Victims of the economic meltdown

February 19th, 2009

I am so tired of television and radio pundits who talk about how we are “addicted” to oil and borrowing and on and on. Talk about piling on the victims of this economic meltdown.

I breathed a sigh of relief when gas prices slipped back down to about $1.60, but I didn’t change my driving habits. I can’t change my driving habits. My grocery store is about 4 miles from my house. I have to drive to it on a divided highway. Even if I felt like walking along the side of the highway to get there, I’d still have to haul my 10-12 bags of groceries back home. Not to mention other necessary errands. Addicted to oil, my foot. When someone comes up with something to replace it that I can afford, the “addiction” will go away almost instantly.

Recently I’ve been hearing a lot about how we in this country have become “addicted” to credit and living beyond our means. Come on, really? Yes, there are those among us who when they get their first credit card go nuts. They learn very quickly that this isn’t the best path, and they suffer mightily for years with trashed credit. This behavior has been around for many years, and it’s hardly new or news.

What we have now is a population that was deliberately targeted by people who stood to make billions in salaries, bonuses and Lord knows what else. These people are some of the sharpest and most conniving out there, and they cultivated legislators and regulators to promote bills and rules that would specifically benefit themselves. Not happy with the interest you are paying on your credit card or how your credit card company changes the terms of your agreement? Thank these guys. Blindsided by the galloping interest rates that have ballooned your mortgage payments? Thank them again. Crushed by a mortgage that’s more than the value of your home? Yup, it’s them.

I read somewhere that several of the architects who devised the tools that made their way into the credit markets were the same folks who brought us Enron and that huge energy ripoff in California a few years ago. When you stop and think about it, it makes perfect sense. There had to have been a lot of people involved in those scams who learned plenty. Very few went to jail, and the rest would be highly sought after by the unscrupulous who would love to perpetrate the same type of scams on a larger population. How perfect.

And we’re “addicted?” Hardly. We were the rubes at the snake oil show. Let’s call it like it is. Then maybe we’ll get angry enough to go after the snake oil salespeople once and for all.

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Economic Stimulus Plan v. Conservative Ideology

February 1st, 2009

Don’t you just love it. The same people who had no problem with doling out hundreds of billions of dollars to the Lords of Wall Street with no strings attached have an issue with providing help to beekeepers. I guess those guys don’t read National Geographic. Without bees we won’t have crops to harvest, and a mysterious disease has been killing the bees. But I suppose it resonates nicely in a sound bite to call this small bit of assistance in the Economic Stimulus Plan pork.

Conservative ideology is sounding mighty mean-spirited these days. The Economic Stimulus Plan is not perfect, but it’s a far sight better than anything the Bush administration and Henry Paulson came up with. The Conservative message of cut, cut, cut has the feel of Marie Antoinette picking our pockets as she admonishes us to quit whining.

I just heard Mitch McConnell on CNN complain about spending $600 million for government-owned cars and say that’s not appropriate for this bill. What? That’s roughly 30,000 cars that would have to be built by someone. Sounds like job stimulus to me. And since the government doesn’t build cars, it sounds to me like that money will be going to big business. I really don’t understand their problem with it.

Conservatives consistently argue against bigger government. That’s their code for taking our taxpayer dollars and parcelling it out to their pals in the private sector to provide the services that government otherwise would. Which is fine, to a point. Some services are not suited to lumbering bureaucracies. But paying excessive sums to politically connected companies with little or no oversight is not. Halliburton’s Iraq contracts come to mind.

The Conservative argument isn’t about spending money; it’s about whose fingers it sticks to on the way past. For the last eight years there was a huge transfer of wealth to the richest Americans via tax cuts and decreased regulation. That was just peachy with Conservatives. But the Economic Stimulus Plan with its extending benefits to unemployed Americans who buy the goods that generate the profits for big business, not so much.

I don’t understand the logic, and if there isn’t any logic, it might mean it’s just plain old greed. Maybe those Barons of the Conservative movement and our Lords of Wall Street consider us peasants.

Not so long ago in England, a gentleman was someone who owned property. They were the gentry. Today very few of us actually ownproperty. It’s mortgaged, and that’s the biggest reason for our peasanthood. The way to free ourselves from this predicament is to get ourselves out of debt.

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