"Lessons Of The Greatest Generation, Now Forgotten By Too Many" Part Three

First published in July 2014


Americans had fought, and contributed greatly to, the winning of World War Two, but upon their return from distant battlefields, where they had fought the hatred and the desire to return to some glorified past of reactionary fascism, they re-entered a nation still fraught with injustices. The major issue was about race, more especially about the treatment of Black Americans, a part of the population over whose enslavement a civil war had been fought, but also a part of society kept segregated from others, with the accompanying discrimination, mistreatment and hatred. Unfortunately, some who had fought fascist hatred in World War Two, returned to America only to support hatred against other Americans, a nasty failing quickly exploited by those seeking to gain or to retain power; our very own reactionary fascists.

The greediest of the greedy and the most reactionary elements of the country gradually chipped away at protections for Americans put in place during the Great Depression, or added later as the legacy of the reforms of the Great Depression. To roll back advances and attempts to right wrongs to American society, reactionaries often used the states to whittle down federal power. This approach, by its very nature, divides the nation, as in the Civil War era, and gradually an anti-Uncle Sam campaign was mounted and financed by those seeking something of which there is obviously not a sufficient supply on this planet for them, MONEY, and the POWER that money can bring. Eventually the banking laws of the Great Depression were repealed. Why? Fewer and fewer people of "the greatest generation" survived to remember those times, by then long past. Further, "some," certainly not all, of their children and grandchildren, many of whom had taken up gallant causes to make the U.S. a better place by fighting racism, bigotry, pollution, militarism, and monopolistic business interests, among other things, during the 1960s and 1970s, decided that making money and accumulating more and more wealth was more important than promoting a fairer country.* The marked decline of activism and the forgotten lessons of the past most certainly contributed to the rise of those who had been waiting for just such an opportunity, and they gained power, along with their philosophy of self interest and greed.

So as, what has been called, "conservatism" became the prevailing philosophy from the 1980s forward, more and more state and local power was pushed, as well as the power of money and the power of those who have money ... lots and lots of money. This corrupting notion has permeated everything from business, to government, to the court system, ever since. Money, or wealth in some form, has always been around, and likely always will be, but when it is unleashed with few restraints, the egomaniacs driving its engine are bound to try to soothe their egos on the backs of others. Can catastrophe be far behind? In recent years, after an economic meltdown that almost brought about a collapse of the world economy, the Great Recession, the perpetrators of the collapse: businesses that moved plants and other facilities overseas, oil speculators, bankers and others with ties to the financial system, generally escaped unscathed from their manipulations and outright deceit. Millions of others lost their jobs, but wealthy bankers and Wall Street brokers whined when they were asked to take smaller bonuses, or when the prospect of slightly higher taxes for them were proposed. Lack of perspective here folks, so "sacrifice" became a word for poor and middle class Americans, not for the super rich. In the world of such egomaniacs, Robin Hood was no hero, but a villain. So instead of shared sacrifice we've seen the wealthiest Americans reap virtually all of the benefits of a gradually recovering economy. The "too big to fail" banks of the initial crisis** are now larger than EVER. This is all pretty much the OPPOSITE of how "the greatest generation" dealt with the economic catastrophe of the 1930s. Instead of pulling together and finding common ground when the crisis developed, the likes of Rush Limbaugh and others chose to try to keep Americans divided, a tactic that has worked, at least to some degree, and government action has been somewhat paralyzed to the delight of the reactionaries, who now await their return to power over the entire system. When a BP oil spill sent a huge spewing of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, one Republican congressman publicly announced that "we" should apologize to BP for the treatment they were receiving from angry Americans wanting the mess cleaned up and the Gulf's wildlife and ecosystem protected.

* The 1960s saw a major increase in activism, often led by younger people, but having lived through that era, the idea that younger people were very liberal, is not truly accurate, in my opinion. To this day, people's political views, including those of young people, are "often" influenced by the area of the country where they live and by the views of their elders. Let's be honest, people of any age vote for or against certain candidates or issues for a wide variety of reasons, some of which don't always make sense, but that's part of being able to vote the way you choose. Just try not to be misguided or to hold onto nasty views out of the false pride that changing your views shows weakness. That philosophy equals, "I'd rather be wrong, than to change," or "2 + 2=5, and I'm sticking with it, no matter what the rest of the world says."  

