George W. Bush Bailed Out the Banks!!!!!

There comes a time in a man's life, especially one who is fairly well versed in recent history, when he just can't take the lies that are spewed out at him anymore. That's what happened to me when I listened to Rick Santorum, the Republican who wants to push his religious beliefs on you in your bedroom and running for President, giving his victory speech after he swept the primaries on Tuesday. He gave this ridiculous "Barack Obama thinks he's smarter than you" speech, and in it presented a lot of misleading and completely wrong information (which I'm used to hearing and just let that roll off my back), but he also perpetuated one of the biggest lies of the "conservatives", and I almost went into a rage. It's one thing for uneducated viewers of Fox "News" to think that Barack Obama was responsible for bailing out the banks. After all, a recent poll found that Fox News viewers were less informed about current events than people who watched no news at all.

No, my friends, Barack Obama unequivocally did NOT bail out the banks!! For the last time it was George W. Bush and his Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (former CEO of Goldman Sachs) that cooked up that idea, hastily sped the plan through Congress (most of which are bought off by Wall Street anyway), and signed into law. Yes, TARP, the Troubled Assest Relief Program, was signed into law on October 3, 2008, a full month before candidate Obama was even elected! When Paulson was pushing his plan, he wanted to give the banks the money with absolutely no strings attached as quickly as possible and with no oversight whatsoever! Thankfully we had a few good Democrats who had heads on their shoulders and didn't allow $750 billion of the taxpayers' money go to the banksters just like that. However, remember what did happen? Just a couple of months later and again a year later? With the taxpayers' bailout money? Multi-million dollar BONUSES!!!! That's right, huge bonuses for the very same executives who played Russian roulette with their customers' deposits and investments (which was only legal because of the repeal of Glass-Steagall). Instead of being fired or investigated or going to jail for their crimes, these scumbags stole even more of middle-class America's money and pocketed it, and it was government sanctioned. Once again, why do you think there's an Occupy Wall Street?

I'm not saying Barack Obama is innocent. After all, as a Senator, and did vote for the bill that created TARP. He did support it. But as President, I think he was more responsible with the use of the funds. He did take some of the funds and use them to help homeowners rework their mortgages so they could keep their homes through several programs. This has helped hundreds of thousands of Americans who were hurt by the Wall Street recession to stay in their homes. He also directed some of those funds to be used in jobs creation programs. And let us remember, that most of the funds doled out to the banks in the bailouts have been repaid to the Treasury. The taxpayers have been REPAID (mostly)!

George W. Bush, the wealthy oil baron, and Henry Paulson, the former bank executive, were quickly trying to push their agenda to rescue their wealthy friends (campaign contributors) in an effort to save the nation from financial collapse. Given that administration's record on saving the nation from potential catastrophes, I personally question their motives (WMDs anyone?). And for any Republican, conservative, Tea Partier, or any other misinformed Fox "News" viewer to say that Barack Obama was responsible for the bailouts, this is an outright LIE! It could not be further from the truth. And it's time the record is set straight and we push back on this ridiculous misleading of the blind.