By Milton Lee Norris
$700 billion dollars and they call it a bailout plan, but who is this bailout plan primarily for? It's really a screaming disgrace. When this country, a country so rich and with so many resources, can even suggest spending $700 billion dollars to bail out the rich, something is very wrong. When this country can spend over that amount for a war which they started for their own aggrandizement, something's wrong.
The money spent will tally over a trillion dollars by the end of this war, and that money was used to basically tear down a country and murder people, innocents, yes innocent people of another country; causing people to be killed, and our own soldiers, men and women to be killed is unconscionable.
America, look at the real price tag of what you are paying for, this war that is killing people, and then look at the price tag that has been paid for AIDS research compared to that.
Just this past summer Bush signed a bill to spend $162 billion dollars to continue this war in Iraq and Afghanistan through part of 2009, http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/senate-panel-approves-iraq-war-funding-bill-2008-05-15.html, when only $48 billion dollars is earmarked over the next five years to combat AIDS. The total HIV cases were 64.3 million and the total AIDS deaths were 23.1 million accordingly to the Global Statistics as of November 2006. http://www.nat.org.uk/document/79
Now look at the price tag of $700 billion dollars to bail out the rich; they're not talking about educating your children, they're not talking about the $700 billion dollars to use for your jobs, to pay off your loans, to pay off your houses. No, they're talking about a $700 billion dollar bailout plan and it's not to feed you, not to clothe you, to house you, to give you medical treatment or medical insurance, no that would be too much like right. And they're not talking about New Orleans, Louisiana or the Gulf Coast and the people that are still in need of help since Hurricane Katrina of 2005. Why, you might ask, don't those people generate that much concern from this administration.
You see, if they had been rich, if those communities had been affluent communities by American standards, Bush would have suggested a plan like this one to bail them out, but they are not. Did you see how quickly he acted, did you watch how certain politicians got all fired up saying that they have to fix this right away? When it's the poor and disenfranchised in desperation, that's a chord that just doesn't resonate and result in fast action or monetary action like the rich. It's always been about giving the poor a pittance; it has never been about the poor until more of Middle America became poorer. Barack Obama knew about those poor and disenfranchised people because he worked with them. The old philosophy of the American government was to continue giving them less; we now have someone advocating for real change and much more.
You see, they are up in arms about the rich because those Hooded Robins are finding themselves in a position of losing some of what they have, and they certainly don't want to be getting closer to the position of the have nots.
George Bush's plan says let's bail them out for $700 billion dollars. America needs to say no, no more blank checks. America finally needs to listen to its people, its good senators whether they're Republican or Democrat, and say no more blank checks for an America that keeps on strangling the poor, the disenfranchised, starving our children from anything and everything of a dream.
America, pay attention to Obama; listen to the Democrats that say no to this. The reason is that there are too many poor and disenfranchised who are too weak, old or uneducated to speak for themselves, but remember one thing: we are the ones that will be paying for this for a very long time. Wake up America, wake up and listen.
