To the Editor:
Lawrence Swift blames a “shallow, misinformed and apathetic citizenry” for “acquiescence in the face of egregious usurpations of power.”
For “shallow, misinformed and apathetic,” substitute ‘scared, lied to, and spied on.’ That is how Bush invaded a country that never attacked the United States and had no plans to attack the United States. The resulting boondoggle has run up a trillion dollars in public debt, squandered all the international goodwill of 9/11, and mired our military in Iraq.
Eight years of waterboarding, domestic surveillance, and disastrous policy by the “Unitary Executive” weren’t enough to raise Swift’s ire, but now that we’ve elected a Democrat to fix things it’s time for…what, exactly? Sedition? Treason? Hoarding food and ammunition in your basement? Please.
And who shall we blame for the global financial meltdown? ACORN was not in the room when Alan Greenspan inflated the housing bubble. When hedge fund managers created phantom stock, destroying American companies for fun and profit with ‘naked short selling,’ Obama was not there.
When mortgage brokers approved subprime loans regardless of ability to pay, lied to buyers, and buried extortionary terms in the fine print, Bush’s regulators were asleep at the switch. Financial geniuses called toxic bonds “safe,” leveraged them, and insured the losses. No one twisted their arms.
Consider Obama’s mortgage relief bill ($80 billion) against Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, which destroyed some $60 billion and counting. It is just one of the many Ponzi schemes we are learning about. According to Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman, forty-five percent of the world’s wealth has been destroyed by schemes both legal and illegal.
All this fancy financial gimmickry was designed to sap every penny of real value into executive bonuses. Now that this house of cards has collapsed, Swift will excuse me if I don’t shed tears for the 2% of Americans making more than $250,000. They caused this mess; I am happy to see them clean it up. “Eat the rich?” Yes – in tiny bites. If you make $300,000 a year, new marginal rates increase your tax burden about $4.10 a day. That’s a Starbucks venti latté. Deal with it.
The alternative is a depression. The alternative is millions of Americans, the 98% that didn’t cause this debacle, out of work and out of their homes. The alternative is to let foreclosure rates destroy neighborhoods and erase property values for people who didn’t take part in mortgage-mania. The alternative truly is “shallow, misinformed, and apathetic.”
