Nothing Has Changed

November 4th has come and gone but the Bush administration and the Republicans are still in power. It's cool that Barack Obama won the election. I'm happy about it too. But we need to stop pretending that everything is fixed and it's all sunshine and rainbows. The truth is that on November 4th, we received a better chance of future change. Nothing has changed yet.

Here are two new examples of how painfully true this is.

Utah Land Grab

The Bush administration used the fact that we were distracted on Election Day to hide their plans to hurt our country for their own gain...again. On the afternoon of November 4th, while we silly citizens were all voting and waiting for the results of the election, the Bush administration's Bureau of Land Management announced a December 19 land auction that will put oil drilling platforms around a National Park so beloved that it is pictured on Utah's license plates.


Here's how AP described it:

SALT LAKE CITY – The view of Delicate Arch natural bridge — an unspoiled landmark so iconic it's on Utah's license plates — could one day include a drilling platform under a proposal that environmentalists call a Bush administration "fire sale" for the oil and gas industry.

Late on Election Day, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced a Dec. 19 auction of more than 50,000 acres of oil and gas parcels alongside or within view of Arches National Park and two other redrock national parks in Utah: Dinosaur and Canyonlands...

In all, the BLM is moving to open 359,000 more acres in Utah to drilling.

They’ve been using the Department of Defense to steal oil profits from the Middle East. They’ve been using the Environmental Protection Agency to stall any progress towards alternative methods of energy. They’ve been using the Justice Department to cover up their crimes. They’ve been using Congress to allow the purchase of legislation by companies. Now they are using the Bureau of Land Management to steal land.

Missing: 2 Trillion Dollars

They are also using the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve to steal every last dollar that they can from our government. We thought the “bailout” was the first time that they had handed out massive amounts of cash. That was a $700 billion shock (to compare, those “stimulus checks” we little people were bribed with back in May only cost $150 billion). Now we find out that an additional $2 trillion has been handed out without our knowledge or permission.

To whom? Who the hell knows? The Federal Reserve’s Ben Bernanke and the Treasury Department’s Henry Paulson refuse to tell us what they did with the money. We only know that it's gone.

This was never approved by Congress. It also appears to have started well before “the bailout” was passed on October 3rd.

These people got balls.


From Bloomberg (who filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for this information):

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return...

Total Fed lending topped $2 trillion for the first time last week and has risen by 140 percent, or $1.172 trillion, in the seven weeks since Fed governors relaxed the collateral standards on Sept. 14. The difference includes a $788 billion increase in loans to banks through the Fed and $474 billion in other lending, mostly through the central bank's purchase of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds.

How much more damage has to be done before we stop these guys?

It’s like our house is on fire, but we tell the firemen, “Hey, just wait it out. It'll rain in January.”

The lame duck Congress needs to come back and impeach these guys now. Unfortunately, especially with the money grab, a scary number of Democrats might be in on it too.

(Photo taken by AFP/Getty Images on October 3rd, 2008 - the day the "bailout" passed)

Stay awake, my friends. We're still in big trouble.