BANK OF AMERICA AND AIG AMONG COMPANIES INVOLVED

Apparently a mere three days after receiving $25 billion in borrowed taxpayer money to keep their saggy, greedy, inept asses afloat, Bank of America Corp. together with representatives of AIG, also the recipient of taxpayer welfare, hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the EEMPLOYEE FREE TRADE ACT.

For those readers too caught up in their daily battle to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads, the EMPLOYEE FREE TRADE ACT is a fantastic little piece of legislation, which if passed, will allow workers to form a union either by holding a traditional election or having a majority of employees sign written forms.

Needless to say, this has the business community, fat and happy after 8 years of George Bush and his anti-worker agenda, terrified at the mere thought that their workers might actually regain some semblance of control and cease being the subservient, poorly paid, expendable pawns that those in the executive suites favor.

To get an idea of Corporate America’s trauma over this legislation, one needs only to listen to the words of conference call participant, Bernie Marcus, a co-founder of Home Depot, who in the October 17th conference call likened the EMPLOYEE FREE TRADE ACT to “the demise of a civilization.” “This is how a civilization disappears,” Marcus stated. “It is incredible to me that anybody could have the chutzpah to try and pass this bill in this election year, especially when we have an economy that is a disaster, a total absolute disaster.”

The corporate big wigs and conservative activists spent the rest of the conference call challenging each other to write six figure checks to Republican politicians in the hope of creating a “firewall” to block the legislation’s passage.

Also discussed was a plan to put heat on Democratic politicians running for reelection in 2010 in the hope of persuading them to vote against the bills passage.

Now corporations and special interest groups spending money to get their way with weak willed politicians is nothing new in this country. But in this instance, it’s pretty apparent that they were using your and my money to do so, money that was intended to keep them from collapsing in the wake of the sub-prime debacle.

Sadly, there is no easy fix for this situation. The process to correct things will be long and arduous. First, these companies such as B of A and AIG, companies deemed too large to be allowed to fail, need to be broken up into many little pieces and most of the pieces sold off.

In the case of the banks, we need to return to state charted banks, and away from these bloated, monopolistic federally chartered institutions that we have today. What this means is that banks would only be allowed to operate in the state that issues their charter. Additionally, we need to ban the banks from being able to gamble with your and my money. Relegate them back to the business of taking deposits and making loans, only.

The same thing needs to be done to AIG. If they are an insurance company, restrict them to the insurance industry and ban them from being a financial services company.

Then when all of these companies are returned to their pre-Reagan business models, Congress needs to take a serious look at the causes of this economic collapse and appoint special prosecutors where needed.

We owe this to our children and grandchildren who will be paying for this bailout for many years to come to try and get to the bottom of what caused this mess and to bring to trial the responsible parties so as to insure that this does not happen again.

But the problem is none of this will happen overnite, which means that we need a faster, more immediate way of making Bernie Marcus of Home Depot and his friends from BofA and AIG suffer for their part in trying to kill the EMPLOYEE FREE TRADE ACT.

The best way I can think of doing this is with a boycott. Essentially, if you have money in BofA, move it to a smaller local bank - - a solvent one of course. The same with AIG. There are many companies out there that do what they do. Choose one and make your voice heard by withdrawing your dollars.

In the case of Home Depot, shop elsewhere. Go to Lowes. Take my word for it, the have pretty much the same products at the same prices as Home Depot.

Only by denying these bastards your dollars will they get the message that the working man and woman in America does not like being shit on while they are being asked to pay for the ones doing the shitting’s mistakes.

Lib

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