Nobody, That's Who

So AIG used our borrowed money to pay bonuses to the scumbags who sold the credit default swaps that crashed the world economy. There was an amendment in the bailout bill that was supposed to stop that possibility but it got removed in the legislative process. Senator Chris Dodd was the Bill's sponsor and he's getting blamed for it.

That's not fair! Senator Dodd has no clue what happened to the amendment. It disappeared in the House and Senate Conference committee which is supposed to resolve the differences between House and Senate versions of bills and send them back to the two houses of Congress for final passage, which is normally a mere formality.

I listened to three big media news shows where the anchor looked sincerely at the camera and got this wrong. These people are hurting our country. This stuff isn't that hard to get right..And moreover, when a news outlet gets something wrong they should make as big a deal looking sincerely into the camera and correcting their misinformation before they go onto their story about a shark swimming in the ocean off Australia.

So we have two problems...Our big national media...The one sanctified and protected by the Constitution because of it's immense value to the democratic process...sucks big time. Our other problem is that our Congressmen and Senators...The ones we elect to make our laws...have no idea who is making our laws.

Think about that for a second. We live in a country where one of the 100 most powerful people in government, the cosponsor of the amendment in question, has no clue how it got removed in the Senate-House conference committee -- or if it was taken out of the legislation even before it made it into conference.

From Huffington Post

Let's also note that the original bailout bill was a Bush Administration creation and that this was simply a fix to that monstrousity that was added to the current administration's Stimulus Bill. The real blame goes to Bush but that too is lost in the current story.

The blame game would be amusing if it weren't tragic. It's the car thief blaming the owner for his car getting stolen because the burgular alarm was too easily beaten. So who will take the blame?

Peace,

Steve