No blank check for Wall Street: Call to action!

Status and next steps

A quick update on the campaign so far, following yesterday's Organic growth, our first tweet, and viral email.  First of all, we've got a logo -- thanks to Bobby McArthur for the excellent work!  And we're up over 350 fans, despite once again getting virtually no links.  Decent progress, and while it's slightly less than we had hoped for, it's a solid core to go on to the next stage.

In the broader picture, there were a couple of major stories on online activism about the financial crisis, Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej's Online activists rise against the bailout on Politico and Sarah Lai Stirland's Online Bailout Outrage Jumps Into Streets, and Into Lawmakers' Inboxes on Wired's Threat Level.  Interestingly, despite our impact with Get FISA Right and the parallels between the FISA situation and the bailout, neither mentioned anything about social network activism.  Instead, the focus is on BuyMyShitPile.com,   TrueMajority's "protest kit", the fake Nigerian spam email, and Bernie Sanders' online petition -- now up to 22,000 signatures.*  There's clearly room for something complementary.

The central challenge for No blank check to Wall Street right now: how to build momentum?

One thing that will be helpful is a focus on action.  The wall-writing campaign leverages the direct communication of Facebook in a unique way.  And while it's no substitute for phoning politicians, wall-writing also has some major advantages: you don't have to spend time on hold, voicemail doesn't get filled up by people leaving long angry rants, and press and activists get to see how much feedback the politician has gotten.  Get FISA Right prototyped this briefly with its 50-state strategy, and initial results were promising; this time, the approach is a lot simpler.

How to get enough people involved to get to critical mass?  The hook of taking a new "web 2.0" approach for direct communications with politicians is one more potential reason for bloggers and journalists to cover this, so maybe we'll start to see some links.  Fingers crossed.  We don't want to rely on this, though, so it's also a good time to crank up the viral email campaign.

Another interesting opportunity: there are quite a few Facebook groups related to the bailout -- clearly some latent energy to tap.  With a specific action, we might be able to get these groups involved in the campaign; so I'll send mail to some of the admins and ask for help.

One of the major complications in all of this is that external events are so up in the air at this point (there's a deal!  no there's not!  it'll be done by Friday!  no that's just a high-level agreement!) that it's very hard to project what timeframe we're working towards here.  There are so many factions involved, and the details clearly matter, that it's certainly imaginable that negotiations will stretch on through next week.  The longer No blank check to Wall Street has to grow, the more it benefits from network effects -- and the more likely that it breaks through and goes viral.

Although it sure would be a lot more likely if anybody linked to us.

jon

* and talk about a wave of blogging: according to Google, there have been 5600 blog hits for "Sanders petition" in the last 24 hours alone.  By comparison, Get FISA Right only had 216 blog hits on July 2, when it hit #1 on my.barackobama.com.  Another example of the gap between blogs and social networks I talked about in Reflections?


jon

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by: jonpincus @ Fri Sep 26, 2008 at 04:07:11 AM CDT

That approach is all wrong. It's a fig leaf over a huge lesion...

The only people that deserve a bailout are working people.

It can be paid for by confiscating the stolen money of the rich, who were enable by opportuist hustlers like McCain and Obama, Clinton and Bush, Carter and Reagan.

A reasonalbe and attainable bailout for working people can include the following: should consis of several items:

1. Socialized medicine financed by confiscatory taxes on the corporate rich and the confiscation of excess profits made by insurance companies, HMOs and Big Pharma. No more dividends checks for the rich until health care is free for all working people, including immigrants.
Build all the hospitals, skilled nursing facilities and hospices necessary.

2. End tax breaks for the rich. Eliminate the capital gains swindle. Go after the speculators and swindlers, and arrest, try and jail them. Confiscate their assets.  

3. We need a constitutional guarantee of a minimum wage of $25.00 an hour with full benefits, both adjusted semi-annually to fully account for inflation.

4. We need to a federal law to cut the normal work week to 32 hours without loss of pay or benefits, with time and a half after 32 hours, and double time after eight hours in any day or 40 hours in any week.

5. Repeal all the Free Trade Agreements in place.  FTA's are anti-union, impoverish working people, make the rich richer and cause environmental disasters.  

6. Workers need a minimum twenty workddays of paid vacation annually plus paid federal holidays plus paid sick leave if prescribed by a doctor, including a year of paid maternity leave, from day one of their employment.

