In 65 years of newspaper reporting and editorial writing, I have never heard so much negative, disgusting big lies as we have seen in the past six months of our lives, and are still seeing.
It all began with the discovery that our nation’s largest and most wealthy Wall Street, New York bankers and banking houses were coming undone, sending Henry Paulson — a former Wall Street hot shot turned U.S. Treasurer — to Congress screaming (in effect) “The sky is falling, the sky is falling. My former buddies on Wall Street are bankrupt and must have billions of dollars of the public money, or they will go bust.”
Sounded fishy to me.
A shocked Congress reacted accordingly. It has no money as such, of course. But because of the weakness and idiocy of Congress several weeks ago, it gave untold billions of money — which they had to borrow from the Federal Reserve — not a part of the government, but a private banking house — to keep his former buddies from going bust, or so he claimed.
It was the neatest con-job in history. The outstretched hands of some of the highest paid people in the history of the nation loaded their pockets — and kept right on doing what they have been doing all the time — raking off untold riches while whining money from working Americans.
But that was not all. Other big business chief executive officers flew their corporate jets to DC and begged more billions from the public treasury — oops — I mean, they went back to the gift house, hands outstretched, and heck, why not give them some more borrowed money, too?
And so you and I know the rest… the U.S. economy went into the tank. Billions of dollars have been added to the nation’s debt.
So where do we go from here?
Thank God for farmers and farm families. Not that they — we — have been immune to the worst and fastest moving recession in the nation’s history, but it is already an established fact that millions of people are suffering from lack of the basics of life — food, shelter and clothing. And if it is not tended to with the speed of light, the damage will not take years but decades to go away, just as the recession of 1928 began, spilled over into 1930 and 1940 and did not end until World War II began to take it from there.
It took General Dwight Eisenhower and his army, and later his esteemed country, honestly, to bring the U.S. back from its many pieces and get the country rolling again.
I was lucky enough to be assigned by my newspaper to cover Eisenhower’s funeral that tended to bring a grateful America back to its senses.
It is too bad that all Americans born and living since then could not have lived in those days, if our people or those who serve in the U.S. Congress would have to take a lesson in history of the U.S. before and after World War II. They would have been, or they would be, more sensitive to the dangers that can befall a great nation and bring it to its knees.
One of Eisenhower’s most memorable speeches warned Americans to beware the dangers of the military-industrial complex that could be in the future of the United States, and shatter our success.
And so, today, we are suffering the danger of not watching for, and stopping, the trends of rot in our free society and those who are responsible for our present sorry condition.
This national curse will have to run its course before the worst is over — and do not think the worst has yet come. The curse of greed, a society that would become a minority of super rich and a hoard of lower working class will not succeed.
Or, as Abraham Lincoln warned, a nation divided of itself cannot stand.
I detest what I am seeing. I detest the action of the Congress, rushing to judgment and adding billions of borrowed dollars worth of debt to an already stupidifying debt for our children’s future to suffer.
We must have a new revolution to cleanse what has become a nation of the rich and the powerful who want more than anything else to become a nation of a handful of very rich and a mass of middle and lower class workers of virtual poverty.
“America, America, God shed his grace on thee, and crowned thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea…”
All is not lost. But there is no longer any time to waste, to clean out the scoundrels, such as Bernard Madoff — and get our floundering engine back on track.
After marching in lockstep at the first signs of massive trouble, our Congress has come alive. Members of Congress who were so stunned when the economic crisis first appeared, have begun to come back to their senses. Finally they are asking tough questions, refusing to accept weak excuses and explanations from the new president's appointment, some of who are openly incapable of the massive trouble the nation is suffering.
And is it too late to recall the flood of money Congress gave the bankrupt bankers who lost billions of dollars in bad loans? I think not. Before it is over, I suspect any number of Bernard "Madoofs” may be discovered.
Now is the time for all good members of Congress and the Senate to come to the aid of their — our — country. The time of party politics must be gone. A new slogan should come out of the Congress and Senate: “Get tough, America. Only our freedom and our lives are at stake.”
