With this $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, we move even further towards some sort of bastard system of corporate socialism. Almost no one is pleased that we've come to this, but almost everyone agrees that it is necessary.
A few voices in Congress to the extremes of both sides aren't stepping in line. Like everyone's favorite macrobiotic munchkin Rep. Dennis Kucinich:
"The $700 billion bailout for Wall Street, is driven by fear not fact. This is too much money in too a short a time going to too few people while too many questions remain unanswered."
After the rush to war in Iraq, I think there's some credence to the observation that we're moving too fast, but D. Kuch, don't you realize this represents the biggest rhetoric opportunity for your party in years? Unless this thing blows up in our collective faces, it's a chance not only to push for greater corporate regulations, but to spread pseudo-socialism past Wall Street and all over this great land.
Barack Obama is already waving the shredded silk flag of the economic crisis. During his speech at the University of Miami he asked the following: Had we gone through with plans to privatize Social Security, what would have happened to millions of people's savings in this economy? See how fun and easy that is. It works for tons of issues.
Universal Health Care? "Oh, Republicans, so you trust this government to bail out your BFFs on Wall Street, but not to bail out hard working Americans struggling with a broken health care system? Yeah, we see how it is."
Tax cuts for the rich? "You really want to give tax breaks to people like Richard S. Fuld, Jr. the former chairmen of Lehman Brothers, and not to mom and pop on Main Street?"
Out of control college tuition? "Hey, look at all those investment banks who only hired out of touch Harvard brats. Who can afford Harvard? The kids out of out-of-touch, rich Harvard grads. Maybe it's time we make college more affordable so it's not the same type of d-bag who can afford the best education and lord over us in some sort of phantom oligarchy."
See, it works for everything, and much like how the Republicans used September 11th to push through things like the Patriot Act and the War in Iraq, the Democrats are going to seize this opportunity to gain support for all their wet dreams, and maybe after 8 years of pretty much failing neo-con initiatives that's exactly what we need right now.
