Yesterday, the House voted to extend the legal ability for the Export-Import Bank to run . . . for another nine months. The people’s legislature passed the “stop-gap” measure, 319-108, with both bipartisan support and bipartisan opposition.
Just last month, President Obama expressed dismay that Republicans would be against it.
“For some reason,” he intoned, “right now the House Republicans have decided that we shouldn’t do this. . . .” He pretended to incredulity and puzzlement. He gave the usual reasoning for the subsidized financial guarantees, and insisted that “every country does this.”
“When,” he asked, “did that become something that Republicans opposed?”
Obama could’ve asked all those members of his own party who opposed it.
But then, he could have asked himself. Back in 2008, he very clearly put the Ex-Im Bank on the theoretical chopping block. Candidate Obama gave the big business bank up as a program that “didn’t work” and one that had become “little more than a fund for corporate welfare.”
So why the change of mind, Mr. Obama?
Has the Ex-Im ceased being a fund for corporate welfare?
No. It’s still there, propping up big businesses doing business abroad — indeed, multinationals abroad, the kind of companies that Obama’s Occupier friends despise so deeply.
What has changed? He’s in power, now. And that power derives from the mighty federal purse, filled by taxing hundreds of millions of Americans, and used to give hundreds of millions and billions in benefits to the few, the insiders.
President Obama and the congressional leadership of both parties are tighter than ever with special interests.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
7 replies on “For Some Reason”
I’ve come to see that education of the American population will be the only way we can break the corruption in Washington. An excellent way to educate them is by ensuring people have to pay out of their own pockets, and making sure they SEE this money going from their pocket to these criminals. The FairTax looks to be a great alternative that has a chance of being passed. IF people who are paying attention get behind it. It isn’t a perfect plan but that is the reason it has a chance to become law. It is revenue neutral which I see as a problem in that it doesn’t cut the amount of money government can spend. What it does, however, is remove all taxation from paychecks that people don’t pay attention to and puts it up front on your purchases where you will see it every time. It eliminates the IRS and having to file and comply with the tax code which is a HUGE gain of power from the government to the people. I would encourage all who read here to look into it. It has much promise.
Good idea but it ain’t ever gonna happen. Wanna know why?
The Federal Reserve is desperately trying to destroy the dollar. Why? Because they know they cannot ever pay the debt back(even if the debt stayed the same and only interest rates moved back into normal ranges) so the only thing to do is destroy the dollar, cheapen your labor so that the Chinese and everybody else will be more on parity with our labor.
The Federal Reserve is quietly telling the powers that be “if you shrink government, subsidies, idiotic programs that flood money all over the economy that we will implode into a smoking heap and take all banks, insurance companies and pension funds down with it”. Maybe they stave this all off for a few years but your children will pay a heavy price for this lunatic monetary & fiscal policy.
Google a paper called “Back to Mesopotamia” written by The Boston Consulting Group. They already have a plan for what to do when the whole thing implodes. What is it? It’s wealth confiscation. Read it.
Right on, Rick.
The amount that’s owed is in excess of $220 trillion. To put that in perspective, that is more than 3 times all the money that currently exists in all of the economies in the world. Collapse is the plan.
I’m with you Mr. dagney. Political decisions are no time to refuse the good while hoping for the perfect.
Drik,
We’re on the same page. Add in those $77trillion of derivatives that dominoe the whole business structure and it’s nothing but a smoking heap..
Aside from the Obamatron being exposed as hypocritical–I’m beginning to think the Reverend Wright diatribes were closer to his corrupt little heart and agenda all along–all this ‘easy money’ has got to come to an end sooner or later. My thoughts are we bite the bullet and step-function reboot the whole money and credit system overnight. Maybe with a year-long transition to purely private money and banking. Because of the government’s massive commitments, however, I also propose along with Thrive (http://thrivemovement.com) that defense (war) spending be cut in half immediately.
What gets me, is the hypocrisy of Democrats who claim Republicans are the party of the 1%, while they vote for corporate welfare almost unanimously. This vote is an exception, as the bill does much more than fund the Import/Export bank, but the fact that legislative leaders didn’t separate it shows they are 100% for the bank.
About half of our GOP reps vote consistently for more corporate welfare as well, validating Mr. Jacob’s “President Obama and the congressional leadership of both parties are tighter than ever with special interests.”