Gov't reaction to Wall Street meltdown like ''punishment'' of Prescott Bush for hiding Nazi money

If an ordinary citizen gave aid and comfort to our arch-enemy in World War II, they would have at minimum expected to spend the rest of their lives in prison or more likely, ended up like the Rosenbergs, executed for helping the Soviets.

Prescott Bush's bank was managing assets of a Nazi financier, including a steel plant that made heavy use of concentration camp labor. Far from being unaware of this, Bush mentioned it in correspondence and was concerned that his bank's ''interests be protected.'' The government found this activity troubling enough that they seized the banks assets under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

Bush's punishment for his involvement?

You would think he would have at least ended up like John Walker Lind, stripped naked, blind-folded, and held in solitary until the trial that put him in prison for life (or shortened his life).

Instead, the whole business was hushed up and he later won a Senate seat.

It seems that something similar is going on with Wall Street today. Can anyone doubt that Wall Street's concerted effort to get themselves deregulated, their Rube Goldberg maze of shell corporations and off-shore accounts, and intentional defrauding of ordinary investors, mortgage holders, and retirees has done more damage to our economy than Tim McVeigh, Osama bin Laden, and all the other terrorists to ever blow up anything in the US combined?

And in fact, the connection to terrorism is not just by analogy, but literal. To the degree that we face a legitimate terrorist threat, it is because business interests demand to be put ahead of human rights, democracy, and even the national security of the United States.

The foremost example of this is how we treated Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev hoped to transition to a European-style social democracy, but the investor class and banks wanted a Russia that was easy to plunder of their natural resources and industry. The result was the standard of living and even life expectancy in Russia DROPPED after the fall of communism, and Putin succeeds partly because he is trying to reclaim their dignity by standing up to us. Oil companies interest in stripping Russia of their oil, gas, and pipeline income further antagonizes a Russia that we now no longer have an ideological beef with. In effect, for the sake of corporate profits, we are reigniting a Cold War with an enemy with thousands of nuclear weapons.

Worse, business is a direct cause of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the Bush administrations failure to bring a quick conclusion to the War on Terror. Those in the Islamic world do not hate us for our freedom, but because we take theirs away to ensure that our oil companies have compliant governments to deal with, from overthrowing the democratically elected secular government of Iran in the 1950s to backing the oppressive Saudi government for decades. Oddly, even though the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 found direct involvement of the Saudi government in the attacks nothing was done about it. Whether this was done because we didn't want to jeopardize business ties with Saudis or because the Saudis were doing the Bush administration a favor with the attack, neither is acceptable.

And yet, the punishment of the wealthy who endanger and loot us like this will be much like Prescott Bush's. The public will use our taxpayer dollars to clean up their mess, and they will continue to live lives of leisure and be free exercise their power as ''masters of the universe'' even though they are masters of nothing but moving our money into their pockets.

I have no problem with capitalism in theory, but in practice, we can no longer afford a financial elite that not only ignores the law, but buys our politicians and makes the indefensible legal.

Any solution to this current problem has to involve putting the fear of God or at least fear of the wrath of the American people into these spoiled sociopathic trust fund babies, the likes of which no financial elite has felt since the Russian or even French Revolution.

Anything less than that leaves America and the world at risk from more attacks by these economic terrorists who make 9/11 look like a toddler's temper tantrum.

Bailout Looks Like Giving Jeffrey Dahmer Steak Knives

What has been done with the bailout money so far?

• massive parties

• executive bonuses

• paying dividends

• bank mergers

There is a real underlying problem, but the bailout looks more like giving Jeffrey Dahmer a new set of steak knives than an actual solution.

I sent the following letter to my senators, congressman, the speaker of the house, and senate majority leader:

Dear (Insert Congress Stumblefuck's name),

Please do everything in your power to stop further bailouts to Wall Street and corporate America.

The money given to Secretary Paulson to distribute as he sees fit has been spent on lavish parties, dividends, executive bonuses that exceeded the amount the firm received in bailout money and worst of all, bank mergers.

If a bank is too big to fail, it flies in the face of reason that getting BIGGER will somehow solve the problem.

Frankly, Congress going along with this bailout with only token squeaks at accountability reeks of Third World levels of corruption.

