Personal information about the Artist....

The Senate easily passed the bailout bill last night, while most Americans were busy watching the Chicago Cubs lose. The Senate couldn't be bothered to hold a hearing to listen to a single dissenting voice, although nearly 400 economists, including Noble laureates, have pointed out that this bailout will solve nothing.

It’s been one hundred years since the Cubs last won it all and it made me think about the generations that passed down their legacies over that period. In my own Dutch lineage we began with immigrants daring to leave their world behind to start from scratch in another continent. They fought a great war, rebuilt their new lives and worked together to prosper without credit cards or much of a banking system. They relied on each other and had the courage to do the difficult thing when it had to be done. The next generation was a group of their children who quickly became young adults when a famine and worldwide depression took hold. My dad was fourteen when he took over the family truck farm business after the death of his father. His situation was not uncommon. They personally reacted to the effects of their economy and adapated hard changes in their lives to insure the future. My dad’s generation worked hard to sacrifice, survive and save, before they were called to engage in another great war. Mom’s, sisters and brothers adapted to the immediate effects by taking jobs, rationing food and gas and growing ‘victory gardens’. The men that survived the war returned to a different world than the one they left, yet they persevered, restored their families, and worked to save money for the “American Dream” of ownership. They relied on each other and had the courage to do the hard thing when it had to be done.

I can’t tell you the exact reasons why those legacies of work, sacrifice and saving weren’t passed down. Some claim that the process was perverted by mind-numbing pastimes and advertising, but the chain was clearly broken. Our legacy, as it currently stands, will be one of excess. The next generation won’t look back at images of the smiling but lean, grizzled folks I see in our old albums. The next generation will look back on an obese heritage. Obese in every way. Many of us grew fat, lazy, self centered, and materialistic. Our generation was too busy with themselves to safeguard the future. We bought into credit and speculation. We gambled on stocks, we lived beyond our means, we turned our kids over to strangers. We chose entertainment and instant gratification over meaningful relationships. We ‘deserved’ it all and didn’t care about the future as long as we got what we wanted right now.

Today the House will begin deliberations on the same ‘gamblers bailout bill’ that they defeated last week. The substance of the bill is the same except another $150 billion in ‘pork’ has been added. We’ve set a new benchmark for waste. It’s only a trillion dollars! You should be outraged that they’re taking your money and enriching themselves. You should be outraged that they’re dooming your children to failure. You should be outraged that they’re trampling the Constitution! I'm not concerned with revenge or envy. This bill only makes the problem worse and 'mortgages' your children's futures to do it! I’ve faxed and emailed my representatives to let them know what I thought of this ‘obscene’ bill. It was pretty easy. I didn’t have to march on the capitol, I didn’t have to wait in an office lobby for an appointment. No picket signs. No riot police. No war to wage or rationing to endure. All I had to do was take a few minutes away from the Cubs game and hit a few keys on my computer’s keyboard.

Most of our politicians have lied to us. We let them. They’ve put together a scheme to steal from us and enrich themselves and their pals. We let them. Our local banks are not in crisis. Our local businesses have not shut down. Only the most leveraged home and business owners might possibly suffer from this, but this bill won’t help them or us anyway! It is NOT a mainstreet problem. It’s not even a Wallstreet problem. It’s the investment banking gambler’s problems and one of the worst of them, Henry Paulson, will be holding the checkbook with the power of a king vested in him. He joined the Investment banking firm Goldman Sachs in 1974, eventually becoming its chief executive. His compensation package, according to reports, was $37 million in 2005. His net worth has been estimated at over $700 million. Goldman Sachs is one of the few investment banks that has not gone out of business in the past few weeks and its shareholders stand to gain immensely from this bailout. Paulson has personally built close relations with China, which will also gain power and wealth from this bailout since they're allowed to transfer their 'toxic assets' to the U.S. by the terms of this bill. In July 2008 it was reported by The Daily Telegraph that: "Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has intimate relations with the Chinese elite, dating from his days at Goldman Sachs when he visited the country more than 70 times." Is this really the man who you want to trust your country's future to?

