Damned if you do, Damed if you don't! The saga of the US bailout bill is the perfect example...

VHeadline's Washington DC-based commentarist Chris Herz writes: Politics in the cuckoo empire ... the USA is always exciting, and to foreigners such as yourselves must seem utterly insane; devoid of logic. But that is merely because you depend on CNN or FOX or the BBC to try to make sense out of it. You really need to pay attention to http://vheadlinevenezuelanews.blogspot.com/ to find a way to analyze what is going on and to hopefully find a way to keep yourselves from being immolated in the collapse of a world system of capital.

And the saga of the bailout bill is the perfect example.

Here we can see US politics in all its glory, policy like a Russian Easter egg: One layer, followed by another, by another, by another. Onward into the fog. No one must be better informed on imperial politics than the nations of South America, exposed as they are to predation from the north. For them it can be a matter of life or death at the hands of the Imperial Storm Troopers, aka the US Marine Corps. It is my job, my challenge to try to put forth to all of you the real motivations, the crunch where it is decided who wins and who loses...

• The Wall Street elites would have loved $700 billions in treasury funds voted to them in one big package ... but, basically, business must go on, so the 700 some odd point fall of yesterday's DOW is followed by a better than 500 point rise today.

The masters of the universe tried to hold the Federal government to ransom: Give us in one way or the other the Social Security Trust Funds or we will stage a capital strike similar to that which occurred in Venezuela after the abortive coup of 2002. But these folks are really no better off than minimum wage workers: No one can afford to stay out of work more than a day or two. 'Tis merely that the numbers are larger.

Members of the House of Representatives flinched, faced with letters, FAX's, email and phone calls from their constituents running about 200 to one against the bailout/give-away. Usually US politicians are utterly obedient to sources of big money, of which Wall Street is the biggest. But conservative Republican congress-critters are aware of just how vulnerable they are this November due to the multiple failures of their party boss in the White House. And they do not want to lose their cushy jobs -- one of the few in the USA offering serious and completely comprehensive health insurance for self and family.

To say nothing of an absolutely wonderful pension after either defeat or retirement.

The result Monday was the defection of near two thirds of the Republican members from the program of their own leaders. The Democratic members expect to win in the November elections no matter how they vote on this issue, so they can afford to be much more obedient to the masters of the universe, and contemptuous of the electorate than their panicked Republican colleagues. Only about forty of their most left-leaning members dared vote nay. These people come mainly from poor and mostly Black urban districts where the racial and class divisions in US society are so acute that no Republican ever would have any chance at election whatsoever.

Beginning Wednesday the Senate will begin the somewhat anti-constitutional process of initiating the Bailout-Give-Away Bill: Appropriations are supposed to originate in the House of Representatives. The idea is that Senate members, serving six-year terms are more able to ignore the strong feelings of constituents (House members are up every two years) and do as they are told by the sources of their campaign funding. Relative to the wholesale hacking of the Constitution of 1789 that has occurred in recent decades this is only a minor violation.

I readily admit that I am somewhat amazed to be on the same side of an issue as are the most conservative members of the House of Representatives. But ok, let's take allies where we can find them.

Meanwhile, you good folks outside of our borders should look on all this as if it were an unusually exciting football game ... this is only about which elite factions here get to loot the vitals of the expiring US state.

And VHeadline will keep you up to date.

From the imperial capital

Chris Herz
cdherez44@yahoo.com

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Venezuela is facing the most difficult period of its history with honest reporters crippled by sectarianism on top of rampant corruption within the administration and beyond, aided and abetted by criminal forces in the US and Spanish governments which cannot accept the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people to decide over their own future.

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