WORD HISTORY:
Burst (Bust)-Before I go into the history, "bust" is simply the same word as "burst," when the "r" sound died out in some dialects in America during the mid 1700s (see the entry for Low German, below). In this case, this is NOT the same word as "bust," meaning, "the chest of a woman," or, "a sculpture of the upper body of a person." "Burst" goes back to Indo European "bhrest," which had the notion "to split, to break apart." This then gave its Old Germanic offspring "brestanan," which had the same general meaning. As the West Germanic offshoot developed from Old Germanic, the vowel and "r" sounds changed places (called "metathesis''). This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "berstan," meaning "to break apart suddenly," and this then became "bersten," before the modern version. The noun form was derived from the verb and also meant "damage, injury." The other Germanic languages have (verb forms): German "bersten," Low German "barsten" and "bassen" (the "r" sound has died out), Dutch "barsten," West Frisian "barste," Norwegian and Danish "briste," Swedish "brista." In Icelandic I found the noun "brestur," meaning "a crack, a break, a fracture."

"The Banker in the Monopoly Game"

Most Americans have undoubtedly heard of the game "Monopoly," * and most likely, a lot of those folks have even played the game. Usually one of the players acts as the banker. The bank initially holds the title to the various properties and the banker collects all fees and such, and pays out money according to the various rules of the game. The banker is supposed to keep his/her personal money and properties (as a player) separate from those of the bank. According to the rules, the bank can never go broke; sort of a forerunner of "too big to fail." The game began to grow in popularity back during the time of the Great Depression, when banks and big businesses were under scrutiny for regulation, following the financial and economic meltdown begun by the Great Crash of the stock market in October of 1929.

In order to bring the game up to date and to make it more realistic, the rules need to change so that the banker never has to go to jail, even if he/she mixes the banks funds and properties in with their own. Further, the banker should be able to pay themselves whatever bonuses they want. If the banker gets into financial difficulty, regardless of how irresponsibly he/she has acted, the other players have to contribute "bailout money" to keep the banker going. This "bailout money" is technically a loan, but it is given with no strings attached to the banker's management of his/her personal, I mean, bank funds ... well, it's difficult to tell exactly what this should mean. And remember, unlike the other players, the banker NEVER goes to jail. Have fun ......

* The game was owned and distributed for decades by Parker Brothers, which became a part of "Hasbro" in the early 1990s, along with "Monopoly."

WORD HISTORY:
Need-This word goes back to Indo European "nau/naw," which had the idea of "corpse," which then expanded to "brought to exhaustion" (as in, "dead tired"). This gave its Old Germanic offspring "nauthiz," which had the broad meaning "distress, difficulty, hardship, necessity, force." This then gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "nied/ned," with many of the same meanings. This then became "nede," before the modern version, although the meaning narrowed to "a necessity, a requirement, poverty (that is, 'lack of necessities').^ A verb form goes back to Old Germanic times, which carried into Old English and the other Germanic languages, as well, all from the same source. The other Germanic languages have: German "Not" (pronounced much like "note," but besides meaning "necessity," the German word also means "distress" and "emergency"), Low German "Noot" (poverty, distress), Dutch "noot" (need, distress), Danish "nød" (need, distress), Norwegian "nød," (need, emergency), Icelandic "nauð"and "neyð" (=nauth and neyth, meaning 'emergency, distress'), "Swedish "nöd" (need, distress). I could not find a modern form in Frisian, but it is a difficult language to research and there could well be a modern form, as it once had "ned."

^ English borrowed words for some of the other, previous meanings of "need": "distress," "requirement" and "poverty," all are Latin derived words that gradually left "need" with its more limited meaning in modern times.