My fear is that our generation will be too self-absorbed to be bothered trying to stop this. Please take some time today to contact your elected officials. These websites may be down when you try (another attempt to subvert YOUR system of representation!), but please be persistent. My own Congressman (Jerry Weller) refused to honor his commitment to his constituents and was the only congressman NOT to vote at all. I hope he shows up for the next vote because I’ve already told him what I want him to do-and you should, too! It really is the least we can do now, but its something.

The House website:
http://www.house.gov/

The AFT website:
http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/bailout_092308

Monday 9-29-2008
What a day! Some bad and some good. At the moment, the huge winners in my opinion, are the free-market system and our system of elected and representational government. Keep in mind, this bailout is far from dead, and the ‘new’ version was barely better than the first version that the President and future 'Czar" gave us. I still think it will be repackaged with even more fear mongering and threats in the next few days. Congress is taking a recess after another sessio of childish finger-pointing. These folks have no clue or conscience!

Wall Street pundits and politicians, those with a direct vested interest, will scream that ‘this is what you get’ for failing to pass the bailout plan. The market movers will use the market drop as blackmail to get another vote on the bailout plan. Keep in mind that most of the numbers were already low before the vote (unemployment, the DJIA, NASDAQ, etc.) and a 'yes' vote did nothing to guarantee that it would’ve changed that. If you were responsible, had a broad range of investments and diversified, as you should have, today’s loss wasn’t as painful for you as it was for the major stock gamblers. If you were already looking at the probability of a recession and had moved into stocks and commodities that hedge against it, you weren’t hurt at all. Gold went up. Wal-Mart held quite steady. Oil and gasoline took huge drops making our cost of living a little lower.

On the other hand, our elected officials, for whatever reasons, made a choice to maintain the “American Way” by sticking to a free market system, refusing socialism, and refusing to empower a ‘czar’, who was at best, blind to the problem, at worst an active participant in it. One analogy that comes to mind is that of an athlete having a badly sprained ankle. A sprained ankle is a very bad thing, but pump enough painkillers into the athlete, throw on some tape, and he may be able to return to the game in some lesser capacity. The athlete may score some more points, but eventually that ankle is going to snap completely and then we’ll lose him for the entire season-or worse. Putting a cast on the ankle requires time but will eventually lead to healing and return the athlete to the lineup. We won’t like it, but it’s the lesser of two evils in the long run and leaves us healthy.

Throwing billions at the financial problem would’ve only been a temporary painkiller and tape-job at best, it wouldn’t have changed a thing in the long run. If the recession that follows this mess (no matter what) cleans up the markets, clears out the fraud, teaches everyone to live within their means and gets us to pay attention to the things that count in life it can be a positive….in the long run. That’s the problem, we’ve been programmed to expect instant gratification. We’ve been told that there are so many ‘things’ that we ‘deserve’ and that we have a ‘right’ to, that we forget our simpler past. There are better prescriptions for this problem than giving up our system of economy and government while saddling our kids with the bills and the mess.

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE48O9WP20080925?feedTy...

http://townhall.com/Columnists/JerryBowyer/2008/09/24/the_bowyer_bailout...

http://blogmaverick

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/2008/09/alte...

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=35700

http://www.clusterstock.com/2008/9/two-better-bailouts

I’m disgusted by the common bond found by so many of our elected officials in the last few days-greed and ego gratification. As the most prominent economists in the country voice their objections to a $700 billion dollar bailout plan that will solve none of the problems inherent in the investment banking industry, those who want to be on television and sound important are sounding-off. Never mind the experts. Never mind the American citizen. The House, Senate and President want to cover their collective asses (in reality this IS their fault) and make themselves and their friends even wealthier and more aloof from main street.

I’m amused that Harry Reid is blaming John McCain for “derailing this process”. He’s not responsible, but in the end, Reid may very well be giving McCain the credit for saving the American people from this idiocy and giving John McCain a maverick ride on a populist vote into the White House as the savior for the American ‘regular guy’. “We did not create the problem” says Reid. Yes, you did, sir. He whines about being up until 11 pm ‘working’. Poor baby---how far from our lives are these guys? “I don’t want to bring Presidential politics into this process” Reid claims as he goes on to blame McCain as an interloper into HIS affairs and fawn over Obama’s “precepts set forth for this agreement”! Too funny. Obama’s an economic expert now? Please…..