7. We need tough federal laws to protect workers who lose, or have lost their jobs because of outsourcing or efforts to control pollution. They should be guaranteed reeducation, relocation and receive full income and benefits until they take a new job.

In the case of those who lost their jobs to corporate outsourcing the costs of reeducation and living benefits should be paid for by a 100% tax on the excess profits and dividends paid to corporate stockholders.

In the case of jobs lost to anti-pollution effort the full cost of reeducation and full income and benefits should be paid by a 100% tax on the excess profits and dividends paid to stockholders of all polluting corporations.

8. We need laws that protect immigrant/imported workers at the same level as native workers.

We need a ten year moratorium on repossessions, garnishments and foreclosures with interest rates reduced to the minimum needed for clerical costs, which is usually less than one percent.

If banks and financial institutions fail they should be nationalized without compensation. The stock holders have robbed us long enough.

Any one who supports the bailout in any form is sentencing working people of decades of imposed austerity. Believe me when I say that we won't stand for it. Any party that supports the bailout is a party that will be tossed into the garbage.


The looter rich much prefer working with Democrats like Obama and the Clintons - they're greedier, they fool more people and they're able to get away with a lot more than Republicans.  

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by: donal1944 @ Sat Sep 27, 2008 at 00:38:44 AM CDT

F*ck with Dodd and Frank, they'll F*CK RIGHT BACK!

I'm hearing some rumors Barney has taken my advice, and sticking a DICK-SIZED poison pill (or several) in the Bail Out bill that BUSH and Senate repigs HAVE TO SIGN, and a good proportion of House Repigs too, or McSame looks like a failure.I hope they are smart enough to link a poison pill to veterans so those repigs who vote against it get charged with NOT SUPPORTING THE TROOPS.

"race, taste. and History finally overcome....and you ain't there"
by Tony Kushner

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by: peteyPornpig @ Sat Sep 27, 2008 at 16:45:03 PM CDT

There will be a bail out

Just get used to it, and stock up on industrial strength KY jelly, you and I have...uh...."a slight pressure", and ...uh...."a little discomfort" coming straight for our collective keesters.

"race, taste. and History finally overcome....and you ain't there"
by Tony Kushner

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by: peteyPornpig @ Sat Sep 27, 2008 at 16:50:31 PM CDT

Bill Kristol wetting his pants

"I've received phone calls in the last hour from two economists I respect, one of them Larry Lindsey, the other in a position where he'd prefer not to be named. Both have government experience, neither is alarmist by nature, and they say this:

The huge European bank Fortis is apparently about to fail. The ripple effect on the American banking system could be disastrous, with bank runs, liquidity crises, and stock sell offs possible Monday. Wachovia may well fail next week. As Larry put it, this really will be 1933 soon if we don't move rapidly to stabilize the banking system.

And here's the bad news: the current bailout bill, whatever its merits and likelihood of passage, does nothing to address this.

Congress should pass by Monday simple legislation doing two things:

1. Giving the FDIC authority to provide unlimited deposit insurance through the FDIC for transaction accounts in banks.

2. Authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to provide unlimited protection of principal in money market funds through the Treasury's exchange stabilization fund.

Maybe my acquaintances (and I) are too worried; maybe this legislation wouldn't quite be the right solution. But I wanted to sound what may be, unfortunately, a needed alarm.

William Kristol is editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD."
  http://www.weeklystandard.com/...
The House repigs better drop their obstructionist sh*t, or they are going to get the blame for the MASSIVE MELTDOWN, and McCain will also catch a lion's share of the blame if he can't get House repigs to sign on.

"race, taste. and History finally overcome....and you ain't there"
by Tony Kushner

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by: peteyPornpig @ Sun Sep 28, 2008 at 02:03:30 AM CDT

Congress, White House reach financial bailout deal

WASHINGTON - Congressional leaders and the Bush administration reached a tentative deal early Sunday on a landmark bailout of imperiled financial markets whose collapse could plunge the nation into a deep recession.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the $700 billion accord just after midnight but said it still has to be put on paper.

"We've still got more to do to finalize it, but I think we're there," said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who also participated in the negotiations in the Capitol.

"We worked out everything," said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the chief Senate Republican in the talks.

Congressional leaders hope to have the House vote on the measure Monday. A Senate vote would come later.

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

"race, taste. and History finally overcome....and you ain't there"
by Tony Kushner

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by: peteyPornpig @ Sun Sep 28, 2008 at 02:28:33 AM CDT