Unsoliscited Punditry #1

Hard Choices, Blame and the Price of Liberty

What is the sound of freedom dying?
Is there a color to tyranny rising?
Can you smell the death of your rights?
Do you feel the Constitution shredding?

The instant that Congress moved to enact a tax of 90% against AIG and other corporate bonus recipients, we became a dictatorial state with the trappings of a democracy just like any other banana republic like Venezuela and Cuba. It is only a matter of time before we become the targets of such avarice and greed by the political class. The war against the common citizenry of America has begun, and this was our 'Boston Massacre'.

The Congress of the United States, or at least select members of it in charge of running the system. Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi seem to be prime movers in this economic debacle, but many more are stretching from it's epicenter and roots are complicit as well. The new administration is far from innocent with P-BO and Hillary also being tied to strings of corruption and payola to the source of the economic collapse. Whatever could I mean? Just this:

AIG, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae all were massive donors to each one of these people's campaigns. Chris Dodd recieved sweetheart loan deals from Countrywide due to his collusion and illicit protection of corruption and probably illegal activities in Freddie and Fannie. Combine this with Dodd being the largest recipiant of AIG "contributions" to his campaign. Next in line behind Dodd for buy off "contributions" would be Clinton, Obama and Frank. If their actions following this monetary assistance to their campaigns present past and future is not conspiracy to defraud as well, it is at least a conflict of interest and bordering on bribery. There needs to be ethics and potentially criminal investigations going on right now into the involvement with these people. If they are willing to tie AIG to the stake and burn it, they need to be considered as well.

Now these are people currently in power to blame for this mess. Some, are continuing to make it worse to protect their own personal agendas and power. Unfortunately this collapse was long in the making, with origins stretching back to the Carter administration and "Community Reinvestment Act" and the creation of sub-prime loans. The administrations and congresses since then are not out of the woods either, for many of them expanded and or protected the continuing problem as the fundamental flaws of this crisis grew, fertilized by greed and personal ambition. Heads of Freddie and Fannie mistating earings so they could gain big bonuses like Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick are to blame as well for covering up the eventual collapse with fancy accounting and outright lies on the real situation.

At least the W Administration tried to rein in Freddy and Fannie... but too late. The question was only of when it would collapse by then. It would have collapsed at a particularly inopportune time for all involved, and the protectors of Freddie and Fannie by those Congressmen and Senators currently in charge of this disaster were never going to do anything to threaten this power structure for their own re-election.

So now, we the people, look at the smoking financial ruin of our nation, in a strange form of freefall. As if somehow it had a velocity of it's own and is still being kept aloft in a floating miasm of it's own disintegrating wreck, beginning to fall to earth. We have to figure a way to make this a controlled crash or impact. Something to walk away from. The issue is one of who should be at the controls. Those currently there are either at fault for this and are fighting for their phoney baloney jobs, or incompetant, or attempting to use policies created 80 years before that failed. FDR was a cataclysmic failure, and the current admin wishes to return to these??

No, we need to stop this. We, as a people... as a NATION... need to stand up together and demand accountability for mismanagement. For corruption. For greed. For personal power grabs of the most heinous sort... from our representatives in government. We need to shake ourselves from shock and deal with this crisis, shoving those who are trying to protect themselves and their friends from righteous blame and anger, out of the way.

This is no longer a time for children to play, but a matter for men and women to deal with the horrible realities we now face, as a way to save ourselves and those we love from true hardship not seen since the 1930s.

This means assessing problems and fixing them post haste. Credit and blame can be assigned after we are safe again. Those that hamper real solutions by offering convoluted fixes to cover their own agendas and illicit gains need to be bulldozed to the side and dealt with appropriately after this is over.

The ultimate question is: Are we a people capable of doing such hard choices and tasks on our own, or have we softened to the point of permanent victim status till someone else takes us over?

Time will tell.