{"id":4837,"date":"2008-09-22T22:17:24","date_gmt":"2008-09-23T05:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/09\/22\/my-senior-senator-the-bailout-is-awesome\/"},"modified":"2008-09-22T22:17:24","modified_gmt":"2008-09-23T05:37:12","slug":"my-senior-senator-the-bailout-is-awesome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=4837","title":{"rendered":"My Senior Senator: The Bailout is Awesome!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"winbig.jpg\"<\/a>Those of you outside Minnesota probably remember Norm Coleman as the guy who won his senate seat when Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash. He hasn’t done much since. But still, Norm’s a political powerhouse in Minnesota, even if he’s taken a weird, meandering course in his career. And he’s leading challenger Al Franken (about whom I could write volumees, and someday will) by a narrow margin.<\/p>\n

Still, Norm occasionally says some radically stupid things. For instance, he has an\u2026er\u2026novel<\/em> take on the trillion dollar giveaway. It\u2019s like the lottery \u2014 we could win big<\/em>, America!<\/p>\n

Yeah, it seems insane, but in a town hall meeting in North Mankato, Minnesota, Coleman said that the U.S. government could make up to $14 trillion on the deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government could make 10 or 20 times what it pays on this, possibly,\u201d said Coleman, according to the <\/a>Mankato Free Press<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Of course, he did admit that he does \u201cworry a little bit\u201d about giving a trillion dollars away. And I suppose it is worth worrying about a bit, but we’ve got bigger things to worry about, like the fact that Al Franken\u2019s angry, so it doesn\u2019t matter, right?<\/p>\n

Seriously, it\u2019s hard to overstate how out to lunch this valuation of possible return on investment is. I mean, first off, if there was $14 trillion in profits outstanding, the foreign banks that still have money would be lining up to throw money into the market \u2014 we wouldn\u2019t need taxpayer rescue. But of course, $14 trillion isn\u2019t going to be made; $14 trillion is more than the entire U.S. gross domestic product<\/em>. It\u2019s not just ludicrous to suggest that the U.S. could earn a whole year\u2019s GDP back on this horrible, horrible bet \u2014 it\u2019s completely disconnected from reality. It\u2019s not only not in the ballpark, it\u2019s not only not in the universe, it\u2019s not in the multiverse<\/em> of possible outcomes from this debacle.<\/p>\n

Of course, Norm, like most Republicans, has been a big fan of deregulating everything that moves over the years, and an even bigger record of throwing taxpayer money at corporations (for instance, he still touts his role in bringing hockey back to Minnesota when he was mayor of St. Paul. And how did he bring hockey back? That\u2019s right, he built an arena with taxpayer funding). So basically, if he\u2019s going to run on his record, he\u2019s screwed. So instead, he\u2019ll pretend that putting all our money on\u00a0double-zero could turn up big, big winnings for America. Oh, and Al Franken\u2019s angry. Victory!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those of you outside Minnesota probably remember Norm Coleman as the guy who won his senate seat when Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash. He hasn’t done much since. But still, Norm’s a political powerhouse in Minnesota, even if … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics-and-the-like","category-elections-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}