Originally published by San Diego News Room: 12-17-09
Have you heard the latest? In the midst of all this talk about Global Warming and Health Care, the House just passed another relatively unknown, but sweeping, regulatory overhaul of a 1,300-page bill. It slipped through as easily as the expanding definition of “Hate Crimes.”
You’re going to love this one. Under the guise of improved regulation of the financial sector, this bill gives our federal government unprecedented power over significant portions of American enterprise.
On its surface, the bill has the scent of fiscal responsibility: new regulations to keep the greed of Wall Street in check. It’s being described in much of the media as the most sweeping, thorough reform of banking regulations since the New Deal. The Obama administration defends the embryonic legislation as a necessary measure to make sure irresponsible investments and lending do not recreate the circumstances that caused our current financial crisis.
Drafting of the legislation was a collaborative effort between Treasury officials and Congressman Barney Frank. Celebrating its passage, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, “We are sending a clear message to Wall Street. The party is over. Never again.”
But the chocolate in the center of this Tootsie Roll Pop grants President Obama the power he asked for in a more blatant way back in March. At that time, The Washington Post reported:
“Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner today told Congress the administration will seek unprecedented power to seize non-bank financial companies whose collapse could jeopardize the economy, a move Geithner said would have allowed the government to bail out insurance giant American International Group at a far lower cost to taxpayers.”
A lot has happened since Obama’s March request. As time went on, talk changed from everything to Czars, to Tea Parties, to anti-government health care rallies, to global warming concerns exhibiting themselves in the Cap and Trade bill. So much is going on at one time, people, keeping an eye on one hand; miss what the other hand is doing.
One of those hands is the U.S. House of Representatives, which quietly sanctioned this Trojan Horse by a vote of 223 to 202. 37 Democrats, to their credit, sided with all of the Republicans and voted “no”. Now the bill must survive the Senate hurdle, but our senatorial leaders are already discussing their own version of the monster and Obama is pressing for its passage with a zeal not unlike his health care appeals.
Should this bill become law, you will have to pinch yourself to make sure you are not dreaming about being caught between the pages of a George Orwell novel. Our government will actually have the right to seize large financial corporations, not merely companies asking for a bail out, mind you, any company they consider too big to fail!!!
To seize a private company, the feds would have to deem such business’ failure as being too much of a threat to our economy. Whew! What a relief! For a moment there, this legislation had me worried. Our administration and congress have shown such skill at assessing economic health, I just can’t wait to hear what objective criteria they will apply in order to assemble the federal government’s indispensible industrial machine—the commanding heights of the U.S. economy—resting safely under the dictates of the federal government.
Merry Christmas! Change you can believe in. I’ll say this: Barack Obama was speaking the truth when he campaigned for change. Unfortunately, it is change Thomas Jefferson and John Adams would not have believed in.
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