And one that has been in the works for some time:

From rollcall:

White House Dispatches Team to Push Economic Bill
September 23, 2008, 10:42 a.m.
By Keith Koffler
Roll Call Staff

The White House today is drumming up extraordinary pressure on Congress to approve its plan to enact a $700 billion mortgage bailout fund, suggesting the markets cannot wait much longer and dispatching Vice President Cheney and other top officials up Pennsylvania Avenue to jawbone lawmakers.

Cheney, White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and presidential adviser Ed Gillespie are meeting this morning with House Republican conservatives, where a rebellion is brewing against the size and questionable free market credentials of the administration proposal.

Cheney will later gather with GOP Senators at the regular Tuesday lunch. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who collaborated in drawing up the proposal, are testifying this morning on Capitol Hill in an effort to defend their handiwork.

But Bush himself continues to do little to explain his plan, and he has refused to be questioned about it.

Asked during a telephone briefing for reporters today whether Bush was speaking with lawmakers, White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto said the president is aware of their concerns but that Paulson is the salesman.

Paulson said Congress and the administration must move rapidly.

“We must do so in order to avoid a continuing series of financial institution failures and frozen credit markets that threaten American families' financial well-being, the viability of businesses both small and large, and the very health of our economy,” Paulson said in remarks as prepared for delivery. “The market turmoil we are experiencing today poses great risk to U.S. taxpayers.”

Fratto said it would be “unthinkable” for Congress not to pass legislation this week, asserting the result would be a “very, very serious situation” for the U.S. economy.

“It shouldn’t take much analysis to remember what happened last week, which was a very serious freeze-up in our credit markets,” Fratto said. “Our financial markets right now do not need uncertainty, they need increased certainty as to how this rescue plan is going to go forward — and that they can be sure that there is a plan to go forward — and that will begin the correction in our financial markets.”

Fratto insisted that the plan was not slapped together and had been drawn up as a contingency over previous months and weeks by administration officials. He acknowledged lawmakers were getting only days to peruse it, but he said this should be enough.

Amid growing criticism of the initiative from multiple quarters, Fratto sought to defend its key principles and argue against changes.

He argued that the proposal is being unfairly characterized as a boon to Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, since credit market difficulties also squeeze average consumers. He minimized the need to help homeowners as part of the package — a key demand of Democrats — saying aiding the credit markets will help on its own and noting that Congress just approved a housing bill that includes assistance.

And Fratto sought to beat back efforts to limit the pay of CEOs whose companies would draw assistance under the legislation, saying it would make it difficult for the plan to work “If you provide disincentives for companies and firms out there that are holding mortgage-backed securities and other securities from participating in the program.”

Fratto noted that some firms holding troubled securities are otherwise successful. “They were not necessarily irresponsible players, and so you have to be careful how you deal with them,” he said.

and will do it again today. Some of this letter is poached from different places.

This week the White House is going to try to push through the biggest robbery in world history with nary a stitch of debate to bail out the Wall Street thieves who created this economic apocalypse in the first place.

This is the financial equivalent of September 11. They think, just like with the Patriot Act, they can use the shock to force through the “therapy,” and we’ll just roll over!

They said providing healthcare for 9 million children, perhaps $6 billion a year, was too expensive, but there’s evidently no sum of money large enough that will sate the Wall Street pigs. If this passes, forget about any money to rebuild our decaying infrastructure, for alternative energy.

With Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie, AIG, the money markets and now this omnibus bailout, well in excess of $1 trillion will be distributed from the poor, workers and middle class to the scum floating on top.

This whole mess gives lie to the free market. The Feds are propping up stock prices, directing buyouts, subsidizing crooks and swindlers who already made a killing off the mortgage bubble.

Even before any details have been hashed out, The New York Times admits that “Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it,” and its chief financial correspondent writes that the Bush administration wants “Congress to give them a blank check to do whatever they want, whatever the cost, with no one able to watch them closely.”

It’s socialism for the rich and dog-eat-dog capitalism for the rest of us.

We gave Bush a blank check after September 11. We gave him another blank check for the war in Iraq. We’re not going to give him another one now, for Wall Street.

Tell the President: No Blank Check and no Bailout. Unless…. Unless there’s some real relief included for working Americans… And unless there are some tough new rules for Wall Street.

