Life Has Consequences

More than a decade ago, Warren Zevon, a pop/rock musician best known for the song "Werewolves Of London" from the 1970s, released an album called, "Life'll Kill Ya." You can't sum things up any better than that. Yep, life has consequences. What is troubling to me though, is the notion pushed by the right wing that seems to say, "only government has negative consequences." That's absolute NONSENSE! MALARKEY!

Individuals make decisions every day that have consequences, and corporate CEOs make decisions that affect the lives of their employees all the time. The "war on government" (at all levels) wasn't pushed by the political right because government consistently made bad decisions, but because they feared government stopping them from exploiting people and resources. The bankers concocted the mortgage scam... I mean scheme, and we're still paying the price for it. They couldn't bring themselves to be honest about it either, and step up and take responsibility. No siree. First they concealed it, even from  their own investors, then they tried to pin it on government, with this stuff about "Uncle Sam made us take risky people for mortgages." There's some truth to that, but the idea that TRILLIONS of bucks in mortgages were influenced by a relatively small number of bad loans is more malarkey. And Uncle Sam didn't make them bundle risky or bad mortgages together to back securities, which were then marketed worldwide! C'mon folks! THINK! Government isn't perfect, but the private sector isn't heaven either; in fact, in more recent times, it's been hell!

WORD HISTORY:
Bard-This word goes back to Indo European "gwer," which had the notion of "voicing praises of someone." This gave its Old Celtic offspring "bardos," with the meaning "poet who praises or sings the praises of someone," which then gave forms of the word to Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic and Welsh. English borrowed the word in the 1400s.