These are trying times, my friends. Even seasoned heros are finding themselves facing unimagined and unimaginable terrors as investment bankers endure periods of joblessness lasting up to three or even four days (psyche! everybody with a bonus of over $5k keeps their jobs) and the American economy craters.
What great and terrible sacrifices will you make? Responses in the comments section, and pass the meme along in a post (with attribution) if you so desire.
Me? I’m giving up laundry. And paying attention to John McCain.
Here’s a brilliant idea: since the US government just announced they’ll use $700,000,000,000 yes, seven hundred BILLION dollars, to buy junk assets, this site, BuyMyShitPile has decided to let the people market their crap directly to the government, no middle man required! As anyone who has seen the interior of my apartment can attest, I’ll be a bajillionaire in no time! Party at raincoaster’s!!!
“I grew up in America and I love my country, but Lord knows, I have to make a living,” Peter Starmeyer, 38, says from the makeshift plywood and cardboard shanty he now calls home on Toronto’s increasingly seedy west side.
“When Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and I lost my job, I had no other choice. The only way for me to keep living the American dream was to move to Canada where businesses value and respect workers and try to help them hold on to their jobs.”
An e-mail that began as a rallying cry from a lone journalist to an influential circle of friends to protest the U.S. government bailout of Wall Street has ignited a national day of street protests. Some demonstrators plan to dump their rubbish in front of the bronze bull sculpture near Wall Street in downtown Manhattan Thursday.
“People are going to bring their own personal junk that they think is worth as much as the junk financial instruments that the government is proposing to buy from the Wall Street banks,” says Andrew Boyd, an activist and freelance online-video artist for nonprofit groups in Manhattan. “We’re hoping that people show up with their 8-track cassette collections, their old Spice Girl CDs, their surf boards that got bit by sharks and old Enron stock certificates.”
This week the White House is going to try to push through the biggest robbery in world history with nary a stitch of debate to bail out the Wall Street bastards who created this economic apocalypse in the first place.
This is the financial equivalent of September 11. They think, just like with the Patriot Act, they can use the shock to force through the “therapy,” and we’ll just roll over!
Think about it: They said providing healthcare for 9 million children, perhaps costing $6 billion a year, was too expensive, but there’s evidently no sum of money large enough that will sate the Wall Street pigs. If this passes, forget about any money for environmental protection, to counter global warming, for education, for national healthcare, to rebuild our decaying infrastructure, for alternative energy.
This is a historic moment. We need to act now while we can influence the debate. Let’s demonstrate this Thursday at 4pm in Wall Street (see below).
We know the congressional Democrats will peep meekly before caving in like they have on everything else, from FISA to the Iraq War.
With Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie, AIG, the money markets and now this omnibus bailout, well in excess of $1 trillion will be distributed from the poor, workers and middle class to the scum floating on top.
This whole mess gives lie to the free market. The Feds are propping up stock prices, directing buyouts, subsidizing crooks and swindlers who already made a killing off the mortgage bubble.
Worst of all, even before any details have been hashed out, The New York Times admits that “Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it,” and its chief financial correspondent writes that the Bush administration wants “Congress to give them a blank check to do whatever they want, whatever the cost, with no one able to watch them closely.”
It’s socialism for the rich and dog-eat-dog capitalism for the rest of us.
Let’s take it to the heart of the financial district! Gather at 4pm, this Thursday, Sept. 25 in the plaza at the southern end of Bowling Green Park, which is the small triangular park that has the Wall Street bull at the northern tip.
By having it later in the day we can show these thieves, as they leave work, we’re not their suckers. Plus, anyone who can’t get off work can still join us downtown as soon as they are able.
There is no agenda, no leaders, no organizing group, nothing to endorse other than we’re not going to pay! Let the bondholders pay, let the banks pay, let those who brought the “toxic” mortgage-backed securities pay!
On this list are many key organizers and activists. We have a huge amount of connections – we all know many other organizations, activists and community groups. We know P.R. folk who can quickly write up and distribute press releases, those who can contact legal observers, media activists who can spread the word, the videographers who can film the event, etc.
Do whatever you can – make and distribute your own flyers, contact all your groups and friends. This crime is without precedence and we can’t be silent! What’s the point of waiting for someone else to organize a protest two months from now, long after the crime has been perpetrated?
We have everything we need to create a large, peaceful, loud demonstration. Millions of others must feel the same way; they just don’t know what to do. Let’s take the lead and make this the start!
AGAIN:
When: 4pm – ? Thursday, September 25.
Where: Southern end of Bowling Green Park, in the plaza area
What to bring: Banners, noisemakers, signs, leaflets, etc.
Why: To say we won’t pay for the Wall Street bailout
Who: Everyone!
Labour Day isn’t just an excuse for a long weekend. The idea behind a weekend is, some people actually do work hard enough through the week that they need two days of rest at the end of it, or the value of their labour will steadily decline over a relatively short period of time.
I’m no longer (thankfully) in the group for whom that is physically true, but posting seven days a week is exhausting in several rather unexpected ways, and so I’m taking time off the blogs and will see you all on Tuesday.
Of course, quite a lot of people (most people in the US, according to several studies I’ve seen) no longer have full employment with two days off each seven; the average worker has one to three part-time jobs, and substantial difficulties synching up their days off. This, plus the outrageous protests of, say, the fruit industry that they cannot find workers (try having fewer convictions for slavery and assault, more benefits, better wages…you get the picture) to pick one at random, is proof that those battles need to be re-fought. Some day they’ll be won again.
Meanwhile, enjoy this hands across the ocean video of Billy Bragg’s “There is Power in a Union” set to a slideshow of American workers through the 20th Century.
Stolen from Cord at the very good Mollygood, and here you thought gossip blogs were all fluff!
Everyone is talking about this Recession, saying that all the numbers are in and it’s a sure thing. Yet, I see no breadlines, hear no word of Wall Street defenestrations (must! pray! harder!). But today proof has emerged that the dreaded Recession, with its associated Stagflation (which sounds like a half-boner at a Bachelor Party) and other related, undead terms rising from the grave of the Seventies, has returned to haunt us like the ghost of Sonny Bono.
What dismal form has this proof taken? Nothing less than a video showing that the noxious poison of the economic downturn has the very GODS in its gory paws.
These are trying times, my friends. Even seasoned heros are finding themselves facing unimagined and unimaginable terrors as investment bankers endure periods of joblessness lasting up to three or even four days (psyche! everybody with a bonus of over $5k keeps their jobs) and the American economy craters.
raincoaster 