Monday, September 22, 2008

La Riva/Puryear: Bail out workers, not Wall Street!

The Party for Socialism and Liberation’s Gloria La Riva/Eugene Puryear Presidential campaign has issued a statement on the massive financial industry bailout currently being concocted in D.C., calling out the hypocrisy inherent in the scheme:

When a worker can’t pay his or her credit card bill, that’s their problem. When a working class family can’t keep up with their mortgage, they are foreclosed and thrown onto the streets. But when the capitalist bankers lose hundreds of billions in wild speculation, the federal government comes to their rescue and makes the tax payers foot the bill! This is theft on a grand scale. Billionaire bankers are protected while millions of workers lose their jobs and homes.

Working people didn’t make this crisis, why should we be the ones who have to suffer? We didn’t create the housing bubble, create predatory lending practices, gamble away billions of dollars in the Wall St. casino. Now the government is creating a fund with our money to take over the bad debts of the bankers and corporate capitalists. For the rich, it’s “heads we win tails you lose,” showing once again that the “free enterprise system” is nothing more than a myth.

In response to the bailout, the PSL candidate call for the following reforms:

  • An immediate moratorium on foreclosures, evictions and rent hikes.
  • No layoffs—jobs for all.
  • Extend unemployment benefits at full pay for everyone without a job.
  • Open the books of the banks for a workers’ inspection
  • Criminal prosecution of banking, finance, insurance and all other executives whose companies have benefited from the foreclosure crisis.
  • Take the $430 million spent everyday on the occupation of Iraq to fund people’s needs. Hurricane and flood victims must have a government guarantee that they will receive all necessary assistance.
  • An aggressive sales tax on the stock market.
  • Creation and funding of jobs programs throughout the country to eliminate unemployment.

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