Let the Bastahds bail themselves out.

Not one freaking penny of our money to them. Fire every single one of them and then put their asses behind bars.

And if there is no legal charge to cover it, make one up.

It's time for hundreds of millions of American taxpayers to stand up, once and for all, and tell them to go fukk themselves. Bail your own asses out.

Gotta agree with you. If it was up to me, I'd let investment banks, insurance companies and "financial services" firms either make it or go under. They don't produce anything useful anyhow. They're just parasites on the real economy. And if it dominos, well, we're going to have to rebuild it anyhow. No point in feeding the cancer before we start to kill it.

I think either way, the US economy is dead. This might be a softer landing for the rich.

Odd thing is, the economy shifted a while ago to this service oriented economy. Finance, selling insurance to each other, and various supporting BS that ...as you said... produces nothing useful. Manufacturing is gutted and sent overseas in search of cheap labor= break the unions. What is left, really? I had high hopes for a new GreenTech movement, but the piggy bank is long gone. They have broken everything

What? Free Market and limited Government Interaction? Anti-welfare?

Who do these conservatives think they are... oh yeah.

A decade ago, the Republicans freed the slaves and up until 60 years ago, the Democrats were pro-segregation.
Once again it looks like the parties will be switching their ideologies because the opposing one failed to keep their own and drove the nation into catastrophe.

It's all based on a scam; they call it "value add" service, but what it reaqly amounts to is more hands in your pocket.

For example, here in Ontario, about 5 years ago they decided to privatize hydro (that was our public power utility.)

They broke it up into the generating, delivery, and billing.

It used to be I got a hydro bill showing KWH used, the cost per KWH, and the how much I owed.

After the privatization I got a bill that showed generation costs per KWH, the transmission costs to get that electricity to me, the power factor (line loses for delivery) costs, and the cost for creating this "detailed bill".

Now, I actually have some electrical engineering experience (no longer do it, but I understand how electricity generation and delivery works) and this new bill provided me no information that could possibly help me in any way ... yet, this new detailed level of "service" cost me about a 10% increase right out of the chute.

Now, on top of that, with the public utility, if my power was out, or I wanted to contact hydro to do some work on my electrical system, or I had a billing question, I simple called "Hydro".

The first thing I noticed on the new bill was that for some reason they were charging me almost 50% more per KWH than what I should have been charged. I called the billing service and they told me that this is the KWH charge my address was registered to be charged and there was nothing they could do, they were just the billing service.

So, I decide to call the generating company. They wouldn't even talk to me. They simply said "you are not our customer", which technically speaking was correct.

It ended up that I had to spend a full week calling around until finally I ended up calling my provincial minister responsible for hydro ... he was able to find out that my condo, a recent reno building, was still registered as a commercial building and commercial building paid more per KWH under this new private system. There was basically nothing I could do until the process for changing the building classification was complete, which they said would probably take a year or two.

Oh, and on top of that, when they made the change to private hydro, they came in and put in new "smart meters", at $1500 a pop, which they added another $25 every bill until it was paid off ... the advantage of this new "smart meter"? It allowed THEM to read my meter remotely, which apparently saved them a bundle not having to get actual people to come and read the meter ... they out in equipment to save them money and I had to pay for it? What a pile of corporate BS.

And don't get me started on how the people built a new toll road to alleviate some traffic problems in Toronto, and then the right wing bastards get in and sell it to some private company for less than it cost to build and with a contract that allowed them to over charge on tolls and use the licensing system to strong arm people into paying even if they claimed they never used the service ... yes, the fucking company can just bill you even if you've never used their damn highway, and you have to pay or your license won't get renewed .. you have a problem with that? Too bad, take them to court if you can afford the lawyer to fight a $20 toll road charge. Fucking crooks.



Anyway, sorry for the rant, but I really don't have much love for how privatization works these days ... it's just a scam that takes something good the people have bought and paid for, made work, and then along comes the friends of some fucking right wing politician and they take our property and make us pay them huge profits to use it.

Sheesh, NoYards. That sux. I guess misery loves company. The Repugs are for privatization in everything down here...toll roads, prisons, you name it. I don't understand why people are so complacent down here. It feels like lambs led to slaughter or something.

Your saga sounds a bit like people's experiences in Bolivia with water privatization, and in Chile with transportation privatization. Sounds a bit like.... well every OTHER story I've EVER heard about the net result of privatization of public functions.

Namely that services are actually REDUCED and costs INCREASED, because the primary motive becomes profit, not the public good.

Well, we still make a lot of guns. Maybe we can do something with those!