The Gay community has spent decades fighting for equal rights and caring disproportionately for the dirty little secret of HIV/AIDS in the black community. We spent our time and money to elect a black president and stand against discrimination. Gay civil rights would not have been taken away by mob rule had a disproportionate number of the black people voted no on Prop 8. Those who've looked at the ugly face of discrimination should never forget that the battle for equality and civil rights is something all people must always stand for. Shame!

Thank you for passing the Economic Rescue Plan

Like most good catastrophes (9/11, Pearl Harbor, etc.), the current economic crisis we find ourselves in is the result of a series of failures that went unchecked until they cascaded out of control. When we look back at 9/11, we find multiple failures at the FBI, the airlines, airport security, the CIA, and our executive branch to name just a few. The guilty list for our current situation consists of:

1) millions of individual Americans and speculators, who at best were delusional, and at worst were greedy, irresponsible, reckless, and ignorant. These people took out huge loans and agreed to ridiculous terms (interest only, low teaser rate, etc.), and often were complicit with the mortgage lender in overstating income and understating debt in order to qualify for the loan. For those of you on this list, a fixed 30-year mortgage with a significant down payment (10 to 20 percent) is the responsible way to finance a home purchase. Financing on a hope and prayer the market will continue on its 20-year run up is a flawed approach.

2) Mortgage lenders, like Country Wide Financial, and its CEO Angelo Mozilo, who created an anything-goes culture to sign people up for loans huge loans. The individual brokers working at these companies were paid huge commissions to close loans. This created the incentive for dishonesty. When Mozilo and other mortgage executives testified in front of Congress, they kept saying they weren’t doing anything the competition wasn’t doing. In fact, they said they had to do it to compete. This is complete bull. Wells Fargo, and many other banks, didn’t do it. Today, Wells Fargo is arguably the healthiest and most prudent bank still standing. They are positioned to heap huge benefits from the irresponsible behavior of the County Wides of this disaster.

3) Government regulators and the Bush Administration. As the republican administration continued to push for less regulation, the seeds for this disaster were sown. Regulation exists because it recognizes that human nature is to test the limits. Remove those limits and the verification, and you get what we currently have.

4) The credit rating agencies. Mortgage lenders, in order to raise additional cash to make more loans, packaged their loans and sold them to many entities, including Wall Street investment firms, hedge funds, and foreign banks. The credit rating agencies, like Moody’s often over rated these sub-prime loan packages as triple-AAA.

5) Investors and Wall Street. They purchased these sub-prime loan packages and failed in their responsibility to themselves and their customers to perform due diligence.

6) The insurance companies. They insured the investors who bought these loan packages. And when those loans started defaulting in great numbers, they were on the hook for more than they could pay.

In looking at the above “guilty” list, I have to assign the majority of the blame to the individuals at the top of the list. They are the ones who ultimately had the choice, and they made the wrong choice. Sure they can say it was the fault of unscrupulous lenders, but I don’t accept that. If I am about to put my name on a $500,000.00 dollar loan, I’m going to make sure I’m fully educated about the process and its ramifications.

In my opinion, Wall Street is probably the least culpable on this list. But the millions of Americans who took out these bad loans, rather than accepting responsibility for helping to create our current situation, are looking for someone else to blame. Who makes a better villain than the highly compensated Wall Street executives who were given multi-million dollar golden parachutes? I do not believe they deserved those huge sums of money, but they are not the villain in this mess. If we’re looking for villains, I would have to say the power to prevent this was concentrated in the hands of a few key individuals, those who are listed as number 3 on my list, the government regulators and the Bush administration. They were asleep at the switch, and now many millions of Americans who did not even participate in this huge scam are going to pay the price. I’m talking about the millions of Americans who worked hard all their lives and followed the rules and did not commit to loans they could never repay. They saved for retirement and now many will have to continue working for 5 to 10 years to be able to retire. It’s the same old story, the irresponsible actions of the few (millions) are going to end up costing all of us who followed the rules.

The damage has now spread to the credit markets and massive unemployment may follow. We are truly in the midst of a disaster and it is clear we must take action fast. The proposed economic bailout plan may not be the best solution, but the most important thing we can do it react quickly. Quick action does not lend itself to incredible detail. We must not be paralyzed by over thinking this, and in so doing loose our window of opportunity. Passing the rescue package was the right thing to do, and if it’s bailing out anyone, it’s bailing out the millions of individual Americans who caused the problem in the first place. Rather than criticizing those who passed the plan, we ought to be thanking them. There is still going to be pain and challenges going forward, but passing this plan was the single best action at minimizing that pain and stopping the immediate bleeding.

Joe McKernan
Long Beach, California

How about some responsible reporting on the bailout plan, like there is a chnce that taxpayers may even profit from it. As Warren Buffet, Bill Gross (Pimco) Larry Fink (Blackstone) say. Instead of scary irresponsible headlines like "Cost to taxpayers 700,000,000,000". The 24-7 newscycle in this country needs to be toned down. The ridiculous comments made in the rush to be first with a headline before all the facts are known is part of the root cause of anxiety today. How about fair and balanced reporting and getting to now facts before reporting. Just like it used to be...remember