I owe you an apology.  I said some pretty mean things in the heat of your Presidency, and now that I’ve had some time to cool off, I want to tell you that I’m sorry and how much I’ve changed.  I said some pretty awful things: I called you “the worst President ever,” a “war criminal,” and linked your Presidency to the end of democracy.  But I now know, it wasn’t you, it was me.

I didn’t realize that starting wars in the Arab world didn’t even need Congressional authorization!  You went above and beyond the call of law by getting authorization to use military force to spread democracy and liberate people from their evil dictators who we used to prop up.

You used signing statements to let Congress know which of its laws you planned to ignore.  Sure President Clinton used them first, but only a few times.  But now that President Obama has used them dozens of times, to specifically set aside any Congressional oversight, I realize that it is the prerogative of the Commander in Chief to decide what laws should be enforced and which laws should be ignored.  At the time I laughed at you for proclaiming yourself “the decider,” but now I realize you were just being honest.

Your illegal wiretapping scheme really made me mad.  Imagine the thought of the government being able to listen in on my phone calls, emails, text messages, any communication you want, just say it’s in connection with a “terrorism” investigation and it’s yours.  Of course I thought that seemed wrong at the time, and so did Senator Obama during the brief period of time he was campaigning to people like me, riled up and angry partisans.  But now that he is President he is keeping and extending all of your eavesdropping programs, and blocking any meaningful attempts at oversight.

You used Guantanamo Bay to imprison people you kidnapped from foreign countries and hold them outside of any established legal framework.  You invented an extra-judicial legal system to hold show trials so that the American values that we are supposedly at war to protect could never be applied to a new class of persons you called “enemy combatants.”  But after vowing to change all of that in a heated campaign, President Obama has reversed himself and is continuing to keep the prison open. He’s even going farther than you are and re-writing our laws to enable “indefinite detention” and do things that our founding fathers specifically designed our constitution to prevent.

Then there was the torture. You spent a great deal of energy at a high level of government deciding how much simulated drowning was too much, which positions hurt the most, and how much sleep deprivation would break someone but all the while being (mostly) careful not to kill anyone.  But President Obama has continued your policies, even applying them to PFC Bradley Manning, a US Citizen just like me, whose conditions of imprisonment are so objectionable that Amnesty International, The UN, and hundreds of leading American law professors have tried to get his torture to stop.  When Hillary Clinton’s spokesman was caught on the record objecting to Manning’s treatment, he was summarily fired, which means that Obama and Clinton seem to think the torture regime you came up with was a pretty good idea, President Bush.  I don’t know why I got so upset before.

One of the reasons your Presidency seemed so upsetting was because all of the thing you were doing were shrouded in Secrecy.  Even when you were sued by the ACLU you claimed broad privileges not to provide certain evidence, citing “state secrets.”  But President Obama obviously thinks you had good reason to do so, because he has expanded his use of state secrets privilege, not only using it to hide evidence but as grounds to dismiss entire cases because the people cannot know about what is being done in our name.

What little the public knew about the things you were doing came from leaks in your administration.  Although you made a lot of noise about prosecuting leakers, you never went as far as President Obama in actively prosecuting leak cases and making clear that the wrongdoing that is exposed by whistleblowers pales in comparison to the crime of speaking to the press.  Sorry again.

Of course there were also the tax cuts.  I thought you were so awful when you took the $237 billion dollar surplus we had in 2000 and got rid of it in one fell swoop by giving it away to the already-rich.  What a conniving, awful, and very Republican thing to do!  Until of course, President Obama made it a priority to use the final hours of a Democratic Congress to extend your tax cuts to the very wealthiest.  I know the country is broke fighting all of those wars, but obviously you were on the right track by making sure the wealthy keep their money so that it could trickle down to the rest of the population.  Very smart policy!  I now realize I was so wrong to object to your bi-partisan wisdom.

You made a lot of noise about the Social Security crisis — apparently it’s going to run out of money somewhere around 2040.  But even though you claimed a mandate to hand over my retirement to the salivating Wall Street bankers, you were never able to touch it.  I hated you for wanting to dismantle one of the crowning achievements of our liberal democracy.  But now that President Obama is soberly devoted to doing the same thing, I realize you were just a visionary, trying to do the right thing years ahead of your time.

In fact, I don’t really remember why I thought you were so awful at all, Mr. President.  It seems that with very few exceptions, President Obama has continued with all of your policies and priorities.  He does have a way of making me feel like he’s really smart and knows more than I do about stuff in a way that you, Mr. Bush, always made me wonder if you really knew what you were doing.  But it turns out you did!  You knew exactly what you were doing, because it was the same as this smart man who we all love, who really has his hands tied.  You must have had a hard time, President Bush — no wonder you were always so annoyed by reporters who asked you questions.

I don’t mean to insult you by saying that there’s no difference between you and President Obama.  I’m sure you know there are some very important differences.  And the blind partisan supporters of both of you will magnify the differences and will be very angry at the comparison, because to acknowledge the truth would make everything they worked for and believed in seem meaningless.  But the reasons that I hated you above all others from your party, the reasons that I thought you were singularly awful, those have been rendered meaningless and silly in the two short years since you’ve been gone.  In those most important ways, you’re no different than your successor, and we just don’t seem able to get all that worked up about it when he does it.

