Pretty Good Idea

Thanks to Barbara Baty.
*******

"Members of Congress should be compelled to wear uniforms just like NASCAR drivers, so we could identify their Corporate Sponsors."

-- Unknown

The Proposal

Thanks to Teresa Ramsey.

The Proposal
*******

When a company falls on difficult times, one of the things that happens is that it reduces its staff and workers. The remaining workers need to find ways to continue to do a good job or risk that their jobs would be eliminated as well. Wall street, and the media, normally congratulate the CEO for making this type of "tough decision"; and his board of directors gives him a big bonus.

Our government should not be immune from similar risks.

Therefore: Reduce the House of Representatives from the current 435 members to 218members; and [reduce also] Senate members from one hundred to fifty (one per state). Also reduce remaining staff by 25%.

Accomplish this over the next 8 years. [This would require] two steps/two elections) and, of course, this would require some redistricting.

Some Yearly Monetary Gains Include:

$44,108,400 for elimination of base pay for congress. (267 members X $165,200 pay/member/year.)

$97,175,000 for elimination of the above people's staff. (estimate $1.3 Million in staff per each member of the House, and $3 Million in staff per each member of the Senate every year)

$240,294 for the reduction in remaining staff by 25%.

$7,500,000,000 reduction in pork barrel ear-marks each year (those members whose jobs are gone; current estimates for total government pork earmarks are at $15 Billion/year)

The remaining representatives would need to work smarter and would need to improve efficiencies. It might even be in their best interests to work together for the good of our country?

We may also expect that smaller committees might lead to a more efficient resolution of issues as well. It might be even easier to keep track of what your representative is doing.

Congress has more tools available to do its jobs than it had back in 1911, when the current number of representatives was established. [This includes] telephone, computers, cellphones, to name a few.

Note: Congress did not hesitate to head home when it was a holiday, when the nation needed a real fix to the economic problems. Also, we have 3 senators that have not been doing their jobs for the past 18+ months (on the campaign trail) and still they all have been accepting full pay. These facts alone support a reduction in senators & congress.

Summary of opportunity:

$ 44,108,400 reduction of congress members.

$282,100, 000 for elimination of the reduced house member staff.

$150,000,000 for elimination of reduced senate member staff.

$59,675,000 for 25% reduction of staff for remaining house members.

$37,500,000 for 25% reduction of staff for remaining senate members.

$7,500,000,000 reduction in pork added to bills by the reduction of congress members.
____________________________________________________________
[These changes would result in a total of] $8,073,383,400 per year. This eight billion is just a start!

Big business does these types of cuts all the time.

If Congresspersons were required to serve 20, 25 or 30 years (like everyone else) in order to collect retirement benefits, there is no telling how much we would save. Now, they get full retirement after serving only ONE term.

If you are happy with how the Congress currently spends and wastes our taxes, then just delete this message. IF you are NOT at all happy, then I assume you know what to do!

*******

The Bailouts Are Doomed - All of Them

Thanks to Barbara Baty.

The Bailouts Are Doomed - All of Them
by Alan Geik

A confession: I am fascinated by scams and frauds. Give me a National Geographic TV segment with Interpol following an art forger across Europe and I am a captive, even through the commercial breaks.

I anticipate years of television shows exploring the still smoldering Mortgage Meltdown. Indictments, law suits, and exposes of the criminality embedded in this travesty will intrigue me with the same frisson as do WWII spy documentaries or reenactments of The Brink's Job.

I have written here before about the two simultaneous bailouts engineered by bank lobbyists in the 1980s. The first bailout scam came "out of the blue" in 1982 when Mexico defaulted on its multi-billion dollar loans, some of the dozens made by New York banks to corrupt Third World governments in the 1970s.

The US Congress needed a public relations hook to vote against any regulation of those loans to military juntas. The lobbyists were happy to give it to them: the loans would "improve the standard of living of the developing countries." How could anyone want to stop that? Not a dime ever served that purpose of course.

