Current mood: scared
This is another more serious blog. After all, my circumstances are beginning to jade my usually happy-go-lucky view on life.
I have been rather quiet on my blogs lately. I haven't known what to say, where to begin. I have read about two of my friends online having major issues after moving to Texas - the majority of which seemed to be from their own family, the rest from unemployment. I have watched as mortgage foreclosure rates in this country rose to what seem to be the highest in our history since the 30's. I have watched as Main Street, USA has been struggling with our $10-billion-a-month expenditure in the Middle East, and with the gradual realization by a majority of US citizens that the main reasons for this expenditure is for oil interests and defeat of terrorist enemies - not for WMD's or nuclear or biological weapons disarmament. What can I say?
North Korea announced that they had a nuclear warhead design, and they tested a deployment device - read missile - for that warhead. Thankfully it was unsuccessful. Iran also has announced that they are increasing their nuclear research, including enrichment of uranium - a move almost universally touted as a prelude to creating a nuclear warhead. Pakistan is strongly suspected as supporting and/or hiding Al Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden. This is evidenced primarily by the surge in attacks on our troops in Afghanistan coming from - guess
where? - Pakistan. We have so many troops in Iraq that we are unable to send support troops to Afghanistan. And we are STILL focused primarily on Iraq. And largely due to our invasion of Iraq despite our allies advising against it, our level of respect by the rest of the world is lower now than 10 years ago. What do I say?
I went with my family to Walt Disney World for a 7-day vacation, and had fun. We just enjoyed it less with TS Fay dumping on us every day. And the problems we had in this nation weighed less on us for a week and a half. Then we came home.
Rumblings about Washington Mutual having issues, gasoline costs still almost double everywhere in the US, oil companies still reporting record or near-record profits but denying gas prices are the reason, Hurricane Ike killing Galveston and Houston and their suburbs, gas shortages, my aforementioned friends still having issues despite returning to the West Coast, the near collapse of the lending market
and its corresponding effect on the rest of Wall Street, the bankruptcies and failures, more major layoffs being announced...
What can I say? I still am having trouble trying to come to grips with the whole mess.
Worse still - that the public was warned by many legislators - not to mention several hundred thousand people who lost their jobs and/or their homes - two or three years ago that this was all coming, and we as a nation effectively ignored the warning. For years we have lifted or eased taxes on imports, yet still we pay high tariffs on our exports. We have a serious problem with illegal immigration, which has been putting a heavy strain on our economy - particularly from abuses of welfare programs designed to help US citizens. And still many say they are needed to do "jobs no one wants". We had an economy that, eight years ago, was working. Unemployment was way down compared to today, housing was booming, foreclosures were far lower than now, our GNP was higher than now. What can I possibly say?
What can ANYONE say? We have run ourselves out onto a rock with only a steep, high cliff behind us and now everyone is nervous. This situation is not a sudden or unexpected one. Numerous warnings and indicators pointed to the US arriving where we are over the last several years. And the majority of it started in 2001.
Desert Storm did only what its instigator and planners announced as its intent - to liberate Kuwait from unlawful and dangerous occupation by its neighbor Iraq, under the late Saddam Hussein. Then-President George Herbert Walker Bush and his generals and advisors all stated that finding Hussein, who was known even then to be a bloody dictator, was not for this operation, or even his successor. I cannot say Bush the Elder was a great president, but - "Read My Lips" aside - he
certainly was not the worst.
I have never been a Republican supporter. I cannot even say I am basically conservative. My main philosophy is "live and let live". Except that I am not very good at following up on my religious beliefs, I could have been a good Wiccan (that, and I truly believe in God, and that his Son Jesus was the Messiah). Their primary driving philosophy is stated as a line in their Crede - "An ye harm none, do as ye will". Major corporations cannot say the same thing. In an effort to save money (and increase profits, and therefore their pocketbooks), many manufacturing and telephone-based service jobs have been gradually migrated to Mexico and Asia. Many of the profits realized by large corporations have been given not to their workers or investors, but to their directors or trustees, in the form of six or seven figure salaries, relatively large stock packages and bonuses,
and severance packages larger than the GSP of many of our states.
We need hard solutions to our issues today. To get them, however, we need to understand the problems. Why did all these companies fail, or get so deeply in trouble? Buying and selling mortgages over and over? The billions poured into the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan? Creating derivative securities backed by mortgages and other less tangible instruments so complicated that the sellers or creators don't fully understand them? Oil shortages due to the Middle East conficts and Katrina, Rita and Ike? Subprime lending with huge balloons in payments causing larger numbers of defaults?
In a word, yes. All of these contributed to our financial crisis. Savings and loans (usually recognized now as "mutual banks") and other lenders were deregulated so that they could create the investments and loans mentioned above. President George Walker Bush (whom I think of as Shrub, or Baby Bush) sent troops to
Afghanistan and to Iraq, and has repeatedly asked for more and more money to sustain them there. Oil prices have soared, and never really dropped much, after this move, and even higher after the three hurricanes mentioned above seriously damaged our ports and oil refineries in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. And due to loss of jobs and lack of wage and salary increases in the last three years contributed greatly to the default of numerous mortgages and other loans, and the APR increase on and closure of many credit accounts. But all of this created a shortage of funds available from traditional lending sources, which drastically slowed spending. Default on a mortgage, and the mortgagor doesn't have the money you were feeding to them to lend to others. Compound that by hundreds, or thousands, of defaults, and you see the REAL issue.
What are we, and our legislators, going to do about it? Nothing? Bail out Wall Street and pass the bill to Main Street? The best thing anyone can do is research and act. You don't have to be an economics graduate to understand the situation. Most of the participants don't fully understand it- and that's the crux of the problem. The World Wide Web and your local librairies have a wealth of information revealing the voting records of your public officials. The stated beliefs and policies of most public officials is available there as well. There is a greater wealth of news and independent articles and blogs there, too. And use the information you find there to answer two questions:
1) Am I and my family as well-off now as, or better off now than, eight years ago?
2) Does the country as a whole seem better off now than eight years ago?
And act. Tell your legislators what you've found, and what you feel. Send letters or e-mails to them. And send them to bloggers and commentators. Send them to newspapers. Talk to your friends and family and discuss with them your and their views. Watch the debates, even the VP debate. After all, if the president dies or is incapacitated, the veep takes over.
And vote in November. If you feel the answer to both of the above questions is "Yes" then you should cast your vote McCain - he seems more and more to want to follow Bush's path fairly closely, especially in Iraq. If you answer "No" to either question, I submit to you that you must vote for Obama, as he has stated he wants to make changes to the executive branch, and help facilitate a reach across party lines to bring about legislative changes, that will return us (ultimately) to where we were under Clinton. We can't just watch by the wayside because "politics isn't my thing". We can't sit on the sidelines or the fence and say, "My vote and voice doesn't really mean anything." We can't hide our heads under the sand. We MUST tell Washington how we EACH feel. We MUST continue to tell them. WE CANNOT just trust the establishment or the government to watch out for our interests. We did that - we trusted the government to watch over us. How do you think they're doing? If I was a teacher, and the members of Congress were my students, and their performances of their duties were a course I was teaching, I would give them collectively a D-. How would you grade them?
Go Vote. And tell them what you feel.
Currently listening to The Essential Bob Dylan (Rm) (2CD) By Bob Dylan
