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What mainly the Democrats and same-minded Republicans
who want to delay the law for the $700-billion bailout don’t seem
to understand is that more than 50 percent of ordinary Americans
will be seriously affected—lose their jobs, businesses and
savings—if the bailout moves are not immediately put into affect.
Most Americans have their savings
in hometown banks. Those big-time US congressmen in Washington have
their life savings in big-time banks. Not so ordinary folk who bank
with, for instance, the Bank of North Orange Village, or some such.
These small banks will get badly hit if there is no bailout of the
big banks they are dependent on.
The millions of hometown
restaurants and diners, railroad station coffee shops and
newsstands, bookstores and gift shops, Filipino stores, Korean
laundries—among many other kinds of establishments—are owned by
people who bank in their hometown lender and depositary.
The slightly bigger
companies—milk factories, the local branch of Pathmark and RiteAid,
etc.—bank with bigger regional banks.
All of these are dependent on and
have some kind of exposure to the bigger national banks and Wall
Street names that need the bailout.
These congressmen are very, very
wrong to vent their anger at the US Treasury Secretary, the White
House (of Clinton and Bush), the Fed and the US government in
general for letting the US financial and banking situation reach
this point.
They should have asked for more
stringent regulations even during the Reagan years.
Actually, John McCain was among
the few senators who were worried about Wall Street and the
investment banks more than a decade ago. But both the Democrats and
his own Republican partymates drowned his and fellow mavericks’
voices.
I have relatives and friends in
every state of the USA, whose savings and small businesses are
threatened with extinction—if the $700-billion bailout law is not
passed at once.
Millions of Americans will lose
their jobs, their children will not be able to go to college, etc.
The decline of the value of good
stock in Wall Street by up to 60 percent must also be promptly
stopped by restoring investor confidence in the market.
US mainstream Catholics
fighting a strong pro-abortion
There’s a proposed “Freedom
of Choice Act” or FOCA in the US Congress. It is a strong
pro-abortion measure. Mainstream American Catholics (not the
pro-abortion-choice Catholics) are fighting it with their prayers
and mass action. The fight is as intense as the one here on the
Reproductive Health Bill.
The chairman of the U.S.
bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities says the bill is not
about freedom at all. Cardinal Justin Rigali, archbishop of
Philadelphia, wrote a letter to congressmen and senators showing
them the bad logic in the bill.
The act “would deprive the
American people in all 50 states of the freedom they now have to
enact modest restraints and regulations on the abortion industry.
FOCA [the Freedom of Choice Act] would coerce all Americans into
subsidizing and promoting abortion with their tax dollars. And FOCA
would counteract any and all sincere efforts by government to reduce
abortions in our country,” the cardinal said.
FOCA, Cardinal Rigali warned,
will not only codify (make a law) of the Supreme Court’s decision
to legalize abortion in its Roe vs. Wade decision. FOCA would also
nullify or even criminalize the anti-abortion laws and policies that
are still in effect in many US states because they do not conflict
with Roe v. Wade.
These include policies to protect
women’s safety, parental rights and informed consent.
“The operative language of FOCA
is twofold,” Cardinal Rigali explained. “First it creates a
‘fundamental right’ to abortion throughout the nine months of
pregnancy, including a right to abort a fully developed child in the
final weeks for undefined ‘health’ reasons. No government body
at any level would be able to ‘deny or interfere with’ this
newly created federal right,” if the FOCA is passed.
“Second, it forbids government
at all levels to ‘discriminate’ against the exercise of this
right ‘in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities,
services, or information.’ For the first time, abortion on demand
would be a national entitlement that government must condone and
promote in all public programs affecting pregnant women.”
Cardinal Rigali’s letter had a
legal analysis of FOCA’s possible consequences.
“Members of both parties have
sought to reach a consensus on ways to reduce abortions in our
society,” he says in the letter. ”However, there is one thing
absolutely everyone should be able to agree on: We can’t reduce
abortions by promoting abortion. . . . No one who sponsors or
supports legislation like FOCA can credibly claim to be part of a
good-faith discussion on how to reduce abortions.”
rqb@manilatimes.net
rq_bas@yahoo.com
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