Cheney Components of the Paulson Plan

A sudden catastrophe, threat of a worse disaster if an exorbitant solution is not adopted immediately and exactly as requested, and the requirement that emergency action be subject to no supervision or check by a higher body. In short, a plan for a policy that changes the future of the country and yet is unaccountable and exempt from all opportunity for review.

Where has this happened before? Let us name just two. The September 11 attacks followed by the "permanent emergency" laws of the Patriot Act. And the nuclear Iraq forgeries and planted rumors to jolt the August-October 2002 debate on the authorization of the Iraq war--an authorization that exempted the president and vice president from future consultations with the Senate. But let us not forget the secret adoption of data mining procedures in violation of FISA in the years 2002-2005. The last had a smaller audience, but it, too, was a catastrophic cure enacted without consultation and on the same extreme-emergency basis.

Dick Cheney's signature is all over the controversial features of the Paulson bailout plan for the mortgage-and-securities crash. To a seasoned viewer it may also appear that John McCain's ploy of calling off the debate scheduled for this Friday has been coordinated with the same strategy. No debates at all until the plan is rammed through: that is the idea. Any searching discussion or challenge by the Democrats, amounts, it can be said, to a form of irrelevant "debate" or dithering. We are all in this together and we must solve it all at once on the terms the expert Henry Paulson has laid down.

The aim is to augment a real with a threatened catastrophe and so again achieve an immense consolidation of power. Newt Gingrich tried something akin to it in 1995, when he threatened to seal his Contract with America by closing all the operations of government. Dick Cheney was Gingrich's colleague in those years, at the American Enterprise Institute, and watched the process with interest. He may calculate that he has stronger nerves (and less short-term ambition) than Gingrich, and that the Democrats in Congress have less tenacity than President Clinton.

Some people have been wondering whether Dick Cheney and George Bush, to preserve their legacy and their secrets, would spring an October surprise to secure the election of John McCain--the clearest and almost the only urgent goal of this administration as it winds down. We have wondered whether the trigger could be in Georgia, or Iran, or Pakistan. Yet the banking crisis, in the manner of its management, now looks like the October surprise one week early and with one week longer to turn it to advantage. If the Democrats insist, as Barney Frank has lately announced they will, on rigorous oversight and explicit opportunities for review and caps on bailout profits by delinquent CEOs, will President Bush accept the result only to subvert it with the last and largest of his signing statements?

Comments

[zitlight73]

I believe this is a Rovian move for McCain to distance himself from the most unpopular and despised president in history who McCain has been joined at the hip. One thing hasn't surfaced from either the Repugs or Demorats; is why can't this "needed bailout" be in the form of loans and not a welfare check for billionaires.

[realpolitic]

If Bush and Cheney have sprung the economic collapse to elect McCain, McCain is not playing his role. He looks completely lost and dithering. He seems helpless and confused. He certainly has not taken a leadeship role.

[RumiSouth]

Talking point: "We can and should rescue the banks. But we caznnot, and should not, rescue the bankers who got us all into this mess."

[darker]

CHENEY? MCCAIN? BUSH? PAULSON? THE REST OF THE RICH CROWD?
It's money grubbing 24/7 while MIDDLE CLASS AMERICANS PAY
for the richs' tax breaks and more.

Sorry, y'all, but I can't vote for corrupt Republican LIARS.
I just CAN'T AFFORD REPUBLICANS any more.

NO MORE YEARS. None.
REPUBLICANS PROVED they cannot govern and don't want to learn how to.

My vote's going for common sense management: Obama-Biden.

[nirek]

I could NOT agree MORE with you !

VOTE OBAMA/BIDEN

[JBS]

Ashes to Ashes, All fall down!

[Sundialsvc4]

The authors of our system of government strove to create a resilient system using just one piece of vellum and a quill pen. They knew that everything thereafter would depend on the determination of their successors to "uphold" that Constitution. They also knew that the Impeachment clause was a whisper-thin protection.

In the last eight years, we have seen over and over again the determination of a determined (but absolutely lunatic) criminal gang to usurp every single power of the Constitution. And we see that they have well-positioned accomplices in all three Branches. We see that they are perfectly willing to use the Country, itself, as a card in their game. This gang is neither Republican nor Democrat.

Greed and avarice are called "deadly sins" for good reason: they can kill a country.

[RichardThomas]

Most of the world doesn't know about the 65 Trillion Dollar Credit Swap Defaults still looming. It dwarfs the mortgage crises and it all has more to do with a Fiat Currency Bubble Burst.

