Dear Mr. Miller,
What about the next $350 Billion the Treasury is asking for to continue to fund the bailout "plan". Are you just going to hand it over, telling us again that the situation is urgent and there is no other option?
You gave the banks $350 billion. It was supposed to get them lending again, which would help companies and consumers get credit. But the credit markets are still frozen and the economy's getting worse. And the banks won't even say what they did with the money!
Now Treasury is asking Congress for the remaining $350 billion in bailout funds. No more oversight. No strings attached. Just $350 billion that could be spent on health care, or green jobs, or more teachers—going instead into the black hole that is our financial system.
Please don't give one more dime to the banks unless they can show they're using it to create jobs and stimulate the economy!
Monday, December 29, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Don't tell us bank bailout was your only option
Mr. Miller,
Why did you vote to use our taxpayer's money to bail out the banks, instead of insisting that the money should be used to help homeowners who can't pay their mortgages and and also used for job creation programs to stimulate spending? Do you think we are fooled when you tell us that because the government had to act fast, the Paulson bank bailout plan was the ONLY SOLUTION AVAILABLE? We know that there were many eminent economists proposing other solutions that would have directly benefited and protected Main Street instead of Wall Street. Why did you and the rest of the establishment Congressional leadership act as though those Main Street solutions didn't even exist? Why did you dutifully follow the dictates of Paulson, Bernanke, and their biased Wall Street economists to pass their plan for a $700 billion bailout that will only protect Wall Street banks (and their wealthy executives and investors) from the consequences of their greedy and reckless business investments at our great expense?
Congressman Miller, please watch this video clip of a speech by Congressman Brad Sherman , and answer his challenges, if you can! (The full video can be viewed at http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/441.html )
Why did you vote to use our taxpayer's money to bail out the banks, instead of insisting that the money should be used to help homeowners who can't pay their mortgages and and also used for job creation programs to stimulate spending? Do you think we are fooled when you tell us that because the government had to act fast, the Paulson bank bailout plan was the ONLY SOLUTION AVAILABLE? We know that there were many eminent economists proposing other solutions that would have directly benefited and protected Main Street instead of Wall Street. Why did you and the rest of the establishment Congressional leadership act as though those Main Street solutions didn't even exist? Why did you dutifully follow the dictates of Paulson, Bernanke, and their biased Wall Street economists to pass their plan for a $700 billion bailout that will only protect Wall Street banks (and their wealthy executives and investors) from the consequences of their greedy and reckless business investments at our great expense?
Congressman Miller, please watch this video clip of a speech by Congressman Brad Sherman , and answer his challenges, if you can! (The full video can be viewed at http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/441.html )
Friday, October 3, 2008
Questions for George Miller on the Bailout!
What can you be thinking of to dare to spend $700 billion of our taxpayer dollars without holding open hearings on the plan first?
Why haven’t you listened to the advice of independent economists, instead of just listening to the finance industry’s own insider “experts” (people whose policies and actions were complicit in causing this mess, and whose industry cronies will be the main beneficiaries from the bailout).
Why aren’t you questioning the underlying premise, the idea that this credit market crisis and its effects can only be solved by a bailout to the finance industry with tax payer’s money?
Why haven’t you considered any other alternatives?
Why aren’t you forcing the immense wealth on Wall Street to bail its own finance industry out? (Including paying for the government bailouts that have already been enacted at taxpayer’s expense.)
Why aren’t you including regulations and laws to stop the over leveraged banking processes and market speculation and deceit that triggered this?
Why aren’t you taking back the bonuses, fees, and compensations from the financiers who got rich from passing off these dishonest mortgage securities?
Why aren’t you including regulations or insurance to protect the small investors and pension funds from the effects of these dishonest financial schemes?
What controls have you put in place to insure that the government would purchase the bad debt mortgage securities from the banks at an honest price matching their current value?
Why aren’t you directly helping homeowners, providing assistance with their debt burden and helping families faced with bankruptcy (instead of helping the fat-cat banks and hoping that benefit will “trickle down” to homeowners and workers)?
Why aren’t you reducing debts from Main Street (the real economy) instead of Wall Street (the financiers that speculate on the real economy)?
Why aren’t you addressing the structural changes that need to be made in the fundamental processes of our debt-based monetary system, a system that has made it possible for the banks and the Fed to hold this blackmail gun to your heads?
An angry voter from Benicia
Why haven’t you listened to the advice of independent economists, instead of just listening to the finance industry’s own insider “experts” (people whose policies and actions were complicit in causing this mess, and whose industry cronies will be the main beneficiaries from the bailout).
Why aren’t you questioning the underlying premise, the idea that this credit market crisis and its effects can only be solved by a bailout to the finance industry with tax payer’s money?
Why haven’t you considered any other alternatives?
Why aren’t you forcing the immense wealth on Wall Street to bail its own finance industry out? (Including paying for the government bailouts that have already been enacted at taxpayer’s expense.)
Why aren’t you including regulations and laws to stop the over leveraged banking processes and market speculation and deceit that triggered this?
