The Bush Bullydozer Strategy To Preempt His Successor

The Bailout Scheme Sold As An “Emergency” Has Become “Hurry Up And Wait”

One of the tactics of high pressure selling is to set a deadline, and make it clear if you don’t chose the offer by the date set, you lose it. The strategy fuels a sense of urgency to get buyers to make decisions without seeking advice or doing too much thinking. Sometimes, a bribe or a threat adds pressure to reinforce a sense of disorientation. Recall President Bush’s ultimatum to Saddam Hussein and his sons. They were given 48 hours to get out of town. Or else! Does anyone really think that had they left they would have been left alone?

The strategy to get the bailout passed came from this same playbook. First, the President warned of an Armageddon. “This is the first time in the history of the United States that the president has sought to provoke a financial panic to get legislation through Congress,” says economist Dean Baker. “While this has proven to be a successful political strategy, it marks yet another low point in American politics. It was incredibly irresponsible for President Bush to tell the American people on national television that the country could be facing another Great Depression. By contrast, when we actually were in the Great Depression, President Roosevelt said that, ‘we have nothing to fear, but fear itself.’”

Then Secretary Paulson and the Federal Reserve Bank Chairman brought their power points to the hill in an unusually alarmist nighttime hush-hush “briefing” to “prove” that unless Congress acted immediately, the whole system would meltdown. They argued something had to be done and they just happen to have that “something” in hand: a three page EMERGENCY PLAN for a mere $700 billion that had to be passed now!

When Speaker Nancy Pelosi wanted to add a role for Bankruptcy courts to adjudicate foreclosures, she was shot down. Paulson, even went down on his knees to beg her to withdraw the idea because it was complicating his “clean” proposal.

Has anyone looked into who was pushing this, at the role of China which demanded to be “made whole” on its loans and investments, or who would benefit the most? Nah.

Did the media hold debates featuring the more than 400 top economists, including two Nobel Prize winners who opposed this hastily conceived “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.” Nope.

To add more anxiety to the process, it was suddenly announced that a military unit trained in crowd control was being brought back from Iraq to prepare to contain expected civil unrest. Congressman Brad Sherman of California’s 27th congressional district told the House that he personally knew of several Congressional representatives who have said they were threatened with the prospect of all out martial law should they vote in opposition to the $700 billion bailout.

Well, we know what happened the first time around. The House divided as the bill grew to l06 pages. Some Republicans characterized Wall Street’s own Hank Paulson as a secret Communist who wanted to socialize the economy. Some Dems raved at the injustice of it all. The bill went down in defeat.

Then the full court press was on. The White House and its political operatives went to work to find out what the “rebels” wanted to change their votes. The “Maverick” McCain was pressed into action to rope in his supporters. Obama was given the job of pacifying the Black Congressional Caucus. Favors were traded, and promises of generous earmarks followed.

The Senate then, in an unusual maneuver, was ordered to vote first to persuade the House. Their Bill suddenly grew to 451 pages with some $105 BILLION in tax cuts added and other subsidies.

Writing in New York’s Daily News, a disgusted Juan Gonzalez concluded “you can’t make this up.” He reported:

“senators packed the bill with scores of lavish goodies to please favored groups and win support from opponents in today’s House vote.

Take, for instance, Section 305 of the 450-page bill, ‘Modifications of Energy Efficient Appliance Credit.’

It runs several pages long and contains separate sections for ‘dishwashers,’ ‘clothes washers’ and ‘refrigerators.’

The bill says manufacturers of energy-efficient appliances will qualify for up to $250 in federal tax credits for each machine they produce over the next three years. Total cost to taxpayers: $322 million over 10 years.

In case your refrigerator is on the blink, you should note the bill says nothing about passing any savings on to the consumer.”

Now, members of Congress in tight races have goodies to brag about. Others said they voted while holding their noses, but only because they didn’t want to be accused of fiddling while Rome burned. You didn’t get a sense that most members believed the measure was needed or workable. But that didn’t stop them from voting as instructed. A few believed in the bailout; others knew they had sold out.

What an “emergency.” The House was persuaded, lobbied, cajoled and then bought to pass the bill. There were no hearings, no testimony. No sooner was it passed than President Bush signed it before sundown in his latest shock and awe maneuver. A day later, he acknowledged that nothing would happen immediately - despite the urgency that drove the process. In his weekly radio address, he admitted, “While these efforts will be effective, they will also take time to implement.” A few days earlier he was saying there was no time.

