Billionaires - rescue thyselves

Well the bailout plan wasn't polling well so now they're calling it a rescue plan. Talk about putting lipstick on a pig. The more I read, the more pissed off I get and so far the best suggestion I've seen so far is at FDL. Read it all but this is the key point.

"The most important condition to put on any bailout proposal is to impose a tax surcharge on the incomes of the wealthiest Americans to pay the bailout's cost. "

Moreover, we should leave that tax surcharge in place for as long as it takes to recoup the total bailout costs, which are still undetermined. If, for example, Paulson gets another $700 billion, to add to the $800 billion increase in the debt limit Congress gave him last July, we're up to $1.5 trillion that needs to be recovered.

Tying the surtax to full bailout repayment will provide a strong incentive for those who don't like taxes to insist on bailout approaches that actually work and minimize taxpayer exposure. They'll insist on effective oversight and accountability for any bailout approaches and actions, as opposed to the Bush/Paulson approach of giving Paulson a blank check to spend at least $700 billion with no accountability whatsoever."

Also read Avedon's post, Why the rich should pay higher taxes.

As far I can see this attempt to legalize the looting of the treasury is just as likely to make things worse than not. It will only delay the inevitable to spare the poor little billionaires from having to bear the losses of their own bad business practices. I don't care anymore whose fault it is, the bottom line is those that made the big bucks on the bubble, should pay the price.

My email today to my Congresslizards is going to simply say, No bailout without a complete rollback of all Bush's tax breaks for the multi-national corporations and the top 1% of US wealth holders. Feel free to copy and send it to yours. It only take a couple of minutes to email your Congresspeople. If you haven't done it yet, please do it today.

[More posts daily at The Newshoggers and The Detroit News.]