzled billions in foreign aid and still does not (as our invasion plsns envisioned) recognize Israel, is costing us millions a day and the services of over 100,000 troops...and even the fucking elevators in the capital's biggest hospital are broken? (link here: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43997)
Um, yeah, I'd call that less than a "Germany in 1946" success...
So to conclude:
Ranger is willing to give you room to "argue". It's his and Lisa's site, you're the guest and in their typical fashion they're gracious enough to give you that right. My personal opinion is that you gotta bring more to the gunfight than the intellectual equivalent of a piece of limp linguine, which is what your "arguments" so far have been.
So either bring some real effort to this forum or else risk having your weak-ass troll crap get stuffed.
None of those facts and figures you list have anything to do with regime change or the establishment of representative democracy in Iraq. The dictatorship is long dead, and the Iraqis have freely and fairly elected a new government. There are problems here there and everywhere, but that doesn't mean the achievement in Iraq has been nullified. Ask any Iraqi if they want Saddam back, or if they'd rather not be able to vote for their leaders.
I wonder how much condescension and how many insults you can fit in a single post. Troll or debate, but not in the same post. My little noodle can't seem to tell when you are making a serious statement or just trying to put me down.
FDC,
The stated goals of the Iraq war were never met b/c they were never clearly enumerated. The mission changed on a daily basis
Military and political goals were totally jumbled. David P. is NOT a savior- he's a career elitist worthy of the Republican's accolades.
The war goals of America, IF they were achieved, have elevated the US to international war criminal status. The war goals were not legitimate from the get go.
jim
you know better than that jim. regime change was clearly and in no uncertain terms stated as the goal and objective of the war. they said regime change so much that it became a democratic party buzzword for the campaign against bush in '04.
when federal spokespeople were pressed on a plan of action for the projected aftermath of the invasion, again and again we heard that there would be a provisional authority to draft a constitution and then a popular referendum to decide whether to put the constitution in place.
Mr Lovecraft:
So - regime change did in fact happen - which you claim.
But now since the new regime is a client state of Iran, please explain to me how does that make a victory? Inquiring minds want to know.
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