Will The Game Have Rules

NOTE: I first posted this article on July 26, 2009, and then updated it July 18, 2013, but unfortunately it is still relevant. Just to give some perspective, when I initially wrote this, Barack Obama had just taken office in January of that year, and there was lots of talk about correcting the abuses of Wall Street banks and of the financial industry in general. Up until now only modest changes have been made, the country's largest banks are larger under Obama than they were under Bush, when they were deemed "too big to fail," and no banker (none, zero, zilch) went to jail, let alone to prison. In fact, some of the bankers seemed incensed that they were called before Congress to answer some questions and to defend their huge bonuses. Of course they felt entitled to the bonuses, even though they said they knew nothing of the multi-trillion dollar mortgage mess. No "accountability" (pun intended) with them. It became, "Just give us huge bonuses, but we're not responsible for anything that actually goes wrong." Income disparity continues to widen, as the top earners have sopped up most of the gains since the modest recovery from the "Great Recession." Unions and workers in general are under attack by some greedy and ruthless business people and their Republican political allies hoping to squelch the last organized opposition to their total domination of the country. Talk of doing away with minimum wage and child labor laws have surfaced, although they have not yet been pushed by the greediest of the greedy. When I first saw "Bang The Drum Slowly," corporate CEOs made 20 to 30 times what the average worker made. Now the CEOs make hundreds of times what the average worker makes. So let's see what I had to say in 2009.  
                                                          _________________________

One of my favorite movies is "Bang The Drum Slowly." When I was in college many years ago, one of the nearby movie theaters had matinee specials, I believe it was on Wednesdays. I had a long spell between classes then, and I'd frequently take in the matinee special. That's how I saw this movie. It wasn't really advertised, nor did it have any big names in starring roles (at that time), but it was about baseball, and I loved baseball; plus, if I remember right, the matinee special only cost fifty cents (remember, that was the early 1970s). One of the main actors in the movie went on to become fairly well known years later in the first several seasons of "Law and Order." This was Michael Moriarty, who played Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone. The other main actor became a Hollywood staple and is known to anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the past 35-40 years; Robert De Niro.

The movie was based on a novel written in the mid 1950s by Mark Harris,* and in both the book and the movie, the ballplayers use a card game called TEGWAR to help admiring fans in the hotel lobbies part with some of their money. TEGWAR stands for "The Exciting Game Without Any Rules." A couple of the players sit in the lobby playing cards. A fan or two recognizes them and asks if they can sit in on the game. They sit down, get out their wallets, toss in a few bucks, and they're promptly told things like, "Throw down a card in the middle of the table." When they do so, one of the players lays down a card and claims the pot, regardless of what cards have been displayed; even if, for instance, the fan had an ace, any card tossed in by the player beats it. Why? Because there are no rules; at least not for the fans, as the players make up the "rules," if you want to call them that, as they go along. The "duped" fans don't understand the game, but they seldom offer any major challenge, as they're getting to play with their baseball heroes and they don't want to sound dumb (ahhhh.....TOO LATE!!!).

This "game" may sound all too familiar, but in a different form. For decades, but especially in the past three decades, many wealthy Americans, and more recently the money managers of the greatly expanded financial services industry, have been obsessed with changing, repealing or just trampling on government regulation of business and investment. Some in government, even some supposedly from "The People's Party;" that is, Democrats, have been complicit in dismantling the safeguards to the American people and the American economy. Most of the support, however, has come from Republicans, as this has been one of their main philosophical components, but that's NOT to say that ALL Republicans have agreed with what has gone on, especially when they now see the results (remember, this was written in 2009), but so many people, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, just didn't understand the complexity of the changes that were taking place. When you add in Reagan slogans like, "Government is not the solution to the problem; government IS the problem," it isn't all that difficult to see how Americans were duped by the players of this TEGWAR game.

Just to make a point, oil and gasoline were successfully put into "futures markets" during the Reagan era. All went fairly well, but then the big boys figured it all out. Not only could they drive prices higher themselves, but they could pool money with other wealthy people into veritable pricing juggernauts.** They can move oil or gasoline prices instantaneously!!! Not only that, but I'm sure most of you remember when gasoline prices changed once or twice a week, and even then, by usually a few pennies at a time one way or the other. I'm also sure you know how in the last several years, prices can change on a daily basis, and by 20, 30, 40 cents at a time!!! But that's only when prices go higher! They come down far, far more slowly. These are supposed to be "future" prices that are set on "futures markets," but now, if oil goes up five bucks a barrel in one day for a contract that is two months off, the gas stations are out changing the price the SAME DAY!!! (My deuce beats your ace because I control the "rules!") I have to say that with so many oil company owned gas stations, that we have further manipulation of the system, but independents are guilty, too.

