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You’ll Still Be Able To Sleep In Your Car

As Congress is once again about to be stampeded into a disastrous policy by a faith-based Administration that refuses to disappear before it wrecks our lives completely, yet another twist of the knife is being contemplated by our economic masters. They now want (this is no joke!), they really now want to not only take over the toxic mortgage debt generated by a wacky crowd on Wall Street, they now want (this is no joke!) to take over uncollected and probably-uncollectable car loans and credit card debt.

The potential consequences of this latest notion of the frightened little men who have stolen our economic futures are so many, so varied, and so awful, they hardly bear mention on a website that can be accessed by children under 12–whose lives, by the way, are certainly going to be less pleasant because of present doings on The Street and in the Capitol.

Let us thus focus on at least one good thing that may come out of these 18-wheeler dealings: Protection for our right to sleep in our own cars.

You see, just as Congress will almost certainly move to keep people with toxic mortgages in their homes, they will likewise almost certainly move to protect those of us who are obliged to sleep elsewhere–shelters, tents, and yes, cars–to retain at least the latter as a night-time dwelling place.

Let us therefore praise the fine men and women now working so diligently on our behalf in Congress. True, they could put off adjourning for a few weeks to get the massive restructuring of the economy right. But that would be too much to ask folks who know the transcendental importance of their own reelection.

Just let me keep the right to sleep in the old Chevy. Do that for me, dear elected official, and you’ll sure ’nuff get my backing at the polls.

  • kritt11
    For those who have lost their house, you can borrow one from the senior Sen in Arizona- he doesn't even know how many he owns.
    For those sleeping in the car-- here's a cheery thought--- if the bank repos the car
    just borrow one from McCain--- he has 13 of them! (Obama only has 1)
  • jwest
    Michael,

    Try to calm down and post a link to whatever the hell it is you’re talking about.

    (I hope you didn’t buy one of those little sub-compacts. Not a lot of living space.)
  • kritt11
    According to WaPo, there's currently a dispute over executive pay and golden parachutes. The Pubs and Paulson are trying to preserve it as is- The Dems would like to cut it.
  • jwest -- I'm not sure, but Michael could be extrapolating from this (link.)

    I, too, felt my stomach drop when I read it.
  • Silhouette
    We are the government. There is no "they" in government. We run the damn place! Don't forget (as much as "they" want you to).

    If our representatives saddle us with tycoon bailouts and bailouts of gamblers' bad risks, we will remember.

    No bailouts for anything other than FDIC insured. Anything else is illegal. Taxpayers can sue the people and lobbiests/their companies responsible elsewise and take it all the way to The Supreme Court. We will be watching this closely and will be keeping tabs on who approves what. The candidate's party who shores up just mortgages by assisting payments for mortgagees...not buying up mortgages but keeping goverment out of the private sector and letting the business live again...we will put in office in November.

    Parties be warned. We're watching you..

    We know this is all about patting the rich guy's back and leaving the poor out at the curb. You have ONE CHANCE to get this right. And remember, you screw the working stiff again and you'll slit all your own throats..nothing like the French Revolution of course...financially and figuratively speaking...
  • jwest
    Polimom,

    “Extrapolating” would be a kind representation if the NY Times article is what put him in a lather.

    From my original reading of Michael’s article, I was left with the impression that somehow the Bush administration was promoting bailing out credit card companies.

    We’ll know later when he stops hyperventilating and tells us what he’s talking about.
  • Silhouette
    "The French Revolution (1789–1799) was a period of political and social upheaval in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based on Enlightenment principles of nationalism, citizenship, and inalienable rights.

    These changes were accompanied by violent turmoil, including the trial and execution of the king, vast bloodshed and repression during the Reign of Terror, and warfare involving every other major European power. Subsequent events that can be traced to the Revolution include the Napoleonic Wars, two separate restorations of the monarchy, and two additional revolutions as modern France took shape.

    In the following century, France would be governed variously as a republic, dictatorship, constitutional monarchy, and two different empires...

    ..Louis XV fought many wars, bringing France to the verge of bankruptcy, and Louis XVI supported the colonists during the American Revolution, exacerbating the precarious financial condition of the government. The national debt amounted to almost 2 billion livres. The social burdens caused by war included the huge war debt, made worse by the monarchy's military failures and ineptitude, and the lack of social services for war veterans...

    [Sounding familiar yet?]


    ..interpretation asserts that the revolution resulted when various aristocratic and bourgeois reform movements span out of control. According to this model, these movements coincided with popular movements of the new wage-earning classes and the provincial peasantry, but any alliance between classes was contingent and incidental."

    Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution
    ***********
    "that the revolution resulted when various aristocratic and bourgeois reform movements span out of control."

    Sound more familiar and a bit contemporary...hmmmm?

    Those Congresspeople who don't know history may be doomed to repeat it. Not saying the guillotine should come back into use. But maybe we should chop off the financial heads of the irresponsible aristocratic and bourgeois?

    Although...down at the pool hall where minds operate on a less benevolent wavelength than mine, I've heard grown men chattering (while drunk with false courage) about how they'd like to get their guns and shoot some rich people. (Kid you not!).

    One wonders how long that courage will remain false and suddenly switch to real if whole groups of these hard-working or recently unemployed men start sober conversations of what to do about suddenly not only having their jobs removed to give a higher profit margin to the aristocrats, but also are made homeless from an inability to meet their monthly bills.

    You know how idle hands can be so restless...

    *shudders*

    If you love your democracy so much rich folks, and the big profits you can make on its stability..just think of this

    "An inefficient and antiquated financial system unable to manage the national debt, both caused and exacerbated by the burden of a grossly inequitable system of taxation.
    The continued conspicuous consumption of the noble class, especially the court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette at Versailles, despite the financial burden on the populace.
    High unemployment and high bread prices, causing more money to be spent on food and less in other areas of the economy. "
  • Silhouette
    There's more...

    [Pay attention kids, this may be your last history lesson]

    "The immediate trigger for the Revolution was King Louis XVI’s attempts to solve the government’s worsening financial situation. In February 1787, his finance minister, Loménie de Brienne, convened an Assembly of Notables, a group of nobles, clergy, bourgeoisie, and bureaucrats selected in order to bypass the parlements, special courts with the power to register royal edicts, who saw themselves as upholders of traditional constitutional constraints on the monarchy. The Controller-General of Finances, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, asked the Notables to approve a new land tax that would, for the first time, include a tax on the property of nobles and clergy. The assembly did not approve the tax, but instead demanded that Louis XVI call the Estates-General, a representative assembly of the estates of the realm, last called in 1614. On 8 August 1788, the King agreed to convene the Estates-General in May of 1789. By this time, Jacques Necker was in his second turn as finance minister.

    As part of the preparations for the Estates-General, cahiers de doléances (books of grievances) were drawn up across France, listing the complaints of each of the orders. This process helped to generate an expectation of reform of some kind.

    There was growing concern, however, that the government would attempt to gerrymander an assembly to its liking."
    ********

    You know, if I didn't know this was coming from a link on history, I'd say I was ready today's issue of the New York times.

    BEWARE OF HASTY AND ILL-THOUGHT FINANCIAL DECISIONS THAT BENEFIT THE RICH AND SCREW THE POOR.

    It's funny how history repeats itself. The basics of greed never seem to change over thousands of years..
  • daveinboca
    Hilarious! I was just reading Nikolai Bukharin's The ABC of Communism and part of his text seems to have been cribbed by Wikipedia and channeled by an one of Lenin's "useful idiots."

    Bukharin, of course, was the ultra-left's ultimate working class hero until Stalin had him shot in the head. Just like those people who think the Rosenbergs were framed, there's at least one born every minute.

    The Who said it best: "Meet the new boss........."
  • DLS
    Well, Dave in Boca, Obama did get kudos from a relative of Saul Alinsky, too.

    As to the Dems in Congress, they're predictably threatening to make things worse. They want to limit executive compensation (illegitimate unless the feds actually take over ownership to a vote-dominating extent among the shareholders, or take over the institutions of note completely), and now there is talk of having judges rewrite mortgage contracts so those who face foreclosure avoid it. They're buying the votes of losers again, and effectively stealing property from the institutions unless they give the insitutions whatever reduction in income results from such action by the judges, or if the properties are seized by the feds.
  • sleepfree
    Sleep free is a right
    I have been sleeping in my mini van part time for over 6 years. I make over 50,000 a year and own 3 rental properties not in ca. I work 4 / 10 hour days and only sleep in my van Sun - wed nights I go to the gyms and never drink or do drugs and yet I find it hard to sleep for free in the S.F bay area. We are turning into a corporate Communist Sate over time and a lot of people are willing to spend 1/2 to 3/4 of there pay check on rent. Instead of buying rare cars and land to get ahead of inflation which is the enemy our society. If we can not make sacrifices for our future then we are being controlled by corporate society. Where and how to sleep for free.
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