So please accept my sincerest apologies. I hope you’re having a great time in Dallas, or wherever you moved to after the photo ops at your “ranch” in Crawford were no longer needed.  Say hi to Laura, she always seemed to get the short end of the stick. (Is she considering a run for Senate now?)  And if you’re up for having a beer sometime, let me know.

Yours in citizenship,

Jon Marcus

One hundred prominent economists from the country’s leading universities have signed a letter to Congress saying that this bailout is unnecessary. Many members of both parties who still hold core beliefs and are not high-dollar recipients of Banking Industry political contributions oppose this bailout. The American public opposes this bailout by decisive margins in every poll conducted.

What’s the rush? The economy is not actually collapsing. None of the doomsday scenarios being proffered are very specific. Our government always reserves the right to close the markets and force a national bank holiday if things were to suddenly go south. Meanwhile, how about holding hearings, building support, and working transparently? That is the way representative government is supposed to work.

The most disturbing aspect of this “bailout” bill is how much power it vests in the Treasury Secretary. In fact, the most historically significant thing about this (Democratic-led) Congress is how much of its own Constitutionally-mandated power it has permanently ceded to the Executive Branch. Just like the Democratic-markup of the Bush surveillance law that passed this summer, this bill pays lip service to oversight and makes cosmetic suggestions that the Democrats can use in form-letters and talking points that address issues important to their constituents, but which are only in this bill as options to be used entirely at the discretion of the Treasury Secretary. That is not governing, that is cynical posturing, and it could spell the downfall of the party.

This bailout is a deeply shameful bill that will alter the fate of our country forever by assuming ballooning debt that will keep us in hock to our creditors like a third world country unable to govern itself. It does not “socialize” private businesses, as many on the right complain; it essentially privatizes our government and turns it over to banks and private corporations.

Government intervention in our economy is not the issue: that is often a good and necessary thing. This particular intervention, however, is being done in such a hurry and so in secret, controlled by the very people who got us into the mess, with the cooperation of the very people who have betrayed every principle of our democracy. We must do everything in our power to stop this bailout if that is still possible, and we must do everything in our power to defeat our Members of Congress who vote for it, no matter how much we may “like” them.

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Listen to Rep. Kaptur speak clearly on the “bailout:”

Kaptur has never been too friendly with the corporate wing of the party and has failed to play party politics well enough to capture any influential committee chairs.  In 1996 her strong stance against NAFTA invited a bid from Ross Perot to be his running mate, which she rejected.

A religious Catholic, Kaptur holds more moderate-to-conservative views on abortion and stem-cell research, and has broken with the rest of the Congressional Progressive Caucus on a couple of votes on those issues.  She does not, however, oppose Roe V. Wade, and believes in the right to privacy and keeping government regulations out of personal decisions.

She voted against the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force and frequently speaks out against the war.

Kaptur is a holdout from the old, pre-Clinton Democratic Party, elected from what used to be a reliably populist-Democratic state, who served with Senators John Glenn and Howard Metzenbaum, in then always-blue Ohio.

[Full disclosure: I worked on Rep. Kaptur's campaign staff in 1990.]

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Dear Madame Speaker,

We are concerned about the Bailout Bill proposal submitted by the Administration. Some of us believe that the bill should be paid for by taxes on the top 1%, and/or should include transfer of equity interests in the bailed-out entities to the government. Some of us question whether a bill should be passed this week.

In any case, we believe the bill would be improved by the following:

1) Supervision. The Secretary of the Treasury shall not enter into any contract until it is approved by a bipartisan three-member Board. Before we pass the bill, Bush must unequivocally agree to appoint one person selected by the Speaker and one selected by the Senate Majority Leader to the three-member Board. Asset purchase agreements of less than $1 billion and service contracts providing for fees of less than $10 million are exempt from this requirement.

2) Phased Authorization. Congress should authorize only $200 billion now, while committing itself to pass additional authorizations in the future, as necessary, up to $700 billion. This would give Congress the ability to monitor and improve the program. Otherwise, once Bush gets the $700 billion, he will veto further Congressional fine-tuning.

3) Fast track for Regulatory & Corporate Governance Reform. Throughout the 111th Congress, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, shall have the extraordinary powers to call up any bill dealing with corporate governance and/or financial services reform under the following rules: the bill shall be subject to limited debate, followed by an up or down vote. If the bill does not include this provision, next year Wall Street can hire 4100 lobbyists to persuade 41 senators to delay any reform bill until it is diluted.

4) US Investors Only. No mortgage-related asset shall be purchased under the bill unless it is established that such asset was owned on September 20th, 2008, by an entity headquartered in the United States. (We have no collective position on whether a U.S. entity should be disqualified because it is owned by a foreign parent.)

5) Obligation to invest in the United States. Any entity selling assets under this bill to the United States must agree to invest the proceeds of such sale in the United States for no less than five years.

