Mark it up - for the sake of hystery

Public Markup now has the "TARP" bill up in a nice format, along with comment threads.

I gather it's being called the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. (Roll call here).

What's odd is, in the past, the USian mass has not seemed too bothered when various Powers were given (or considered as possibly to be given) to Asshats Public Servants to serve as czars overseeing drugs or other terrifying, fearsome, or otherwise emergencifying bugbears from the black lagoon.

But somehow here, the middle class and its wingnut angels see a problem with greasing the skids of commerce if the commerce is abstract, has international dimension, and doesn't have some goober from Kansas with his pitchfork standing in front of it.

what it is

"...while we've all heard stories about how much waste and inefficiency there is in our military spending, this is always portrayed as either "corruption" or simple inefficiency, and not what it really is -- a profound expression of our national priorities, a means of taking money from ordinary, struggling people and redistributing it not downward but upward, to connected insiders, who turn your tax money into pure profit

"the basic dynamic is transnational companies raiding the cash savings of the middle class.

"These fantasy elections we've been having -- overblown sports contests with great production values, decided by haircuts and sound bytes and high-tech mudslinging campaigns -- those were sort of fun while they lasted, and were certainly useful in providing jerk-off pundit-dickheads like me with high-paying jobs. But we just can't afford them anymore.

"we all liked to imagine ourselves in the wealthy column, or at least potentially so, flush enough to afford this pissing away of our political power on meaningless game-show debates once every four years."

Economic Realities Are Killing Our Era of Fantasy Politics via wood s lot