| NO BAILOUTS FOR SPECULATORS
Paul Richmond urges all those who have supported his campaign to not only lobby Congressman Dicks directly, but to lobby all his known supporters, and ask them to lobby Representative Dicks. We are being stampeded into a bailout we cannot afford. And once again our Congressional Representative is on the wrong side. (See http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll674.xml
As Paul Richmond has stated throughout his campaign for the 6th District of U.S. Congress, our economy has become no longer about producing anything of actual value. Instead it has become by for and of speculators who manipulate the economy. As Kevin Phillips pointed out in his most recent book, Bad Money, speculation is now almost twice the portion of the U.S. Economy as is the manufacture of any actual goods.
While Representative Dicks has campaigned for more than 32 years about bringing jobs to this region, his policies have consistently undercut any jobs he has actually brought by simultaneously supporting speculators and sending our jobs overseas. This has included his repeated support for any and all “Free Trade Policies,” including GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA, and the WTO. It also included his earlier support for the Savings and Loan Deregulation.
The current financial meltdown of our banks, was both entirely predictable, and the result of yet another wrong vote by this Congressional Representative, and others like him. In 1999, Gramm Leach Blilely, also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act was passed. This eliminated the last of the protections put in place after the Great Depression of 1929, known as the Glass Steagall Act. Glass Steagall prevented insured deposits in commercial banks that made safe loans, and prevented commercial banks from engaging in speculation. Dicks, along with 6/7 of Congress, Democrat and Republican, voted to eliminate te last of these protections. This is why banks that for many decades engaged in relatively safe practices are now saddled with bad loans and defaulting. (http://clerk.house.gov/evs/1999/roll570.xml)
As Representative Pete Defazio, one of the 57 who rightly voted against Gramm Leach Bliley correctly pointed out, if these institutions are too big to fail, they are probably too big to be allowed to exist, at least in their current form. There are a host of other remedies that can be tried that will not drag the taxpayers ever further in debt, including reducing the millions of failed mortgages to levels that can actually be repaid. As both the Iraq War vote, and the vote on the PATRIOT Act proved, hastily enacted measures responding to “crisis” never work well, especially when these measures are put together by those who created the crisis and put those who created the crisis in charge.
Congressional Representative Dicks should be contacted directly, especially by those who he has asked for support. His office contacts are available at
http://www.house.gov/dicks/offices.shtml and are listed below:
Washington DC
2467 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: 202-225-5916
Fax: 202-226-1176
Tacoma, Washington
1019 Pacific Ave, Suite 806
Tacoma, WA 98402
Phone: 253-593-6536
Toll Free Number: 1-800-947-NORM (947-6676)
Fax: 253-593-6551
Bremerton, Washington
345 Sixth Ave, Suite 500
Bremerton, WA 98337
Phone: 360-479-4011
Fax: 360-479-2126
Port Angeles, Washington
332 East Fifth Street
Port Angeles, WA 98362
Phone: 360-452-3370
Fax: 360-452-3502
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