The Bailout Stumbles
So it seems that this plan may be dead for the moment.
(CNN) — What began as high-stakes negotiations over the proposed $700 billion bailout of the nation’s financial system dissolved into bickering, begging and a roiling battle between parties Thursday night.
One day after President Bush said the nation’s economy is at grave risk, lawmakers argued over competing counterproposals and wound up without any apparent financial bailout deal on the table.
I’m frankly glad that this rush to spend at least 700 billion dollars has been slowed. That’s an insane amount of OUR money that the very people, Congress, who created the conditions that allowed this situation to develop want to hand over to the geniuses who went out and actually lost it all. It’s insane.
I agree the economy is at grave risk. It’s at grave risk from damn near anything this Congress does.
But the bright spot out of this is that the true nature of our parties is being revealed, it seems to me: all they care about is the next election and their hold on power. Every issue is a partisan squabble. The Democrats and the Republicans both now place party interests above that of national interests. Power has corrupted both, absolutely. Sure, there are decent, honorable people in both parties, but they are swamped by those who see every issue, every discussion only through political lenses and in terms of how it can be turned to their side’s advantage.
It’s sad but inevitable; these two parties have had a long run but they have fallen into corrupt machines solely interested in their own self-preservation, and they use the tools of government; laws, coercion and your money; to ensure it.
They need to go.
Oh sure, we’ll replace them with at best other parties that will eventually founder as well, as all human institutions surely do, but at least we’ll hopefully get a few good years out of them.
Nanny State | tree hugging sister | 
September 26, 2008 7:26 am
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Heaven forbid our leaders actually pause to think about what they’re doing. I’m all for the downfall of these two parties, but besides ballot access rules being rigged, most of the third parties out there are so limited in appeal that I despair of any change happening.
Hard to get much better perspective than Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin in 1802:
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”