by Julie R Butler

Created on: December 16, 2008   Last Updated: January 13, 2009

The US government's bailout plans are a huge mistake and, if not revised, will prove to be the undoing of this great nation. Here are ten reasons why.

1.Bait and Switch. The way that this emergency was handled was the most astoundingly brazen attack yet on the democratic process by the Bush Administration. Congress was held hostage. "Give us the money or die!" The Senate fell for the big bait and switch, wherein, at the last moment, the Bush Administration inserted one little sentence about restrictions on executive compensations when the government, as planned, bought their troubled assets at auction. But then the Treasury Department injected the funds directly into the companies instead, creating a giant loophole through which the executives are now free to jump toward their bonuses and compensation packages, thank you very much.

2.Not Sharing the Wealth. Hardly any of the $335 billion handed out so far, money that was supposed to liquefy the frozen credit markets, has actually flowed as credit out of the coffers of the banks and institutions that received it.

3.No Trickling Down. Now that no credit is available, now that the bubble of artificial money has finally burst, the myth of the "trickle down" effect has also been busted. Giving to the rich so that they may help the poor just ain't happening.

4.Homeowners Still Screwed. People were cajoled into buying homes they could not afford by the Republican-led government, which promoted homeownership because the real estate, insurance, construction, mortgage lending, and commerce lobbies were their "BFF's."

5.Monopolies. The results of the government handouts of billions of dollars to institutions that they claimed were "too big to fail" is the consolidation of these institutions into monopolies that are even bigger. Bigger is not better.

6.No Accountability. No one is being held accountable, not the Treasury Department, which is full of industry insiders who are looking after their buddies; not the executives who allowed their big institutions to fail because of pure greed; not the investors who collected fees by gambling away everyone's pension funds on complicated financial instruments that no one understood; not the lawmakers who insisted on a free-market free-for-all.

7.Workers' Rights. In the mad scramble to find solutions to keep failing corporations afloat, unions are being painted as greedy, lazy, corrupt, and (gasp!) socialist. This broad vilification of all unions, based on the actions of a few, sets all

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