After Mexico, then Brazil, Argentina and other countries defaulted. The money centers turned their pockets inside out and said "we never expected governments to default and so we never kept sufficient reserves." Then came the familiar "if Congress doesn't bail us out, the banking system will crash."

I was in Havana in 1985 at Fidel Castro's Third World Debt Repudiation Conference. Both Castro, and his unlikely literary ally in this matter, the National Review, correctly predicted massive government bailouts for the third world debt bubble as well as for the even bigger money center bank created scam, The S&L fraud. I wrote about this last year as Paulson and his banking buddies were readying the still-fast-asleep Congress into signing off on this current mother of all bailouts.

Incidentally, the hook for Congress to keep their hands off of the 1980s' S&L fraud was "banks are loaning to small businesses all over the nation without all of those cumbersome regulations." That too sounded great, didn't it?

The current bailout scam began with the same lobbyists slapping congressional hands away from predatory loan regulation, while crafting the new theme; "these loans are to help minority and working class families buy houses and live the American Dream." Simple, easy to understand, and of course, self serving. They were ably assisted by the Bushes, a family that has loved every unfettered giveaway they could get their hands around. (Two of the Bush boys were responsible for $1.5 billion in government payouts to their friends and associates in the S&L fraud.)

In 2006, some (myself included) wrote about the massive fraud expected from the bailouts to come. I imagined that, during a decade without any oversight, some mortgage "packagers" must have slid the same sure-to-default mortgage into as many packages as they could. Who would ever know if the same mortgage was in an Oslo fireman's pension fund and in a boutique Tokyo bank's portfolio?

Whatever regulators were still around had been lulled to sleep with visions of $1 million a year private sector jobs (SEC attorneys cost a little more). While this particular scam has not yet been uncovered, dozens of similar ones are already percolating to the surface.

This is why the bailouts will do little except to enrich those who can get their fingerprints on the funds. Simply put; who is going to provide oversight?
Three Quotes That Tell Us the Bailouts Are Doomed

1. "The air was sucked out of the room." (Senator Christopher Dodd)

On an evening in September, members of Congress came out of a meeting with Bernanke and Paulson, during which they were given "grim news" about the state of the economy. Paulson, despite his supposed ideological opposition to government intervention, had unfurled a $700 billion bailout bomb. Contemptuous of his hapless prey he even insisted that Congress deal themselves out of oversight of the funds.

Sen. Chris Dodd, who gets my vote for congress' biggest dolt, offered the tired cliche; "when we heard about the actual state of the economy the air was sucked out of the room." Really? Where was this Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee for the past 8 years?

Why should he be "shocked?" Why should the air have been "sucked out of the room;" a room filled with so many participants in the previous two bailouts!

My quick count of a US Congressional seniority roster indicates that 38 current members of the Senate had signed off on one or both of the 1980s bailouts, and the several fundings of the Resolution Trust Corporation that, when its doors finally closed in 1995, had left billions unaccounted for.

Were any of these senators, or the 163 (!!!) members of the House of Representatives (out of 435),who were there for those role calls, not aware that another bailout was being cued up by the same lobbyists using "the banking system will crash if we don't....." sound bites? Or did they really believe up until that Grim Meeting that the economy was "fundamentally sound" as Bush and McCain kept repeating, right up until the huge bailout request was made?

Didn't the retreaded sound bite from the 80s; "a bailout now will cost less than it will cost later without a bailout" sound familiar to any of them? Will they be "disappointed" and "angry" this time around when the initial bailout estimates once again prove to be vastly understated and the funds once again untraceable.

2. "We need to get this bailout approved by Monday morning before the Asian markets open." Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson

In this one simple sentence Paulson expressed his low esteem for the Congresspeople sitting across the table from him. Similar perhaps to an auto salesman telling a customer that his manager will get a monthly bonus with just one more closing and so they will give him/her a "special deal" if a sale is made immediately. The Asian markets? Who cares about the Asian markets? So what if the Shanghai stock market went down for the day, or week? Yet this preoccupation was repeated several times by the legislators as a consideration in their hasty deliberations.

