Of course, virtually none of those in the banks and corporate offices who sold those instruments were ever punished.
In our current plutocratic system, rarely
do leaders in positions of power ever have to pay a real penalty for
their bad, or even illegal, acts. Either they are given a free pass or
they find a "bad-apple" scapegoat.
--With the economy in the toilet, and the Republicans resisting any
stimulus or other effective measures to help the working and
middle-class climb out, fewer and fewer Americans had any cash to buy
big-ticket items and many, with no jobs and the safety-net shredded and
their pensions and retirement savings cut in half, had to struggle
just to keep afloat.
That meant factories were shuttered, in
addition to those that had been closed because of "outsourcing" of jobs
to China, Mexico, India, et al. during the Clinton and Bush
presidencies. Millions were laid off and, due to the resulting loss of
tax revenues, cities and states were out of monies to finance
everything from police and firefighters to helpful civil servants.
As I write this, an estimated 10-18 percent of the workforce (roughly
20 million citizens) are unemployed, and having extreme difficulty
finding jobs. More than 35 percent of American children are living in
poverty. And this current Great Depression is projected to last many
years, maybe a decade or more, as a result of Republican machinations
and Democratic timidity.
Jobless Recruits
Wolfgang, you know better than I do the possible ramifications of
having millions of unemployed young men, many of them under-educated,
feeling like rejected losers. As we know from what happened in Germany
in the 1930s, these angry, frustrated masses of young men and their
parents become perfect
fodder for extremist demagogues.
What's most frightening is that these
likely recruits, energized by their rage and emotions, feel comfortable
inside a balloon of voluntary ignorance, eager to support such
political nitwits as Sarah Palin, Christine O'Donnell, Carl Paladino,
Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Ken Buck and the rest.
Simple example: When asked whether they support Obama's new
health-care approach, many of these newborn rightwing activists rant
about how the government shouldn't be in the business of helping people
via entitlement programs. But they get very angry if there is any talk
about cutting back or eliminating their agriculture subsidies or
Social Security checks or Medicare coverage.
When their hypocrisy is pointed out to
them, it becomes clear that they feel they deserve the government help
but the Others, especially minorities and the poor, do not. Racism and
classism are alive and well in the American polity.
Today, many young, unemployed men (and their parents), devoid of hope,
wind up recruited by militias and political groups of one sort or
another, and are encouraged into action by far-right demagogues like
Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Sarah Palin to channel
their anger into the Tea Party movement allied with the Republican
Party.
Their "enemies," they are led to believe,
are minorities, journalists, "the government," gays, Muslims,
liberals, immigrants, "moderate" politicians, the supposed
SocialistMuslimNaziStalinist in the White House, et al. In other words,
every angry citizen can pick a convenient enemy to hate and act
against.
Normally, the party in power would provide energized correctives to
pull the confused, frustrated masses back toward the middle. But the
Democrats, and especially President Obama, have been mostly clueless as
to how to combat this movement, which is based on lies, arrogance,
duplicity and threats of (and actual) violence.
In any event, their halfway-effective responses were always many months too late. Only in recent days, for example, has Obama even begun to energize his base to fight back in the midterm election, now two weeks away.
He's only partially successful since he
and his spokesmen have belittled the Democrats' progressive base for
nearly two years now, using it as a convenient punching bag as he tried
to lure Republicans and Independents to his side.
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