BernieHund: The Political Watchdog

Good Morning, America!  A few years ago, Monday morning was that special time of the week when most of us got up and headed off to start a new work week.  We put in our 40 hours or more and planned a family outing for the weekend, often riding through neighborhoods one scale up from the one where we lived.  We picked out our dream house and worked and saved for the day we could purchase a home, perhaps as a first time buyer, of if we owned a small cottage we searched for one just one step up, one grade better than the one we had.  Most of us had jobs, jobs that we expected to work until retirement.  We had 401(k) plans for our retirement.  We had individual savings accounts.  

Today we are not looking to our next house, but desperately trying to save our present home, often to no avail.  Our saving accounts are depleted.  Our 401(k) plans have basically become legalized gambling.  And, should the corporation we work for fall on hard times, our 401(k) plans and our health care plans are the first cuts.  All one has to do is take a look at some of the Chapter 11 “reorganization” plans the bankruptcy courts have approved for major corporations.  Should you or I fall on hard times, mostly due to catastrophic medical expenses, the Washington lobbyists have convinced our legislature that we should have no recourse except to give up everything we have worked for thanks to the recently adopted consumer bankruptcy laws.  Our government, those we elected, have decided that it is more important to save face with corporate America than to save the faces of Americans. 

Good Monday morning, my friends without benefits.  It seems that the American dream has finally migrated into the American nightmare.  Unlike some I’m not going to blame the government for everything that has gone wrong in our lives.  After all, we voted for those who legislated us into poverty.  And, we have all had a hand in the cookie jar, each of us reaching for the biggest cookie we could grab.  Perhaps, we all bought into the theory of a chicken in every pot and a house on every lot.  After all that was the dream a few decades ago.  Today, many of us can no longer afford the house or the lot, and more and more of us can no longer afford the chicken or the pot. 

Did we as Americans want more than we could afford?  Did we attempt to live the champagne life on a beer bottle income?  The answer is yes.  So, part of the responsibility for our national economic crisis rests squarely on our shoulders.  But, that is only half the story.

When we tried to reach beyond our means, there were greedy bankers and mortgage brokers on the other side of the table who told us we could have it all if we would only sign on the dotted line.  We wanted to believe them.  They failed us.  We wanted more.  And, they told us we could have it. 

The banks and other lenders had devised a plan to hand off the potentially bad mortgage loans, labeling them as securities, selling them to other banks and inverstors at a discount rate.  The constant turnover of these so-called securities was somewhat like playing the child’s “hot potato” game.  Whoever is caught holding the hot potato got burned.  The scheme would have worked far longer, although doom was inevitable, except those bundling the securities and dumping them off on investors became too confident in their plan and much too greedy.  The lenders had to know that when a majority of those adjustable rate loans accelerated, the default rate would rise significantly.  They were drawing to an inside straight.  Like a pack of hungry dogs they tore at the meat of the American dream and the American citizens, setting the country up for the current economic crisis, taking advantage of a weaker prey.

When the scheme was first put into play, I suspect there were realtively few potentially bad loans in the mix.  Yet, when it became too easy to get people to sign on the line, when it became too easy to encourage people to exaggerate their earnings to get a loan, when it became too easy to make more money off the unknowing and unsuspecting, greed took over.  The greed was sitting on both sides of the table.  Those who should have known they couldn’t afford everything they wanted put doubts aside and signed on the line.  Those who handed them the pen could only see pay raises, rising commissions, and larger bonuses. 

So, today we wake up on a warm Monday morning and find that the American citizens who have been watching their homes go into foreclosure are now faced with subsidizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  The entire set up of those two entities seems faulty on the surface even to the untrained eye.  The taxpayers by way of the government guaranteed their loans.  When profits were made, individual investors and banks are the ones who took home the profits.  You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to figure out the inequity in that scheme.  As long as everything went well, people with money made more money.  Now that everything seems to be going wrong, the taxpayers will pick up the tab.  Perhaps, that is a simplification of the scheme, but it is pretty damned close to the reality.

