Our own government, using trillions of our hard earned tax dollars, is not willing to tell us what the ‘toxic waste’ assets are that we are getting for loaning the banking industry, the insurance industry, perhaps the auto industry and others, our money.
Considering that Wall Street stupidity and greed got us into this mess, we should be knowledgeable about how the toxic waste is now spreading into our own pocketbooks.
What is the United State worth? Its value is now tainted by trillions of dollars of assets that STINK so much that they have been removed from the balance sheet of the private industries that created it and they have been put in the public’s hands.
We are now responsible for cleaning up the toxic waste. But none of us got the $4000 bottles of wine at company dinners, the remodeled kitchens, the Hampton getaway homes that were bought with the cash that flowed as these assets were bought and sold by private industry.
Here is a great reminder of the billions the Dr. Frankensteins rewarded themselves with, less than two short years ago:
Now, two years later, like spoiled brats, they want to be rescued. Like youngsters who open all the family cupboards, eat and drink all the good stuff, run around partying and putting their dirty little fingers all over the walls and furniture, then drunkenly pee in the corners of the kitchen and let poo leak out of their diapers, they sit clasping their hands together, begging for relief from their own actions. Parental tough love is called for here. Why are we now picking up their poo?
Thank goodness for Bloomberg, for suing our government for what should be PUBLIC information.
Schizophrenic: Californians voted to allow chickens to have enough room to move around,
but they won’t let private citizens make marital commitments unless you are boy-girl.
I voted No on 8. A few years ago, one of my favorite bloggers, www.WilliamSledd.com, put out a youtube video asking people to speak out about gay rights. My daughter and I turned on the iSight Camera and make a quick video, here:
It was touching to get comments from young people around the world, thanking us for our kindness. I’m raising my kids to believe that everyone is here for a reason, everyone has gifts to bear and your one challenge in your lifetime is to live as fully, as completely as you can, as YOU.
So, its a big day when as many voters voted to allow civil rights as voted to refuse civil rights. The pendulum has swung FAR since the days when Ronald Reagan would not treat men dying of AIDS with dignity by acknowledging them (and look at his karma, he ended up with Alzheimers, unable to acknowledge his own wife). I’m going to keep up the fight, will you? Some day, very soon, we’ll overturn Prop 8.
Obama-Biden’s victory showed that there is power in the grass roots, and one day soon the grassroots will defeat Broekhuizen and Ahmanson, sending them back into their mansions.
It has been a bitch of 8 years. By letting Bush & Co. have free rein, by NOT acting to protect the environment, our money system, our health care insurance system, our low income and hungry elders and children, we’ve given the message to our government that we ‘don’t want to know’ what they’re doing. That changed with Obama’s election.
We are, however, waking up to a terrible hangover. Americans have suffered untold damages, we have post traumatic stress disorder from remaining silent thru the last 8 years. Its unravelling, unwinding slowly, with the jolt of hope from Obama’s vision.
And now we are FINALLY being told about the insanity of our ‘shadow banking industry’ and the delusion that we still operate under, trusting those who have destroyed our country financially, the leaders of Wall Street who are now vying for jobs divvying up the trillions of dollars in bailouts.
Vanity Fair writer Niall Ferguson has a beautiful new article titled “Wall Street Lays Another Egg” about the ‘Emperor has no clothes’/'Banking Industry has no money’ phenomenon.
Then there is the ‘problem’ of civilians killed by US troops around the globe. WIRED Magazine has a great blog article: Despite the pinpoint targeting, despite the satellite-guided, pint-sized bombs, despite the lawyers in the air operations center and the patient behavioral profiling, American airstrikes in Afghanistan still continue to kill civilians at an alarming rate; more than three dozen were allegedly slain yesterday in a strike on a wedding party in Kandahar province. Every errant attack undermines U.S. efforts to stabilize the country, and gives the Taliban another propaganda win. But the air war is showing no signs of slowing down — in fact, airstrikes are up more than 30 percent this year.
Obama’s election represents a sea-change for Americans, a waking up from our complacent slumber, a desperate wish to be proactive, have a healthy economy, be global citizens.
I pray that he does not choose the facile appointees. That he blows our minds by choosing RFK, Jr as Head of the EPA. Not Larry Summers for Treasury, but someone who has NOT put their foot in their mouth about women and minorities. That he name a Pentagon Department Head dedicated to the ‘Human Cost of War’, and a open up a Department of Peace.
Doerr focused on the fact that the US needs to invest in graduating a greater number of capable professionals. His goal is to double it from 30,000 to 60,000 graduating in physical sciences and engineering. Doerr highlighted the fact that a majority of students are studying from foreign countries. After they graduate, we send them back home, “what kind of foreign policy is that?” he quipped. His advice, “Staple a green card to each diploma!”
Its innovative ideas that we need.
Please, break the cycle! There is a mandate, now. Please step up with the audacity of hope. Open with big ideas and push forward with all hope. The world awaits.
When Bush took office 8 years ago, I said that America had not yet awakened enough to its own laziness. We didn’t want any more ‘Old Boy’ networking, but it was all we knew and we didn’t collectively have the guts to HOPE for something more. When Bush used fear to get elected 4 years later, I saw a deep, deep melancholy. Chagrin. Head shaking. Last gasps of hope slipping away. Such a huge, gaping difference between what we said we want, freedom and justice for all, and who we were willing to be.
Ah, so this is how we, as a country, want to be: the bully in the sandbox. Can’t speak to foreign leaders we don’t agree with. That would show ‘weakness’. Can’t ask Americans to sacrifice after the death of 4,000 citizens. Instead they should ‘shop’. It broke my heart to see the US step out in the world, but in a for-the-rich, profit-driven way with weapons blazing, trillions of dollars going to death instead of life.
Now, 8 years later, I wonder if the pendulum has swung far enough in the other direction for us to step out for HOPE? Will we have the courage to get back to our ideals?
Can my kids grow up in a world within which they are asked to be global citizens, to show empathy for those that need help or are injured or dying unjustly? Can we stop locking up our young people and instead give them jobs? Can we stop the money hemorraghing to East Hampton mega-mansions (or Rush Limbaugh’s Florida estate, where drugs just might be delivered, without prescriptions but with no attendant jail-time?) Can we stop giving bailouts to those who’ve destroyed us? Can we break our co-dependence with the cowboy politics championed by Ronald Reagan and badly mimicked by GWB?
