Nader/Gonzalez Blast Congress for Approving Backwards Bailout Bill
Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Toby Heaps, 202-471-5833, toby@votenader.org
Statement from Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez Condemning Bailout Bill
Now that Congress has done the dastardly deed in approving Bush’s bailout, Ralph Nader, independent candidate for president, is issuing a call for American taxpayers to summon their members of Congress who voted for this wrongheaded $700 billion bailout of the Wall Street speculators and crooks to meet in a local public auditorium and answer up for their surrender to the corporate welfare kings and banksters.
After the empty champagne bottles are carted away on Capitol Hill and the legislative wastrels receive their signing pens at the Bush ceremony in the White House comes the reckoning back home. The days before the election are when taxpayers have the greatest leverage over their senators and representatives. It is the time when even cowardly legislators can neither run nor hide from the outrage, the sense of betrayal and gross unfairness pouring forth from the people of America of all political backgrounds. No wonder 90 percent of the people believe America is in decline.
Taxpayers can obtain information with much detail taking apart this bailout deal from many sources. The Nader/Gonzalez website contains a ten point plan that shows how to legislate in the public interests of the workers, consumers and tax-payers, punish the wrongdoers and prevent another such financial collapse of casino capitalism from a repeat future rush to Washington to feed at the trough of socialism.
Americans are crying out — ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! For themselves and their children. Summon your senators and representatives to a school auditorium before November 4, 2008 and instruct them in no uncertain terms. After all, your senators and representatives are supposed to work for you, not against you and for the corporate greedhounds and gamblers with your pension, mutual funds and small investor’s money.
Ask why they didn’t require speculators to fund their own bailout while you, the taxpayer, pay 5-10 percent sales tax for necessities. Speculators buy $500 trillion of securities derivatives each year and don’t pay one penny. A mere 1/10 of 1 percent sales tax on purchases of these derivatives would raise $500 billion per year to pay for their bailout. Let the speculators fund their own bailout
Why didn’t they comprehensively re-regulate the financial services industry to prevent future collapses?
Why didn’t they give shareholders the authority to control the companies they own including their out-of-control bosses?
Why didn’t they provide the resources for a corporate crime crackdown?
The New York Times lead editorial this Thursday lamented the "sweetened" version of the bill passed by Senate for doing too "little to avert the defaults and foreclosures that are pushing house values ever downward," and called it "unwise and unfair" to leave struggling American homeowners out of the bailout bill. Why did this bill provide nothing to prevent or avert homeowners’ foreclosures?
Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher chalked up the cause of the financial markets crisis to "a sustained orgy of excess and reckless behavior."
Now Congress has engaged in its own sustained orgy of excess and reckless behavior.
For more information visit votenader.org
