but the time has come. I have so much pent up anger and hostility I have to rant, or I’ll explode.
I have spent the last two years+ supporting and defending the President. And in spite of how angry I am at him this moment, I will still support him until I see a better choice. Defend? Maybe not so much. Because this time, unless I convince myself otherwise during the course of sorting this out at your expense, what he is doing is indefensible.
Technicalities? Is the administration really going to stand there and call what is happening in the mortgage industry “technicalities?” Fraud and perjury are now “technicalities?” Is that what we’re going to call it when the cops do it, or the prosecutors? Where do we draw the line?
Now, I bought it when the banks said “We’re too big to fail. If you let us go under, the whole country is going with us.” So, out of fear of the consequences of NOT bailing them out, we did it. I didn’t like it, but I figured the consequences of not doing it were too horrible to contemplate. Now I’m wondering if it wasn’t a mistake. I mean, if we had let them go, we would probably be two years into the second “Great Depression” and working our way out. Instead we are back at square one, back at the precipice, with the difference being that all the fat cats have gotten their outrageous pay and bonuses for two more years on our backs, and millions have been foreclosed upon, perhaps many of them fraudulently.
What a perfect time for President to come out and say, “We’re not doing this again. We bailed you out. And instead of tightening your belts, and using every nickel we gave you to unwind the mess you made, you lined your pockets, and arrogantly went about your way, using the money to buy more influence, thwart our attempts to regulate your ability to do this again, and create more of the shady “instruments” that got us into this mess in the first place. You have run roughshod over your customers, the very people who bailed your sorry asses out, violated their rights, committed perjury, and in some cases, fraud. And enough is enough. We don’t need the Attorneys Generals from all 50 states to investigate your practices. We’re going to do it for them. You are going to be required to make every effort to keep every single person who owns a home today in that home. You are going to make right, what you have done to this country, and as much as is possible, the world. If you have committed, or caused to BE committed, fraud or perjury, you are going to jail. You are going to forfeit your ill-gotten gains. If necessary we will nationalize the banks for as long as it takes to clean up this mess, and we are going to put into place safeguards that insure that this NEVER happens again. As long as I am President of the United States, not one more corporation is going to have its needs put above those of the most common of men. Period. If that means we need to go into a depression and start from scratch, so be it. This country has been built on the rule of law, and I will not for one more day watch it be trampled. If I do not do one more thing with the remaining days left in my term, I will restore the people’s faith in our form of government, take it back from the moneyed interests, and restore integrity to the halls of the White House and Congress. There is not one single thing of greater importance to me. Not one.”
And I would have him deliver the statement with as much fire and brimstone as a Baptist preacher, then leave the stage and set about doing it, second term be damned.
A Stillidealistic girl can dream, can’t she?
cross-posted at Dagblog
Once Upon a Paradigm 