An idea for the bailout bucks

Let’s do a little ranting. There’s nothing else to be done because no one seems to have a real idea what can be done about the bailout. Yesterday, Hank Paulson who couldn’t explain a bus schedule, tried to convince Barney Frank the Commerce Chair, that it didn’t matter what Congress had legislated for rules in the $700 billion dollar handout to the finance sector because, “that was not our original intent.”

Frank cut him off three times as Hank tried to obfuscate the point by wandering way off from the reason he was there. Barney was actually waving the printed words of the stipulation at the insincere secretary which clearly states how the money could be spent, but Paulson was having none of it. He continued to bluster his way to the end of Frank’s time who finally threw up his hands in disgust. Hank had done his job. He had no intention of addressing the actual question or responding to the people’s representatives, and he didn’t. The frustration and arrogance in the room made for squeamish watching.

And it brings up the question that I had from the beginning of bandying about the $700B number. Who will be spending the money, and on what, and where does it all come from?

Our federal budget is $2.65 trillion as in - 000,000,000,000.00 - and $700 B may not sound like that much to Hank Paulson but here’s what the gummint was able to fund for this year with only 789 billion:

• Health/Human Services
• Soc. Sec. Administration
• Education Dept.
• Food/Nutrition programs
• Housing & Urban Dev.
• Labor Dept.
• other human resources

Next year the budget will be at three trill. Fourteen percent of that, or $420 billion will go for Medicare payments. That’s only for people over 65. How about taking the bailout billions (wherever that comes from) and finance a national health program like every other modern country has so that all citizens are covered the way federal and state employees, veterans, congress people and anyone else on the government teat is. That way the big three auto industries wouldn’t have that huge number for health benefits while the workers are working and even after they are retired.

That supposedly is the reason that the big three can’t compete with their foreign-owned competitors who, of course, build their cars in the U.S. Same kind of workers, same pay, but with no legacy funds eating up the profits. I guess that we are supposed to ignore the fact that America has been building the wrong kinds of cars and paying lobbyists obscene amounts of money to get away with it. Cars with lousy mileage fueling needless horsepower. Why do we build V-8s that go twice the top speed limit? Only in the last couple of years Jeep (Chrysler) came up with a competing model for the Hummer. We need more Hummer’s? Now these dubs come crawling to Capitol Hill wringing their hands while holding out their collective hat.

Mitt Romney, whose dad used to run American Motors and brought it out of a crisis similar to what we are seeing today, says in today’s NYT, screw ‘em. Well, not exactly those words, but he did say let them go into chapter 11 which is a vehicle (groan) for allowing these companies to hold off paying their creditors till they can get back on their feet, simply put. Not so simple will be restructuring the very complex labor agreements, specifically what the unions have perpetuated since there have been unions. Mitt says get rid of the old management. Bring in new truly creative people from unlike industries to get at real innovation. Set up for the future with an eye towards energy independence. I like it. Let him run it if he’s so sure it can happen.

The main thing going on here is business as usual. The greed heads are tripping over themselves trying to get their schemes through so they can get a taste of the $700,000,000,000 pie. There was even a bunch of plumbing contractors who formed a group asking for a chunk so they could rehab houses to get them back on the market. You can just imagine how the Treasury is being inundated with scams of all sizes. I don’t trust Paulson to do the right thing and if brash Barney can’t get him to answer a straightforward question, how is he or anyone else going to get a strict accounting of who is going to get some of this money? And oh, you flat-ass know they will be back for more.