Pat Dollard | Young Americans

This is the problem with our Elected Class. They think everything is separated. Government is above the people. Wall Street is always ahead of the people. The fact is, many many “working class” Americans have investments these days … whether through work plans, or voluntary investing in the stock market.

This push of the concept that Wall Street is the villain in this can only carry so far. My Father has investments, and he’s a union blue-collar retired worker democrat. My husband through work has an investment plan. Such is the case with many businesses and industries these days. So, when Obama and the democrats yell some ‘wag-the-dog’ class war chant, This is about Main Street … they had better consider this:

By Salena Zito - (Pittsburgh Trib)

Not everyone gets the Wall Street-Main Street connection.

But they should, because both streets intersect on every block in America.

“In the sense that if the credit market dries up on Wall Street, capital will be unavailable on Main Street,” said University of Arizona political science professor Robert Maranto. “So no car loans, house loans, business loans and the like.”

In the short run, Maranto explains, there is no reason to panic, but over two years it would lead to higher unemployment. Maranto also reminds that most of Middle America’s savings are plowed into the stock markets, “so if the market loses value we all take a hit.”

University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato said he is not surprised the House of Representatives defeated the bailout bill Monday.

“The Paulson Plan was so poorly presented and explained that it’s no wonder Americans rose up angry, the battle was lost when the word ‘bailout’ was applied. Who in their right mind wants average Americans to bail out the corrupt, greedy financial executives who got us all into this mess?”

Sabato says Wall Street executives are lucky they haven’t been lined up against a barn door and shot, with the blindfolds cut from their golden parachutes.

“Americans know something has to be done and some compromise will be reached, but this episode has kept members of Congress and the Bush administration on notice and on their toes,” Sabato said.

Maranto agrees that it was probably not a bad idea for the public to send a message to Washington not to go overboard. “My gut tells me that Congress will arrange a bailout in the next few days, and it will probably be a better-designed policy than what Treasury Secretary (Henry) Paulson first came up with.”

Maranto argues that policy-makers do better when they operate under scrutiny.

In fact that is a message Sen. John McCain is trying to push: that divided government worked pretty well in the 1980s and ’90s, and it can again. Without that argument he might as well hand Barack Obama the car keys.

A fact not lost on Maranto, “It strikes me that Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both committed their biggest blunders when their parties ran Congress … they made much better and more centrist decisions when they had to deal with parties controlled by the other side.”