1222 Too Big to Fail

1222  Too Big To Fail

How many people in this country are living below the poverty line?  And how many visits to a doctor did they skip because we don’t have universal health care?

How many storm-savaged/ravaged homes and businesses have yet to recover from Sandy or Katrina or Andrew?

We can bail out the banks.  We can bail out the automakers.  They’re too big to fail.

But so are the American people.

And we need a bailout.

Inflation is near zero except when you count the stuff people have to pay for … food and fuel… oh, and taxes.

Yet we have billions to burn in places we don’t belong, like Syria and Afghanistan and wherever else we are either hated and mistrusted or at least unwelcome guests.

We can’t fund medicine.  Education is a disaster at every level. We are so busy building walls against Mexicans and shooting people dead in places we don’t belong… so busy funding far eastern sweat shops at the expense of our own factories and workers and deregulating everything in sight and plenty that isn’t that we have lost ourselves.

Got a spare billion or two? (we do, but that’s another story.)  Hey, here’s an idea, let’s dump some more money into another impossible war.  No investor shorts Lockheed, Northrop-Grumman, General Dynamics, Boeing, Unisys, or Remington Arms.

We are too big to fail.  We need a bailout.  And not just a financial bailout.

We need to shift our focus away from the Big Three Devilish Damsels: Casey Anthony, Jodi Arias and Miley Cyrus of the twitching and twerping and mediocre rear end.  Also, the Kardashians, the new English prince and anyone else who makes the cover of the Enquirer, the Globe, People, the New York Post, E! television and Entertainment Tonight.

We debate and argue and fuss about germ-sized “problems” and we don’t deal with the things that are destroying us.  Fakenomics. Deregulation, waste, corruptions and the politicians we still take seriously.  Poverty. Malnutrition. And how we’re going to recover from the tea party.

We used to take care of each other.  Now, we take care of business. We do it because it’s what we do.  Or what’s done in our name.

Shrapnel (middle school spy edition):

--According to news reports, the anti-drug warriors’ eavesdropping and spying make the NSA’s look like one middle schooler cribbing the test answers from the kid at the next desk. If the NSA is as effective at curbing terrorists as the DEA is at curbing drug deals, the terrorists have nothing to worry about.  At least not from us.

--We’ve also come to learn that the NSA has cracked all the internet security measures most of us pay for.  If the spies want to know your credit card numbers, you social security number and your eye color they already have it, so what’s the big deal?  The big deal is if the NSA can do this so can the middle school kid at the next desk.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013