The two men at the top of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac food chain earned approximately $30 Million last year.  While the fat cats were lapping cream from the kitty bowl and moving up the food chain, those of us who signed on the dotted line have been losing our homes in record numbers.  To add insult to injury, now the taxpayers are expected to pay the two institutions back into the black through our tax dollars.  Yet, no one has offered to pay our mortgages to keep us in our homes.  Instead, we have been offered yet more opportunities to refinance our homes… for those who can qualify.  And, friends, try to qualify for a loan today if you are on the brink of default.  We have been structured into financial loss.

I would like to be able to say that I have the answer to the economic crisis our country faces.  I don’t.  Honestly, no one seems to have an answer.  Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke scooped up the ailing Bear Stearns, placing American taxpayers at risk.  We had to save the system, a system that according to some of our top economic advisers is incomprehensible.  Now, Americans are faced with propping up the two largest mortgage lenders in the country… while we move out of our personal homes.   

On Sunday morning, John McCain said on “Face the Nation” that when things get back on track the American taxpayers would be paid back.  That’s all well and good, I suppose.  When will America get back on track?  And, is that the same track we have been riding on?  What does that do for the family down the street who is loading the moving van today?  Absolutely nothing.  In other words, those who made the profits from greed are the ones who are least affected.  The American public is left to fend for itself until the rich and powerful get their fill.

Of course, I fully expect some brilliant Washington mouthpiece to say that with the saving of the Fannie and Freddie, we have turned the corner.  If you believe that I have a bridge to nowhere I want to sell you.  Just think about it for a minute.  We may have saved the largest mortgage lenders, but what corner did that turn for you and me? 

During the month of August, an additional 64,000 American jobs were lost.  We are now looking at a 6.1% unemployment rate in our nation, approximately one-half million American middle class working people standing in lines to collect a small unemployment check each month.  Our corporations prefer to have “Sue” in India or some other country answer a phone for a service call rather than have an American do it.  Our corporations would rather import cheap goods from China to fill their stores and then threaten its employees that they will lose their jobs if a Democrat moves into the White House.  I am speaking of WalMart in particular and many other companies in general.  (How many times did we hear “WalMart moms” mentioned during the Republican Convention?)

Perhaps Americans could suck it up one more time if there was an end in sight for this present economic crisis.  To believe the end of this crisis is near, in my humble opinion, is to believe in the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny.  We may have as of this morning faced the most severe crumbling of the mortgage industry.  And, surely Fannie and Freddie may soon be solidified under new management at some undetermined cost to American taxpayers.  If I balanced my checkbook with the skill… or lack thereof… shown by those who headed up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac I would be sitting in a jail cell.  Yet, I feel sure they will receive a severance package that equals the annual income of many suburban neighborhoods, or more.

To think we are turning a corner on the economic crisis is nothing short of a joke.  We have a half-million jobs, or more that have vanished into thin air or moved to another country.  And, I now ask if any of you have a credit card balance at the end of the month.  Have any of you been forced to pull out a credit card to fill your gas tank?  Have any of us used a credit card to purchase our weekly groceries?  Chances are we have all used our credit cards to buy necessities.  And, more than likely we did not pay off the balance due on that credit card at the end of the month.  

When unemployed Americans who are trying to survive and feed their families while they look for another job are no longer able to pay their monthly credit card payments and the banks begin to feel that pinch, I suppose we will be called upon yet again to rescue them from more bad decisions.  It’s coming.  And, it isn’t too far off in the future.  

I see no way around the present crisis for Americans.  For all the plans and positions proffered to save the economy, Americans… middle class Americans… are the first to pay for the corruption and incompetence of our government and the last to benefit.  When those in power deny us health care, saying that we can’t afford the cost or that it isn’t the government’s responsibility, I say they can’t have it both ways.  If we are literally taxed to death to pay for the failings of the Executive and Legislative Branches of governement, we have no money left to pay for our own health insurance. 