There is a real problem, but the solution should not be a reason for those who caused the problem to celebrate. They are literally economic terrorists threatening and doing real harm to most Americans.

Instead, they should be wondering how to pay their bills on the part of their bank accounts that aren't frozen, whether the forensic accountants will find all their off-shore accounts, and if they are cooperating with federal prosecutors enough to avoid serious prison time.

Secretary Paulson himself and those in the Bush administration who put together the initial proposal and those who benefit from this most should be subject to a RICO investigation not handling more taxpayer money than the cost of the Iraq War.

The solutions we need are far tougher regulation, oversight, and most importantly, welding shut the revolving door between corporations and elected office.

Further, given the epic scale of this corrupt handout to Wall Street, Congress cannot return in January and say you can't afford programs for the middle class and poor.

The Republicans have just suffered an epic defeat, but if Democrats think they can hold power by being just 5% less corrupt than the GOP, you will join them in the ash heap of history.

Sincerely,

To write your Congressmen & Senators and tell them to stop the open corruption and draining of our tax dollars to make the rich richer, click Uncle Sam:

After Gitmo, Obama to close Club Fed prisons for Wall St. economic terrorists

Close on the heels of announcing he will close the Guantanamo Bay prison where alleged Islamic terrorist are held, Barack Obama said today he would immediately end the system of separate prisons for economic terrorists. Obama explained:

"We need to have one justice system for all Americans, even domestic terrorists who drain pension funds, break functioning businesses, destroy jobs, and corrupt our political process, all to enrich a very few."

"Instead of being sent to regular prisons with the Americans most effected by their crimes, they are sent to segregated prisons with carpet, tennis courts, pools, little threat of prison rape, and in general, little to distinguish the prison from the country clubs where they spend most of their time hatching terrorist plots to attack middle class Americans while they're playing a round of golf or sipping umbrella drinks by the pool."

"These gentlemen need a punishment that fits the magnitude of their crime."

"If a nineteen year old kid who sold a dime bag of pot has to go to the bathroom on a steel toilet with no privacy, that's where Wall Street scammers who stole hard-working Americans dreams of a safe retirement should have to go to the bathroom."

"If that nineteen year old kid is in danger of being raped by his roommate, forced to dress like Paris Hilton, and be bought and sold for cigarettes as a sex slave, that's where Wall Street terrorists belong who said they needed $700 billion of our tax dollars to keep our economy from collapsing then took the money and spent it on lavish parties, bonuses for execs and dividends. The only thing that's unfair about that is I can't imagine anyone giving up one cigarette for Henry Paulson's sorry, withered ass."

Critics of Obama's plan to put Wall Street economic terrorists in mainstream prisons argue that prison rape would not serve as a deterrent since it is very similar to the initiation ceremonies of fraternaties and secret societies the execs joined in college. An unnamed bald male escort said far from finding the experience unpleasant, many of them pay top dollar to relive it again and again.

Obama did hold out a fig leaf to Republicans and corporate-controlled Democrats:

"I have said that I wanted to reach out to my opponents, and I meant it. Many Republicans in Congress have said this proposal is too harsh, that we should have more compassion on these terrorists. They think we should just give them therapy and a hug instead and make them promise never to do it again."

"I disagree, but in the spirit of bipartisanship, I am offering an alternative to these trust fund babies gone wild who have never contributed anything to society: they can avoid prison altogether in they join the Army and serve in the infantry anywhere our troops are in combat around the world for as long as their prison sentence would have been. "

"They would not be eligible for promotion or any leadership positions since they have shown that they cannot be trusted with the safety of anyone else. Instead, they could be used to clear IED's, as decoys to draw enemy fire, and as human shields for any troops with missing or defective body armor."

"If their parents and fraternity brothers want keep them out of harm's way, they would be free to lobby for any ongoing wars to stop, but given the love these people have for money, their relatives probably prefer to cry at their funerals than lobby themselves out of war profits."

President-elect Obama went on to say that Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson would be an excellent first choice for the financier to cannon fodder program.

"He put the deal together, his firm abused it, I think it's only fair that he be the guinea pig to see how this reform works."

Obama added that he couldn't comment on whether President Bush or Vice President Cheney would be joining Paulson until after the inauguration .