Paulson, and all of the CEOs appearing before congress, understand that government bureaucrats are no match for corporate accountants, lawyers, and lobbyists who have spent years sidestepping regulations, evading taxes and when challenged, mounting overwhelming defenses to whatever agency manifests a bit of curiosity.

Even a more benign view of the relationship between congress and bankers would have to take into account that the RTC (which is now being seen as a model for bailout oversight) had in 1991 over 8,000 employees. Many of them were drawn from the FDIC. They were from the beginning overwhelmed by their own inability to evaluate existing deals and often couldn't determine which branch of the RTC had authority to manage a specific "resolution."

Into what monstrous size and shape will this New Age RTC have to morph in order to administer bailouts of $$ trillions, instead of $$ billions?

Management of current bailout funds will have even more difficult challenges; instead of selling off just S&L assets, this new bureaucracy will have to unravel thousands of deals between investment banks,central banks, mortgage bankers, and also contracts of the auto manufacturers with their legions of vendors, and of course any other industries whose lobbyists can extract funds this year.

Who will judge the appropriateness of a now all-but-bankrupt bank's short position in the gold futures market, for instance? Or the purchase of a foreign auto plant by one of our home grown Big Three dead whales? Barney Frank? He sadly waddles after the Treasury, trying to extract "oversight" provisions after he signs off on deals.

3. "We wanted to change some of the credit card regulations but the credit card industry strongly objected." Senator Christopher Dodd

Yes, Senator Dolt, a truth you must bravely confront is that the "credit card industry," i.e. their lobbyists, are supposed to object strongly to proposals that will negatively affect their clients' business models. That, Senator, is exactly what they are paid to do.

You however are paid to withstand their objections and to proceed with legislation that protects the public. Even you lifers in congress, who have been wined and dined by every lobbyist in Washington, should consider at some point attempting to rise to the occasion.

Every attempt to manage the bailout funds will be fought by recipients emboldened by the simple fact that the money is already in their pockets. Congress and their appointed watchdogs will be shown, once again, to be as hapless and as outflanked as ever. Sad, isn't it?

It is clear that corporate America has learned how to improve the bailout scam with each successful application far better than befuddled Congress has ever learned how to prevent it.

Just released! LCV's 2008 National Environmental Scorecard

Just released!
LCV's 2008 National Environmental Scorecard

This year, as the nation struggled with record high gas prices and oil companies reaped record profits, our nation's energy crisis and the dangers of our dependence on oil could not have been more apparent.

How did Ohio's delegation score on energy votes this session?

Ohio's delegation was split between those who favored continued dependence on oil and other dirty fossil fuels and those who favored renewable energy and energy efficiency. Representatives Kaptur, Kucinich, and Sutton earned scores of 92%, Senator Brown earned a 91%, and all continuously fought for clean energy alternatives. However, over half of the delegation received 50% or lower, and Representatives Jordan, Latta, and Boehner earned abysmal scores of 0%.

While we applaud those who championed clean energy solutions that will create jobs, save consumers money, and protect the planet, we are disappointed that so many in the delegation sided with Big Oil over the interests of their constituents. The average Ohio Senate score was 55%, and the average Ohio House score was 46%.

The 110th Congress started out strong. The House passed a bill to repeal more than $13 billion in subsidies to Big Oil and to increase funding for clean, renewable energy. And, the first increase in fuel efficiency standards since 1975 was passed and signed into law.

Unfortunately, too many in Congress put the interests of Big Oil before their constituents, and blocked much needed additional progress towards a clean energy future.

LCV's 2008 Scorecard highlights critical energy votes from this last session and how each and every Member of Congress voted. Click here to view LCV's 2008 Scorecard.

Will you help educate others on the environmental votes of the 110th Congress? After viewing the Scorecard, please spread the word by forwarding this to your friends and family.

Thank you,

Gene Karpinski
President
League of Conservation Voters

For Your Information

Thanks to Maureen Dwyer.

