What, really, is the best treatment for our economic crises?
With all the talk of the failed bailout, someone needs to ask the question -- What, really, is the best treatment for our economic crises?
In my family, someone very near and dear to me has struggled for a lifetime with severe acne problems. This person has tried just about every "lotion and potion" on the market, with little effect. We've never tried some of the really advanced medical stuff out there like blue light acne treatment, but we have done numerous prescription treatments by a variety of dermatologists -- and all with little lasting effect.
Thinking of our economy in similar terms, perhaps there is no answer to our economic crises. I say "crises" and not "crisis," because there's a lot more going on in our economy besides just this economic bailout. It's all interrelated, but it includes oil prices, energy crises, job losses, inflation, and on and on. Any way, suppose there really IS not good solution to these issues? What do we do next?
I would suggest two things which MUST be done to "save" the American economy: 1) accountability, and, 2) bipartisan politics. Washington leadership, Wall Street leaders, and "Main Street" leaders right down to you and me MUST recognize that policies over the last couple of decades have failed. And politicians cannot find solutions until they forget about labels like "Democrats" and "Republicans" and really start thinking about being Americans.
Seriously, campaign strategies won't get the job done. One of the most idiotic screeds I've read in a long time was a recent Cal Thomas column in which he actually blamed the Democrats for the fundamental economic problems we're facing, saying the seeds of it went back to Carter and Clinton.
Now really, Cal, get serious. If we lay blame for our economic woes at the feet of ex-presidents -- one of whom was in office over 30 years ago! -- instead of holding the present leadership (Democratic AND Republican) accountable, well, it's hard to see how we'll ever find a solution.
We've gotta hang together on this one or we'll all hang separately. (Bad allusion to one of the Founding Fathers' comments -- I forget which one.)
Certainly interesting to hear responses to failure of ‘bailout’ bill
I must say, watching a lot of CNN reports yesterday and today, that it's certainly interesting to hear the many responses to the failure of that economic "bailout" bill.
Many "average people" posting on CNN blogs and sending webcam comments echo a common theme: "Hey, when I was in financial trouble, none of these big banks or financial institutions came to my aid -- why should I help them?"
Admittedly, it's hard for today's average citizen to hold a coherent thought in mind for long (sorry, I've seen to much stupidity in print, on the air, and on the streets of my own little city here). And, also admittedly, given the track record for the last eight years of the Bush Administration and the do-nothing performance of the Democratically controlled Congress the last couple of years -- nobody really trusts the government anymore.
Given all that, it's really time for people to "get it" that we aren't talking here about bailing out fat-cat corporations or government crooks at the taxpayers' expense. We're talking about keeping the whole blooming economy afloat so YOU and I have jobs, retirement income, home mortgages, student loans, car loans, and all the rest. America is NOT economically broke (yet), but our credit/financial system fluidity really is just about frozen.
So clear those mental memory cards of all those nasty images, John Q. Public, and realize it's not a case of bailing out big business or CEOs -- it's about bailing out the system that will either help or hurt every one of us, from the poorest to the richest.
Boneheads in Congress abandoned their leadership roles
It's one thing for us average-know-nothing-much-about-economics Americans to resist a $700+ billion economic bailout plan. It's a different matter for those self-serving boneheads we call Congressmen and Congresswomen to miss the point entirely and vote it down.
My son the investor pointed out to me this evening that an article he read today said we taxpayers have already paid more than $300 billion for one of the recent U.S. bank failures. According to that article, he said, we can expect to fork over two or three times the price of this rejected bailout plan every week for awhile as various banks and investment houses fail and credit tightens to nearly shut down the economy.
But, since the meek little mice we put in Congress are more interested in their party politics and reelection than in doing what's the best available option for the country -- well, let's just say fixings for those favorite Christmas dinner recipes may be a little harder to come by this year.
In fact, multitudes of people will probably be looking at a slim holiday season this year if Congress doesn't show a little backbone and do what has to be done. Oh, and you do understand, right, that every time a major bank shuts down or has to be sold off all those billions of dollars come out of our taxpaying pockets?
Has our economy fundamentally changed, or have people just dropped the ball?
I've often thought that people who are surprised by national events are generally just people who are ignorant of our nation's history. It's all happened before, really, hasn't it?
This is a presidential election year so, of course, both major political parties are jockeying to make THEIR party look like the "good guys" on the economy and the other guys look like, well, the "bad guys" -- and notice, also how the major issue right now is not the war in Iraq, not security against terrorism. It has turned into a battle over the economy and the horrendous crisis America is in economically.
Perhaps you think the economy is fundamentally sound? After all, no one has officially declared this a "Recession," have they? If you believe that, you have my sympathy. As one of cable TV "economic experts" put it the other day, the government engineered $700 billion + "bailout" is not good -- but it is necessary to avert "Great Depression II."