Try to stay informed. We're all in a hurry. We want sound bytes or short magazine or newspaper clips to tell us the basics to some very complex issues, or to issues that have been deliberately made so complex that most of the American public, including many wealthy folks, can't understand them. The current administration is trying to decide what rules need to be put in place for our TEGWAR game to make the game fairer for the other players. I certainly hope they decide to separate the "Wall Street investment casinos" from the banking business. (Ahh, and likewise with the insurance industry!) And no more of this, "Too big to fail," either! The big boys are going to scream bloody murder even if only very modest changes are proposed, but DON'T be fooled. Forget about all this "socialist" name calling crap. It is a ruse to divert attention from the real issues. Remember too, if you're a Republican, the "trust buster president" was Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican. Don't let these right wing fanatics drag you along with them in supporting such nonsense, including the repeal of estate taxes on large fortunes.*** By the same token, Democrats can't be shy about questioning proposed changes to make sure they will work, and that they don't overburden business. Don't let the left wing fanatics make you fearful that a business might make five cents on something. If regulations are put in place, but then need to be tweaked, so be it. Don't set your feet in concrete and refuse to act when the need to act is evident. (Actually, this applies to both parties.)

*There was also a television production of the book done in the 1950s, starring then little known actor Paul Newman, a Clevelander.

**It is NOT without reason that I call them, "The sit on their ass class."

***It was a Republican, Herbert Hoover, who felt that great fortunes should not be allowed to be passed on, as they only perpetuate the control of the wealthy. Folks, the wealthy have survived. Income figures for more than three decades show the upper income brackets registering major gains, while many middle class incomes have lost ground or stagnated. If the rich gain, it has to come from someone. Do you want to venture a guess from whom?

WORD HISTORY:
Sty-There are two such words in English, this one, "pen for pigs," comes from Old Germanic "stijan," which had the notion of some type of enclosure, but exactly where Germanic got the word is unknown. Old High German had "stiga," which meant "enclosure for cattle." In Old English is was "stig," which meant "hall, in the sense 'room,' or animal pen." German has "Steige" (also spelled "Stiege," which "might" be from Low German???), which means "crate, carton," with that notion of "enclosure" present in the meaning, and the word also once was used for "animal pen, coop," and "may" still be used that way in some dialects. Other Germanic languages have: Swedish "stia," meaning "pig pen, pig sty," Icelandic "svínastíu," meaning "pig pen" (there may be other forms in Icelandic, but I found this first, just for the sake of example), Danish "sti," meaning "animal pen." I did not find modern forms in Dutch, Frisian, or Norwegian, although it is "possible" there are forms in dialect usage. I also did not find a form in modern Low German, which has no standard language form, but rather a number of dialects, and as I noted above, "Stiege" is a possibility.

Sty #2:
This word for "an inflamed swelling on the eyelid," goes back to Indo European "steigh," which had the notion of "rise, arise and stride forth." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "stig," which meant "swelling." Old English had "stigan" which meant "to rise." Later in English came "styany" (supposedly pronounced like "sty on eye"), a compound word from "styan," meaning "swelling," and "eye." The word is related to modern German "steigen," meaning "to climb, rise," and the German noun "Steige/Stiege," which means, most often (see #1), "stairway, staircase." Other Germanic relatives of English have: Low German Saxon "stiegen" (climb, ascend), West Frisian "stige" (arise, rise), Dutch "stijgen" (rise, ascend, climb), Icelandic "stiga" (walk, step), Swedish "stiga" (climb, rise), Danish "stige" (climb), Norwegian "stige" (rise, ascend).

The Middle Class And The Poor Are Lousy At Class Warfare

This was first published in June 2013, but it is still relevant in too many ways, especially with Republicans now totally in charge. 

