Blame is Not Accountability

Just before I boarded a transcontinental flight this afternoon, leaving me without access to the real world, I learned that the House of Representatives failed by a sturdy margin to pass the compromise $700 billion bailout of the financial services industry.

Throughout the airport terminal, men and women of all ages huddled around CNN monitors, watching as the stock market took a precipitous drop—at one point 700 points—exactly the reaction Henry Paulson, Treasury Secretary, had told us to anticipate.

How many jobs were lost today? How many families were displaced? How many loans were called? How many retirement funds disappeared? How many college tuition payments went poof? How many dreams were destroyed?

Immediately Republican House Leader Boehner blamed House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi. According to the last reports I read before going off-line, gosh it’s at times like this that I wished I had booked the earlier Jet Blue flight, a majority of Democrats had voted for the bailout. The Republicans had not been able to rally their troops. Understandably this is a very unpopular bill for most Americans. I have grave doubts about its efficacy, but more importantly, I want to know what got us here before we commit the next generation to paying for this crew’s mistakes.

And neither Paulson nor George W. has been a particularly effective spokesperson, unable to explain why taxpayers should foot the bill for Wall Street’s greed and mismanagement. Every time Bush has made a speech in support of this bailout, his approval ratings have gone down further. He is the disgraced president who ironically was saved the embarrassment of attending this summer’s Republican National Convention by a hurricane.

Boehner blamed Pelosi. This isn’t accountability. Before the House vote, Pelosi was accused of giving a speech that sounded too partisan. Her forceful denunciation of the actions that brought us to the brink purportedly forced reticent Republicans into withholding their votes. They didn’t want to sound too much like they wanted a new administration. Here’s Pelosi’s speech so you can see for yourself.

I suspect that the vote was about Republicans being afraid of losing their seats in the House. All of the House is up for reelection, remember, and none of these Republicans wanted to have to explain their votes to angry constituents next week. However, now that the bailout has been defeated, just for the moment, and the market reacted as predicted, these same cowards have political cover so that they can vote for it later in the week.

Accountability would be investigating the way the derivatives market was exploited and manipulated.

Accountability would be investigating which mortgage companies targeted communities of color and convinced hard working men and women that they could afford unaffordable mortgages. Accountability would be investigating the bond houses that rated bundles of those bad mortgages as secure. Accountability would be investigating the banking houses that were pushing these investments on their clients while quietly selling their own institutional holdings. Accountability would be looking into how hedge funds profited and why hedge fund managers don't pay income tax, but only capital gains taxes at 15%.

CNN, in a feeble attempt to conceptualize $700 billion, suggested that it would buy every man, woman, and child in America 20,000 McDonald’s apple pies.

However, this afternoon while lunching with Christine, she told me about one commentator who favored $85,000,000,000 to America in a "We Deserve It Dividend." We don't know who this person is, but here is the Dividend Plan:

To make the math simple, let's assume there are 200,000,000 bona fide U.S. Citizens 18+. Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up. So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billon that equals $425,000.00. My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a "We Deserve It Dividend". Of course, it would NOT be tax free. So let's assume a tax rate of 28%. Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes. That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam. But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket.

This is a far more illustrative example than buying apple pie from McDonald's!!!!