Gender, Race, and the Bailout

As we all know, the $700 billion bailout plan failed in the House of Representatives yesterday, sending stock prices plummeting. Both Democrats and Republicans voted for and against the bill, with many different and even conflicting reasons behind their votes. However, one fact stands out: looks like the congressfolks who voted for the bailout plan received, on average, 54% more money from banks and financiers than those who voted against it.

Now Congress has gone back to the drawing board to try to work out a compromise, and although there are many theories on how that may look, nothing concrete has been determined yet.

Wouldn't it be nice if someone had come up with a rescue plan that worked from the bottom up, to help the little people rather than the fat cats? Well someone did, and that someone is Cynthia McKinney, Green Party candidate for President. Here's another take on what a progressive bailout would look like.

For many of us, the recession isn't something we can look at as preventable, because it's happening right now. There's a pretty good chance that the economy is going to keep getting worse for many of us, regardless of the eventual bailout plan. This is especially true in California, because the long-overdue state budget was based on economic figures that failed to take into account the slowdown of the economy.

According to the National Women's Law Center, "Women feel the impact of economic insecurity and rising food, energy, education, and health care costs more deeply than men – and see government as a key to the solution." Women are also more at risk of foreclosure, because they have a higher share of subprime loans.

And speaking of subprime loans, there appears to be an attempt by conservatives, led by Ann Coulter, to shift blame for the crisis away from deregulation and company greed, and towards the real victims, the homeowners who were encouraged to take out risky loans for which they were unqualified.

Tied into this is a clearly racist angle. "If only," the thinking seems to go, "responsible companies hadn't been forced to give loans to immigrants, Latin@s, and African Americans!" There's just one problem with that logic: most of the subprime loans did not go to people of color.

Just like blaming welfare on people of color, when most people on welfare are white, the racism in the new "analysis" of the financial crash has a lot of popular appeal. We see the same tactic in the recent proposal of Louisiana state Rep. John LaBruzzo to pay low-income women to be sterilized.

And if you think the shift in focus to, "Blame the brown people!" isn't tied to the fact that we have a Black man at the top of the Democratic Presidential ticket, then you have a lot more faith in human nature than I do. I have to go with Jay Smooth on this one; if ever there was a time to vote for the smart guy, this is it.

Even George F. Will, not exactly known for his progressive tendencies, is saying that Barack Obama is the better choice to deal with the current financial situation.

One thing we absolutely cannot afford is to tie the hands of the next President with a massive financial commitment that would prevent investing in health care, education, energy independence, or infrastructure.

Call your Representatives and Senators at 800-473-6711 or 202-224-3121 and tell them we need a progressive bailout that functions bottom-up, not top-down, and that we won't bankrupt our future for the sake of Wall Street's bottom line.

Read our other posts on the economic crisis:
Bailout 101
Economic Free-fall Hurts Workers Worse Than Wall Street
posts on the economy

Comments

[la pobre habladora]

A brilliant post about disturbing things - perhaps the most disturbing is the LaBruzzo guy and what it says about us that we elect these bigots as our representatives.