What are they afraid of?  They're afraid of right and left-wing demagoguery, which is so easy when we're talking about something as unpopular as bailing out the financial sector.

However, progressives in safe seats are overwhelming supportive of the bailout for a simple reason.  They want to protect jobs.  

No one is really for any of this.  Some people, however, are willing to do the unpopular because it is necessary.  

We didn't have the option, by the way, of waiting for a good bill and a decent Treasury Secretary, as you know.

What I object to, above all, is this effort to hijack a policy position that is most opposed by progressives and call it the true progressive position.  It's not accurate and it borders on outright dishonesty.  

Add to this, that I have seem more dishonest accounting and 'economist analysis' from the progressive opponents of the bailout than I have seen from the Republican opponents, and I'm losing my patience on this matter.

I believe that, had we not passed the bailout, we would have suffered much larger job losses, much more business failures, and a much deeper hole to climb out of.  If I didn't believe that, then I would oppose spending the money without proper oversight and without adequate investments in other distressed areas of the economy.  The banks needed to be saved so that the economy didn't go right down the shithole.  I never said I liked it.

I certainly understand the progressive case against both the bailout and many of the features of the bailout.  What I don't support is lying about the cost, or using evidence of every wasted dollar as an excuse to whip up populist disgust with what is an admittedly unpleasant and unpopular program.

The problem is that the average consumer in the United States is a wage earner, and their real wages have been stagnating for the past twenty or more years, despite a rosier-than-reality set of CPI figures from the last two administrations.

The fact that most in New York and Washington have not quite realized yet is that the average American consumer is exhausted, tapped out, broke.

This bailout, devised by the very same crooks who caused the crisis to begin with, is NOT going to help us out of this mess.  It's going to bury us.

The chief executive of US bank JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, told the Financial Times on Thursday that the worst of the economic crisis still lay ahead as hard-hit consumers default on their loans.

"The worst of the economic situation is not yet behind us. It looks as if it will continue to deteriorate for most of 2009," he told the business daily.

"In terms of our sector, we expect consumer loans and credit cards to continue to get worse."

Dimon said the bank -- which bought rivals Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual last year -- was prepared for a deterioration in consumer-orientated businesses but if things were worse than expected, it would have to cut costs further.

The interview was published after a fresh wave of selling hit US and European stock markets Wednesday, as an unrelenting flow of bad economic and corporate news sparked fears of a deepening global downturn.

[No irony should be lost on the fact that the rapid expansion of the money supply is causing an equally rapid destruction of your purchasing power, so shareowners can be made whole. That's what all of these bailouts are for, to keep the shareowners of these banks from realizing their losses. It's the same shit that happened in Japan and we all know how well that has worked out!]

So you, Boo, support the idea that we bail out the stockholders and let Americans just fend for themselves and that's not the hard core conservative stance HOW?

Just because a lot of progressives were fooled into thinking that TARP was a necessary evil doesn't make it the kind of government intervention a true progressive should get behind.

Since when did you begin trusting neocons to come up with a government intervention program?  They haven't.  This is a scam, plain and simple.

Um, taxpayer funds being used to `rescue' the shareowners of banks from their losses...yet nobody is lifting a finger when it comes to `rescuing' what you have worked your whole life to build.

What further proof does it take to convince you that our government is a wholly owned subsidiary of Corporate USA? Your money is for them, not for you.

Understand good citizen that the Obama `tax cuts' will be used as an `excuse' not to give you a pay raise...while the boss makes a `public service announcement' that the new HMO has much stiffer co-pays than the old one did.

And like your raises in the past, your costs will exceed the meager increase in your paycheck...leading to more consumers to default on their debts.

The bankers can see it coming.

But the Government will bail them out...you're on your own.

Is it time to trash this stupid system? If you don't think so now, you soon will.

THAT'S the progressive position on this subject.  Bail out Americans, not Corporate America.