"Cash for Trash" protests break out all over U.S.

From IPS International News:

ECONOMY-US: National Protests Erupt Over Bailout Plan

Haider Rizvi

NEW YORK, Sep 25 (IPS) - The George W. Bush administration's plan to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to rescue giant Wall Street firms from their current financial meltdown has unleashed a spontaneous wave of protests across the United States.

"Cash for trash," shouted activists who gathered near Wall Street to express their outrage at Bush's proposal to buy bad debts of financial institutions at the cost of 700 billion dollars of taxpayer money.

Protesters said they want the Congress to protect millions of U.S. citizens who are on the verge of losing their homes due to bad lending practices of creditors instead of doling out public money to big investment firms responsible for ruining the economy.

"People are up in arms about this," Matt Holland of the TrueMajority.org, an advocacy group comprising 700,000 members that played a major role in organising the protests, told IPS. "Our members are livid. They're hitting the streets."

According to the group, thousands of people in more than 190 cities and towns across the country took part in demonstrations against the corporate bailout bill proposed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson last Friday.

The four-page draft bill, which is currently under discussion on Capitol Hill, did not initially require any legal and financial measures to protect homeowners from possible foreclosures, nor did it put any limits on the salaries of the corporate executives -- although legislators say that has since been amended.

On Thursday, Democratic and Republican lawmakers declared they were close to reaching a deal on a modified version of the bill, but still there was no indication if it would pass the Senate and the House.

"While many are focused on providing relief to the Wall Street, millions of homeowners are at risk of being left behind," said Janet Murgula, president of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights group.

To Murgula, "it is irresponsible public policy to ask taxpayers to foot the bill for a Wall Street rescue package while simultaneously denying them a sustainable response to the devastation the rising foreclosures rate is having throughout the country."

Independent presidential candidate and populist consumer advocate Ralph Nader agrees.

"The public outrage out there is really enormous," he said in an interview with the left-wing television programme Democracy Now!, calling the Bush proposal "a double standard between the guys at the top and the people who are going to have to pay the bills."

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Still more video footage from St. Paul

After reading about the Texas beach front land grab, and watching yet another video of stormtroopers in black body armor bullying bystanders in a park... well its kind of ridiculous, but I can't seem to get a song out of my head. (Didn't we used to sing this when we were little kids?)

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

I looked up the lyrics of the song and discovered something I didn't even know... it was written by Woody Guthrie!

And here is the rest of it; the part we didn't sing in kindergarten:

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND
words and music by Woody Guthrie

Chorus:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Chorus

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Chorus (2x)

Guess Woody tried to warn us -- but his song was censured.

I'm starting to see the bricks

The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, pull back the curtains, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.

- Frank Zappa

When did our government decide that we citizens are the 'enemy?' Or has it always been this way? Appears Zappa was right after all. I'm beginning to see the bricks.

During the Clinton administration, I had this weird idea that we Americans were one nation. Oh, and that 'liberty and justice for all' bit still held true; or so it appeared. Perhaps we were all still asleep. These days, Clinton is golfing with Bush Sr. Makes you wonder.

Police break up anti-war meeting in Washington

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Mounted police charged in to break up an outdoor press conference and demonstration against the Iraq war in Washington on Thursday, arresting three people, organizers and an AFP reporter said.

"The police suppressed the press conference. In the middle of the speeches, they grabbed the podium" erected in a park in front of the White House for the small gathering, Brian Becker, national organizer of the ANSWER anti-war coalition, told AFP.

"Then, mounted police charged the media present to disperse them," Becker said.

The charge caused a peaceful crowd of some 20 journalists and four or five protestors to scatter in terror, an AFP correspondent at the event in Lafayette Square said. No one appeared to have been hurt.

Three people -- Tina Richards, the mother of a marine who did two tours of duty in Iraq; Adam Kokesh, a leader of the Iraq Veterans Against the War group; and lawyer Ian Thompson, who is an organizer for ANSWER in Los Angeles -- were arrested, Becker said.

I'm reading 'Presidential Courage' by Michael Beschloss. Fascinating book.

One of the things that has really stood out in the initial chapters (about George Washington and John Adams) is how... wonderfully unruly and free these early Americans were, to speak their minds and to get involved in their government. As I read, I see what real freedom looks like. And boy - we have lost it. I fear any semblance of free speech is hanging by a thread.

Perhaps that is why I test it so often out here on this blog. This is my wind sock.

These early patriots were in the streets demonstrating all the time; and their voices were heard. We really were a 'government by the people.'

This of course was before the banks and the corporations took over. The difference is painfully obvious - and I stress 'painfully,' because I am realizing more every day how much we have become like the old Soviet Bloc... how much we have lost of our wonderfully unruly democracy.

The frog in the pot is boiling now. Bush just tosses aside the laws he doesn't like and makes new ones to suit his and his corporate cronies' interests. The Constitution... to him, is just a 'damned piece of paper.'

We are definitely not the country we were. Lincoln used to welcome the widows and mothers of soldiers into his home; he didn't have them arrested.

But then... surely Bush is no Lincoln.