Atop his horse, Old Tom, Lincoln rode through prairie grasses that grew as high as his head all about him as he cantered along. A brilliant litigator, he urged townspeople to, if at all possible, avoid the expenses of the legal system. Still, he had to earn a living, and took cases both for an escaped slave and later for a Kentucky slave owner, both in the affirmative - and won them.
He never truly knew financial prosperity, despite rising to the highest executive office in the land. He felt fortunate enough just to manage, and had difficulty keeping his wife, southern belle Mary Todd, happy. But he successfully traversed troubled times, determined to keep the American Union intact. That also reminds me of the sea of growing debt we are now attempting to navigate, hoping to escape drowning or an economic firing squad.
Struggling as a young lawyer, when he finally won a big Illinois Supreme Court case, he had to sue merely to recover his fee. Would he be chasing an economic ambulance these days? Perhaps. Or maybe he would be among the senators or their aids who are peppering Bankers and corporations with questions as to how they are using and misusing public stimulus and TARP funds.
He agonized over the Civil War and its consequent cost in human lives, and we are now at war on fronts in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Most surely the most damaging cause of our national debt has been the horrendous military expenditures. Add in corporate greed evidenced by civil contracts acquired without benefit of bidding and oversight that have left former Vice President Cheney and his Halliburton far more wealthy than before, and you begin to complete the picture.
Nothing is free. Everything in this life has its cost, whether in money, in patience, in labor, or in stress -- which brings us back to the present day stress of bail outs and their price tags. To our dismay, we are now discovering it's no national political and economic issue, but a geo-political problem, and it's repercussions will likely be felt long and hard the world over. We're not multiplying numbers, but entering into exponential equations, with the entire planet holding its breath as it waits for what we Americans decide to do.
In our times adults responsible in the economic crisis have come to resemble children in a puerile war of words. Recall how, as kids we would try to outdo our playmates? "You have a million of them? Well, I've got a billion!" Then the retort would be "a trillion" and following that a ba-zillion" and a "ga-zillion!" So went all the lofty taunts in a childhood game of fantasized Monopoly.
If money were humor, one could do a Jimmy Durante impersonation: "I've got a million of 'em, folks - a million of 'em!" But it's greenbacks were talking about here, folks, not play money. Not jokes. And not astronomy either. Yet we've had to put the subject of fiscal peril in terms that can only be viewed as cosmic in scope and described by astrological euphemisms. Thus it is that financial slavery has taken on the face of debt, rather than color.
Even the traditional national pass-time, baseball has been tainted. The Yankees will soon be playing in a stadium which replaces the "house that Ruth built," and its new name? Citibank! This sponsorship will benefit the team annually with its top- heavy all-star payroll, to the tune of twenty billion dollars a year. And you could easly liken the steroid scandals to an economic, overly-muscular debt.
So one cannot help but draw the inevitable conclusion that poverty, with its attendant long term indebtedness, is strewn with equal opportunity mortgage bankers - present day Shylocks - fixing the books, and embezzling the tax dollar. It's now a racetrack full of economically careless drivers.
Hey, it’s just an accident, looking for a place to happen, and it may soon resemble a veritable multi-vehicle auto collision resulting from drunken veering about, and finally, disastrously crashing. Or perhaps this has already occurred in terms beyond our wildest nightmares - and we are only just starting to realize it!
We've substituted dollar signs for stars in the process. Or are they planets - all of them red as Mars like the ink with which accounts note, penny by penny, our burgeoning budget?!
So, to quote the song from "My Fair Lady," "Are the stars out tonight? I don't care if it's cloudy or bright, 'cause I've only got eyes for you." Unfortunately, it's not a love affair at all - if it ever was one - and it seems as though in point of fact our bankers only have unashamed lies for you. They're at the top of the world, or out in the firmament, and they're looking down on us now.
Maybe educators will one day thank our society for introducing a new area of study. After all, we've created a potentially innovative academic field of research to be taught soon in our schools and colleges: "Astronomics$!."
Charles Riccillo is a frequent contributor to the Pueblo CHieftain, whose articles may be found archived at http://www.chieftain.com
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