What has happened in America? Or what IS happening? Are we undergoing some fundamental sort of change in our governmental agencies, our social institutions, our economy, our very way of life?
Nope. I don't think so. I think we're merely experiencing what we have always experienced throughout the history of our country -- only on a larger, more public scale. There have always been greedy people, stupid people, incompetent people in America. I will admit I personally don't recall such a time when so many greedy, stupid, incompetent people have been in positions of power all at the same time, but perhaps I just wasn't paying attention in the past.
This nation has always, I repeat, ALWAYS been run by a coalition of big business and lawyers. Sure, we've had a wide range of politicians and "celebrities" in visible leadership. But just take a look at the events that have gone on to shape our country. You'll find that, for the most part, that old adage attributed (I think) to President Coolidge (maybe Harding, but I think Coolidge) has always been true: "The business of America has always been business."
We live in the only nation in history that has a whole subculture of specialized lawyers making a handsome living on everything from Mesothelioma lawyer, to "slip-and-fall" lawsuits, to good old fashioned "ambulance chasers" who advertise on television that they can get you top dollar for anything that MIGHT ail you. Got a problem? Got even a potential problem? Wake up feeling miffed or upset at someone this morning? File a lawsuit. It's pretty much your "God given" right in America, right along with the nearly sacred "right" we have to own assault rifles, both to be used liberally should our neighbors fail to love us as they should.
Sorry, I didn't intend to rant along expressing myself with bad sarcasm. So I'll get right to the point remaining: If anything has "changed" in America it would be the increased apathy with which the average American citizen/voter regards the government. Our present economic crisis has come about because of massive failure on the part of all the agencies and individuals who are supposed to be policing private industry, i.e., government regulators you and I are paying nice salaries to so they will oversee the credit industry, the stock markets, etc. But I guess in the George Bush Administration (FOR MOST OF THE LAST EIGHT YEARS!!), nobody's been minding the store.
Get out and vote in November. Do your part to take out the trash.
We really must come to our senses regarding oil drilling
We really must come to our senses regarding oil drilling.
Am I the only person in the world who understands that opening restricted U.S. areas to oil exploration and drilling will only accomplish ONE SURE THING?? And here's what that is. Ready? Here goes:
Multi-national multi-trillion dollar oil companies will make even more obscene amounts of money.
That's really the "bottom" line on all this silliness about ripping up the environment, risking more offshore drilling, etc. Am I the only one who "gets" this?? Okay, let me explain exactly why my statement above is true: We have not and will not pass any laws or government regulation which requires the oil companies to 1) sell the increased oil from new drilling at any set price that might affect us little old consumers in a good way, and, 2) even guarantee that the oil reaches American markets.
Do you get it now? The oil companies are perfectly free, should they find umpteen-billion barrels of new oil, to pump that stuff out of the ground and sell it to Europeans, South Americans, Asians -- any markets where they can get the most money.
I don't really care about all the bickering about when or how new oil finds and new oil drilling would take to get to the marketplace. That's irrelevant. THAT'S IRRELEVANT. Sorry for shouting, but folks are passionately convinced that we must open the ANWAR region in Alaska, or do more offshore drilling near Florida, California, whatever, because "we must make ourselves less dependent on foreign oil."
But that won't be the result of such new drilling, any new refining, etc. The result will be more product for oil companies to put on the open market and sell to the highest bidders.
After all, never forget, the poor old oil companies only make a tiny percentage of profit, right? That $16-$20 BILLION and more in profits the oil companies make in any given year, well, really, that's irrelevant. Or, to paraphrase the line from the wizard of Oz, "Pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain."
Bear with me before I end my "rant." This also must be said: Oil is a finite resource which will run out. It may not run out in the next five years, or 10, or 20 -- but it WILL run out. If we don't focus more on developing serious, practical forms of alternate energy, then our children and grandchildren will pay for our stupidity.
Guess I just need to pull myself into line and become a "cut taxes and spend and put the results on the backs of ten generations to come" Republican and get over it!
Hmmm. I LOVE the smell of fresh textbooks in the morning
I offer that post title with apologies to all of you who are "Apocalypse Now" fans. I just couldn't resist pirating that famous napalm line and spoiling it with textbooks and stuff related to school and classrooms.
It's the fall weather that has settled all around us here in the Missouri Ozarks, following a not-too-hot-but-way-WAY-too-wet summer. And when fall settles down around me, I cannot help but think of the many, many enjoyable years I spent in my life as a student. I love school. I always have loved school. I love school so much that I decided at the age of 55 to return to graduate school for an M.A. in history. The good news is, I fulfilled all the course requirements with a nearly perfect G.P.A., though I never got the seminar paper and comprehensive exams done, so I never got the degree. The bad news is, I DID get humongous student loan debt built up and I never got the degree to earn money to pay off those student loans.
