• Who cares? • If memory serves me right • Turn off the lights Who cares? I woke up Saturday morning to the news that 31 U.S. soldiers died in Afghanistan and moved on to other headlines. Why don’t we
• Who cares? • If memory serves me right • Turn off the
lights
Who cares?
I woke up Saturday morning to the news that 31 U.S. soldiers died in Afghanistan and moved on to other headlines. Why don’t we care?
We are spending far beyond our means. Why don’t we care? We allow the wealthy and their corporations to thrive while the rest of us suffer. Why don’t we care?
What we seem to care about are our religious, moral and ethnic differences. Our public dialogue is manipulated by a national plutocracy that controls our policy and media that distorts the truth rather than seeking it.
Violence in thought and deed is a credo blindly embraced by far too many of us. The American Dream is based on the faulty logic of a world without limits and one that is here to serve our every whim. The idea of being even slightly inconvenienced in our march toward satiation is unthinkable.
We are distracted by the Kardashians and the rest of their well meaning and talentless tribe because we have been led to believe our own daily lives are less consequential, a reflection of the profound feeling of impotence we all share.
We no longer talk to each other, we talk at each other. We are so focused on the left and the right, we are blind to the middle where the heart resides.
This country and this world belongs to all of us and we need to honor it and not abuse it.
Thirty-one young Americans died today and beyond their loved ones, no one cares.
Larry Feinstein, Koloa
If memory serves me right
While entertaining and thought provoking the convenient memory of Ms. Lee with regards to history is right out of the Moveon.org playbook (“What stuff do you need?” Letters, July 31).
All points made are found verbatim in the Moveon.org literature.
What Moveon.org attempted to do was take the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which was signed into law by Bill Clinton, and Phil Gramm’s participation, to point to the fact that this loosening of credit was the Republican’s fault. Moveon also blamed Alan Greenspan and George Bush for causing the mortgage crisis, as Ms. Lee parodies.
The crux of the author’s argument is that in 2002 George Bush made a speech in which he proposed making it easier for minorities to enjoy home ownership through various programs that would help them understand the massive amounts of paper work involved, provide money for Section 8 participants in the form of down payments, and encourage lenders to help in other ways for minorities to achieve the American dream. Of course, at no time did Bush say those minorities did not have to make their monthly payments on time, or not pass stringent qualifying requirements for their loans. Moveon.org fails to ever mention that, or that it was the two bills signed into law by Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter that led to the creative financing fiasco.
What Ms. Lee also fails to point out is that George Bush in 2001 cautioned the nation that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were out of control. He correctly warned of a possible financial crisis if they were not reigned in.
President Bush again in 2003 warned all of us about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s lack of oversight. Out of character for the Republicans, Bush proposed a new Government Regulatory Agency to oversee Fannie and Freddie to make sure all the loans they were buying were safe. Of course Barney Frank made his famous rebuttal speech on the floor of the Senate claiming Fannie and Freddie were sound and no crisis would affect them so no regulation was needed. He and Charles Shummer were victorious in having Bush and the Republican’s proposals to reign in mortgages and help prevent a mortgage crisis shelved. Remember that Ms. Lee? I do.
Alan Greenspan himself finally went before Congress in 2005 and warned that unless Fannie and Freddie were reigned in, and further regulations placed on them, we would face a major economic crisis. Democrats continued to block any regulation of these two controlling mortgage giants.
Is it any wonder that during the 15 years before the mortgage crisis the overwhelming majority of campaign contributions by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae went to Democrats? Out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s 10 biggest campaign contributions between 1989 and 2008, 8 went to Democrats!
Of course, Ms. Lee and Moveon.org conveniently forgot all about this.
Gordon Oswald, Kapa‘a
Turn off the lights
In case you folks watching American Idol and fiddling while Rome burns haven’t noticed, the entire American economy is a giant Ponzi scheme.
Get investors money (treasury bills and bonds), spend it, then borrow more from other fools to pay off the first bunch. We have been doing this for at least 60 years if not more.
With 70 percent of our economy being consumer spending (mostly on stuff we don’t really need) and with the only real job growth being government, an entity that produces nothing and services nothing very efficiently, it would seem it’s only a matter of time before our lifestyle will be a thing of the past.
So, fiddle on folks and continue to elect the same “group think” morons you have to date. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is one form of insanity.
In D.C. it appears the inmates have taken over the asylum. We have met the enemy and it is us. We would be better off if government at all levels just closed its doors and turned off the lights. Let’s try Mondays and Fridays for starters and save 40 percent right off the top.
Michael Wells, Anahola
