Michele Bachmannn makes over $169,000 a year, her husband owns a psychiatric clinic, and yet she collects federal farm subsidies from a farm she doesn't even live on. Why are hard-working Americans paying that bill? |
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Remember when that fiasco went through? I don't have the actual numbers but it pushed through citing totally bogus estimates for how much the program would cost. No sooner had it passed when the estimates more than doubled. This bank bailout bill (it's the banks being bailed out here, not mortgagees), is going to cost far more than $25 billion. The "real" number estimates I am seeing are $500 billion. I this is the first but unnecessarily sloppy step in nationalizing Fannie and Freddie. It would be more honest and efficient to just get on it now rather than all of the looting that will happen from now until after the elections and how harmful this is to Wall Street and to the housing market as the unavoidable correction is extended over years instead of months. Kind of like being electrocuted gradually.
Next catastrophe: the upcoming "drilling" bill that compromises to the Dems' demand for "cracking down" of speculators. Just wait and see what happens to volatility when liquidity is sapped out of the market. It will look like the bond market looks today. Markets exist to discover price. It is not a free market if legislators "regulate" in lieu of the regulators by stomping on everyone.
We are witnessing a bipartisan willful destruction of free markets in America. There markets will simply move elsewhere like London and Dubai. Yeah, let's elect one of the two globalist liberals running for the United Establishment Party. We don't need government solutions, we need less government but better regulatory enforcement of sensible and efficient regulations. |
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Sorry folks, I have my own personal trolls. |
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We keep being told that Fannie and Freddie, the entire banking system actually, is in good shape and that the "blank check" Paulson insists he needs won't be used. Then why does he need it? Keep in mind that by the time the spending floodgates open, there will be a new president, a new Treasury Secretary and a new Congress. There is no putting this genie back in the bottle once it is out. We are witnessing in our own times how big government, for fear of how recessions tarnish the appearance of their power, bring about depressions. We are inching to the precipice while being led by blind and arrogant people. Where is the GOP in this? This is yet another Bush administration surrender. |
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Reads like it might be from one of Michele's dedicated blogger/stalkers. Bill? Eric? Eva? Is that you? |
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where did JSM support cracking down on speculators and when did JSM support bailing out Freddie and Fannie. Thanks for your citations. |
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"Rescue" and "Prevention" in the title of a government bill I relexively grab for my wallet to try to keep it from getting lifted. |
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gotta bail out those crooked lenders, greedy speculatin' house flippers, and stupid buyers. It's the American Way. By the way, does everyone understand that this bill will encourage lenders to dump the worst loans, ie, the inner-city and cheaper housing areas. You know, the people that Congress supposedly wants to help. Sheesh.
Next up: the four day work week and guaranteed 10 weeks off per year. |
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McCain frequently cites speculation, "obscene profits" by companies as knee-jerk bugaboo comments. He is so clueless when it comes to the economy that he isn't even in the game. |
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Just a guess but even though Congress is about the biggest bailout bill ever for the benefit of banks, their stocks are getting crushed. Fannie is down 20% as I write this. The market is voting that there is no solution behind the bailout. Kind of like handing the family fortune to the Grimm Reaper to come back tomorrow. The only solution government has for every problem is to print money. It doesn't work. |
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to write something on this, here. Did you know that five of the top ten Minnesota counties for foreclosure rates are *in* Bachmann's congressional district?
So does it puzzle anyone that she'd rather lecture you guys on gas prices--a subject she has no background in, no experience in, no knowledge of, and no power to affect (as the 363rd most influential person in Congress.) She much rather do what gets you boys turned on (parrot conservative talk radio "thinking" on energy)--than do something about home foreclosures on families in her district.
Does that bug you at all? I mean, some of the poor suckers whose homes were being threatened presumably voted for Bachmann, with the understanding that if she was elected, she wouldn't leave them high and dry and bankrupt and homeless. These are people who work for a living, we're talking about here. These are people who voted for Bush, and damned the Democrats--this is the Sixth District of Minnesota.