Back when George W. Bush was still president, renowned businessman Warren Buffett commented that there had been class warfare waged in America for a couple of decades, and that his class, the very rich, had been the class waging that war and that indeed his class was winning. Since Buffett's remarks, we've seen an economic meltdown largely triggered and made so horrendous by housing and mortgage manipulation by, ah well, Buffett's class, none of whom spent a day in jail, let alone in prison, as they claimed they hadn't known about all of the mortgages issued to people who hadn't yet been carted off to the coroner's office.* Even then, when forced to give up part of multimillion dollar bonuses, some of the perpetrators kicked, shouted and screamed how unfair all of this was, some seeming to show ingratitude to the taxpayers who helped bail out their banks as well as their own sorry asses. This opened a new front in class warfare, as the guilty were let off, but the poor were blamed for the plunging economy and skyrocketing unemployment, and since then the war on the poor has escalated. Since the economy hit bottom in 2009, it has made a slow, but fairly steady recovery, but with almost all income gains going to ah, Buffett's class. Meanwhile, cuts are being made, or proposed, to food programs in many states and have been proposed nationally. The Republicans, who have made no secret that they favor ah, Buffett's class, lost the presidential election in 2012, but such cuts may come under a Democratic president.**  

So let me set this out there for you: since Reagan and the conservative philosophy came to prevail, taxes were cut, especially for the rich (which we were told would not create budget deficits). Jobs were first sent to what were generally non union, generally lower wage states, putting pressure on wages for middle class people and the working poor. Then trade deals were promoted with countries where workers make a fraction of what American workers make, with whole plants eventually being transferred to some of these countries by those great patriots of ah, Buffett's class. With wages stagnant or falling for many Americans, conservatives appealed to those people's desire to maintain life style by offering tax cuts (to also help pay their growing credit bills often brought about by the attempt to bridge incomes with credit buying), which then brought serious budget deficits, which brought calls for cuts to programs for poor people to help balance the budget, the number of whom has been growing because of all of the above. The vicious cycle continues, although recently more revenues will be added from ah, Buffett's class. As Warren Buffett told politicians to "quit coddling the rich." You think maybe we should listen?   

* When defaults on mortgages grew, housing prices began to plummet, and the effects of job transfers overseas and the downward pressure on wages for the non wealthy had people who had paid their mortgages for years swept up in the resulting carnage.  

** All of this traces back to the 2010 election. For more on why, see: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-2010-was-such-important-election.html
  
WORD HISTORY:
Rare-This is the word meaning "uncommon, scare," as the word with the same spelling, but meaning, "not fully cooked," is a different word. "Rare" goes back to Indo European "re," which had the notion of "loose, divide;" thus, "solitary, thin, scarce." This gave its Latin offspring "rarus," with much the same "solitary, thin, scarce" meanings. Old French, a Latin based language, inherited the word as "rere," meaning "uncommon, sparse." English borrowed the word from French in the 1400s.

That Loud Squeal You Hear

I originally published this in January 2010 

 

That loud squeal you hear is from Wall Street bankers. We're about to find out if President Obama "gets it." We'll also find out how many Democrats AND Republicans "get it" in both houses of Congress. The President is supposed to announce new proposals to curb Wall Street and the "anything goes" philosophy turned loose on the American public by Republicans, but aided and abetted (even urged) by some Democrats over a decade ago. From what I understand, the proposals will move the country back toward the Glass-Steagall Act that separated traditional banks from investment banks; that is, banks that take lots of risk. Further, some "fees" will be imposed on the banks and possibly the bankers. Oh my...it's got to be tough contemplating how to get by on 40 million a year rather than 50 million, and boy would many of us like to find out how tough it is, for even less than that amount.