6) Tough Standards on Executive Compensation. As to any entity (or affiliate thereof) selling assets to the Treasury, any executive compensation contract calling for compensation in excess of the amounts which are deductible under Internal Revenue Code Section 162(m) is hereby void as against public policy.

7) Homeowner’s States Rights Not Preempted. The federal government shall comply with all state and local laws which protect the homeowner, not withstanding any argument that the federal government is exempt [from] the reform.

8) Reports to Congress. The reports to Congress required by Section 4 of the Paulson Act shall be rendered every 2 weeks.

9) Minority and small business contractors; Buy American. At least 10% (in dollar volume) of the asset management contracts and advisor contracts must be small enough that a firm of 100 or fewer staff could perform the contract. Otherwise, minority and small business will be effectively excluded. In contracting with private entities for services regarding the acquisition and management of mortgage-related assets, the Secretary of the Treasury shall be bound by all applicable laws designed to benefit minority-owned businesses, women-owned businesses, and small businesses and shall be bound by all applicable “Buy American” provisions.

10) Review. Section 8 of Secretary Paulson’s proposal should be deleted. The actions by the Secretary shall be reviewable by administrative agencies and the courts, as provided by existing law.

11) Valuation. The Treasury shall not pay more for any asset than the asset’s fair market value.

We believe the bill should also include appropriate homeowner protection/bankruptcy reform, and appropriate economic stimulus.

Some of us also support a surtax on excessive compensation received by executives of bailed-out entities.

From: Representatives Brad Sherman, Peter DeFazio, Lloyd Doggett, Donna Edwards, Bob Filner, Rush Holt, Mike McIntyre, Bobby Scott, and Donna Christensen.

Where is your representative on this issue?  Your Senator and Congressman are probably panicked.  Time for them to hear from you!

Dear Friend,

The U.S. government has been turned into an engine that accelerates the wealth upwards into the hands of a few. The Wall Street bailout, the Iraq War, military spending, tax cuts to the rich, and a for-profit health care system are all about the acceleration of wealth upwards. And now, the American people are about to pay the price of the collapse of the $513 trillion Ponzi scheme of derivatives. Yes, that’s half a quadrillion dollars. Our first trillion dollar compression bandage will hardly stem the hemorrhaging of an unsustainable Ponzi scheme built on debt “de-leverages.”

Does anyone seriously think that our public and private debts of some $45 trillion will be paid? That the administration’s growth of the federal debt from $5.6 trillion to $9.8 trillion while borrowing another trillion dollars from Social Security has nothing to do with this? Does anyone not see that when we spend nearly $16,000 for every family of four in our society for the military each year that we are heading over the cliff?

This is a debt crisis, not a credit crisis. Just as FDR had to save capitalism after Wall Street excesses, we have to re-invigorate our economy with real – not imaginary – growth. It does not address the never-ending war on the middle class.

The same corporate interests that profited from the closing of U.S. factories, the movement of millions of jobs out of America, the off-shoring of profits, the out-sourcing of workers, the crushing of pension funds, the knocking down of wages, the cancellation of health care benefits, the sub-prime lending are now rushing to Washington to get money to protect themselves.

The double standard is stunning: their profits are their profits, but their losses are our losses.

This bailout will not bring real jobs back to America. It will not bring back jobs that make things. It does not rebuild our schools, streets, neighborhoods, parks or bridges. The major product of this financial economy is now debt. Industrial capitalism has been destroyed.
In the next few days I will push for a plan that includes equity for every American in any taxpayer investment in this so-called bail-out plan. Since the bailout will cost each and every American about $2,300, I have proposed the creation of a United States Mutual Trust Fund, which will take control of $700 billion in stock assets, convert those assets to shares, and distribute $2,300 worth of shares to new individual savings accounts in the name of each and every American.
I will also insist that all of the following issues be considered in whatever Congress passes:

Reinstatement of the provisions of Glass-Steagall, which forbade speculation
Re-regulation of the finance, insurance, and real estate industries
Accountability on the part of those who took the companies down:
a) resignations of management
b) givebacks of executive compensation packages
c) limitations on executive compensation
d) admission by CEO’s of what went wrong and how, prior to any government bailout
Demands for transparencey
a) with respect to analyzing the transactions which took the companies down
b) with respect to Treasury’s dealings with the companies pre and post-bailout
An equity position for the taxpayers
a) some form of ownership of assets
Some credible formula for evaluating the price of the assets that the government is buying.
A sunset clause on the legislation
Full public disclosure by members of Congress of assets held, with possible conflicts put in blind trust.
A ban on political campaign contributions from officers of corporations receiving bailouts
A requirement that 2008 cycle candidates return political contributions to officers and representatives of corporations receiving bailouts
And, most importantly, some mechanism for direct assistance to homeowners saddled with unreasonable or unmanageable mortgages, as well as protection for renters who have lived up to their obligation but fall victim to financial tragedy when the property they live in undergoes foreclosure.

These are just some thoughts on the run. You will hear more from me tomorrow.

Dennis J Kucinich
www.Kucinich.us
216-252-9000 877-933-6647