But I'm sure I'm far from alone when it comes to frustrating student loan debt, right? I would bet most of you reading my rantings are either paying off student loans, paying student loans for children or spouses, or you know many who are paying off student loans. Student loans have become such a necessary part of higher education in America that I just read a news story saying the U.S. House just passed the extension of a law intended to keep easy student loans available even in these dire economic times.
So, may you enjoy the smell of those textbooks yourself this fine fall morning, and beyond that. And may you always find a way to get the education you need -- AND to pay off those student loans!
My sad prediction: Electorate goes ‘Palin crazy’; McCain to win presidency
After listening to several stump speeches by that wily old veteran Sen. John McCain, and watching that "sexy librarian" smile (as the various late-night comedians and media pundits have characterized it) -- I'm convinced they are headed for the White House.
Honestly, in my entire life I have not yet seen a Democratic presidential ticket -- with the possible exceptions of JFK and Bill Clinton -- that knew anything about appealing to "the masses." Maybe the entire Democratic Party needs a sort of "political Lasik surgery" to open their eyes about campaigning. People don't want reasoned arguments and detailed answers to their problems. They really just want to get excited, to vote for candidates who stir their emotions. (Anyone else out there old enough to remember the two Eisenhower v. Stephenson elections? Eisenhower won because HE was the more "charismatic" and the popular war hero -- not because he was exceptionally intelligent or offered reasoned solutions for the nation's problems.)
I'll be perfectly honest with you about my passionate opinion on this: Those Americans who actually go to the polls and vote are a terribly ignorant lot of folks, driven mostly by emotions; mostly by the emotions of fear and anger. They are not really very well informed, generally, and they really don't care about honesty, truth, common sense, etc.
Sen. McCain, with something around 120-130 professional lobbyists working in his campaign and with 26 years of professional work as a congressman and senator in Washington, stands up with a smile and a straight face and calls himself a maverick who'll ferret out the special interests and eliminate "earmarks" and special spending. Gov. Palin rails against earmarks while she fails to explain the whole story about her handling of the $200+ "bridge to no where" money giveaway.
Yet people wave their arms happily and cheer at McCain and Palin. That's because people are ignorant, or not paying attention, or living in denial, or ... something. The cheers and excitement generated by McCain-Palin perfectly illustrates the problem: People don't want TRUTH, they just want rousing words they can unite behind against the common "enemy" -- even if they don't know for sure who that enemy is, or what the truth might be.
Ah, well. I'm not really in love with an Obama-Biden ticket, either. Hard to see any real leadership on the presidential horizon, truly it is. And it's not likely that even McCain-Palin could top, or maybe "bottom out" any lower, than Bush-Cheney.
If we elect McCain-Palin, the joke’s on US!
If Americans, through apathy or idiocy, elect the McCain-Palin ticket in November, the jokes on all of us. Presidential campaigns and political campaigns in general are usually built upon various layers of lunacy. But this McCain-Palin Republican presidential ticket is the mother of all multi-layer political cakes.
In the first place, you've got a guy, Sen. John McCain, heading the ticket who's been a "Washington insider," i.e., since 1982 he has served first as a congressman and now a senator, portraying himself as some sort of "maverick" who'd work not for the party first but for America First. He decries Washington politics (which he has been a major player in shaping since 1982) -- and, by God, he insists he means it!
The next thing this maverick warrior of the people does is find someone highly qualified to lead the nation, should anything happen to him as president: Gov. Sarah Palen of Alaska. The good (?) governor has been shaped in the forge of high-level Alaskan policy, having earlier served as mayor of a town there of about 9,000 people -- oh, and, uh, she's under investigation within the state of Alaska for possible ethics questions related to possibly using her influence to get an ex-brother-in-law fired from the State Patrol (or whatever Alaska's name for it is). Never mind that the good senator has spent several MONTHS insisting that Sen. Barack Obama is very lightweight on the experience score, and really, pretty young to be taking on something as important as president. (For the record, Obama is actually OLDER than Palen.)
Finally, Sen. McCain, Gov. Palen, and all the delegates at the GOP Convention gave each other standing ovations and congrats all around for their astute grasp of our nation's needs. Palen was applauded as though she were the Second Coming of Christ -- despite MONTHS of patter from McCain and the GOP that a major fault against Obama is that he's a "rock star" or "celebrity" -- AND THE ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PARTY SEES NO INCONSISTENCIES, NO HYPOCRISY IN ANY OF THIS????????
Sorry. Got carried away there. I'm 61 years old. I began voting the first election I was old enough to do so -- 21 at that time, in 1968 -- and I've never missed voting in a presidential election. For many years, I was a dutiful nod-my-head-slack-jawed-and-vote-Republican/Christian-conservative. Then I did the unforgivable for the GOP/Christian/Conservative camp: I started paying attention and THINKING about what's going on in this country.
