We have committed a historic blunder

Can you imagine how different our country's history would be today if, in 1932, instead of creating public works programs and other policies to help the working citizen, Franklin D. Roosevelt simply gave billions of dollars to banks and corporations in a massive government bail-out? This past week, our country has committed a great historic blunder. The U.S. Congress has passed, and President Bush has signed, a $700 billion bail-out bill for failing corporations on Wall Street. We have, unlike Franklin Roosevelt decades ago, addressed the symptoms of the economic problems rather than the causes. The problems did not start with Wall Street and then trickle down; the problems began on Main Street, with people losing their jobs and being unable to pay their mortgages and other bills, and then spread to Wall Street. This bail-out bill will solve nothing because it does not address the causes of the problems. This bail-out bill will not patch the gaping hole in our Ship of Economy which is causing it to fill up with water and sink. This bail-out bill is not right, because it protects corporations from the consequences of their corrupt and reckless practices while neglecting the struggling average American. And what is not right shall never be advantageous, for, as Cicero wrote, "Advantage can never conflict with right. That is why Socrates, as the tradition goes, used to curse men who had first begun to differentiate between these two things which nature had made inseparable---everything which is morally right is advantageous, and there can be no advantage in anything that is not right." Right and advantage are one and inseparable, now and forever.

Despite this, leaders in Congress and in the White House, including the two major-party presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, passed and signed the bail-out bill this past Friday. The fools in Washington have bumbled things up again. That day, I spoke to my grandmother, who asked me what I thought would happen now that this bail-out bill had been passed. I said, "I think that things will get temporarily better, and then much worse, because we haven't addressed the causes of the economic problems. We need to address high jobless rates (currently 6.1%, the highest in over a decade); the inability of people to pay their mortgages, to pay their other bills, to make a half-decent living in this country and be able to have a house and other economic opportunities." My grandmother said, "I think that you might be right." However, apparently, things shan't even get better before they get worse. They are getting worse already. The DOW plunged over 300 points today, putting the DOW below 10,000 points for the first time since 2004. Most everything in the Stock Market was heavily in the red. But there is no FDR in sight this time. There is no great leadership present to direct us along a better and alternative way. All leaders and prospective leaders have fallen right into line to sing along to bail-out tune, save for a few truly principled and good individuals such as Representative Dennis Kucinich.

I have to tell you, I think that every bit of this current economic situation is just utter insanity. Having a debt-based economy brought it and our country down, and so, naturally, the way to solve that would be to accumlate more government debt by way of bail-outs. The more money we print to fund the bail-outs, the further the American dollar will be de-valued, and, the more money that we borrow from China to fund these bail-outs, the more destruction that a debt-based economy will wreak upon our society. Were the people who voted for the bail-out bill even thinking and aware when they enunciated the word, "Yea!" Perhaps they were thinking, "Yea! I get another term in office, because now my corporate interests will be appeased because of this $700 billion bail-out, and the people in my congressional district will be appeased because of the $150 billion of added ear-marks just for them!" I have to be honest with you, this is just killing me, and not in a funny way like a good joke would. This is as serious as a 76-year-old man having to go back to work after his second heart attack because he needs the health insurance from the company. And this is personal---I know that man, and there are noble others like him. Where are the people who are supposed to help him? Well, apparently, they're all busy shoving money down the throats of their corporate sponsors with this $700 billion bail-out. It is truly sickening.

Instead of creating public works programs, establishing a single-payer healthcare system, creating a prescription drug benefit that pays for the prescriptions of all seniors, instituting a living wage and Fair Trade policies to protect the worker (the fundamental element of our economy), and re-evaluting our debt-based financial system, all we are doing is bailing out big corporations to save them from the consequences of their reckless practices while totally neglecting Main Street and the causes of the problems, and we expect these actions to prevent an economic crisis! Can you imagine, can you just imagine, how different and more terrible our country's history would be if all FDR had done was exactly what we are doing now?