I've not written much the last few months due to having to deal with the medical issues of various family members and friends. Being involved with these cases has brought me face to face with two of Obama's most egregious failures to date. How? Which ones? There ARE so many!
Read on. I have to set the table first.
Over twenty years ago, a friend was audited by the IRS. Settling that debt required his selling everything he owned, including his home. He couldn't face up to that responsibility, telling us that he was going to kill himself because he couldn't take the pressure (from the shame of losing status in a consumer society?) anymore. It took two tries but he succeeded, dumping his federal financial fiasco on his poor parents, who were grief-stricken that they let their son talk them into releasing him from a locked facility after the first attempt so he could die by his own hand.
Just recently, another friend began making very similar statements (I take these remarks very seriously after my experience cited above, and am an active part of an attempt to rescue her from her personal depression). In her case, she had re-mortgaged her home every time one of her alcoholic siblings got into tight financial straits and needed a bailout, until they owed her about twice what her home is now worth. That's the thanks you get for rescuing the unraisable! Her last lender was Countrywide, which is now a division of B of A (a major recipient of Obama's TARP gift monies intended to help folks like her). B of A is giving her the runaround instead of discussing what they might do for her. First the excuse was she wasn't late on her payments - until she was just this last month. Then the excuse became she hadn't missed a payment - which is coming soon. They also tell her that once this happens, she will be on a waiting list until they can get to her, as much as 45-180 days. This bait-and-evade-until-foreclosure game is killing her.
And for this Obama squandered the national treasure? For this, Obama obligated all of the American taxpayers to cover the debts of those rash greedheads who created this mess in the first place? What justifies making them even wealthier in trade for them NOT dealing with the mortgage problems of those like my friend, whose desperate needs drove them to make poor economic decisions? We should have let the banks jump off the ledge for all the good such extended indenture has produced! We as a nation would probably be much better off! There would then be huge government credits not wasted in the latest round of executive bonuses available to redeem the bad mortgages, a beneficial effect which would have eased the national economic distress according to yet another friend who is in real estate.
Article comments
1 - Dave Nalle
You know, the Chinese refusing to buy more debt might be the best thing that could happen to us. It would be a wakeup call for these insane spenders.
Dave
2 - Bliffle
That's just Daves "Hail Mary" pass, now that the system he invested so much ego in is crashing around him.
3 - Silas Kain
In a famous line from the brilliant play "Boys in the Band", "Give me librium, or give me death."
4 - Dave Nalle
Bliffle, how have I invested any more in the "system" than you or anyone else in America?
Dave
5 - Bliffle
Ego investment. You seem to have a bigger ego investment in the current (i.e., as of jan 1, 2009) system, which you have done a lot to bring about, than I do.
You seem annoyed that Obama is president, and you seem to wish for the Chinese to administer him a thrashing.
But I think that Obama may have outflanked you and similarly-minded fellows on the right.
Whereas rightists may have thought that leaving the treasury broke, the financial system collapsing, and two expensive quagmire wars in distant foreign lands would hobble any succeeding democrat administration in 2009 and render them powerless, Obama has simply upped the ante and thus outflanked the reps.
As I've said many times before, Bush and his cohorts are poor strategists. They are good tacticians, witness the Iraq Invasion hokum, the Kerry swiftboat truthers, the Obama birthers, etc., but they can't put tactics together into a strategy.
The reps 'scorched earth' strategy is vulnerable to a flanking attack, which is what Obama is doing.
The reps need another Eisenhower or Nixon (this time could we please have a non-psycho, please?).
6 - Dave Nalle
Why would I have an investment in a government which I was working to oppose from the very start? Makes no sense.
I don't care if the Chinese thrash Obama, all I care about is that something inspire the mad spenders to fiscal sanity.
Dave
7 - Bliffle
Mad spenders? But the Bushies are gone.
The Obamas have only spent a fraction of the Bushies. The TARP may turn out to be a wash. The $800billion stimulus is less than the Iraq Invasion, and it seems to be working.
Even if the healthcare bill costs $900billion over 10 years, that's less than the Bush tax cuts and Medicare D plan.
Also, the Obama spending goes to the US citizens rather than the Ruling Class, so the multiplier will be high and may produce a big economic gain generally.
8 - scout
I hope the personal problems are well.
Thanks for the great thinking.
Really, the 'healthcare' nonsense is just another corp welfare policy.
We are ruled by political gangstas that work for even more powerful gangstas, nothing less.
If we really wanted general healthcare, we would simply slightly expand medicare, and make the pharmaceuticals pay for it with donated medicine.
Simultaneously, we would renounce our constant overt and covert war system, which is simply another form of corp welfare under patriotic cover.
Look how little bush constantly connected Saddam to his 9/11, and we go in, hang him, and take Iraqi oil. Afghan's had the oil connection to India and the opium market to be controlled. We take the opium profit and take control of India's economic growth.
We are ruled by gangstas, NOTHING MORE.
9 - roger nowosielski
Great article, Realist, I think the best I'm seen so far on the perils of Obamacare and the ugly aspects of the health insurance industry.
As to the suicide aspect, we created the society of consumers: it's the inevitable consequence of capitalism. Material values rule. They in fact define us and our sense of self-worth. That's the saddest thing.
10 - Joanne Huspek
I think you've outdone yourself. Chills, thrills and spills. Oh, and suicide.
I tell people the only good thing about the future is that I'll be dead for it. One way or another.