Klein/Maddow on Bailout

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Calling the bailout the "greatest heist in monetary history," Klein goes on to state that "the crisis on Wall Street created by deregulated capitalism is not actually being solved, it's being moved. A private sector crisis is being turned into a public sector crisis."

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The countdown to bank nationalization continues.

Obama and congress cannot have it all ways and they cannot please everyone. The evidence shows that they will please their financial and corporate masters first.

You and yours can get fucked.

Let the Prosecutions Begin!

The Verdict: Possible Jail for Financial Execs
http://www.portfolio.com/executives/2009/04/21/Possible-Jail-for-Financial-Execs
We asked a group of eight former prosecutors and other legal experts (some of whom asked to remain anonymous) about which of the meltdown's disgraced CEOs are most vulnerable to prosecution. Here’s their verdict...

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May it be...

This is substantially more important than almost anything I can think of right now. Money is time - and vice versa. These bastards have literally stolen people's lives away from them because of their elaborate and fraudulent financial schemes. Our government has the duty to go after these "banksters."

But I won't hold my breath waiting for it. And that's part of the problem too...I'm not really sure what our goverment is good for beyond taxing grandma in order to rain money down on Goldman Sachs.

Obama the Great Conciliator

Inside Obama's bank CEOs meeting
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/20871.html

Arrayed around a long mahogany table in the White House state dining room last week, the CEOs of the most powerful financial institutions in the world offered several explanations for paying high salaries to their employees — and, by extension, to themselves.

"These are complicated companies," one CEO said. Offered another: "We're competing for talent on an international market."

But President Barack Obama wasn't in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation and offered a blunt reminder of the public's reaction to such explanations. "Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn't buying that."

"My administration," the president added, "is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."

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He says the right things, he just doesn't do the right things. Well, maybe he could say the N-word too and be a man of the people.

You know, Nationalization.

The War on Drugs, Industrial Hemp and the Financial Crisis...

I guess a bill has been proposed in the federal legislature to decriminalize industrial hemp. Hemp is incredibly useful for an endless assortment of things: paper, rope, textiles, biodegradable plastics, food and bio-fuel. But yeah, let's keep that illegal in the name of the radically failed war on drugs...

In truth, the U.S. loves drugs! We buy them over the counter and feed big pharma and we buy from the black market and feed South American drug lords. I guess the violence and death on either side of that equation doesn't bother anyone.

But hemp bothers them!

I am a strong proponent for reasonableness in government. I therefore support the legalization of most drugs wholeheartedly - not because I am a user but because it makes good health sense to control the quality of drugs people are ingesting anyway (it reduces overdose accidents by a huge measure) and then it makes good fiscal sense to tax the drug source the same way we do big pharma.

Taxing what are now illegal drugs would rake in serious money. Even legal, I bet marijuana and cocaine would be billion dollar industries. I know you know some potheads and cokeheads. Just admit to yourself that the availability of illicit drugs is de facto and uncontrolled. Don't you want a piece of that pie paying your government bills?

Hemp isn't even a psychoactive drug. It just looks like one. Can't we at least legalize that?

There is dumb and then there is the appalling shit our government does in our names...

...every day...all the time...ongoing...endlessly...

...dumb...dumb...dumb...