"It's true that we don't live in a direct democracy where every last decision by elected officials must conform to majoritarian desire, nor should we want that. In general, elected officials should exercise judgment independent of -- in ways that deviate from -- majority views. But the opposite extreme is what we have and it is just as bad -- a system where the actions of elected officials are dictated by a tiny cabal of self-interested oligarchs which fund, control and own the branches of government and willfully ignore majority opinion in all cases (except to manipulate it).

"Moreover, even in a model of representative rather than direct democracy, the more consequential an action is -- should we start a war? should we burden the entire nation with close to a trillion dollars in debt in order to bail out Wall Street? -- the greater the need is to have the consent of the governed before undertaking it. From all quarters, Americans heard the arguments in favor of the bailout -- "agree to have this debt piled on your back for decades or else face certain doom" -- and they rejected it, decisively, at least for now.

"Anyone arguing that their views should be ignored, that their judgment be overridden by the decree of the wiser, superior ruling class (see David Brooks and Kevin Drum as good examples), is simply endorsing the continuation of the predominant framework for how our country has been run for the last decade, at least. Whatever else that is, there's nothing "wise" about that framework. Even if one believes in principle that the country is best entrusted to the elevated wisdom of a magnanimous and superior ruling class, and that majoritarian opinion should be systematically ignored, our ruling class -- the one we actually have -- is anything but wise and magnanimous. It's bloated, incestuous, reckless, inept, self-interested, endlessly greedy and corrupt at its core. Ye shall know them by their fruits. It's hard to imagine anything less wise than continuing to submit to its dictates."

And George Monbiot writes at The Guardian, via CommonDreams.org: "Any subsidies eventually given to the monster banks of Wall Street will be as American as apple pie and obesity. The sums demanded may be unprecedented, but there is nothing new about the principle: corporate welfare is a consistent feature of advanced capitalism. Only one thing has changed: Congress has been forced to confront its contradictions.

"One of the best studies of corporate welfare in the US is published by my old enemies at the Cato Institute. Its report, by Stephen Slivinski, estimates that in 2006 the federal government spent $92bn subsidising business. Much of it went to major corporations such as Boeing, IBM and General Electric.

"A report published last week by the advocacy group Common Cause shows how bankers and brokers stopped legislators banning unsustainable lending. Over the past financial year, the big banks spent $49m on lobbying and $7m in direct campaign contributions. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac spent $180m in lobbying and campaign finance over the past eight years. Much of this was thrown at members of the House financial services committee and the Senate banking committee.

"Whenever congressmen tried to rein in the banks and mortgage lenders they were blocked by the banks' money. Dick Durbin's 2005 amendment seeking to stop predatory mortgage lending, for example, was defeated in the Senate by 58 to 40. The former representative Jim Leach proposed re-regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Their lobbyists, he recalls, managed in "less than 48 hours to orchestrate both parties' leadership" to crush his amendments."

So the millionaires' 100 club will now try to ram through a terrible bill based on the disastrous, obscene, anti-democratic Paulson plan that will reward the Wall Street and its financial institutions' perpetrators of this debacle. The Senate will ensure that this bailout will  be paid for on the backs of regular American taxpayers already struggling financially under the burden of economic inequality, while the wealthy who benefitted from the avaricious and fraudulent mortgage lending and bundling financiers and investment houses will continue to use fianancial advisers and accountants only the rich can afford to help them escape paying any taxes or even their fair share of taxes courtesy of the senatorial plutocrats.