Government Solutions

When incompetence is combined with criminal greed you arrive at the current state of the union. The national debt is closing in on 13 TRILLION dollars. Not only is there no apparent concern for this fact, there is a continuing effort to further burden the taxpayers, current and far into the future. Bailing out failure has become a new norm, the latest being a bonus to the banks holding Greek debt, as if the failure of this socialistic society is a responsibility of American taxpayers. Government in bed with financial institutions enriches a narrow segment of society at the expense of all the rest of us. Small businesses, the driver of a successful economy, have no mechanism for enriching politicians, so they are dying in droves while the larger financial firms, banks and investment houses, are prospering. No accident, of course, since the funding for politicians comes from them. In the latest "financial reform" legislation pending debate and vote there is no mention whatever of controlling Fannie and Freddie, the prime mover in the current mortgage crisis. In fact a vote just taken to include provisions to begin controlling and reining in these two GSE's, the Democrats managed to defeat the effort by 56 to 43. The New York attorney general is bringing action against several big institutions for fraud in the mortgage market, alleging manipulation of the credit reporting agencies for the purpose of misrepresenting the risk potential of mortgage backed securities. Of course they did and of course many investors lost a great deal of money, initially, but your friendly politicians came to their aid, bailed them out with your tax dollars, and life pretty much goes on. The mortgage market gets a lot of press, but it really is not the intention of the government or the lenders to "help" the borrowers. The complicated interplay of programs apparently designed to help borrowers is designed at root to get politicians re-elected and insure that financial institutions are protected from loss. No one should be naive enough to believe that politicians have any other goal than insuring their retention of power. Did you know that JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have made a profit every single trading day this year in the stock market? Do you believe that anyone is either that smart or lucky? Do you believe that the 1000 point drop in the Dow a few days ago was caused by someone with a thick finger on the keyboard of a computer? The market corrected very quickly of course, but in the movement I'm sure a lot of money was made. I'm not suggesting conspiracy. Simply that the system is set up for gaming. The idea of stocks as an investment in companies engaged in commerce for profit has pretty much evolved into a casino mentality, and the dice are not in your hands.
Politicians are incapable of ethics driven behavior. The financial markets are manipulated for the benefit of a few and the re-election of their friends. Even something as simple as deciding to seal our borders against illegal immigration can't be tackled for the obvious reason of security, but instead, concentrating on how to convert these illegal bodies into legal votes. Poor Arizona is now being castigated for producing legislation to protect itself that is the mirror image of federal law that has been on the books for decades, but not enforced for political reasons. When the federal government fails or refuses to act to defend the citizenry of the state, the state has an obligation to act. In our larger war on terror, the administration has gone to great lengths to categorize repeated attempts to harm us as "lone wolf" events. The care given to avoid using the word "terror" or "Muslim" or "jihad" is frightening. There is no rational explanation. Now since the New York Times Square event the AG Holder has used the word terror several times in just a few days. Something this guy said must have inspired some level of fear, but still no "Muslim" or "Jihad".
Politicians are not our friends generally. Usually they are simply self-serving dolts, but this current crop are positively frightening, because of their direction, and their unbelievable incompetence and blatant thuggery. If we're not awake in November, 2010 then we deserve our fate.
As usual,
thanks for visiting.