Suicide Pact

Putsch asks us to sign away much in return for little

©Bryan Zepp Jamieson
9/22/08
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/VRWC/suicidepact.htm

The words are stunning, so stark naked in their greed, lust for power, and utter contempt for America: “Decisions by the [Treasury] 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.”

The phrase comes from Section 8 of the Administration version of the bill designed to provide a vast bailout of the former investment banks who are holding trillions in mortgage notes of dubious value. Mind you, the bill itself isn’t vast – it fitted comfortably on three pages. The scope of the bill is vast. It effectively socializes virtually all mortgage debt, guaranteeing – at our expense – that those who made the loans would get their money back, and those that packaged and resold the bad loans as instruments would be protected from what amounted to a vast fraudulent Ponzi scheme.

It grants the Secretary of the Treasury sole authority to dispense $700 billion as he sees fit among the troubled financial markets. That would, right off the bat, make him the de facto most powerful man in America.

The language stripping him of all accountability is just icing on the cake. Incidently, the President himself could be construed to be an “administrative agency” which means that Paulson really would answer to nobody.

Now there’s a man who would never have any trouble filling out his dance card.

Some of the admin apologists are trying to dismiss the language as being just legal boilerplate. The GOP does routinely tack it on bills they like, and forget to add it to bills they don’t like. Someone decided that Marbury vs. Madison, the 200-year-old ruling that gave courts jurisdiction to review the constitutionality of laws, was an intolerable burden, and argued that by adding such language, the courts would be relieved of the responsibility of having to adjudicate every nit-picking little detail.

The courts themselves agreed, ruling that if a regulation only had an “incidental effect” on rights, then the regulation need only be reasonable (Zablocki v. Redhail, 1978) and that strict scrutiny need not be applied to laws that were “neither vague nor substantially over- or underinclusive” (Schad v. Mount Ephraim ,1981).

In three pages (with spaces between provisions, yet), there really isn’t much room for specificity, and any law that socializes much of the debt in the country is bound to be regarded as being perhaps a bit overinclusive.

But the language here precludes a court even looking to see if it reaches the muster of Zablocki or Schad.

It’s just the typical GOP ploy of using a national crisis to power grab and feather their own nests. Half the scum in that party ought to be on trial for treason.

Then there’s the matter of who gets the benefits. The way it’s worded, the banks and the investment houses get their debts “deleveraged” – ie, covered, while all the people struggling with payments on misleading if not outright fraudulent mortgage agreements are invited to go screw themselves. Which leaves us facing a situation in which Wall Street is happy and wealthy, while millions of homes sit vacant, depreciating rapidly, and tent cities spring up across the country.

Nor does it address the issue of CEO bonuses. It came to light today that the management at Lehman who did such a spectacular job of running it into the ground will divvy up $2.5 BILLION in severance bonuses. Nice work if you can get it. All it takes, really, is rich parents and no scruples.

And, naturally, it says next to nothing about regulation, beyond having to obey whatever whims Czar Paulson might have. Given that Paulson is another overpaid market whore, that pretty much guarantees that the principles of laissez faire (“don’t just steal; steal with BOTH HANDS!”) and the free market (“Americans aren’t just consumers; they’re consumables”) stay in place.

The public is deeply skeptical of this bailout to begin with. These provisions translate into public fury. While most people agree that Congress must take decisive action, nobody I’ve spoken to likes this particular bill. Even without hearing the specific language, they don’t like it. When they do hear what it has in it, they start talking about tax revolts and throwing out all of Congress.

The GOP wants to take advantage of this crisis, just as they did 9/11, Katrina, and the contrived crisis of Iraq. They want to extend their power, having never abandoned the dream of one-party rule, a reich that will last a thousand years. And they want to feather their nests, and those of their rich buddies.

What they don’t understand is that unlike 9/11, people blame them for this. They should have learned from Katrina. Nobody accused them of causing the storm, or even for the state of the levees, but they were held responsible for the appallingly slow and inept response in the week following the flooding of New Orleans.

This time, by a 2-1 margin, the public blames Republicans for the current economic mess, surmising, correctly, that the Republican push for de-regulation and so-called “free markets” led to this ongoing disaster.

They are furious that their wages are stagnant while the cost of food and fuel soars, and the admin assures them that things are just getting better all the time. They are, if you’re a vapid millionaire living off derivatives.

A lot of people see a choice in the road right now. Accept the latest GOP con job and become slaves in their own country. Or reject it, and risk a complete economic meltdown. Either way, they’ll suffer.

But at least by telling the Republicans to stuff their latest nasty little power grab, they would suffer with some dignity.

In fairness, a lot of Republicans oppose the bill. Newt Gingrich has spoken out strongly against it, and John McCain wants provisions for firing the head of the SEC and replacing him with Andrew Cuomo, an idea the Democrats would do well to embrace. Nearly all the old-time conservatives oppose the bill. Democrats are equally split, between those appalled by the bill (Dennis Kucinich dismissed it as “cash for trash”) and those who lack the backbone to be seen as quesstioning what Putsch is pushing as “an emergency measure.”

There is a sense of urgency. The Dow bombed again today by 380 points, and oil jumped a heart-stopping $25 a barrel. The Hang Seng is down 500 at this hour. It really isn’t going to hold together much longer.

But accepting the Putsch Junta plan is very much like treating a headache by taking a shotgun and blowing your own brains out.