That's who she walked away from, with her "no" vote. The reason she did it isn't "principle"--she has none; she lies, easily, that's a fact. She slavishly supports big government policies of Bush, Cheney and the Hastert Congress.
It's not principle; it's the fact that she's being groomed for a higher office by the wealthy conservatives who tell you monkeys what to think and do, every day. And I know you will vote for her when you get the chance, even if she *demonstrates* to you--as here--that she will cut your economic throats, if it's in her interest.
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She's leaving the working families "high and dry and bankrupt and homeless". That rotten, good for nothing b**ch!!
Who would actually have the audacity to expect working Americans to actually pay their own mortgage? The nerve!!
Why do we even send representatives to Washington is we can't count on them to print us some money when we overextend ourselves and can't take care of ourselves!!! |
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How much of my mortagage is the government going to pay off?
Oh, I forgot, I've been making my payments, didn't borrow more than I could afford, and have been responsible.
I'm the one that gets to pay for others irresponsibility. |
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(see what i did there? how I've linked Bachmann, you know - BTO! and my subject lines?)
so, what they ought to do is break em up! Break them up into a dozen little banks and let them compete. The market will fix it fast. Apparently, the W administration has taken a likeing to JimmaCarta's idea that all you need to do is print more money.
VaPat, if only you were illegal you'd prolly get even more $$$ back;) |
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--you guys keep using words like "irresponsible," "greedy," terms like "unwillingness to pay."
That's kind of weird to me, because I know something about the community affected here by the mortgage and credit crisis (which was hitting this area for a long time before Bachmann got into office.)
The thing I know, that might make a difference in your analysis--is that rural Minnesotans--work. They're not "greedy," "irresponsible," "unwilling to pay." Rural Minnesotans are basically "born working."
So here you have a case in which families who tended to vote GOP were betting on the future--which, according to Bush and his GOP Congress, was going to be rosy. Tax cuts would bring prosperity; the end. They trusted that the prosperity of the nineties would continue, or at least would return shortly--because that was what the President and GOP promised them, in return for policymaking authority.
These people are not financial experts, like the institutions that "irresponsibly" loaned these "bad risks" the money to buy their home. But they're not "bad risks," either--as I pointed out, these are people who work: the very Americans that the Republican party claims to represent--but won't represent, when it comes down to the loss of their homes.
And, though you refuse to see it: the effect of losing the homes doesn't just extend to the foreclosed. It's the communities that are being bailed out, here. If homes start to shut down in those areas and bankruptcy rises--what does that do to the equity (ie, life savings) of surviving homeowners in that neighborhood? What does that do the business life of the local towns, the shopping areas, the car dealerships, etc.? |
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So a lot of people who *can* pay their mortgages are being bailed out here, too. Congress is trying to head off a national economic disaster.
I know, I know; as long as your family's financially okay and your tax burden isn't being raised, you think the country's doing just fine economically. This is the conservative "s----w all the other Americans" policy. But tell me--why are you guys okay with Michele Bachmann, a lawyer/congressman collecting farm subsidies on your tax dime?" Why are you guys willing to turn a blind eye to a taxpayer-funded freebie like that, when you're outraged about the fact that you're being taxed to bail out home ownership for working Americans?
It's that kind of "turn a blind eye to Republican tax dollar piggery" that leads critics to charge that you guys are actually proto-fascists (loyal to the leaders and the movement) rather than true conservatives (loyal to the principle, to the rational.) |
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where'd you get that idea or is this just a diversion? I thought Minnesotans were educated. If so, why'd they buy more than they could afford?
I agree with you that the W economy was only a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sky, now that we know it was propped up on printing money. But when i found out an associate of mine got a big house on his salary, by himself, with no money down - I declined the same offer as I knew it smelled. Now the market is good for me and others like me who have gone to the cash system.
