TimesToCome

Unhappy about the bailout for billionaires? Our only option is to throw them all out and start over.

If you live in The Woodlands, Texas, we have Kent Hargett challenging Bailout Brady, and Rick Noriega challenging Crooked Cornyn.

If you are not living in in the 8th in Texas, check out US Elections which lists the candidates running for office across the nation.

Use the internet.  Link to the challengers websites. Get the names out into cyberspace.

Send a message to your government “We’re angry and we’re not going to take it anymore”.

Thanks to the internet we can now rattle our so call ‘representatives’ in DC.  And we have.

It is not just the bailout that is grating on the US population.  It is yet another, dark of the night, planned in advance, power grabbing, must pass now or die bill before Congress.

We’ve seen them before.

There was the ‘Patriot Act’ which essentially allows the government unlimited spying and powers of detention on whom ever they choose.  ‘Bill of Rights’ you say?  It seems to have been written out of existence by the ‘Patriot Act’.

There was also the $600b rush to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  For $600 billion you’d think they could have at least found one lousy WMD.  I would’ve settled for BinLaden.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times buddy and you had better start finding new employment.

We have had enough of politicians bought and paid for by corporations that act in the corporations interest, not ours.

We’re having a problem with CEOs that collect multimillion dollar bonuses while they run companies into the ground.

We are fed up with companies that move the best paying jobs over seas and put their company finances in banks outside the US to avoid US taxes. We’ve had enough.

American is slowly waking to the credit hangover of all credit hangovers. Perhaps it’s time to buck up and just live with in our means?

Yes, there will be hell to pay for ‘Just saying No’, but there would have been hell to pay anyhow.  We may as well take a few CEOs and politicians down with us.

The vote fell through, the dollar went up, oil and the market went down. But we all know the market will come back up. A stronger dollar and cheaper oil? How is that bad for the guy on Main St?

If this is such a good deal for the American public, then why the scare tactics and why the rush?

It is time to take America back from Corporations and put it back in the hands of Americans.

See Dan Krohn’s Blog for some interesting legal insights in to the bailout bill

This bailout for $700 billion dollars is roughly equal to 10% of all US money in existence. Now if you add in the Iraq war ( $600 billion ), and FannieMae/FreddieMac ( $20 billion ), AIG ( $20 billion ) then W, Congress, the Federal Reserve and out of control CEOs have blown 18% of all  United States money greedily gamboling for more. Now we, the middle class and poor, are supposed to bail out the super wealthy.

We have an FDIC, perhaps you’ve heard of them?  They insure all accounts in banks worth less than 100,000.  How many of you doesn’t that cover?

Bernarke has been doing his best to terrorize the stock market into collapsing.  Every time he opens his mouth it is a threat of dire consequences should we not give the Federal Reserve and Paulson, unlimited power and money.  Why the scare tactics if the government is doing the right thing?

The Democrats are holding out saying we need to block Golden Parachute payments to CEOs of bailed out companies.  Is this a joke?  Hold back the bonuses?  How about we throw all these greedy corrupt bums in jail?

Printing money is inflation, and inflation is a tax on the poor and middle class who tend not to hold ‘hard’ assets.

It is time we took back the government that is supposed to be ‘of the people, for the people’, clearly neither party in DC meets that standard.

I say if they vote for this bailout, we vote them out and we recall and impeach anyone we can not vote out of office.

I gave up writing politicians. You have the net. Blog your thoughts on the bailout, Digg them, YouTube them. Plaster your thoughts on the ‘Billionaire Bailout’ all over the net. Let DC know just how much this displeases you.

Consider this: If we’re going to pump $700b into banks to keep the economy flowing, shouldn’t we be putting into banks that are not failing?

Take the Pledge. I did:
Pledge to vote against representatives who vote for bailout petition

See also:
A bailout we don’t need
Lobbyists in feeding frenzy
NPR Why Congress Objects to the Bailout Plan
One set of thieves bails out another set of thieves
McCain was thick in the previous banking/mortgage scandal he doesn’t need to go to DC, he knows all about these scams already.
25 Harsh reactions to the Bailout for Billionaires

On a dark but light note: Request for urgent confidential business relationship Clearly our leaders have been reading too many 419 scams in their inboxes.

Today I went out and stumped for a local politician.

I arrived at the polls bright and early and stood with the other campaign workers waving signs at passing voters. Except there were so very few voters. We waved at all the cars passing by. It reminded me of being a child and pumping my arm trying to get the 18 wheeler drivers to blow the horn. Most of the cars passing us switched to the lane away from us going by. I’m not sure if that is because they felt guilty about not voting or they felt we were crowding them.

There was a mix of men and women waving signs, small 30ish to 60ish women who had not had boob jobs and 30 something to 60 something men. It was funny, not a single person there was overweight. Do overweight people not work the polls? Or is it some other selection effect?

You’all who know me will be amazed to know that this politician was given the highest rating the ‘Christian Coalition’. I explained that I thought church and state should stay far away from each other. He told me they weren’t a religious group. ???

Any how deep here in the Bible belt I’m not sure there are any non-approved politicians and this guy has a reputation for being a hard worker and for getting things done.

A barrel of crude oil holds about 42 gallons of crude.

This 42 gallons of crude is converted to about 20 gallons of gasoline.

The gas tax varies by state from .08 to .45 per gallon.

If we look at prices from 2007 we can see the price per barrel of crude is about ~1/3 to a half the price per gallon at the gas pump.

So about a third to a half of the price per gallon can be traced to crude. This means at $121 /barrel we’re looking at $3.04 to $6.34/gallon regular in our near future. At $200 /barrel it’ll be about $7.20/ to $10.80/gallon.

Gas prices world wide range from about $8/gallon in Europe to about $1/gallon in the Middle East at a time when we are paying $3.50/gallon.

Gas prices are rising now because the US dollar has been falling. In order to bail out the hedge funds which invested heavily in high risk mortgages and the US government which has spent far more money than it has fighting a war in Iraq the Federal Reserve has been busy printing money. More money means less value per dollar.

This has the effect of the US consumer bailing out the mortgage crisis and federal debt in the form of high costs for all goods not just gasoline. Whether or not this is the correct way to fix the problem I know not. It is certainly the traditional way the government has bailed itself out of trouble in many a country.

Is the future all bad? Perhaps not. If the rate of inflation can be kept under control it may be a little painful but not a disaster. And some of the money invested in the war will come back to us. After WWII transistors and radar and other war inventions brought about new industries in the private sector. There is every reason to believe that all the research and development in robotics for the war will spur new industries and bring more robots into our lives.

Sources:
History of crude prices
History of US gas prices

More information:
A Primer on Gas Prices
Estimated Gasoline Price Breakdown