If Senator Richard Shelby were running for President right now HE’D have my vote. Shelby will come out of this as the winner in the eyes of the American people, just as McCain would have if he’d taken my advice and opposed this ‘Christmas in September for the Super Rich’. Shelby has been the voice of calm, reason, and the common man. If this rape of the American people can be stopped, it will be Shelby who is responsible and he will be my new hero! Republicans are wisely running from their President's ill-concieved plan and that will force this to be an unholy alliance between a Democratic majority and a Republican President whom they viilify as an idiot on a daily basis. Let me reiterate my opinion. This bailout will fail. A recession is inevitable either way. A Democrat President and Majority in power over the next four years will be crucified for being in power as the people suffer from their decisions and remember exactly who backed the bailout.

In the meantime, lets remember, none of this would be happening if we were more like our parents. The generation that survived the Great Depression put their pride and energy into two things: saving money and their kids. My folks were not consumed by living a more lavish lifestyle, not by pampering their kids as a substitute for their abdication of parental duties, not living beyond their means by creating a spiral of debt and overwork to cover their debts. The current generation cried for home ownership. They cried for new, foolish rules to allow them to borrow. They found amoral and weak-willed politicians willing to create new rules that they knew were unsustainable and then in turn allowed banks, brokers, and investors to perpetuate the same sick process knowing it was doomed.

This is a pivotal moment in our history. No matter what happens with this bailout bill the country is about to drop into a massive recession. Those American people who have leveraged their future (and their kids) for the sake of more expensive designer tennis shoes as their car is being repossessed will have to change their ways and learn to find their pride in something less material. We were all taught to believe that the native American was a childish fool for trading his heritage on Manhattan Island for a collection of cheap beads and trinkets in the early days of this country, but what have we done? We trade our self esteem and heritage to places like China and India for our own brand of beads and trinkets. Today we throw away clothes because we’re told that our tastes have become more refined. We buy what we’re convinced we want, not what we need. Our beads have brand names like Nike, BMW, Bose, Sony, Aeropostle, Prada, and on and on. We’re all guilty to some extent and we’ll all have to pay. On the bright side, we may actually emerge as a better country and better individuals for it if we don‘t pass on the costs to our kids and grandkids.

That was ‘better’, not ‘bettor’.

The day you see George Bush and Barney Frank gushing praise for each other is the day you know we’re in it deep! Today is that day. Today is also the day I usually pay my bills, but I just can’t make myself do it right now. Blogging is much more cathartic. I should be spending most of my day working on art, or, in this fine weather, working on my golf. Much of my day has been spent devising a strategy for when the bailout passes Congress. I’ve been looking short term, expecting the market to skyrocket the moment the bailout is leaked (about an hour after members of Congress call their own brokers to buy Fannie Mae) and what to do long term as the dollar dwindles in value as the months and years go by.

Overnight, another bailout was quietly passed which would have been met with outrage in the light of day. The U.S. automobile industry was rescued from their poor decisions over the past decade with a no-interest gift of a mere $24 Billion dollars. Overnight the other credit sectors of the financial community have had their lobbyists demand to be bailed out as well as the incompetent mortgage brokers and auto makers. Credit card companies and auto financing companies that have grown rich over the insatiable appetites of the American consumer want you to pay them your future tax dollars as well as your monthly payments. In effect, they really do want your first-born!

At the very same time, the American taxpayers and citizens have been contacting their government representatives at a rate of between 95% and 99% in opposition to the ‘big’ bailout plan. If there was ever a mandate from the American people, this is it. So we’ll see who owns this country. Will elected politicians, in an election cycle, care at all about their constituents or will they buckle to pressure from both the ultra wealthy and foreign interests? The People’s Republic of Wall Street is putting pressure on our elected officials and I suspect that this bailout windfall is worth buying out every politician on Capitol Hill. Who needs to be re-elected? Despite their very unpopular decision, I'm predicting right here and now that you'll see a lot of smiling public servants who will not be able to contain their glee in the next 24 hours. If you’ve ever chuckled at the term ‘public servant’, hold on to your sides because very soon you’ll be laughing so hard you’ll cry!