Why aren’t you taking back the bonuses, fees, and compensations from the financiers who got rich from passing off these dishonest mortgage securities?
Why aren’t you including regulations or insurance to protect the small investors and pension funds from the effects of these dishonest financial schemes?
What controls have you put in place to insure that the government would purchase the bad debt mortgage securities from the banks at an honest price matching their current value?
Why aren’t you directly helping homeowners, providing assistance with their debt burden and helping families faced with bankruptcy (instead of helping the fat-cat banks and hoping that benefit will “trickle down” to homeowners and workers)?
Why aren’t you reducing debts from Main Street (the real economy) instead of Wall Street (the financiers that speculate on the real economy)?
Why aren’t you addressing the structural changes that need to be made in the fundamental processes of our debt-based monetary system, a system that has made it possible for the banks and the Fed to hold this blackmail gun to your heads?
An angry voter from Benicia
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Bail Out Main Street, Not Wall Street
Congressman George Miller:
Based on your recent approval of the Wall Street Bailout Plan, it appears that you and the Democratic leadership have now completely abandoned your Democratic roots and values and gone over to the ideology of the Republicans, embracing their discredited trickle-down economic theories. The housing bubble and this credit crisis that we are now in proves that trickle-down ideology doesn’t work—it only benefits the financiers and wealthy investors and speculators. But now when that crowd and their “experts” hold a gun to your head and tell you to jump and bail them out, you jump – even though there is no reason to expect the banks will eagerly start loaning to other banks and businesses as soon as you spend $700 billion of our money to let them unload their bad debts on the government.
The only thing this plan does is trickle down their toxic mortgage securities to us, while ballooning our national debt which we and our grandchildren will have to pay back to those same banks plus interest! It will plunge America into a “disaster capitalism” scenario in which there is no money left over, after payments on our enormous national debt, to pay for infrastructure and basic government services and social safety nets. And what will it do to the value of the dollar and higher prices? This is a financial coup d’etat. Don’t do it!
Please do not vote for another Wall Street bailout plan. We are not fooled by the sugar coating of tax breaks (much of it pork), toothless oversight, and other tweaks. Not one cent of our taxpayer money should be spent assisting Wall Street. Vote only for a Main Street bailout plan. Use our tax money to directly assist homeowners and the real economy on Main Street.
Your constituents are watching. Don’t fail us again.
Sincerely,
Norma Fox, Benicia, CA
Note: If you want specific suggestions from independent economists on what an appropriate bailout plan should look like, please hold some public hearings and invite a few of the 200 economists who wrote to Congress on Sept. 24 regarding dangers in the Treasury Plan.
And for some very practical specific suggestions for a bailout that would protect and stimulate Main Street, that would mostly employ mechanisms that are already in place, and would not require taxpayers to borrow hundreds of billions, see the WashingtonPost.com op-ed by James K. Galbraith, Sept. 25, “A Bailout We Don’t Need”
Also see the key principles laid out by the Institute for Policy Studies in their Plan to Pay for the Recovery
Based on your recent approval of the Wall Street Bailout Plan, it appears that you and the Democratic leadership have now completely abandoned your Democratic roots and values and gone over to the ideology of the Republicans, embracing their discredited trickle-down economic theories. The housing bubble and this credit crisis that we are now in proves that trickle-down ideology doesn’t work—it only benefits the financiers and wealthy investors and speculators. But now when that crowd and their “experts” hold a gun to your head and tell you to jump and bail them out, you jump – even though there is no reason to expect the banks will eagerly start loaning to other banks and businesses as soon as you spend $700 billion of our money to let them unload their bad debts on the government.
The only thing this plan does is trickle down their toxic mortgage securities to us, while ballooning our national debt which we and our grandchildren will have to pay back to those same banks plus interest! It will plunge America into a “disaster capitalism” scenario in which there is no money left over, after payments on our enormous national debt, to pay for infrastructure and basic government services and social safety nets. And what will it do to the value of the dollar and higher prices? This is a financial coup d’etat. Don’t do it!
Please do not vote for another Wall Street bailout plan. We are not fooled by the sugar coating of tax breaks (much of it pork), toothless oversight, and other tweaks. Not one cent of our taxpayer money should be spent assisting Wall Street. Vote only for a Main Street bailout plan. Use our tax money to directly assist homeowners and the real economy on Main Street.
Your constituents are watching. Don’t fail us again.
Sincerely,
Norma Fox, Benicia, CA
Note: If you want specific suggestions from independent economists on what an appropriate bailout plan should look like, please hold some public hearings and invite a few of the 200 economists who wrote to Congress on Sept. 24 regarding dangers in the Treasury Plan.
And for some very practical specific suggestions for a bailout that would protect and stimulate Main Street, that would mostly employ mechanisms that are already in place, and would not require taxpayers to borrow hundreds of billions, see the WashingtonPost.com op-ed by James K. Galbraith, Sept. 25, “A Bailout We Don’t Need”
Also see the key principles laid out by the Institute for Policy Studies in their Plan to Pay for the Recovery
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