ThanksHank.org - A Tax Payer Rebellion Launched!

The goal of the "Thanks Hank [1]" campaign is to stir a tax-payer revolt through the use of humor. What's most absurd that We the People accept the risks and pay for the losses after the most greedy have collected obscene salaries, profits and windfalls.

This crisis bursts the conventional "bubble" that markets will solve all our problems. For 30 years we fed the palaver that markets are good and government is bad. We are now surrounded by market failures in finance, trade, jobs, health care and climate change. Not one of these problems can be solved without strong public policies to intervene and regulate market outcomes to align with the public interest.

This "Bailout" is Grover Norquist's twisted wet dream to shrink the government's capacity to serve the people "until it is so small that it can be drowned in a bathtub." He and other market fundamentalists perpetrated this myth on the American people, in order to transfer the common wealth to the uncommonly greedy, and now they are going to have to pay us back! We want a 21st Century NEW DEAL.

The Backbone Campaign and our movement partners Democrats.com, Code Pink, and others, under the advisement of economists Dean Baker and Doug Henwood make this Counter Proposal to Paulson and Congress:

* The people who caused the problem or profited most should pay for it:
1. Highly compensated executives total compensation should be capped or taxed heavily as a condition for being bailed out.
2. Tobin tax on all transactions in Finance, Insurance and Real Estate including currency transactions.
3. Government takes an equity stake, proportionate to the size of the bailout
4. Tax hedge fund managers' income
5. Accountability - fire executives of failed companies as done in the UK, and abrogate their severance packages.
6. Impose a five-year, 10 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year for couples and over $500,000 for single taxpayers.

* Re-regulate to prevent this from happening again
1. Direct the Federal Reserve to intervene to prevent asset bubbles.
2. Extend reserve requirements to new security categories
3. Regulate the packaging of loans so they can be evaluated, rated, and priced rationally.
4. Regulate hedge funds and private equity funds in a way comparable to banks

* Include Main Street in the bailout & Invest in a new productive economy
1. Establish a moratorium on foreclosures, renegotiating mortgages or institute a rent-to-own plan to keep people in homes.
2. Create a major economic recovery package which puts Americans to work at decent wages, in productive jobs that add value to homes and communities.
3. Invest the taxes on speculation, executive compensation, and the surtax on the wealthy in clean energy, infrastructure, education, and health care.

Congress will inevitably whine and pose as if they are fighting - stories of all night meetings for instance - but in the next few days they'll cave. Why? Because they are dependent on campaign contributions from the rich, in bed with Wall Street lobbyists, held by the balls by energy corporations and the military-industrial-complex and have forgotten that they are elected by Main Street not Wall Street.

The only thing that will bring about a different outcome is if We the People rise above the fear mongering, stop all business as usual, and say "Enough is enough!" in the streets and on the overpasses, at congressional offices, and at the headquarters of major corporations that have undermined our republic with undue and disproportionate influence over our elected officials.

Take action at ThanksHank.org [1] send your unpaid debts to Hank Paulson at the Treasury, deposit slips to Congress, and get this rebellion rolling!

(This "Thanks Hank!" video is a collaboration between the Backbone Campaign [2], En-JoyProductions.com [3], and videographer James Culbertson.)