Another Dead Canary

So I considered suspending my blog and offering my services to Congressional leaders to help them hammer out a sensible solution to our looming economic disaster.

But they didn’t really seem interested in what I had to say. So screw ‘em. I decided to march to the White House to protest the $700 billion bailout, instead.

I blogged about Thursday’s bailout protest over at Citizen Vox, where I write as part of my day gig. The turnout for the protest was light — the rain probably kept a lot of folks away — but don’t misread that as a lack of anger about this unbelievable bailout plan.

People are plenty angry.

There were protests across the country Thursday. CNN’s John King writes about the bailout revolt on AC360 from Montana. A rancher tells King:

“We’re responsible for our debts out here. We pay our debts,” Rieder says. “I think George Bush himself said they got drunk on Wall Street. Well, they ought to suffer the hangover like we have to every day out here.”

In NYC, the Campaign Silo blogs about the march on Wall Street where the protest motto was “Buy my shitpile”:

Protesters said they wanted a chance to sell their bad investments back to the government for millions of dollars, just like the Wall Street bankers.

This bit of street theater was intended to underscore the message that ordinary people need a bailout and not just corporations, Asked what message he hoped to send, activist Andrew Boyd said, “We hope to show that Americans all across the country beginning to realize what this means, that we’re basically foreclosing on our future. We want people to take a long breath and make sure that Main Street is prioritized in this crisis.”

I’m not an economist. I’m not smarter than Ben Bernanke or Henry Paulson. I know that something needs to be done to keep our economy from going into the tank, or deeper into the tank, as the case may be. But why do I feel like I’m sitting in that little room in the car dealership where the manager is trying to give me a “deal” but only if I sign that day? Or maybe it’s deja vu. Isn’t this how President Bush tried to sell us his war in Iraq?

The difference is that this time around, Congress is on its own. Main Street’s not buying the dog and pony show a second time. Wasn’t it President Bush who famously said “fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”

We’re about to spend $700 billion on a plan that was exactly 3-pages long when it was given to Congress this week? I’ve bullshitted my way through college essay tests with more thought and detail than that. Isn’t anyone a little concerned about how quickly this deal is being rammed down our throats?

Isn’t anyone concerned that Treasury Secretary Paulson wanted to make himself King? Should we trust Paulson — a former CEO of Goldman Sachs whose net worth was estimated by Forbes in 2006 at $700 million — to do what’s best for Main Street, or do what’s best for his buddies on Wall Street? But I’m just another liberal. What do I know? How about someone like conservative pundit Michelle Malkin:

Both parties in Washington are about to screw us over on an unprecedented scale. They are threatening us with fiscal apocalypse if we don’t fork over $700 billion to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and allow him to dole it out to whomever he chooses in whatever amount he chooses — without public input or recourse. They are rushing like mad to cram this Mother of All Bailouts down our throats in the next 72-96 hours. And right there in the text of the proposal is this naked power grab: “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.”

Is it just a coincidence that all 435 members of the U.S. House and a third of the Senate are up for re-election and all of them were eager to adjourn and get out of D.C. this week to hit the campaign trail?

Slow down people. Let’s think this one through before we hand Wall Street a blank check.

Photos by Joe Newman