Bryne on the Bailout Failure
[Ed note - sorry, this was supposed to publish late last night and failed somehow. The miracle of technology.]
I’m not a big fan of Chicago Tribune columnist, Dennis Byrne. (If you’re googling yourself again, Mr Byrne - welcome back.)
His column today [Sept 30], however, made me chuckle rather than foam. This - in all seriousness - is the opening line:
The American public on Monday stuck it to the “knowledgeable and sophisticated” elites who warned that without the $700 billion federal financial bailout plan all hell would break loose.
Um, the ‘elite’ leading the charge for the bailout was none other than Mr Byrne’s president, George W. Bush.
Bryne complains about the choice that we, American taxpayers, are being forced to make:
We who hesitate are lost. On top of that, the public was asked to pick its poison immediately, without congressional hearings, extensive public debate or any other accouterments of a democratic republic. The public was required to accept the edict. No look before you leap.
Now… of what does this remind me? The insistence that we accept at face value what we are told despite what appears to be a reckless investment of capital into a risky adventure that no one has taken the time to think through… What could it be?
But, credit to Mr Bryne for both calling out Bush as ‘elitist’ and then railing against Speaker Pelosi for:
…let[ting] loose with a nasty partisan attack totally inappropriate for the quality of the debate. You had to see it to believe it: There was rational debate on the House floor, indeed in a spirit of bipartisanship, and then she comes along blaming President George W. Bush for everything.
To be fair, I don’t disagree with some of his points - the bailout plan was rather rushed; hopefully there will be a better plan sometime this week.
But what I adore about Byrne’s column is it appears totally devoid of irony (at least when it’s not coming from the Left).
Now that’s something you have to see to believe.
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