Robert Owens
What Have We Done to Deserve This?
By
Oct 1, 2008 - 9:06:34 AM

At a recent Board of Supervisors meeting, one well-organized group held up signs asking for an immediate hearing on an issue they believed had gone on for too long.  While it hasn’t reached the pitchforks-and-torches, storming-the-castle-gates stage yet, it took effort to get past the attorneys and unnamed “staff” who orchestrate our “public” hearings.

From the county courthouse through the state house to the pyramid scheme in the sky, it’s the same thing.  We’ve been nice obedient sheeple, quietly allowing our leaders to usurp the power that rightly belongs to we the people.  While we’re busy working to pay mortgages and bills, our leaders act like pied pipers leading us down the primrose path.  The problem with following the piper is that eventually he has to be paid.  

At home, most of us just want our leaders to act as our advocates instead of the advance men for developers, speculators, and other assorted flim-flam men.  We’d just like to know what’s going on instead of constantly wondering, “What’s going on?”  I know we have an almost entirely new Board of Supervisors, some of whom may be thinking, “The job I got isn’t the job I thought I wanted.”  We’re asking part-time people to do full-time jobs for part-time pay.  I don’t think any of us are looking for miracles, but I do think we’re all looking for transparency.  I realize that whatever is done, someone won’t be happy, but it appears obvious that when no one knows what is going on, nobody’s happy.  Saying, “I don’t know anything” at first sounds honest, but eventually it sounds convincing.

At the state level, we have our second governor in a row who promised not to raise taxes.  Like his predecessor, he even got mad when his opponent accused him of wanting to raise taxes.  Both raised taxes as soon as they were riding in the big black limo.  Now, the Commonwealth’s broke and according to our “leaders,” what’s the only way to fix it?  Cut the things people care about, schools and safety, but not one fewer limo ride, not one less perk for our leaders who need extra sessions just to do what they’re supposed to do in the regular session.  Who’s kidding whom?  We all know these cuts are just getting us ready for the tax hikes any blind man can see coming.  

Meanwhile what’re they doing up in OZ?  Their sustainable socialism turns out to be unsustainable, and their lobbyist fat-cat friends are in trouble for playing with a stacked deck, so it must be time for the BIG bailout.  They say we can solve the mess they’ve made through the purchase of the bad loans they’ve inspired and encouraged.  Buying up toxic paper is what Fannie and Freddie have been doing for years, and we all know how well that turned out.  How did we end up here?  America has been the engine pulling the world economy since the beginning of the twentieth century.  Our dollar became the reserve currency and times were good.

I know it’s all the fashion to blame greed and unfettered freedom for the mess we are in as our leaders screech “The sky is falling!” while offering only two alternatives: nationalize the economy through bailouts or do nothing.  The pundocracy of the mainstream media plays right along acting as if the sky is falling.  While there are many other ideas about how to handle this, which aren’t being reported by the media, if I had a vote I’d vote for doing nothing.

Let the people who’ve made the bad loans suffer the consequences.  I know the talking heads tell us that if we do, that the economy will size up and none of us will be able to get a loan to buy a bag of beans.  I think these guys are trying to sell us a bag of magic beans.  Not long ago, the mantra was if Bear Stearns fell, the whole house of cards would collapse; it didn’t.  Then it was if Fannie and Freddie went under, the apocalypse was here; it wasn’t.  Then if AIG went down, the economy would crumble; it didn’t.  How many times are we going to listen as the air assault troops with golden-parachutes lead the way for the perpetually re-elected to scare us into another bailout?  Think what this has already cost: $150 billion borrowed from China for a stimulus package to provide tax rebates to millions who don’t pay taxes; $29 billion for the bad loans of Bear Stearns so J.P. Morgan could buy it at a bargain price; $85 billion to nationalize AIG; $300 billion to bail out Fannie and Freddie.  Now the same sleight-of-hand artists want $700 billion to buy the worthless loans from America’s biggest banks.  Yet even as the best Congress money can buy negotiates the deal none of us want, the financial gurus say this is only a band-aid.  What do they want?  Blood?

There is an old saying: “In a democracy, people get the government they deserve.”  Which brings me to my question, “What in the world have we done to deserve this?”  Which brings me to my answer.  We took our eye off the ball.  We fell for a bait-and-switch.  We let the hucksters change the American Dream from freedom and opportunity to owning your own home.  No one fought a revolution so that people could own their own home.  No one fought their way ashore on Iwo so people could own their own home.  People owned homes in America before the Revolution, and people own homes in the most repressive regimes on earth.

What have we done to deserve this?  We woke up from the American Dream of freedom and opportunity and fell into the trance of give me more.

© Copyright by Village Publishing LLC