Dear Representative Mitchell,

I am a constituent of yours living in the Shalimar neighborhood of Tempe, and I am writing to you to request that you resist and vote against the proposed bill by the Bush Administration to use tax payer funds to purchase real estate related securitized debt obligations, or other financial products, from private banks or any other seller. If the Treasury Department wants to use taxpayer funds to repay FDIC insured accounts fine. If the Treasury Deparatment want to use tax payer money to make loans to consumers or business as a market participant because the existing so called finance industry now refuses to do so fine. But to buy worthless assets with tax payer funds (that will be itself borrowed) that enrich private commercial interests (why do you think the stock market just went up) is outrageous. The Administrations conclusory argument that we have to do this or we get a depression is not substantive. They have not made public any coherent argument that that is the case or that buying worthless assets is a solution. The meeting with congressional leaders where supposedly everyone was scared with non-public information sounds like the same type of non-public and false information given out in the meetings before the Iraq war and look where that got us. Low stock prices is not a crisis, its either an accurate reflection of companies’ values or a buying opportunity. The only companies that need a high stock price or their fundamentals fail are frauds like Entron and that is the vibe this whole thing has. You don’t fix an Enron problem by throwing money at Enron. We have had 200 years bankruptcy law in this country, put it to work for the non-commercial banks, and have the fed take over insolvent commercial banks just as it did in the late 80’s. The liquidation value of these mortgage backed securiites will be determined in these processes and they will be sold to private investors, not taxpayers for insane premiums. One of the reason stated for this whole effort is to stabilize home prices. Using taxpayer money to prop up inflated home prices (prices that have disconnected from the peoples incomes to carry the debt service on them) is awful policy. Ironically none of these measures enables homeowners to restructure their home loans based on the liquidation value of their homes like one can do with nearly every other type of loan due to an exception secured by the lending industry in the bankruptcy code. If you struck that exception you would have given homeowners all they need to stay in homes that they can actually afford without a dime paid by the taxpayer. Finally, its my sense that you pretty much do whatever the Congressional leadership tells you to do. I am sorry if this perception is incorrect, but if it is incorrect please show some indepedence now and push back against this godawful 700 billion dollar trainwreck being rammed down our throats. Pardon the harsh tone of this email but it is a very important issue, maybe along with the Iraq war funding bills, one of the most important votes of your career.

Mark Giunta

The whole purpose of NCLB is to dumb down the middle class.

And there you have it.

circa some time in the Republican fantasy:

A union? What’s a union?
A social safety net? What’s that?
FDR? What’s that, fudder?
Voting?
Buddy, you’re talking some foreign language and I’m here to tell you we don’t stand for that around here.

[presumably Pelosi’s statement] makes sense to me

Isn’t it amazing how simple things can be if only it’s done right. Heh.