The Lint Screen

Tag: taxpayers

  • Help Save The Bankers!

    A proposal for a more civilized feeding time for bankers.
    As evil self-serving politicians go on a witch hunt against Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street financial types, I’ve become worried.

    What if the dastardly politicos enact regulations that might curb the free marketeers from earning their paltry hundreds of millions of dollars annually?

    What if there are no longer billions of bucks for bonuses, paid for by taxpayers, for losing on aggressive bets made?

    What if financial lobbyists don’t enjoy unlimited budgets to grease politicians and assist in writing laws ensuring future riches?

    In other words, what if stupid laws cap the opportunities for gambling, greed and gouging the little people who don’t even understand how banks make money?

    After many sleepless nights, I have come to a simple solution: cut out the middlemen.

    Rather than the outdated system we currently have– bankers hiring lobbyists to get politicians in the pocket and help write laws that enable financial fatcats to gamble and win big, or get paid-off by taxpayers if they lose– let’s just cut out the lobbyists and politicians and simply have taxpayers pay Wall Streeters directly.

    The market would be much more efficient if we taxpayers simply tithed 5-8% of our income to our banking overlords from the get-go. Why should they have the inconvenience of waiting for our income to be taxed, then passed their way?

    With my bold new proposal, these pinstripers wouldn’t even need to trump-up risky gambles or cockamamie financial instruments. They wouldn’t have to hurt their ivy league brains conjuring schemes to screw people– we’d just fork over the dough up front and acknowledge our woeful ignorance. Then the civilized cufflinked crowd could get back to more important matters, like buying estates on the Hamptons or dandruff control.

    Why must we continue these pointless charades in Washington? Help save the bankers– write your congressional servants and let’s cut to the chase.

  • Political Parties Dissolve, Sponsorship Evolves

    As a result of the recent Supreme Court ruling permitting unlimited election finance support of politicians and political causes by corporations, unions and special interest groups, the venerable Democratic and Republican parties are dissolving in favor of direct politician sponsorship.

    This means that soon you may see politicians carry designations like, Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil, MetLife, FreedomWorks, Boeing, AMA, Bank of America, NEA, Lockheed Martin, KBR, Novartis, General Electric, Citi and DuPont.

    Politicians scramble to find corporate sponsors.
    “Thank goodness for this new ruling,” said a senior senator who demanded anonymity, “we can finally do what we’ve been doing for years– sucking from the corporate teat and letting them guide our hands in writing legislation they can profit by. Now we can do it without the charade of having to debate issues and causes with arcane notions like justice and equality. We can openly allow corporate fascism to rule enabling us to better serve our corporate overlords without the hindrance of the so-called people. Sure, we need them for their votes, but that’s about it. After the election, they just get in the way of things. There’s no need for people in a democracy like ours.”

    Asked if this new corporate sponsorship will be like NASCAR sponsorship– with large corporate logos displayed on uniforms, the senator responded angrily, “Don’t be preposterous. That would be tacky. We’ll simply wear lapel pins with tasteful logos to show our sponsor support. We’re not whorish shills, you know.”

    Financial companies are elated with the new ruling. “Now we can really help the country with some of our innovative financial ideas,” said a high ranking official who threatened death to this reporter if his identity was disclosed. “Years ago we had to maneuver and work backroom deals to get things like the Glass-Steagall Act overturned. That allowed us to gamble with the housing market finances. Now we don’t have to be so secretive, we can be open about lining the pockets of lawmakers to get laws that favor us without bothersome government oversight or restrictions. If our financial ideas fail, who cares– taxpayers will bail us out. The Supreme Court’s recently ruling ensures a much more transparent buying of politicians, and frankly, what could be more American than that?”

    With that, the Wall Street bigwig lit a Cuban Monte Cristo cigar with a burning $1,000 bill and exclaimed, “Hrrrrummmph!”

  • Are We Making A $700 Billion Mistake? (Pt. 1)

     

    Hey, what the heck! What the freakin’ heck!
    Hey, what the heck! What the freakin’ heck!

         I don’t know about you, but I’m worried sick. This financial market meltdown is giving me the willies, and now I think I see the devious greedy paws of chimps on the taxpayer’s checkbook.

         Get a load of this: while Bernanke and Paulson are begging politicians for a big fat Wall Street payday, chimps dressed to the nines have been spotted in the crowd, hungrily licking their chops.

         Now I’m not usually an alarmist, but what if these chimps are behind the entire brouhaha? What if it was their clever plot to deregulate the financial markets, slash rates and make money easy to get, take on a ton of bad debt, fail miserably and then stick it to taxpayers to bail the banks out? Are chimps running Wall Street? Are we patsies, being played like a glockenspiel?

         Now some may think I’m out of line here, but I’m going to Brooks Brothers to see if chimps and monkeys are snatching up fancy duds.  Something stinks here, stinks to high heaven.

  • 7 Ways To Capitalize on AIG

     

    Now that we own it, let's milk the sucker!
    Now that we own it, let's milk the sucker!

         Last week, we American taxpayers bought ourselves AIG. I’ve never owned an insurance company, but I do have a few proposals about running our new enterprise:

    1. Let’s outsource for cheap labor in China and India.
    2. Let’s not insure any high risk people.
    3. Let’s continually raise premiums.
    4. If there are claims, let’s dispute them.
    5. Let’s hire an army of lobbyists to get politicians passing laws that favor us.
    6. Let’s pay ourselves great big paychecks with huge stock options and bonuses.
    7. If we do happen to get into financial trouble, let’s have some government bail us out.