I have concluded that, 1) ALL politicians of ANY political party will ALWAYS say just what they think you want them to say to get your vote, and, 2) of the major parties in this country (both) that are, so to speak "full of it," the GOP -- especially under this dual ticket from circus world -- is MORE full of it generally speaking. And they are several layers of B.S. beyond believable this year.
My apologies for getting so carried away. It's the absolute, bold and blatant hypocrisy of this year's Republican ticket that just leaves me speechless and makes me rant so.
Ah, well, what do I know? I'm just a guy who reads the papers.
Sarah Palen’s candidacy is the most patronizing selection ever made by a presidential candidate
If I were a woman voter, I would be outraged by Sen. John McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's selection as his vice presidential running mate. Heck, I'm not a woman voter and I'm STILL outraged.
For months now, McCain and his goofy campaign have been both implying and outright saying that Sen. Barak Obama is too young and too inexperienced to be president of the United States. That's absolutely been their outcry, along with the idea that his popularity (celebrityhood seems to be their preferred take on that, or "rock star" status?) somehow makes him unqualified. They have said this in every campaign commercial, including the ones that ran during the Democratic National Convention in Denver last week. McCain himself has said this again and again in stump speeches.
BUT -- apparently sensing a chance to grab some confused and/or disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters -- McCain and/or his advisers (who knows how the decision was made) startled the world with their announcement that Palin was his pick. If that's not an obviously patronizing to women voters of America, I don't know what is??
And here's my favorite part: She was born in 1964; Obama was born in 1961. So she's younger than Obama. She's had virtually no political experience. I'm not certain about this, but I think she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (where??), also served on the Wasilla town council, and she's been governor since 2006. Uh, experienced or inexperienced? You decide.
John McCain would have been hard pressed to find someone so spectacularly UNPREPARED to be president of the United States had he intentional set out to find someone unprepared.
Yet, with a sincere, straightforward look, I heard Sen. McCain proudly explain to one of the network media people in an interview today or yesterday that she is an excellent, highly qualified candidate.
I wanted to reach through my television screen and try to slap a little sense into the old boy -- or at least wipe the goofy smile off his face. PREPARED????? QUALIFIED????
Sen. McCain, you do realize we're talking about a person who could be one heart beat away from the presidency, don't you?????????????????????????????????????????
Ah, well. What do I know? I'm just a guy who reads the papers. Should McCain and Palin win in November, maybe I'll look at the idea of immigrating to a quiet village in Canada ...
[tags]Sarah Palin, John McCain, idiotic candidacy, just a guy who reads the papers[/tags]
Somewhere between religious extremes lies the real Candidate Palin
I've been a "religious" person all my life, and that ranges from the fundamentalist evangelicalism and Pentecostalism of my teen and early adult years all the way over to the more "mainstream" and even "liberal" beliefs of my current Episcopalian/ECLA Lutheran spiritual journey.
I've mumbled and grumbled about religion off and on in this website, so I was thinking of such matters when I heard Sen. John McCain's pick for his presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- who comes from an extremely conservative political and evangelical religious background. Having said all that, I'll try to convey my honest opinion of her as a candidate. I can't speak of her as a person because all I know about her is what I've read in the media and on the Internet.
I can tell you this: In the conservative evangelical spectrum there are varying viewpoints about women. On the far right, proper or "righteous" women are seen almost as some sort of pure, surreal human equivalents of "Votive candle holders," i.e., they exist primarily to carry prayers and blessings between God and their husbands/families. Sort of like human equivalents of angels. On the far left (okay, so "far left" is too extreme for ANY range of the fundamentalist/evangelical/Pentecostal spectrum) side of evangelicalism, righteous women are treated with dignity and equality with men, i.e., they are able to be ordained to ministry, teach in churches and/or Bible schools and seminaries, etc.
Somewhere in the middle between human equivalents of angels and humans on an equal par with men is where the vast majority of evangelicals place women. Those who treat women as "second class citizens" or restrict them from ordained ministry really do represent a dying faction.
And I suspect that Gov. Palin, religiously speaking, is closer to the mid-range of that spectrum than the toward the far right. Admittedly, this is based only on my experience with the broad spectrum of Christianity I've personally been involved with. And when I tried to find a "denomination" or church label that fit Palin, the best I could find is that she has belonged to some "charismatic," i.e., Pentecostal churches and sort of identifies her self as "undenominational" or "nondenominational" Protestant. She's a conservative Bible believer of one stripe or another, for sure.
Enough about religion. I can accept and respect her religious leanings. No problem there. If I can collect even a few of my thoughts on her experience or qualifications for president of the United States, I'll have something far different to say about that in my next post.
[tags]Sarah Palin, conservative Christianity, religion and politics, just a guy who reads the papers[/tags]
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