Some people will just have to move. |
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So if I read you, you don't like Michelle Bachman? Is that the main thrust of all your posts? Mission accomplished. I'll make a note of it "BillP doesn't like Michelle Bachman." There. |
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But if that's all you can see--I can't help that, Phil.
Maybe if I put it to you another way: most people would have tough time with a politician who rails against "irresponsible, blank check government spending"--and at the same time, accepts those checks from the government. Personally.
A politician and a party that have always backed an administration and GOP congress who cuts those checks to her--"printing more money", as Scarlet Pimpernel puts it--isn't likely to be the cure, is she?
Pimpernel, I'm glad that you'll own up to the fact that "that the W economy was only a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sky, now that we know it was propped up on printing money." But there were plenty of liberals telling you that that was the Bush economic plan, even before he was elected. I'm glad some of you are finally waking up to that reality, but there are still way too many conservatives who continue to insist on drinking that economic Kool-Aid. McCain knows that, that's why he suddenly began to sing on the conservative side of the choir; he's selling the same economic poison, these days.
And maybe you don't like farm subsidies, but here we are faced with a blog by Congresswoman who just loves 'em, so long as she is the recipient. So: can a person accepting tax dollars that she doesn't need, be considered a conservative--just because she talks the conservative B.S. and the GOP talking points while accepting a free gift of your tax money?
It's just talk, talk radio thinking, hot air (as you have seen with the Bush admin.) In Bachmann's case=our tax dollar subsidies to her family=good, your tax dollar subsidies to families in her district facing foreclosure=bad.
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sorry, BillP, we cons see you and W and Johnny Mac as continuing problems - not solutions.
Here's how it has devolved:
Reagan - Bush - Dole - W - Democrap with an "R" next to his name who deliberately undermined the party and its majority status.
This must stop. |
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...if you're a "real" conservative, you've never had a conservative you could vote for, have you?
Your "devolution":
Every name on that list, including Reagan, especially including Reagan--was a liberal big spender when it came down to it. So was the Gingrich DeLay Hastert Congress.
The problem is that one in politics sincerely believes in conservatism as a principled approach to government. It's just a rhetoric to get you guys out to vote for Republicans--which you do, again and again, even though they burn you time and time again.
And conservative voters will continue to vote for charlatans and frauds in the GOP and on talk radio, who parrot back what their target audience wants to hear: never believing for a second that American government can operate the way you guys want it to. (This politician, Bachmann, doesn't believe in your conservatism either--but she will happily and repeatedly tell you that she does, and people like you will voter for--because where else you gonna go, pal?)
I would tell rank-and-file conservatives to grow up and get real about how America's worked since before 1900--but I know there's no chance that that's gonna happen; you guys have too much invested in this emotionally. |
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Completely wrong. Reagan always submitted sensible budgets that we OFFICIALLY declared dead on arrival. The Democratic Congress always passed much larger budgets than Reagan submitted. Reagan did his best with what he had, including a staff that was more loyal to GHW Bush than to him. Bush took over a balanced budget yet never submitted a balanced budget and the budgets Congress approved were almost always smaller than his. Yet much of Bush's fiscal disaster was created by unbudgeted special appropriation bills and gigantic new entitlement programs. And Gingrich Congress was instrumental in pinning Clinton down on eventually balancing the budget.
The current budget crisis is largely the creation of the GOP for forgetting why they gained majority in the first place and is why they are now out of power. |
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I wrote an entry a while back (two actually) on how humans really want a King to rule them and the other one was about how conservatism is not practical in the political realm. But, even you, SHOULD admit that too far is too far. Having McCain run as a REPUBLICAN is insane. You are all of ye bonkers. You're so far gone you don't even realize it. It is madness.
Trying to put McCain in the same ballpark as Reagan won't work. What we cons don't get is why y'all don't understand that Bill Clinton won by going to the right, W won by fooling us to the right, and Reagan had a landslide by being pretty far to the right.
