As if I weren’t feeling badly already, what with an invisible fork in my neck for 3+ days, and what feels like an infection slowly spreading across my neck and up to my ear, I wake up on Sunday to hear our Elected Idjuts and Supposed Experts talking about a $700 Billion-with-a-B Bailout for “troubled” financial firms, as if it were already a done deal.
Yes, in spite of Aunt Crankypants’ concerns and caveats, apparently it’s true. So we will never be able to address national health care, adequately preserve our infrastructure, eliminate the Medicare “donut,” or even make a dent in our great-grandchildrens’ budget deficit...because the pigs at the trough are going to bail out their buddies to the tune of $700 Billion.
But if we don’t feed the pigs at the trough, the neocons whine, our house of cards will tumble and we will be thrown into a Great Depression! ...And could it be worth mentioning that (according to NYT “Shareholders at the Top”) Secretary Paulson still owns $523 million (current value) in Goldman Sachs?
Ah, but if we DO feed the pigs, we will be Rewarding Bad Behavior, which as any preschool teacher will tell you, only encourages more bad behavior. These financial institutions took on too much risk, out of greed, and it shouldn't be my job to bail then out. I’ll risk another depression if there’s a chance the CEOs of these firms will be left penniless.
From “Connect the Dots” at the Daily Kos:
A few years ago Bush tried to hand over social security to the same captains of high finance who managed to fly the nation's economy into the side of a mountain last week. Had he succeeded, we might have spent the last few days debating how to bail out Social Security. Just a few days ago John McCain wanted to do the same with your healthcare
That ought to help a lot of people decide how to vote.
3 comments:
As the old saying goes Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered. Not a pretty thought come to think of it, but I hope you found it uplifting all the same.
Also in the news,those foreigners broke the Superconducting Super Collider so we have to wait for months to find out the origins of everything. The problem with this is that someone or some sort of Super Computer will prove this theory wrong and so its back to the chalk board/motherboard/Idunno. All I know is I enjoy reading your posts, not your circumstance but you have a smart thing going on in your head, we need more of these.So thank you. JW
Foreigners broke the Super Collider? Damned foreigners! When are they gonna do something about 'em?!
FTR: what is known as the Superconducting Super Collider was in reality a very expensive U.S. project that was begun in Texas but was terminated in the early 90s by the U.S. House of Reps, due to the monstrously high price tag. Talk about waste. $2 billion had already been spent for...nothing. Hmmm, I don't know how many "foreigners" were involved in that mess. Unless Texas is considered to be a foreign state...
Seriously, though, you must be referring to the more recent Large Hadron Collider built in Switzerland. There was indeed a big problem with the cooling system, which should be resolved in the next couple of months.
Back to pigs. I just found out from the Italian news that Italian families with home mortgages (a LOT of people!) will also help feed the pigs at the trough. To the tune of a few thousand dollars per family per year. Nice.
Margaret
Florence, Italy
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