So there was some foreign money involved in the $85B WELFARE CHECK issued to AIG, but the brunt of it is still being passed onto you, me and the future grandchildren we may never have. Who can afford to have kids? I'm not talking about draping them in designer duds for tots either. I'm talking about feeding them and having a roof over your head.
Yet Donald Trump and some of his more whiny Liberal For Pay peers want to complain about having to pay their FAIR SHARE in the form of capital gains or corporate taxes because it's sooo hard out there for a pimp, er billionaire. Oh sorry - everyone isn't a billionaire. Some of us are just RICH. As for the rest us:
- unemployed
- underemployed
- working two jobs
- skipping meals to feed their children
- not being able to retire because Social Security doesn't cover rent
- filing for bankruptcy
- displaced citizens
- sick
- down and out
OR
- lucky to still have a job but you finally get it that you'd better start cutting back
Nobody asked me if I wanted to pay for this. I don't see the gov't calling me up saying they have a cost of living expense check with my name on it!!
When it comes to being poor and/or disenfranchised does the gov't even know you exist? Or are we always used as a scapegoat example of the "ills" of society? As if hard work ALONE = RICHES. Isn't the deck in fact stacked against us already?
I look at the executives running these companies and the politicians that passed the laws to benefit them and see a sea of white-skinned male faces in high places pulling aces from a pre-sorted stack all the time. Even when they're caught stealing or bilking their companies OR involved in some pay scheme donation scandal it barely registers a blip on the evening news.
Meanwhile some other politician or teevee pundit is screaming on the boob tube about "urban" crime and "illegal aliens" being the cause of the apocalypse.
Which brings me to One Drop's post over at Too Sense where he contrasts the gov't rescue of AIG versus the abandonment of New Orleans. It makes me mad all over again.
Because the government cannot be forced to compensate all of its victims, the only way justice could ever be done would be for the federal government to voluntarily decide to pay damages. Not being an economist, I don't have any numbers with which to calculate the total cost of rebuilding every home destroyed by the Corps. But I cannot imagine it costing $85 billion to do so.The AIG bailout shows that the government is capable of massive cash outlays in responding to a crisis. Given sufficient will, the government has sufficient resources (or, at least, its Chinese lenders have sufficient resources). This is not a question of ability, it is a question of priority.
Priority indeed. We see where this current administration places its priority. Not in its citizens. In California our own Republican Governor has seen fit to veto the budget meticulously worked on by members of both parties. He sees fit to instead throw the would-be middle class bread and butter workers into poverty. See the majority in the Bay Area saw past the Hollywood glitter and did not vote for him in the first place but we get to suffer because the rest of the state did.
California has the highest number of defaulted mortgages in the country. Rents are at an all-time high with the lowest vacancy rates ever because people have nowhere to go - except out of the state. We pay the uppermost sales tax rates. All of those companies going under have numerous offices in this state as well.
What we see happening now is just the beginning. Goldman Sachs, Wachovia and WAMU are very likely to be next. The gov't can't bail all of these companies out without a huge public outcry - at least I hope!
Not when they left Gulf residents twisting in the wind and allowed the insurance companies to NOT pay the policies of those who'd met their end of the bargain.
I hope I'll be singing a new tune come this November.
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