I only added the last bit because I think we can be fairly certain they're going to go along with it. ;(

Once in a while you get shown the light, In the strangest of places if you look at it right.

the last part in my letter today.

From Chris Floyd:

Next Bad Deal Gone Down: The Comedy of Congressional 'Oversight'

I know we keep channeling Arthur Silber here, but he has been all over the deeper implications of "Bailoutgate" than anyone else. His latest piece rightly skewers the emerging "compromise" between Bush and the Congressional Democrats on "oversight" of the government gift program for the Gordon Gekko gang. As any sentient being might have suspeted, the "tough oversight" being offered by such champions of the common folk as Chris Dodd and Barney Frank is -- wait for it -- a weak and watery sham.

Silber quotes the Wall Street Journal (his italics):

One broad area of agreement involves congressional oversight. Rep. Frank said the Treasury agreed to an independent board to monitor the bailout and report on its progress to Congress and the public. The board wouldn't have authority to veto Treasury investment decisions, and the bailout's launch wouldn't be delayed while a board was being put in place.

Then goes on:

Dodd's plan is no better with regard to "oversight"; see Section 4 (among other provisions: "The Emergency Oversight Board shall meet 2 weeks after the first exercise of the purchase authority of the Secretary under this Act and monthly thereafter." Yeah, that should do it.). In addition to the fact that the centerpiece of Dodd's proposal is the one action that should not be taken and that will do nothing to "solve" an insoluble problem, is its gross immorality: presenting the bill to American taxpayers who had nothing to do with creating this crisis. And yet, even Paul Krugman claims that Dodd's proposal is "a big improvement over Paulson's plan."

As he has done for days, Silber keeps hammering away at the salient point in this carnival of greed and power-grabbing: no bailout "plan" of any kind can fix this problem:

The consequences we are now seeing are irrevocable and unavoidable. The bad debts must be accounted for and written off. A problem of massive bad debts and insolvency is not a problem of liquidity. This truth means one thing in terms of the "solutions" proposed: a massive bailout of insolvent financial institutions which includes keeping the bad debts in the system still longer is precisely the wrong action to take. It will not solve the problem, for this problem cannot be solved. But it will accomplish one goal: it will postpone the problem to another day, and it will make the problem worse, and it will cause still greater damage.
.
...In other words, Krugman insists that we solve a problem that cannot be solved -- but that we do it more "efficiently" and "competently." This is precisely the argument that Democrats, liberals and progressives always make -- even with regard to momentous war crimes like the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In still other words: they concede the basic terms of the argument, and argue only over the specific implementation. And then they pretend to wonder why they keep losing the argument. Here's a clue: they keep losing the argument because they never engage it. If Krugman and the many others like him have their way, the immorality and the futility will continue, in economic policy, in foreign policy and in every other area -- but the immorality and futility will be carried out more "efficiently."

In this essay, Silber also addresses one of the underlying elements driving us into so many disasters:

[M]ost Americans will not accept that actions have consequences, and that those consequences are sometimes irrevocable. Your prayers will not restore over a million slaughtered Iraqis to life. Your wishes will not instantaneously erase the horrifying memories that make an American soldier unable to sleep, incapable of holding a job, and that make him a stranger to his own family. There are times when our actions lead to results that cannot be undone.

These are not difficult concepts to grasp, Silber says....and yet:

Yet most Americans -- and our entire governing class and almost all commentators and bloggers -- refuse to grasp them. It is as if these ideas are written in a dead language. Certainly, the language is dead to them, for they have made themselves incapable of understanding it. To recognize a truth of this kind threatens the mechanism of denial that lies at the very center of their sense of themselves, at the very center of their identity. So the truth cannot be acknowledged.

And so the bailout, in one egregious, unjust, destructive form or another, will go through, and the Democrats will vote for it, and Barack Obama will say - as he said in the FISA law debacle, when he stood with Bush and Cheney for tyranny -- that it's "not perfect" but it's a "good compromise" and he will work to make sure the bailout is -- wait for it -- carried out "efficiently". (By his many economic advisers who had instrumental roles in creating the crisis in the first place, no doubt.)

This bad deal is done. How soon before the next one comes barreling down the pike?
***

Once in a while you get shown the light, In the strangest of places if you look at it right.