Daily archives: April 9th, 2009

Sign Petition to Break Up the Banks

Democrats.com is circulating a petition, and I would encourage you to click through to their site and sign this petition:

Treasury Secretary Geithner proposed a $1 trillion plan to help Wall Street make a killing buying “toxic assets” with our tax dollars and guarantees. And he proposed a complex regulatory scheme to keep huge financial institutions from wrecking our economy once again.

But there’s a better and simpler solution: break up those huge financial institutions. If they’re “too big to fail,” then they’re too big to exist.

Returning to the banks and insurance companies that existed before the Reagan era would not hurt our economy. As Paul Krugman writes, “that boring, primitive financial system serviced an economy that doubled living standards over the course of a generation.”

Our friends at A New Way Forward have a plan:

NATIONALIZE: Insolvent banks that are too big to fail must incur a temporary FDIC intervention – no more blank check taxpayer handouts. (see Paul Krugman on nationalization)

REORGANIZE: Current CEOs and board members must be removed and bonuses wiped out. The financial elite must share in the cost of what they have caused. (see Simon Johnson on reorganizing)

DECENTRALIZE: Banks must be broken up and sold back to the private market with new antitrust rules in place – new banks, managed by new people. Any bank that’s “too big to fail” means that it’s too big for a free market to function. (see Mike Lux on decentralization)

Thank you for your consideration on this matter!


Media Whores Randall Terry, Fred Phelps Coming to Notre Dame

Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame!

Notre Dame President Fr. Dan Jenky will not rescind the university’s invitation to invite President Barack Obama to give the 2009 Commencement address at Notre Dame and receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.  Jenky is right to stand by his invitation.

The invitation has drawn the attention of two media whores: radical pro-life activist Randall Terry and radical closeted anti-gay activist Fred Phelps.

Randall Terry respects life so much that he once arranged to have a dead fetus sent to Bill Clinton at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.  No word on where or how he procured the fetus.

Terry tells The Observer that his movement had, regretfully, fallen out of the spotlight, and needed a boost.  He said he first heard the news that Obama was going to Notre Dame last month:

“And when we came back, and I followed the news of President Obama’s invitation, a light went off in my head, that, that’s the line,” Terry said. It was the “golden opportunity,” as he called it, for the pro-life movement.

So Terry packed his bags and moved himself and his family – his wife and four children – to South Bend just a week after the announcement was made. And he’s staying, he said, until the Commencement ceremonies on May 17.

“We’ve already got over 20 local volunteers, within the next 10 days we will have six full time staff on the ground. Many local alumni are bending over backward to help us because of their outrage at this,” Terry said.

Terry has already held press conferences at ND.

Members of Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church have also announced their intention to picket the Notre Dame Commencement.  The group was in Pittsburgh today picketing the funerals of the three police officers shot and killed last week.

I won’t link to Phelps’ Web site — don’t care to contribute to his Google page rank.  But the site does indicate that Fred and his group will picket at ND.  Their rationale?

Obama Hates you, take U 2 Hell! E Angela Blvd & N Notre Dame Ave How appropriate that the biggest pedophile mill in the whole entire world would have Beast Obama speaking at their 2009 Commencement.

And it goes on from there.

Terry has pledged to “make a circus” of the Commencement.  Well, the stage is set.  Phelps and Terry will have to compete for the spotlight.

Who will win?

Time to call out the angels.