The two may be related if one assumes that the economy market has had something to do with global warming: an overheated financial world of profit at any cost producing an overheated planet busily choking itself with careless consumption. Or at least until recently.
I find it ironic that once people start conserving and saving, we’re told that we can’t stop the financial bleeding unless we buy the latest gas-guzzler or LCD television because we need to create jobs. Huh? I’m curious where will these jobs be. In China? We don’t create anything much in this country anymore. Our manufacturers found it cheaper to get the stuff made abroad. Now they wonder why we don’t have the money to buy their products.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember that not too long ago spending was supposed to be our road to prosperity: those who could (and some who couldn’t) were to spend themselves mad for the sake of the economy with no thought given to where the money was coming from, except for tapping the equity in our houses. Someone must have figured that all that capital tied up in our houses was just sitting there, not really making money except for the homeowner. How wasteful when a buck could be made. Bye bye equity.
Someone could go insane trying to figure out all the ironies and inconsistencies.
Now it is Detroit with its hand out. Sorry. I don’t feel very loyal or sympathetic. We had one of the lemons from the 1980s. Even with proper, recommended care, the US made car self-destructed at 82,000 miles. The Toyota Camry we got next chugged along uncomplaining to 208,000 miles. I can do the arithmetic. Not even patriotism or Consumer’s Reports will make me buy an American car again. Fool me one, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Besides, I have the memory of an elephant when it comes to being taken. I can’t help feeling that with further bailouts the people in power—the carpetbaggers—are taking one last dip into the national till before it snaps shut on their fingers.
But it’s not just the national players being ugly. I read in the paper today about homeowners “considering” whether to make their mortgage payments either because they owe more than the house is worth (right now) or because they think they can become eligible for a handout after ninety days of non-payment if the government relief program kicks in. Everyone wants something for nothing and as quickly as possible.
Why should I be surprised by this behavior? This is how the corporate world and the government has operated—my mother called it behaving as if there is no tomorrow.
AOL has a slide show right now on its homepage about nineteen big-time crooks (Kenneth Lay, Milliken et al) and where they are now (in jail for the most part). What an example they set.
There are times when I feel like the woolly mammoth revealed by unseasonable melting in the arctic. I’m frozen in a situation not of my making, but I’m going to be paying the price of the meltdown along with everyone else.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Silly Me
Silly me indeed! I thought that once the election was over that we’d have a patch of peace. Apparently not. If anything, the diatribes against Obama and the Democrats have notched up to a level of hatred that scares me. Obama has not yet been sworn in and not yet faced down the horrendous economic problems he has taken on, and yet we already have Republicans offering themselves as candidates for 2012. This doesn’t make me believe anything they have to say about bipartisanship.
I also don’t get it. What part of dumped are they struggling with? Eight million more people thought that Obama would provide better leadership than McCain. The whole country said much the same at the last election when Democrats gained control of Congress. Why didn’t the Republicans get it then? People were sick of them. The electorate spoke and the people elected whom they believed. Calling Obama a socialist and a communist only makes me, for one, wonder if these people have any idea what the words mean. We have come closest to a dictatorship with the current administration, yet these people feel morally outraged at having been voted out?
I’m reminded of a Durer print depicting an outraged artist showing his painting that has just been turned down for a major art show. He’s pointing to a very nondescript painting of a candlestick and saying “This the fools rejected.”
It would be funny if not so tragic watching the Republican leadership not learning from this election. “Reaganomics is still a good idea,” the head of the Colorado Republicans was quoted as saying. Well, not very much has trickled down anywhere. We have a class of obscenely rich people who aren’t trickling anything except into their bank accounts and dividends—unless of course buying $12 million houses in Aspen or Beaver Creek can be considered trickling.
What’s troubling me most, though, is not just the wrongheadedness of not hearing what should be obvious, but the actual refusal to accept the will of the people. Some of the vituperative commentaries being spat out at the public through media such as FOX could be seen as inciting violence. Do they really want to see race and class warfare in the streets?
At a time when we should be joining together in a coordinated effort to get this country back on its feet, we are instead hearing just more of the same “petty-mindedness” and “mean-spirited” attack (to quote a would be presidential candidate in 2012). Is this what passes for political dialogue in the red states?
Please. The election is over. The winners won. The losers lost. Let’s get on with doing the work that has to be done and support the man we have chosen to do it.
I also don’t get it. What part of dumped are they struggling with? Eight million more people thought that Obama would provide better leadership than McCain. The whole country said much the same at the last election when Democrats gained control of Congress. Why didn’t the Republicans get it then? People were sick of them. The electorate spoke and the people elected whom they believed. Calling Obama a socialist and a communist only makes me, for one, wonder if these people have any idea what the words mean. We have come closest to a dictatorship with the current administration, yet these people feel morally outraged at having been voted out?
I’m reminded of a Durer print depicting an outraged artist showing his painting that has just been turned down for a major art show. He’s pointing to a very nondescript painting of a candlestick and saying “This the fools rejected.”
It would be funny if not so tragic watching the Republican leadership not learning from this election. “Reaganomics is still a good idea,” the head of the Colorado Republicans was quoted as saying. Well, not very much has trickled down anywhere. We have a class of obscenely rich people who aren’t trickling anything except into their bank accounts and dividends—unless of course buying $12 million houses in Aspen or Beaver Creek can be considered trickling.
What’s troubling me most, though, is not just the wrongheadedness of not hearing what should be obvious, but the actual refusal to accept the will of the people. Some of the vituperative commentaries being spat out at the public through media such as FOX could be seen as inciting violence. Do they really want to see race and class warfare in the streets?
