Some interesting articles have been floating through the news, the last couple of days.
A man who created and ran an investment firm (I referred to it in an earlier post) was in fact running a Ponzi scheme, and has (so far) been shown to have stolen almost fifty billion dollars from a range of people and organizations, many of whom have, as a result, gone from wealth to bankruptcy virtually overnight. A man who is a well-known lawyer in New York, dealing in real estate, has been found to be executing a massive fraud of his own. Two extremely wealthy brothers bought land on a small island near England, bought several of the island's businesses, demanded changes in the legal structure of the country, and then, when the changes were not executed to their liking, shut down the businesses, throwing about a fifth of the island's population out of work.
And then, of course, there's the current governor of Illinois.
A fierce and terrible retribution should be visited on these foul people, and a mighty oath sworn to make right what has gone wrong. Will this happen? I doubt it. The two fraudsters will escape substantial punishment, possibly with the aid of learned comments regarding deep-rooted psychological deficiencies and the need for compassion, not retribution, while the two brothers , whose actions show the moral depth of a boy torturing small animals, will skip any penalties for their actions whatsoever. To such people, the effects of their foul behavior on others is beneath notice. They simply do not care. "Me First" is their motto; frequently, it's "Me Only".
When others can so massively affect your life, you need powerful resources on your side - people of integrity, energy, and purpose. Such people do exist now, but they are not interconnected; they are not collectively strong. I believe that this is what Obama brings - that sense of someone strong who's going to look out for you, make things right, slap down the clever people and the sneaky people and the bold and arrogant people. Not all of them, certainly; but, we can hope, enough - so that there is a recentering of the country's moral and ethical compass. At the personal level, we need to have the equivilent of neighborhood watches, overseeing those who are powerful in our society. We can't rely on the integrity of those in power -- even those as focused and worthy as Obama and his cadre. They are, after all, human; they do, after all, have their own foibles. We can't leave it up to them, entirely. We need to look out for ourselves.
A massive revulsion from and expulsion of those human weasels, involving foul prisons in some dank and bleak gulag, would be awfully nice, too.
2 comments:
The change you so ferverently hope for will have nothing to do with removing politicians from the trough or bringing about honesty in government and wishing won't make it so. The "change" will involve a depression economy, depression "attitudes", the equivalent of the "new deal", infill of urban areas, kids with families living with their parents, the loss of mobility (due to lack of fuel and the slapping of toll booths on previously "free" highways), the corrosion of housing prices, stock options and the US dollar. The costs of attending university will be out of reach to even more people, and the loss of jobs will produce a {hopefully temporary} welfare state. Y'all will be darned lucky to avoid a police state. In my wildest dreams I don't forsee a golden age. Gosh knows I would love to be optomistic, but I don't see any new railways being laid down, or the electrification of existing railways. I don't see any widespread regulations being made to require new housing to be superinsulated, or even to be situated on the lot to take advantage of the sun! (Not that there is any new housing going on anyway.) I see big talk about improving the "infrastructure" as if anybody will be able to drive on it, but nothing about improving public transit.
Oh well....we got our own problems in Canada...in fact Canadian politics is getting quite fascinating. Nobody seems concerned that three quarters of the business in Canada are owned by US businesses which are facing receivership. Not the least of which is the foreign owned GM which is asking the Canadian Government for a BIG handout, and not to be outdone, the totally foreign owned forestry industry is demanding the same.
Yet, I am not gloomy, really. There are unprecedented opportunities coming down the road if we only reach out to take advantage of them. The internet is not just about porn nowadays, its about learning and education. Increasingly, the doctorates you get from colleges are becoming irrelevant. The auto companies may be forced to create autos that people can actually buy, and maybe they can re-tool some of their assembly lines to create electric tramways. They don't have to be "steam punk" trams, but that would be nice....grin!
Well, you wanted change. I DO hope you like it. You will never go back to the days of happy motoring and hour long single occupant commutes, jobs that will pay enough to send your kids to university AND pay off the house. It'll be change to a lifestyle our parents would recognize from the dirty thirties when they built houses from rammed earth, churches all had huge soup kitchens attached to them, and families wouldn't see dad for months at a time because he was working at a job in another city.
The internet isn't just for porn?
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