The fatal “no” votes to the financial rescue package came from a strange-bedfellows coalition of lawmakers, from the most conservative to the most liberal members of the House, with a large number of representatives from low-income districts angry that Wall Street seems to be getting handouts while people getting tossed out of homes would get minimal aid.
One common strand that tied some of the diverse opponents together: a tough re-election fight. Eighteen of the 21 most vulnerable Republicans up for re-election, and 10 of the 15 Democrats in the closest races voted against the $700 billion financial rescue, illustrating the political hazards of bailing out Wall Street without offering an equally generous hand to taxpayers.
To me, this illustrates that the members of the House aren’t really thinking about doing what’s best for the country, even if it’s unpopular, but just care about protecting their jobs. It does make me wonder how many of those “no” votes would have been “yes” votes if we weren’t only 5 weeks from Election Day?
As Juvenal said in Roman times, “Two things only the people anxiously desire — bread and circuses.”
If everything was left solely to the people, do you think we’d be paying any taxes? But without tax revenue, how would vital government programs, such as say … Defense … be funded? Taxes are not popular, but are vitally important to ensure that our government can continue to function.
Putting together a plan, even an initially flawed plan that can be revised down the road, is vital to getting our economy back on track. The current ad hoc approach causes more uncertainty, more panic, more consolidation, less competition, and certainly doesn’t seem to be working.
What is going to happen if the Citigroup, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase acquisitions of WaMu, Wachovia, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch lead to their own financial troubles?
The $700 billion would be disbursed in stages, with $250 billion made available immediately for the Treasury’s use.
Curbs will be placed on the compensation of executives at companies that sell mortgage assets to Treasury. Among them, companies that participate will not be able to deduct the salary they pay to executives above $500,000.
An oversight board will be created. The board will include the Federal Reserve chairman, the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, the Federal Home Finance Agency director and the Housing and Urban Development secretary.
Treasury is allowed the option to take ownership stakes in participating companies under certain circumstances.
Treasury may establish an insurance program — with risk-based premiums paid by the industry — to guarantee companies’ troubled assets, including mortgage-backed securities, purchased before March 14, 2008.
One provision requires the president to propose legislation to recoup losses from the financial industry if the rescue plan results in net losses to taxpayers five years after the plan is enacted.
(CNN) — Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain said Sunday they would probably vote for the government’s proposed bailout legislation once they check out the final details.
Congressional lawmakers announced early Sunday they made “great progress” toward reaching a deal on the White House’s proposed $700 billion bailout plan.
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, said the final plan will be a compromise that includes some of the original Bush administration proposals and elements demanded by congressional negotiators.
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway …
He did a lazy sway …
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf.”
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—
“I got the Weary Blues
And I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can’t be satisfied—
I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died.”
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
It is late last night the dog was speaking of you;
the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh.
It is you are the lonely bird through the woods;
and that you may be without a mate until you find me.
You promised me, and you said a lie to me,
that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked;
I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you,
and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.
You promised me a thing that was hard for you,
a ship of gold under a silver mast;
twelve towns with a market in all of them,
and a fine white court by the side of the sea.
You promised me a thing that is not possible,
that you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish;
that you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird;
and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.
When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness,
I sit down and I go through my trouble;
when I see the world and do not see my boy,
he that has an amber shade in his hair.
It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you;
the Sunday that is last before Easter Sunday.
And myself on my knees reading the Passion;
and my two eyes giving love to you for ever.
My mother said to me not to be talking with you today,
or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;
it was a bad time she took for telling me that;
it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.
My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,
or as the black coal that is on the smith’s forge;
or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;
it was you that put that darkness over my life.
You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me;
you have taken what is before me and what is behind me;
you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;
and my fear is great that you have taken God from me!
— Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (1859 - 1932), Irish dramatist.
» by flahute in: Word Play on September 14th, 2007 at 03:44:28 UTC |
AMERICA
by Allen Ginsberg
America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good
looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial
for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I’m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.
I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came
over from Russia.
I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious.
Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance.
I’d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that jetplanes 1400 miles an hour
and twentyfive-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live
in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I’m a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles
more so they’re all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings
they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and
the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about
the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing
the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real
mensch Mother Bloor the Silk-strikers’ Ewig-Weibliche made me cry
I once saw the Yiddish orator Israel Amter plain. Everybody must
have been a spy.
America you don’t really want to go to war.
America it’s them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. Her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black
niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
Berkeley, January 17, 1956
(From The Portable Beat Reader. Ann Charters, Ed. New York: Penguin Press. 1992. pp 74-77).
