Tell your Representative to vote NO!
I am angry. I know that is a shock, but so are most Americans, we are angry, and we are confused.
In the last seven and a half year, since George W. usurped the Presidency, 6 million Americans have slipped out of the middle class and are in poverty, and even working families are lining up at emergency food shelves in order to get the food they need to feed their families.
Since President Bush has been in office, median family income for working-age families has declined by over $2,000. More than seven million Americans have lost their health insurance. Over four million have lost their pensions. Consumer debt has more than doubled. And foreclosures are the highest on record. Meanwhile, the cost of energy, food, health care, college and every other necessity has soared.
While the middle class has declined under Bush's reckless economic policies, the people on top have never had it so good. For the first seven years of Bush's tenure, the wealthiest 400 individuals in our country saw a $670 billion increase in their wealth, and at the end of 2007 owned over $1.5 trillion in wealth. That is just 400 families! 1.6 Billion EACH!
We have the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any industrialized country on earth, with 1 percent earning more total income than the bottom 50 percent!
The top 1 percent owning more wealth than the bottom 90 percent!
We are living at a time when we have seen a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the very wealthiest people in this country, when, among others, CEOs of Wall Street firms received unbelievable amounts in bonuses, including $39 billion in bonuses in the year 2007 alone for just the five major investment houses! The bonuses alone could be used to buy up the speculated securities!
The incredible greed of the financial services industry manifested itself in the hundreds of millions of dollars they have spent on campaign contributions and lobbyists to convice lawmakers to write favorable legislation in order to deregulate their industry so that hedge funds and other unregulated financial institutions could profit. They play with trillions and trillions dollars in esoteric financial instruments, in unregulated industries which no more than a handful of people even understand, yet we base our ENTIRE economy on them.
The financial services industry has charged 30%interest rates on credit card loans and tack on outrageous late fees and other costs to unwary customers. Despicable predatory lending practices where designed to take advantage of the desperate and the uninformed. Millions spent in marketing them to the working poor as a way to a better life.
Now there is the bailout package in which you are being asked to place at risk $700 billion, which is $2,200 for every man, woman, and child in this country. You're being asked to do that in order to undo the damage caused by these greedy Wall Street fucktards. In other words, the "Masters of the Universe," those brilliant Wall Street cocksuckers who have made more money than the average American will ever even see, have brought our financial system to the brink of collapse; for their own gain! Now, as it all swirls down the toilet, these billionaires are demanding that we, the middle class, which has already been ass-raped under Bush's brilliant economic policies, pay to fix the shit that they broke!
My friends and neighbors did not earn a $38 million bonus in 2005 or make over $100 million in total compensation in three years, as did Henry Paulson, the current secretary of the Treasury, and former CEO of Goldman Sachs.
My friends and neighbors did not make $354 million in total compensation over the past five years as did Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers.
My friends and neighbors did not cash out $60 million in stock AFTER a $29 billion bailout for Bear Stearns after that failing company was bought out by J.P. Morgan Chase.
My friends and neighbors did not get a $161 million severance package as E. Stanley O'Neill, former CEO Merrill Lynch did.
Yet these greedy fucks are the ones controlling our financial future.
In the last seven and a half year, since George W. usurped the Presidency, 6 million Americans have slipped out of the middle class and are in poverty, and even working families are lining up at emergency food shelves in order to get the food they need to feed their families.
Since President Bush has been in office, median family income for working-age families has declined by over $2,000. More than seven million Americans have lost their health insurance. Over four million have lost their pensions. Consumer debt has more than doubled. And foreclosures are the highest on record. Meanwhile, the cost of energy, food, health care, college and every other necessity has soared.
While the middle class has declined under Bush's reckless economic policies, the people on top have never had it so good. For the first seven years of Bush's tenure, the wealthiest 400 individuals in our country saw a $670 billion increase in their wealth, and at the end of 2007 owned over $1.5 trillion in wealth. That is just 400 families! 1.6 Billion EACH!
We have the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any industrialized country on earth, with 1 percent earning more total income than the bottom 50 percent!
The top 1 percent owning more wealth than the bottom 90 percent!
We are living at a time when we have seen a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the very wealthiest people in this country, when, among others, CEOs of Wall Street firms received unbelievable amounts in bonuses, including $39 billion in bonuses in the year 2007 alone for just the five major investment houses! The bonuses alone could be used to buy up the speculated securities!
The incredible greed of the financial services industry manifested itself in the hundreds of millions of dollars they have spent on campaign contributions and lobbyists to convice lawmakers to write favorable legislation in order to deregulate their industry so that hedge funds and other unregulated financial institutions could profit. They play with trillions and trillions dollars in esoteric financial instruments, in unregulated industries which no more than a handful of people even understand, yet we base our ENTIRE economy on them.
The financial services industry has charged 30%interest rates on credit card loans and tack on outrageous late fees and other costs to unwary customers. Despicable predatory lending practices where designed to take advantage of the desperate and the uninformed. Millions spent in marketing them to the working poor as a way to a better life.
Now there is the bailout package in which you are being asked to place at risk $700 billion, which is $2,200 for every man, woman, and child in this country. You're being asked to do that in order to undo the damage caused by these greedy Wall Street fucktards. In other words, the "Masters of the Universe," those brilliant Wall Street cocksuckers who have made more money than the average American will ever even see, have brought our financial system to the brink of collapse; for their own gain! Now, as it all swirls down the toilet, these billionaires are demanding that we, the middle class, which has already been ass-raped under Bush's brilliant economic policies, pay to fix the shit that they broke!
My friends and neighbors did not earn a $38 million bonus in 2005 or make over $100 million in total compensation in three years, as did Henry Paulson, the current secretary of the Treasury, and former CEO of Goldman Sachs.
My friends and neighbors did not make $354 million in total compensation over the past five years as did Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers.
My friends and neighbors did not cash out $60 million in stock AFTER a $29 billion bailout for Bear Stearns after that failing company was bought out by J.P. Morgan Chase.
My friends and neighbors did not get a $161 million severance package as E. Stanley O'Neill, former CEO Merrill Lynch did.
Yet these greedy fucks are the ones controlling our financial future.