For Your Information: If you are willing, send this message on to anyone in your address book with an open mind and a desire to do what's best for our country. Worthy of your time and attention regardless of your Party Affiliation.

545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.

If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ.

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way. There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like 'the economy,' 'inflation,' or 'politics' that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!


Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

What you do with this article now that you have read it is up to you, though you appear to have several choices.

1. You can send this to everyone in your address book, and hope they
do something about it.
2. You can agree to vote against everyone that is currently in
office, knowing that the process will take several years.
3. You can decide to run for office yourself and agree to do the job
properly.
4. Lastly, you can sit back and do nothing, or re-elect the current
bunch.

YOU DECIDE, BUT AT LEAST SEND IT TO EVERYONE IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK, MAYBE
SOMEONE IN THERE WILL DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

War with Iran?

(Thanks to Mick Gallagher.)

Dear Friends of the Heart,

On Tuesday, a second US aircraft carrier arrived in the Sea of Oman off the southern coast of Iran1 giving a whole new meaning to the term "escalation." The bush administration is hell-bent on sending 21,000 troops to Iraq against the wishes of most Americans, but now it seems as if it might not stop there.

While the war in Iraq grows worse by the day, the White House seems to be turning its sights toward neighboring Iran, which could escalate the current conflict into a regional one. This reckless move comes despite the fact that most experts believe diplomacy is the way to go with Iran. President bush is out of control, and Congress needs to step in immediately to rein him in. Please sign this petition to Congress asking that it require the president to seek its authorization before taking
military action in Iran. Clicking here will add your name to the petition.

The President claimed that Iran is aiding the Iraqi insurgency, but analysts continue to cast doubt on the evidence. Even General Peter Pace of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has questioned the claims that the Iranian government is directly involved. After all, we are already in a war founded on disproved claims of WMDs.

But the reporting of this news is just the latest. Already we have two aircraft carriers in the region--unprecedented outside of war--and Patriot missiles have been deployed. Neither of these will help to protect our troops in Iraq, where most of the fighting is on the ground.

One thing is clear: Military action in Iran would further endanger our troops in Iraq, and threaten to destabilize the entire Middle East. It could even prop up the Iranian president, who is quickly losing popularity in his own country.

We have options: Experts say that sanctions and diplomacy can work. They just worked with North Korea, where we reached a deal last week for them to disarm. And we owe it to our troops to use all of our resources before sending them into harm's way. UN sanctions just went into effect yesterday; we need to give them a chance to work before provoking a regional conflict. It would be a mistake of historical proportion if the Administration thought that the 2002 resolution authorizing force against
Iraq was a blank check for the use of force against Iran-- without further Congressional authorization. Nor should the President think that the 2001 resolution authorizing force after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, in any way, authorizes force against Iran. If the administration believes that any use of force against Iran is necessary, the president must come to Congress to seek that authority.

Can you send a message to your representatives in demanding that Congress check our out-of-control president?

Clicking here will add your name to the petition:

Please also support General Wesley Clark and Iraq veterans, who have also mounted a petition against war with Iran, just announced today at:
http://www.StopIranWar.com

General Wesley Clark helped them launch their effort with these words:

War with Iran is not the answer now. We must work with our allies, talk with Iran, and use all diplomatic, political, and economic options at our disposal. Military force in Iran is not the solution.

Thank you for all you do.
Ilyse, Wes, Mari, Justin and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007

Sources:

1. "USS Stennis Carrier Group Deploys Into Gulf Region," Bloomberg News,
February 20, 2007

2. "Pace Questions Whether Iran Arming Iraq," ABC News, February 13, 2007

3. Hillary Clinton for President. Transcript of floor speech. February
14, 2007

Support our member-driven organization: MoveOn.org Political Action is entirely funded by our 3.2 million members. We have no corporate contributors, no foundation grants, no money from unions. Our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. If you'd like to support our work, you can give now at:
http://political.moveon.org/donate/

PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.