This President has shown that he can be pushed and shoved around, by both Democrats and Republicans, but let's see if he finally takes a stand on something and doesn't give away the store because of nasty rhetoric from some opponents. Proposals to curb the banks need to be supplemented by curbs on commodity speculation, especially in such essentials to the very survival of the nation as oil and gasoline. I'll throw in natural gas, too, for I see T. Boone Pickens is running new ads about switching many oil using items over to "plentiful" American natural gas. I've said here before that Pickens is using his own money to promote turning us away from oil (much of it imported from countries that don't exactly invite us to birthday parties), and I have to give him a big hand for that, but I just don't trust the "inve$tment cla$$," better known to me as the "sit on their ass class." Once we switch, or probably once we commit to switching many things to natural gas, the "plentiful" part will disappear, and we'll be told, "There's a serious shortage of natural gas and you'll be paying double...no... triple (do I hear quadruple?) what it costs now."

All of this will test many Republicans, too. Will those bulwarks of "free markets" turn against their philosophy? Will the threat of regulation of the financial system bring cries of how the Republic is about to end? This could get interesting.

Obama & The Bankers

Well, the President recently met with the executives of the "too big to fail" banks, and then he met with the executives of the "if you can't swim, the hell with you" modest to small banks. Of the latter, within the past year, a good many have not been able to swim, and they have indeed been let to "go to hell," and have failed, including one recent failure here in Cleveland, where the bank traces its history well back into the 1800s. In fairness, the Obama Administration took over the policies towards the banks, both large and small, of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson of the Bush Administration. Now, in more fairness, the Obama Administration can't claim they inherited all of these policies. Yes, they inherited an economy on the very brink of another Great Depression, but they didn't have to go along lockstep with the Bush Administration on banking policies. That is something they chose to do on their own. If we see "real" banking reform, with the "too big to fail" entities brought down to size, I will gladly give credit to the President and all those associated with it.

As the President noted in some televised remarks a few days prior to his meeting with the "big" bankers, whose salaries and bonuses are indeed "too big," Americans are angry at the bankers. These folks are now trying to pay themselves even more, when they should be thankful that the public didn't come, drag them outside, and string them up, like the criminals they are! Yes, I said "criminals," for what they did to this country and millions of Americans was out-and-out CRIMINAL! They brought the country to its very knees, and it will be quite some time for the ship to be righted again, if ever, and the lives of many Americans will NEVER be the same.

Lest we forget what they did to us! Don't let that happen!

WORD HISTORY:
Gall-There are two, possibly distinct, words here. I say "possibly," because they may actually be related, but that is uncertain. First, "gall," as in "gall bladder," meant "bile," or "yellow substance." It traces back to Indo European "ghol/ghel," which meant "yellow, gold," and also continued in Greek "khole," and Latin "fel."* Old Germanic continued with "gallon/gallam, and this developed as "galla/gealla" in Old English, the form being dependent upon the regional dialect. Close English relative, German, has "Galle," and another close relative, Dutch, has "gal." The use of this word to mean "boldness," in the sense "impudence," (as in "He had the gall to say such a thing") supposedly developed in the 1880s in America, but it also meant "effrontery/bitterness" (as with a verb form in "I was galled by the events," as bile is bitter) going back to the 1200s. Now secondly, "gall= a sore spot," or the verb, "to make sore by chafing," could well be the same word, as often times sores have a "yellowish" color, and they certainly can make you "bitter." Some linguists believe this meaning goes back to Latin "galla," which meant "a swelling on a plant," (one source also says Latin used this for "a sore spot on a horse") but others point to Low German "galle," which meant "sore/sore spot." Still others feel that the Latin and Low German forms come from are two separate words/meanings. It is more than a little confusing. What gall!

* Greek and Latin are both Indo European languages related to English, but further down the family tree, although English and the other Germanic languages picked up (usually referred to as "borrowed," by linguists) a number of words from both, and more so in the case of Latin, gave (usually referred to as "loaned," by linguists) some words to those languages' vocabularies.

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."

Bank Execs Get Bailout Money

Nice to know where our money went, right? Well the link below is to an article about how numerous bank execs got over 1.6 billion $$$$ of that money! Are you mad? I sure as hell hope you are!!! See... unregulated capitalism doesn't work, unless your rich! Of course, this ISN'T capitalism, it is socialism, that delightful word so scorned by the monied class, and especially the sit on their ass class. It didn't stop them from putting their hands out and and filling up on taxpayer dough.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28337800/