By James Donahue

As documented in another story linked to the publication Financial Times and appearing on this site, the controversial plan by our government to take over the nation’s financial institutions smacks of an old idea promoted by the late Karl Marx in his book The Communist Manifesto.

While this may come as a shock to many Americans, it has not escaped the attention of economists who have been appearing on various television and Internet shows and sites to talk about the problems connected to this so-called “bailout.”

Even the vicarious conservative radio talk show host and usual Republican mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh this week picked up on the socialist scheme hidden within the pages of the plan. Limbaugh went so far as to accuse treasury secretary Hank Paulson of seeking the role of a socialist commissar running a command economy. “The absurdity is better known as socialism,” he told his radio listeners.

Indeed, the proposal is perhaps the most deceptive document thrust before our legislators since the Patriot Act, and notice that the same element of fear of not acting quickly has put our lawmakers in a frenzy. Nearly all are running for re-election in just one month, all are anxious to get home and campaign among their constitutes, and all are forced to stay in Washington and sort out the complexities of an economic hodge-podge they do not fully understand.

It is a problem forced upon them by a corrupt administration coached by an evil wizard behind the curtain, who has planned well in advance to create the kind of emergencies that leave everyone locked in indecision and conflict.

At this late stage in the campaign, with Democrat Barack Obama appearing to have a definitive lead over the aging Republican John McCain, we can only surmise the purpose of this latest national and international crisis. Either it is part of a plan to force a complete takeover of our government before the election, or it is an attempt to leave the nation totally bankrupt so that the next president will be unable to do anything more than ride out the inevitable line of programmed carnage to come.

Like the late President Herbert Hoover, elected to office in 1928, and taking office only months before the stock market crash that led the world into the Great Depression, Obama may be remembered as the man who was in office when the economy once more crashed around us. Hoover took the blame for a problem that was already in place during the Presidency of Calvin Coolidge. Will we likewise blame Obama for the misdeeds of the Bush Administration?

Hoover was voted out of office after just one term because he was not only caught off guard, he could find no solution to what was a world-wide crisis. A hard-line conservative Christian Republican, Hoover would not have dreamed of the socialistic-styled programs used by his Democratic successor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, that used government dollars to create employment for hundreds of thousands. Roosevelt’s final punch was to collaborate with Britain’s Winston Churchill to get America thrust into a world war against not only Japan but Germany in 1941. The war effort staged a dynamic economic turn-around for the United States, fired up idled factories for building war machines, and put women to work on the assembly lines while their husbands went off to war. The depression was over and the nation ended up as a dynamic world power by the time Roosevelt died in office.

We strongly urge our lawmakers to reject the bailout proposal. Some people who are in the know about these matters say that a few simple steps can be taken now to stabilize the markets at home without committing $700 billion tax dollars, and give everyone time to go home and get through the looming elections. After this, there will be time to take a closer look at the issues and draft a better way of fixing the mess created after some 20 long years of careless mortgage and bank lending brought on through policies promoted by Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal Reserve.

While we know little about the complexities of national economic policies, it seems logical that rather than dump so much money carelessly into the laps of the very people who caused this mess, we might better follow Obama’s advice and provide help to homeowners who are defaulting on their mortgages. Provide government backed low-interest mortgage loans that these people can afford to handle, and assure banks and mortgage lenders at least a partial return on their investments.

The trickle-down effect didn’t work. Let’s try a grass-roots solution and see if it doesn’t stimulate people to not only stay in their homes and pay off their mortgages, but find jobs and start buying cars and other marketable goods once again.