It is time to decide.  It is time for Americans to decide if it is in our best interest to continue to pay the price for bad decisions made by those we have elected, Republicans and Democrats alike.  We hear talk about Social Security balancing on the edge of bankruptcy.  We hear talk about our government’s inability to guarantee minimal health care coverage for the masses.  We hear talk about the educational needs of our children, yet we are told that we cannot fund the programs necessary to carry out the plans.  Yet, we can afford to prop up those institutions who created the problems, who were so greedy that they were only interested in their immediate gratification and pay raises.

We hear that our country is borrowing billions of dollars from foreign, not always friendly, governments to pay for a war that stands as one of the greatest deceptions in American history.  And, in the wake of the war, many in our Legislative Branch, the Congress, voted against the G.I. Bill saying that it was too expensive, while building the most expensive embassy in the world in Baghdad and drawing up plans for something closely resembling Disney World for the Iraqi citizens to enjoy when (if) we ever withdraw our troops from the present occupation of their country.

While we listen to the candidates tell us how their plans are going to save us and save the world, the truth seems to be that the only one’s being saved are those who least need it.  Our candidates on every level recite our local, state, and national problems.  We, the American citizens, don’t need to be told what our problems are.  We are living with them.  We are experiencing the fallout from the energy crisis, the sicknesses that come from lack of healthcare, the fear of being homeless next month.  We know the problems.  Yet, the politicians seem to recite them over and over again, as if to remind themselves more than us.  We know the problems.  We want to hear the solutions, real solutions, not more of the rhetoric of election years.

America has seen the rise and fall of our economy over the past several decades.  Even the most downtrodden among us know that once again America will rise from the despair created by our present economic crisis.  Yet, we must recognize that during the last four decades our times of prosperity have come under Democratic administrations.  That may be no guarantee of the future.  But, it is a good indication.  For all the criticism of Bill Clinton, he left the national coffers full when he left office.  In a mere eight years, George Bush has taken our nation from a balanced budget into the greatest debt our country has known. 

It is time for a change.  John McCain says he offers change to America, but only 10% based on his record with the Bush administration.  Americans need more than that from our next President.

As for us, the American citizens, now is not the time to give up and surrender to fear and despair.  Now is the time to organize and work ourselves out of the crisis we are in.  It can be done.  Each community, each neighborhood can organize and do something to help one another.  Yes, there is value to community organizers.  It is our responsibility to help one another, to work together to do what we can to get our footing back on solid ground. 

Barack Obama has stirred the American citizens to believe that we can have an impact on our destinies.  We must not only believe that we can, we must take action.  It begins by getting our neighbors to the polls in November.  It continues as neighbors work with neighbors to overcome small neighborhhod and community crises.  The strength of America is not in military power.  The strength of America lies within each of us doing our part to make our country stronger and less dependent on foreign countries for their imports, oil or manufactured products.  The strength of America is in uniting against corporate giants who have dictated our national policy for the past eight years.  But, it begins at the grass roots level.  We must organize and mobilize for November.

In closing, I am reminded of the story of the young child who needed to remain occupied while his father took a phone call.  The father ripped a page from a magazine.  The picture was of the earth.  Quickly, the father tore the picture into pieces telling his son to put the makeshift puzzle together while he took the phone call.  He watched his son work on the puzzle with little success as he talked.  Satisfied that the puzzle was sufficiently difficult to keep the child occupied, the father turned his attention to business.

As the father hung up the phone, he noticed that his son was sitting in front of the completed puzzle.  Surprised that the youngster had successfully completed the puzzle the father spoke, “I didn’t know you knew how to put the world back together.”

“I didn’t.”  The youngster replied.  “I put the house on the back together.  When the house was right, the world was right.” 

And so it goes.  To solve the problems in the world today, we, as individuals, must start at home and solve our problems first… the economy, health care, education, energy.  We can each do our part as individuals by casting our vote in November and making sure we get our friends and neighbors out to vote.