One huge point - None of the above names ever tried to pull their party down to raise themselves up except John "Maverick" McCain.
Call us "The 300". Or compare us to the brave souls at the Alamo. Whatever. We'll not go gently into that good night. |
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It is uncanny how supposed conservatism has devolved.
My dad was a died in the wool, blue dog democrat. He was a union man who worked for the railroad his whole life. He would never have voted for Obama, but would have loved McCain. That's where we have gone. McCain is no conservative, he's my father's democrat.
I'm with you. Enough is enough. |
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Bill P.............has drawn the ire of conservatives by lambasting Ronaldus Maximus!!!
Oh........and Michele Bachmann voted AGAINST the FARM BILL which provided subsidies!!!
Lets get the facts out there!!! |
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I'm with you in terms of McCain........He's pathetic but where do we go??? I liked Ron Paul/Romney...........but now who???? |
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You know guys, I tried to post here to address your concerns, but the blog is not letting it go through.
Testing, testing... |
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Two conservatives, Phil says I'm completely wrong about history, Scarlet says I'm right. How can that be, if you're both conservatives looking at the same set of historical facts?
The answer is that Phil is wrong. Bill the liberal and Scarlet the conservative are the ones seeing the facts--Scarlet is able to see them even though he's completely opposed to me, ideologically. Phil, I'm sorry, you're drinking that LSD-laced right wing koolaid that they still dispense in the conservative media--the stuff that makes you dream that big spending, Tip O'Neill bill signing Reagan was conservative (just because people agreed to call him one.)
I know that there are people who will go to their graves hailing Reagan as a great "conservative" president, just as there are people who insist that history will vindicate W. There's nothing that I can do about it except point out that it's a form of madness and denial that you need to accept in order to remain a conservative in good standing. (I think of Buckley's joke, made in the 80s, about "the new Ronald Reagan movie: Rebel Without A Clue.")
The fact is--conservatives trade principle for political power, every time. Principles (small government, more individual liberty, fiscal discipline) are the first thing to go, after "they get in." Thirty years of experience of that seems to have taught the thirty percent of the voters that call themselves conservative: nothing.
Cosmetic victories, only--no smaller government, no fundamental reforms, just a bunch of right wing talk that gives you another corrupt congress that spends your money on pork and incompetent liars for presidents.
Which is just as well--the "big secret" that top conservatives know (but you don't) is that effective government of the US in accordance with conservative principle would not only be rejected by the American people--it would be impossible.
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I agree, let's get the facts out there. If she voted against the farm subidies--why is she, and the rest of the Bachmann family, still *taking* the farm subsidies?
You see what I mean? It does you and me no good to have a politician who votes against government handouts, but takes 'em anyway (personally!) How are you guys ever going to get anything remotely resembling a conservative into office, if someone like Bachmann satisfies your standard for "principled?" Can you see why Bachmann and other self-styled conservatives secretly despise your intelligence, at the same time they flatter your perception?
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The era of personal responsibility is now over. A report on CNN at the beginning of this debacle, with a woman whining that she could no longer pay the mortgage on her $309K home because she and her husband ONLY MAKE $79K a year sounded the alarm. How could they possibly be responsible for the payments!?!?!? Why work? Take your handout, and when the teat has dried up there, claim yourself as an illegal alien and get free education, healthcare, housing, food, etc....we the hardworking tax payer are paying the tab. Damn! |
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I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We’re the workingest state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours, we have people that are working two jobs.
Michele Bachmann
Now I see why she is opposed; if you can't pay, work more hours |
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Please act responsibly and return it to the federal government that you despise so much. After all, you earn $169,300 a year as a member of Congress and don't even live on a farm. So why are you cashing farm subsidy checks? Over $250,000 in taxpayer dollars have been paid out to the Bachmann Family Farm in federal farm subsidies. Where's the outrage about that pork Michele? |
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