Will The Dems Finally Act?

Regular readers know that I've been preaching here for quite some time about how the country has been taken over by the wealthy business interests in the country. There are many important issues in this country, war and peace certainly being one, but in my opinion, in the end, what will destroy the country is how we deal with the economy and the standard of living for all Americans, not just the rich. The philosophy that spawned the take over by the "interests" was put in place just shy of thirty years ago. In the early Reagan years, many Americans could not have foreseen how the mighty would truly become THE mighty in the country within just a couple of decades. We have two major political parties to help balance things out in how the country operates. During much of the last thirty years many Democrats in Congress supported a lot of conservative policies. I said "many Democrats," but certainly not all. Some of those Dems were so conservative, that they switched parties and became Republicans. Additionally, during his two terms, President Clinton, a Democrat, also signed into law a number of policies that were heavily supported by conservatives in the country, including the repeal of some significant regulation of the banking industry, proposed mainly by then Senator Phil Gramm, Republican of Texas.* So, I'm not just picking on Republicans, but it was their favored philosophy that prevailed for almost thirty years, and it was that philosophy that helped put the country into the predicament it is now in economically.** In essence, however, WE are to blame.

We watched oil and gasoline prices spiral to heights never believed possible. We watched as higher energy prices drove the price of just about everything higher. We watched as the price of many other food products soared, because of "supposed scarcity." We watched the country's wealth dissipate in trade imbalances that boggled the mind. We watched as middle class Americans saw their collective incomes shrink. We watched as Wall Streeters and other wealthy Americans "cleaned up" on high prices for everything, transferring money from OUR pockets into THEIR bank accounts. We watched as Wall Streeters and other wealthy Americans used that money to drive prices even higher, thus perpetuating the transfer of wealth from low and middle income Americans to the very wealthy. We watched as these same greed mongers helped (unwittingly, I'm NOT saying this was a conspiracy) foreign nations, some of them openly hostile to America, reap the benefits of higher oil prices, "fueled," if you'll pardon the expression, by the obsessive greed of our own greediest people. We watched as home prices surged to absurd levels, driven higher by mortgages granted to anyone who had a heartbeat, and maybe even to some who didn't. We watched as people who hated the idea of government, be put in charge of the government! Then these same imbeciles charged that the government doesn't work right! If you ever wanted to know what the Wild West was like, this stuff was pretty much comparable; that is, no law and order, except for the wealthy, who were a law unto themselves.

Now we've had a new President since late January. We've had Democrats in control of the House of Representatives. We've had Democrats in charge of the U.S. Senate. So what's been done to change all of the absolute nonsense that had been going on? Ah...NOTHING! Well, I guess there is going to be a policy to cut back on Wall Street bonuses announced some time today, supposedly for one year, but that is insufficient for the magnitude of the problem. The whole system was taken over by wealthy interests. Corporate board members have been as cozy as cucumbers on a vine with CEOs and other corporate officers. These folks approved all of these bonuses and exorbitant salaries. The average shareholder is just like dust on the floor.

We have the greedy back to driving oil and gas higher. Let me tell you, how much do you want to bet that many a Wall Street business is behind that? They'll destroy the country, because they are so obsessed by greed and ego trips that they don't even see how they hurt the country by taking money from the pockets of average Americans AND helping transfer more of our wealth overseas to oil producing countries. I know many people don't agree with me on this at this time, but you watch, if nothing is done, many Americans will be screaming for Uncle Sam to nationalize the oil industry in this country, just to get a handle on the abuses that have gone on. Survival will outweigh all this "socialist" malarkey shouted by some people who don't even see their own self interest. And they are urged on by people who fully understand their own self interest. Can you guess who they are? All of the negative ads appearing on your television screen didn't get there by magic. They were funded by someone. Any attempts to change the system that now favors the "big boys," will face well funded opposition, and you can put that in a Wall Street bank account. (A "Word History" is below the notes)

* Gramm was one of those former Democrats who changed parties.

** Very concisely, but not all inclusive, that philosophy entailed big tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans, free trade policies with countries whose workers earned only a fraction of what American workers made, thus putting our own workers at a serious disadvantage, and the idea of "the best regulation is no regulation." That last notion was in place as the conditions mounted that would cause the economy to melt before the very eyes of those who opposed regulation so much, like Christopher Cox, George W. Bush's head of the Security & Exchange Commission, better known by its initials, SEC, but he was not alone!

WORD HISTORY:
Now-This very common word goes back to Indo European "nu," and meant "at the present time." This gave many of the Indo European dialects (later separate languages) a form of the word, as Sanskrit, an ancient relative of English, had "nu," and Latin had "nunc," and Greek had/has "nun/nyn/nu" (I found three different versions). The Germanic languages also kept a form of the word, and this gave Old English "nu." The other Germanic languages also still have forms: German has "nun," Dutch has "nu/nou," Norwegian has "na," Danish has "nu/na," and Swedish has "nu."