Ramblings

This and that about the national news!
by Charlie Leck

Privatizing Social Security
Anyone notice how this issue is dead? Bush pushed hard for it eight years ago and again four years ago. It was going to be the way the masses could really make money. Can you imagine the condition of the social security system and retirement funds if we had gone down that bumpy road?

Bailing out corporate failure
Fred, from Colorado, writes that he’s decided against:

“NO BAIL OUT... i want a buy out...let the feds buy equity interest in ailing banks and lenders that hold bad mortgages or derivitives... that gives them cash to loan, keeps them in business and gives them time to sell bad investments... years if necessary... they should have more skill to sell them than the feds, and doesn't reward them for stupidity and greed...let them WORK their way out of this mess. there, now i feel better! F”

Corporate Welfare
I call it corporate welfare, of course – this notion of putting up hundreds of billions of dollars to keep corporations afloat. Just let the rich bastards complain about welfare services again for people in need! Then, remind them.

Want to really understand this mess?
I keep telling you. Democracy Now, with Amy Goodman, is one of the best places you'll ever visit on the Internet. Take a look at this broadcast with Juan Gonzalez if you really want to understand this mess we're in. This particular broadcast features the independent Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, along with Dean Baker, a co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and Robert Scheer, a journalist with the San Francisco Chronicle. It's good stuff.

Political Fear
The politicians are all running frightened right now! They really haven’t got the slightest idea what to do with this financial crisis from a political point of view. Damned if they do and damned if they don’t – and they’ve got to get back to their home states so they can campaign. Damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Life as a politician is no fun. I do have some sympathy for them and I’m glad someone will do it. Though we often start to think they’re rotten, when people like Senator Stevens from Alaska pops up [see story in Monday's NY Times], most of these legislators are good people who really are committed to serving their constituents.

Polling
The polls appear to be very close between Obama and McCain. Obama loses really big in rural areas and wins in urban areas. Suburbs are interesting. Obama is doing better than one would expect. There is a bit of an uprising by educated, suburban women. The Obama supporters also claim to have a secret weapon they’ll unleash on election day – a whole nation of young people who are not wired into the system and aren’t reached by conventional polls. The campaign organization may be correct. Is there a vast army of first time voters who are fed up with George W. Bush and his uncle, John McCain?

The Debate
The confrontation between Obama and McCain is at hand. It will be interesting. Just watch how tough John McCain will be. He will be nasty tough. The only way he can get elected is to paint Obama as a radical and a dreamer. He’ll do nasty things to accomplish that. The key will be in how Obama handles the attack. My bet is that the Obama organization is preparing him to handle a lot of sleaze. After the first debate, the polls will start to mean something.

Keep your eye on this story
This could end up being a big story because, if true, it contradicts something John McCain recently said about one of his campaign aids. This is breaking news -- only broke last night!

Excepting Corporate Welfare, Of Course

Remembering Alice's Restaurant and the simple days!
by Charlie Leck

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant,
Exceptin' Alice of course!

Do any of you, my older friends and readers, remember Arlo Guthrie singin' this wonderful song – that was more like an entire album – going on for over twenty minutes about Alice and her husband, Ray, and the faithful dog, Fasha, and their Thanksgiving Day from hell together? Oh my, in the sixties it was my favorite song! I listened to that song hundreds of times and laughed so deep down inside myself each time I did.

Now, just why did I think of that song this morning when I read a NY Time editorial about corporate compensation. I thought of Arlo Guthrie singin' his charmin' song about Alice and her restaurant. Here's all these big-wig business types shoutin' about welfare and money handouts to the poor and how wrong it is that these folks ain't pickin' themselves up by their boot straps (whatever the hell that it is) and goin' out solvin' their problems by their own self, anyhow.

"But that's not how it works. The ongoing bailout of the financial system by the Federal Reserve underscores the extent to which financial barons socialize the costs of private bets gone bad. Not a week goes by that the Fed doesn't inaugurate a new way to provide liquidity — meaning money — to the financial system. Bear Stearns isn't enormous. It doesn't take deposits from the public. Yet the Fed believed that letting it implode could unleash a domino effect among other banks, and the Fed provided a $30 billion guarantee for JPMorgan to snap it up.

"Compared to the cold shoulder given to struggling homeowners, the cash and attention lavished by the government on the nation's financial titans provides telling insight into the priorities of the Bush administration. It's not simply a matter of fairness, though. The Fed is probably right to be doing all it can think of to avoid worse damage than the economy is already suffering. But if the objective is to encourage prudent banking and keep Wall Street's wizards from periodically driving financial markets over the cliff, it is imperative to devise a remuneration system for bankers that puts more of their skin in the game."

Now here's Arlo, comin' round again and screechin' his heart out as he gets to the refrain…

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant,
Exceptin' Alice of course!

Mr. Cayne even got Alice. He's the big dude at Bear Stears. His bank collapsed right under him, you know; yet, between 2004 and 2006, he was paid over $40 million cash money. Now he's gonna reeeetire just down the road from Alice's Restaurant and live up there high on the hog.

I saw this'un nice little lady on the TV th'other day. She wassa 'bout to lose her entire house 'cause she was in those arrears to the tune of 'bout 2,000 bucks on her mortgage. That company had talked her right into improvin' her house with what they were callin' Equity Loans. My, oh my, how easy they made it sound. So she jest went 'bout fixin' up her kitchen and her bathroom and put on a nice porch and fixed the patio up real nice. Everything was so purdy! She was'a ridin' real high 'til somethin' went badly for her. Payment went up a tad and there was no room in her countin' for that.

There was no big government t'hep 'er out. She was what they call down around Alice's Restaurant, "shit outta luck!" Those fellers were gonna take her house, 'cause, of course, she signed that paper sayin' they could if'n she didn't pay that Equity Stuff back. They told her that her Equity had done disappeared. Vanished! And now her house was worth less'n what she done owed on it. Yep, she was SOL.

It's a real funny, goofy world when we can stick it to a nice lady like that. Yet, that fancy dude, that wrecked that bank, will walk away with enough to buy hundreds a'houses like that nice lady's house.

They's all against welfare, them corporate dudes; exceptin', of course, corporate welfare that bales 'em out when they stink up the place

The NY Times feller puts it real nice in them fancy words:

"But until bankers face a real risk of losing their shirts, they will continue blithely ratcheting up the risks to collect the reward while letting the rest of us carry the bag when their punts go bad."

END

For you young'uns, here's an explanation of Alice's Restaurant.

This was a war protest song that we either sang, or listened to on loud speakers, when we took to the streets to protest the injustice of the Vietnam War. This particular, long, delightful verse will explain it all and represents the general humor of the entire piece.

And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if you're in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are , just walk in say "Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and
they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends, they may thinks it's a movement. And that's what it is , the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar.

With feeling. So we'll wait for it to come around on the guitar, here and sing it when it does. Here it comes.

You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant,
Exceptin' Alice, of course!

They were glorious days. Recruiters were aghast. Federal agents thought we were crazy! We marched on and on and kept tellin' to make love instead of war – with feeling!

When we got tired of singin' about Alice, we'd move on to Give Peace a Chance!