There was another reaction, and not the one we had been told to expect. The grateful markets did not go up as we had been led to expect they would. No, they went DOWN. A report showing another big job loss led to a 157 point drop. Banks in several European countries went bust.

So what happens now? Do the architects of Paulson’s panacea expect that we will move forward with all deliberate speed? Think again, as AP reports:

“Experts say the most important thing that needs to happen before the $700 billion bailout even has a chance of working: Home prices must stop falling. That would send a signal to banks that the worst has passed and it’s safe to start doling out money again.

The problem is the lending freeze has made getting a mortgage loan tough for everyone except those with sterling credit. That means it will take several months or longer to pare down the glut of houses built when times were good — and those that have come on the market because of soaring foreclosures — before home prices start appreciating.”

So, we have gone from hurry up to hurry up and wait. The rush is over. John McCain who threatened to veto all earmarks went along with the charade. Barack Obama said this is not the time to assess blame and played the role of a “responsible” leader – i.e. get along by going along. The tax payers are out a likely trillion dollars plus before this is done and there goes all the promises of new programs. The “Leave No Bankers Behind” Bill is now law.

Is the “emergency” over? No way! In fact, mortgages are not the only disaster even as the number of foreclosures grow with little relief in sight. There are a series of new crises threatening to implode: hedge funds, credit default swaps, credit card defaults, commercial real estate, the auto industry, etc.. The housing market is still melting down, unemployment is up along with inflation and our members of Congress are back on the campaign trail boasting that they “did” something.

This is supposed to be an exercise in building confidence, a word whose first three letters spell CON.

– Danny Schechter, editor of Mediachannel.org, wrote “PLUNDER: Investigating Our Economic Calamity” (Cosimo) now at online book stores. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

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We all knew that it was the bum’s rush, even Obama. Was there an alternative? I loathe the Republican Party. It is run by traitors.

The entire 8 years of the Bush/Cheney administration reminds me of Limbo, as in, “How low can you go?” Well, they are consistent! Has there been one item of the Bush agenda that actually benefited the people of the United States? Name it. They are looting the Treasury and trying to leave nothing for social programs, ironically, by “socializing” the debt of Wall Street, after letting markets run amok with no oversight. NO McCain, NO Palin, No How, No Way.
Obama/Biden 08!

It’s the media, stupid.

Unless you have a filibuster-proof majority of 60 in the senate, there’s no way to get anything passed with a majority of one. Even when the democrats vote together and outvote the republicans, Bush can be guaranteed to veto it. Hence it gets sent back to the Senate where they can only override Bush’s veto if they have a vote of 60 or more senators. When the democrats filibustered early in Bush’s presidency, the republicans made a big public display of it and they were criticized in the mainstream media for holding up legislation. But, since the democrats have had their majority of one in the senate, the republicans have filibustered almost everything the democrats have tried to get passed and you hear nothing about them holding up legislation.

I hear all these people trying to blame the democrats for the financial crisis, but it is at top of the republicans agenda to deregulate the financial markets and everything else, and to privatize our government, which they have done. So now we have the current financial crisis as a direct result of deregulation, and we’re paying 4 times as much to have private contractors perform former government functions and in every case the quality of these private contractors’ work is inferior to what it had been when the government performed the same function. And all these failures fall back on the shoulders of the taxpayers. Meanwhile, all the war monging war profiteers are making a killing in the war in Iraq, which they lied about in order to get us to accept, and now we can’t leave unless we “win.” Tell me how you “win” something that’s not a “war” since there are no opposing soldiers. Maybe winning would entail getting their power turned on for more than 24 hours. But we can’t even do that. The private contractors faulty wiring has killed soldiers in 16 separate incidents when they miswired their barracks and the soldiers were electrocuted in the showers. How could this continue to happen after the first one was killed you may ask? The contractors have “cost-plus” contracts, which means the longer it takes to do contracted work, the more they get paid, and since oversight of private contractors has been outsourced too, there really isn’t much oversight. Almost all the private contracts awarded have gone to card-carrying republicans.

REPUBLICANS ARE NOTHING BUT A BUNCH OF GREEDY, SELF-SERVING CONS, and Bush has not done one thing to help the middle class taxpayers, not one! Name one if you can!