It’s probable that the feeling among most citizens regarding the current so-called “financial crisis,” having reflected back to last fall and the “bailout” fiasco and moving forward through subsequent congressional/presidential decisions, is the maddening one of simply “being had,” conned into believing that the government, in order to save the country, was forced to divert the hard-earned cash of ordinary workers from valid governmental enterprise in order to re-distribute it to institutions whose fat-cat managers had run them into the ground and become filthy rich in the process. It’s the empty feeling one has when he’s been cheated in a game or been the victim of a pickpocket – or even a mugger.
The feeling deepens into outright anger when one remembers that elected officials and bureaucrats have been as much a part of the problem as their fellow corrupt pooh-bahs of business, both parties being tarred with the shame of finagling everything from the statistics to the facts in order to pull the wool over the eyes of the public. This is not even to mention that the president could do no better than to nominate a two-bit tax-cheat to the highest financial position in the country and that a Congress that wallows in either stupidity or outright negligence was perfectly willing to enter into the perfidy, although republicans have made a gallant fight for sanity.
Citizens watched in virtual disbelief as their lawmakers, without even reading the 1,100-word, $787 billion worth of “stimulus” legislation, approved it on 13 February, though not one House republican voted for it and only three republican senators. This was a travesty on the democratic system, the fact that a handful of elected officials can write legislation no one understands – not even themselves – and ram it down the throats of the public. A president who may or may not know as much about economics as a sharp ninth-grade general-math student was overjoyed to sign it and then get on with the process of the House’s budget plan in excess of a shocking $3.5 TRILLION, to take effect 01 October.
Resulting from the doling out of hundreds of billions of dollars to banks, financial institutions, insurance companies, auto companies, and the actual 80% ownership of gigantic AIG has been practically no change in the economy’s downward spiral. The unemployment rate stands at 8.5% and is projected to exceed 10% by October. Yet, the Congress and the president seem to think that spending amounting to incomprehensible levels will somehow work. This is sheer lunacy and the average citizen has a right to wonder what’s going on, since none of this makes sense.
This is true especially at tax-time. Treasury Secretary Geightner paid up two years worth of stolen taxes in order to get his plum appointment. He owes another two year’s worth but hasn’t felt the need to cough it up, being the public-spirited citizen he is (that statute of limitations thing – sorta like those unconscionable bonuses at AIG)…this, while ordinary joes and janes are filling out tax forms and sweating out how to make the payments.
Citizens have a right to be furious over this, not even to mention how they felt when former senator Daschle anted-up a cool $140,000 worth of stolen taxes in order to be commerce secretary – but the public outcry over having this super-tax-cheat in government gave him a change of mind. The democrat senators would have approved him in a heartbeat (plenty of corruption in that august body), though he would have gone to the Big House if he had been caught stealing that money from a bank. He would never have paid-up, so at least the IRS got some money accruing to his blatant dishonesty. Neither would Geightner have paid-up…both of them too elitist by half.
Some say this administration should just be given TIME to make its grandiose plans work, when already AIG has been funneling money to Goldman-Sachs and its European enterprises, after being awarded THREE bundles of billions – about 170 of them…and there’s no end in sight. Geithner has decided to offer “toxic” housing contracts (euphemism for defaulted loans) to private financial institutions or even individuals, even though that makes little sense, especially since no one can say what these bad loans are worth. Only an auction could settle that, but that’s too sensible to be done – actually too risky for the government AND the institutions.
The latest: the feds have told General Motors that the CEO had to go…and he’s gone, even though he’d been on the scene there since 1977 and had to compete with the likes of Toyota and other auto establishments not operated by union members, a huge competitive disadvantage. Geithner has also asked for the power to shut down any enterprise he deems doomed to failure, whether it is or not. This is government by executive fiat, about as un-democratic as it gets. A compliant Congress – actually just the democrat majority – will go along, most of that constituency either unaware of the Constitution or just part of the corruption.
So…the citizens have every right to be mad. It seems abundantly clear now that there’s no bottom to the cesspool into which Obama and his gang have decided to throw the nation’s money (already pumping more money into the auto interests), itself piling up what will eventually be a bad debt of huge proportions. Obama may have won Berlin, but he will soon be losing the USA as people begin to understand his easily recognized intentions. A power-grab of this magnitude is not much more serious than those that have caused palace-coups in other governments. That won’t happen here, but if the Congress goes along with this, the voters will pull off the coup next year.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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