At a time when we should be joining together in a coordinated effort to get this country back on its feet, we are instead hearing just more of the same “petty-mindedness” and “mean-spirited” attack (to quote a would be presidential candidate in 2012). Is this what passes for political dialogue in the red states?
Please. The election is over. The winners won. The losers lost. Let’s get on with doing the work that has to be done and support the man we have chosen to do it.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
November 5
And now it starts—the taking back of America from what someone has called “the monster of the Republican Party.” Obama has won in a landslide. It was time.
The country that I took citizenship in is not a country of belligerent selfishness nor of hypocritical self-righteousness. The avenue that the country has traveled down in the last decade is not the America I knew—and for some time thought was gone. But it has survived and was just waiting to be reawakened.
Despite the thunderings of religious bigots who so often proved themselves to be the gays or adulturers that they denounced; despite the posturings of free-market zealots who had their hands in the national till all the while; despite the cynical manipulators of patriotism and national pride who sent us into a war that has claimed over 4000 of our young people and countless thousands of the people we were supposedly “saving”—despite all this, America has come back. We have elected someone who seems to have the steady hand and the composure to sort out the lies and tell us what we need to hear and not what America’s vanity might prefer.
In the weeks ahead, I hope that Obama brings us a message of sacrifice and working together. We need to hear it. I was touched by the poll that showed that a majority of people earning over $200,000 said they expected to pay more taxes and that it was all right. America has been good to them. It is fitting that they pay something back. For too long we have all been sipping from the public trough.
Obscene CEO compensation has been merely the tip of the ice berg. We’ve all had tax rebates. Defaulted credit spending has helped drain national capital. We have systematically dismantled our self-sufficiency by sending our manufacturing overseas. We were told to spend, spend, to keep the economy going. But, as my late husband used to say—it’s not possible to spend yourself rich.
Everyone was involved. Short-sighted local governments, dazzled by visions of increased income and an unwillingness to look for the long-term downsides, granted permits to developers to throw up more and yet more of development houses that borrowers could not afford and are now in foreclosure, leaving everyone else, including those who did not default on their mortgages, with devalued houses.
Everyone had a hand in this and everyone will suffer regardless of whether they were financially prudent. That’s not the American ideal—but it is the American reality.
It was one hell of a party with everyone coming dressed as some form of greed. Now it is morning and the room stinks of corruption and last night’s booze.
Anyone who thinks that this election was about abortion and “values” and supporting the military has watched too much FOX. It was about the economy and about the final waking up of the electorate to the fact that we’ve been had.
So, I say to Obama—put us on diet, make us be frugal, remind us about the lessons of prudence and cooperation, and try to get us beyond the easy self-serving answers that require no thought. We need to think more than ever.
Above all, though, I would say to him: I am delighted that your generation—the one we have stuck so cruelly with the bill for the party—has the chance to take the leadership away from the people who have messed up so royally. Go for it! But I also send you my most ferevent hope that you be safe from those who fear you and the change you must bring us.
The country that I took citizenship in is not a country of belligerent selfishness nor of hypocritical self-righteousness. The avenue that the country has traveled down in the last decade is not the America I knew—and for some time thought was gone. But it has survived and was just waiting to be reawakened.
Despite the thunderings of religious bigots who so often proved themselves to be the gays or adulturers that they denounced; despite the posturings of free-market zealots who had their hands in the national till all the while; despite the cynical manipulators of patriotism and national pride who sent us into a war that has claimed over 4000 of our young people and countless thousands of the people we were supposedly “saving”—despite all this, America has come back. We have elected someone who seems to have the steady hand and the composure to sort out the lies and tell us what we need to hear and not what America’s vanity might prefer.
In the weeks ahead, I hope that Obama brings us a message of sacrifice and working together. We need to hear it. I was touched by the poll that showed that a majority of people earning over $200,000 said they expected to pay more taxes and that it was all right. America has been good to them. It is fitting that they pay something back. For too long we have all been sipping from the public trough.
Obscene CEO compensation has been merely the tip of the ice berg. We’ve all had tax rebates. Defaulted credit spending has helped drain national capital. We have systematically dismantled our self-sufficiency by sending our manufacturing overseas. We were told to spend, spend, to keep the economy going. But, as my late husband used to say—it’s not possible to spend yourself rich.
Everyone was involved. Short-sighted local governments, dazzled by visions of increased income and an unwillingness to look for the long-term downsides, granted permits to developers to throw up more and yet more of development houses that borrowers could not afford and are now in foreclosure, leaving everyone else, including those who did not default on their mortgages, with devalued houses.
Everyone had a hand in this and everyone will suffer regardless of whether they were financially prudent. That’s not the American ideal—but it is the American reality.
It was one hell of a party with everyone coming dressed as some form of greed. Now it is morning and the room stinks of corruption and last night’s booze.
Anyone who thinks that this election was about abortion and “values” and supporting the military has watched too much FOX. It was about the economy and about the final waking up of the electorate to the fact that we’ve been had.
So, I say to Obama—put us on diet, make us be frugal, remind us about the lessons of prudence and cooperation, and try to get us beyond the easy self-serving answers that require no thought. We need to think more than ever.
Above all, though, I would say to him: I am delighted that your generation—the one we have stuck so cruelly with the bill for the party—has the chance to take the leadership away from the people who have messed up so royally. Go for it! But I also send you my most ferevent hope that you be safe from those who fear you and the change you must bring us.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)