Uhhh, No.

The AP ran a story in most papers yesterday about liberals having to defend former strongholds throughout the country. The "tea party" impact, as it is better known.

I read this article with excitement as I was looking forward to becoming just a little dumber by the end of it. See, that's my new thing, dumbing myself down (insert joke) because I figure if I can really get down to a level I'm going to call "mid-American", I think I'll become a lot happier.

The quote from the article which really jumped out at me was this one:

In Hyannis Port, someone swiped a pair of "Jeff Perry for Congress" signs from the front of chiropractor Kristin Weber's heavily trafficked office, so she drove to her mother's house on a side street and grabbed one to replace it.

"I think people are fed up with the government," said Weber, 41. "They're fed up with the overspending. They're fed up with the bailouts. It has not helped the economy, whatsoever. And we really do need change we can believe in."

I hear Kristin Weber loud and clear, for I too am fed up. My advice to her, and every other tea party idiot would be to start reading the same paper which quoted you. Because like "off-track betting in the Himalayas" there is a "smaller story" that I've been following:

TARP bailout has earned U.S. $25 billion

Yalman Onaran,Alexis Leondis, Bloomberg News

Thursday, October 21, 2010

The U.S. government's bailout of financial firms through the Troubled Asset Relief Program provided taxpayers with higher returns than yields paid on 30-year Treasury bonds - enough money to fund the Securities and Exchange Commission for the next two decades.

The government has earned $25.2 billion on its investment of $309 billion in banks and insurance companies, an 8.2 percent return over two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That beat U.S. Treasurys, high-yield savings accounts, money-market funds and certificates of deposit. Investing in the stock market or gold would have paid off better.

When the government announced its intention to plow funds into the banks in October 2008 to resuscitate the financial system, many expected it to lose hundreds of billions of dollars. Two years later, TARP's bank and insurance investments have made money, and about two-thirds of the funds have been paid back.

Banks benefited from dozens of other programs instituted by the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Department, from the purchase of mortgage-backed securities to the bailout of home-lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The suppression of interest rates at close to zero for most of the last two years has also boosted banks' income, enabling them to borrow money at almost no cost and lend at higher rates.

Those low rates drove down yields on instruments used by American savers. U.S. Treasury 30-year bonds yielded an average of 4.1 percent from Oct. 20, 2008, through Tuesday, according to Bloomberg data. When the price appreciation of the bonds is taken into account, the return for the two years is 13.9 percent.

The $25 billion TARP return could fund the SEC for more than 20 years, based on the agency's proposed 2011 fiscal year budget. It could pay for all farm subsidies in the United States for more than two years.

But don't let the facts distract you.

It's Your World

I spent the early morning reading the San Francisco Gate, and I happened across an article about unlimited contributions on behalf of corporations. A reader weighed in basically saying what everyone else already realizes:

This week a Montana state judge dismissed a 1912 ban on corporate political spending, following the January 2010 Supreme Court ruling, Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, which did the same on the grounds that corporations have the right to free speech.

I am a person with the right to free speech, yet how can I compete? Corporations have irrefutable advantages over people, such as limited liability and perpetual life. In addition, the amassed wealth of corporations (in 2005, post-tax corporate profits were almost $1 trillion) is too much money for individuals and non-corporate associations of people to compete with.

Rep. Donna Edwards, D.-Md., recently introduced an amendment to the Constitution to allow the government to regulate political corporate expenditures. How else can we restore the rights of actual people and take back our democracy?

When I imagine a United States that I would be proud to live in, it is a place where the citizenry can engage in the political process in a meaningful way, a not a place where corporations will always be able to buy elections no matter the needs and desires of actual people.

Clearly a Supreme Court representing the interests of the people.

Later in the day I picked up the NYTIMES and read through about the difficulties facing the US Justice Department in prosecuting Blackwater employees who murdered people in Iraq. As it stands right now, most of them are getting off.

I could go on for hours about the problems caused by using private soldiers, but that's not pertinent to my point.

What does bother me is right-leaning corporations like Blackwater (now called Xe Services) can fund candidates, or issues, without limitations. They can basically outspend politicians who don't choose war, and support candidates who do. Meanwhile, they're being paid by our government in the first place, then funneling that money back with the hopes they get hired.

What happens next is one of Blackwater's employees guns someone down, which reverberates through the Muslim world, but then that "soldier" isn't even charged! Then the US State Department sends a letter to the grieving family telling them the results of the case, which they have to do.

So lets just say that our country is really fucked up for allowing this to happen, and that conservative justices on the Supreme Court are actually green-lighting this process, against the will of congress (I wrote more about this below).

There are many other factors involved, surely, but without a doubt the fact that money used to influence politicians leads to certain corporations profiting on war, which in turn completely fucks the United States over, and every other country in the world.

Yes, that's FREE SPEECH talking, Motherfuckers!