The info is on http://www.coinage.me/default.htm

Where the flaws are articulated in detail unlike anything you see on the news, such that you can understand them and so the workings are not obfuscated with complexity. A detail solution is provided to fix the foundation, which everyone else speaking about the problem seems to lack.

Many people only see the appearances they do not see the fundamental flaw in the system itself.

http://storyline.me/default.htm "reports Congress being blackmailed, wealth extorted from citizens"

[bdschiers]

The trouble here is that no one knows what to believe. Bush and Cheney's credibility has sunk so low that even their most adamant supporters do not trust them. It is a classic example of the boy who cried wolf once too often.

[gconners]

This isn't a "sudden catastrophe", it's been building for over a year, probably much longer. Bush talked about bank failures, job losses, foreclosures, inability of American's to borrow money, etc. People on "main street" all over the country know that this has been happening for quite a while. Now, all of a sudden, the sky if falling? This is NOT something that should be rushed into (as noted above the cure could be worse than the disease). Can any of the major players really explain what would happen if a bill took a week, or two, or a month? Or never? When do we stop mortgaging our children's and grandchildren's futures for our own reckless policies? We CAN'T borrow our way out of this! Remember 2001: "the grown-ups are in charge"? Well, act like it!

[Seamus]

How about our elected and appointed "leaders" exhibiting leadership and management?

[arthur2008]

If this deal abandons the victims of predatory lending, the Democrats -- whose cowardice and opportunism led them to support George Bush's war -- will have shown themselves to be completely irrelevant to progressive interests, even as a firewall against the rapacious thugs in the White House. At that point, progressives should work actively to defeat these neoRepublicans.

[fisharefreinds]

By Catherine Austin Fitts, blog, 9/25/08

"I suggest we try another tack, in addition to what Congressman Sanders proposes: support the BORROWERS of the troubled loans, not the OWNERS of the loans. I believe there is a good chance that there is collateral and other fraud in these mortgage loan portfolios. I.e., loans with no properties to support them, multiple loans secured by a single property, loans used to launder money through government guarantees. This conclusion is based in part on the numbers, which don"t make sense, and upon observation of the number of HUD-insured loans that have gone into default before a single payment was received. If the lenders are just paid for these loans what is the theoretical value in a good market for these loans, assuming they are performing (i.e., above current market value), the lenders will get a windfall and be rewarded for making fraudulent and/or predatory loans. And the bailout as proposed will be a perfect way to hide the evidence of wrongdoing."

Wasn't this what Eliot Spitzer was going to do?
Ms. Fitts has so much to say on this (as does Congressman Sanders) please visit her website at
Soalari.

[fisharefreinds]

sorry the websit is Solari.com

[HeevenSteven]

Not that Bush's signing statements are worth the ink they're written with, but do they even have that much worth or mean anything to a new administration?

[Meteor]

".... will President Bush accept the result only to subvert it with the last and largest of his signing statements?"

Bush said he would reject "anything he thinks will hinder growth" .

This bailout plan is no less an attack on this country's form of government than 9/11 and I, along with many many others, think that it comes from the same source.

"...Dick Cheney's signature is all over the controversial features of the Paulson bailout plan..."

[blondecuban]

I'M TOTALLY AGAINST THIS BAIL OUT!

This is nothing more than a transfer of wealth from the masses to the power elite. I say, "let those banks collapse". Why should they get the bail out that millions of people declaring bankruptcy don't?

Use the $700 Billion to rebuild the economy via grants for green businesses, extension of unemployment benefits while people get training to work in a differently field, student loans, etc.

[Agent420]

I agree. F u c k the f a t c a t s. We can do it without them.

[robertreincke]

I concur that this was a last gasp of Cheney doctrine. Hooray, they'll be gone soon. Instead of winning at taking away more of our freedoms with a blank check and lack of oversight, it may appear that we are moving closer to harmony. Perhaps despite all of their (Cheney/Bush) awful intent, which is more obvious and more fact based than can be described in a few sentences here, we are moving towards some decent policy (what looks to be a re-write negotiated by both parties) with honest discussion from both sides of the aisle.

[957]

Harmony? decent policy,?I'm sure your a nice person but I gotta tell ya the only people that are going to come out smelling good is the washington fat cats and wall street elite and ceo's , we and I mean tax payers that are at the end of the food trough you know the ones that are now going to just bend over and spread em as usual the ones that are going to be paying for this for decades to come, you think for a minute the politicians give a rats ass about you and me? if you do there is a bridge in Alsaka for sale,, no no its time to start the revolution, americans should be pissed as hell that the powers that be have almost taken this country down with the biggest scam in history. You think they are going to stop giving Iraq millions/billions no no they will bail out their own. we are all suckers.