Fear Button Time Again

Are we all supposed to breathe a sigh relief on the news that Bush and leading lawmakers, including the presidential candidates, have agreed on principles to form the basis of a bailout bill for Wall Street? (There are some early details here.) Well, I'm not. I'm not relieved. For two reasons. First, because I'm still adamantly opposed to any bill that gives our money, even one dollar of it, to the Wall Street fat cats to get their sorry asses out of the mess they've brought on themselves. I don't care how many conditions are added to the giveaway. There are several other rescue plans being proposed by some very smart people that don't involve putting taxpayers in hock for this. Here's just one of them.

And second, and an even better reason, nobody is certain whether this monstrously expensive plan being endorsed will even work. Did you get that? There are no guarantees here other than the one that guarantees financial safety to the Lords of the Universe on Wall Street, and the guarantee that my great-grandchildren are going still be paying off this debt. That is, if this country manages to survive that long.

What's happened here is that the vile little pretender in the White House has once again succeeded in pushing the country's fear button and getting it to convulse.

Apparently, millions upon millions of Americans agree with me. (I won't take the time now to marvel about the sheer wonder of that.) Everybody's furious. Strangely enough, I find myself in almost total agreement with Senator Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican:

"There's no question we've got a big mess here. But I'll tell you the one sure thing is this mess was caused by the government. They broke it. I don't trust them to fix it at this point," he tells Fox News. "I see this as a trillion dollar band-aid that's designed to get people past the next election, but it is not going to solve our problem. I think it's going to make it worse by expanding our national debt, lowering the value of our dollar." (Quoted here.)

Agreed. The mess was caused by government, but it was in cahoots with the obscenely greedy free marketeers of Wall Street. That's my only quibble with what he says. But the part about this being political window dressing to get everybody past the election . . . that's so true it could have issued from the mouth of God.