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Spin Preparedness

By karlsie Sep 30, 2008

The American tax payers have been exonerated; at least for a short while; from carrying the burden imposed by poor financial management. It has taken an act of Congress to grant us this brief reprieve. It’s somewhat disturbing that both Presidential hopefuls endorsed a bail-out for the tottering financial institutions. It appears the dictionary for administrative offices no longer contain the term, “fiscal responsibility”.

Said R. Bruce Josten, the top lobbyist for the Chamber of Commerce in a letter to members. “Make no mistake: When the aftermath of congressional inaction becomes clear, Americans will not tolerate those who stood by and let the calamity happen.”

The lobbying market is casting about for a spin to make the American people feel guilty and a way to shift the blame. It is making threats, unsubstantiated by facts. The American people didn’t visit this calamity on themselves. It was elicited by the very institutions that, having wiped out the afford ability of the middle class, now wish to continue their poor policies of granting extended credit and loans to entities that have ceased to produce a substantial return for the investment. These entities have become liabilities. They can’t be rescued any more than you can risk giving a gambler more money to recuperate from his losses.

As a society, we understand to some extent how these banking institutions have failed. They over-calculated the demand within the real estate market. Major industries transferred their production to foreign countries with cheaper labor laws, leaving scores of blue and white collar workers without jobs. Commercial enterprises have forced small businesses into bare survival. We are left only with our energy resources and computer technology. This is not enough to rebuild the infrastructure for a healthy, prosperous population.

The rebuilding needs to take place in the ability of the people to maintain once again, a self-sustaining economy. This could mean radical changes in lending policies and in the direction of the funds. The investments should be made in alternative energy, clean water facilities and bio-agricultural developments. Easier loans should be made available for small farming operations, energy efficient businesses, and low cost housing. States that are able to support and develop their natural resources; i.e., energy, timber, mining, fishing, etc., through loan sharing should do so by placing equal shares into stock that generate funds back into the state’s economy. This way, not only what has been borrowed has been paid back, but the revenues of the state resources are going back to the state’s general fund. This was the basic foundation for the Alaskan permanent fund. The funds generated through lease sales of oil properties were placed into a general fund that instead of sitting idle, or dispersed until it was gone, was placed into stocks that produced enough profit to give the citizens of the state a yearly dividend. If we, the tax paying people of the United States must shoulder the burden of financial irresponsibility, then we people, rightfully own the fallen institutions and should be allowed to choose the directions of its investments.

“What happened today was not a failure of a bill, it was a failure of will,” said Dodd, the Banking Committee chairman. “Our hope is that cooler heads will prevail, people will think about what they did today and recognize that this is not just scare tactics — it’s reality.”

The truth is, the banking institution has failed to protect the assets of its investors. It has failed through short sighted get rich quick schemes, through reckless credit lending. We can not enable them with our tax payer’s dollars to continue these same policies designed to postpone the inevitable. We must build our own direction and the direction must be one that carries us into a progressive future, not one that will have crippling repercussions on our ability to thrive and give stability to our future generations.

By karlsie

Some great perversity of nature decided to give me a tune completely out of keeping with the general symphony; possibly from the moment of conception. I learned to read and speak almost simultaneously. The blurred and muffled world I heard through my first five years of random nerve loss deafness suddenly came alive with the clarity of how those words sounded on paper. I had been liberated for communications. I decided there was nothing more wonderful than writing. It was easier to write than carefully modulate my speech for correct pronunciation, and it was easier to read than patiently follow the movements of people’s lips to learn what they were saying. It was during that dawning time period, while I slowly made the connection that there weren’t that many other people who heard the way I did, halfway between sound and music, half in deafness, that I began to understand that the tune I was following wasn’t quite the same as that of my classmates. I was just a little different. General education taught me not only was I just a little isolated from my classmates, my home was just a little isolated from the outside world. I was born in Alaska, making me part of one of the smallest, quietest minorities on earth. I decided I could live with this. What I couldn’t live with was discovering a few years later, in the opening up of the pipeline, which coincided with my first year of junior college, that there were entire communities of people; more than I could possibly imagine; living impossibly one on top of another in vast cities. It wasn’t even the magnitude of this vision that inspired me so much as the visitors who came from these populous regions and seemed to possess a knowledge so great and secretive I could never learn it in any book. I became at once, very conscious of how rural I was and how little I knew beyond the scope of my environment. I decided it was time to travel. The rest is history; or at least, the content of my stories. I traveled... often to college campuses, dropping in and out of school until one fine day by chance I’d fashioned a bachelor of arts degree in psychology. I’ve worked a couple of newspapers, had a few poems and stories tossed around in various small presses, never receiving a great deal of money, which I’m assured is the norm for a writer. I spent ten years in Mexico, watching the peso crash. There is some obscure reason why I did this, tightening up my belt and facing hunger, but I believe at the time I said it was for love. Here I am, back home, in my beloved Alaska. I’ve learned somewhat of a worldly viewpoint; at least I like to flatter myself that way. I’ve also learned my rural roots aren’t so bad after all. I work in a small, country store. Every day I greet the same group of local customers, but make no mistake. My store isn’t a scene out of Andy Griffith. The people who enter the establishment, which also includes showers, laundry and movie rentals, are miners, oil workers, truck drivers, construction engineers, dog sled racers and carpenters. Sometimes, on the liquor side, the conversations became adult only in vocabulary. It’s a good thing, on the opposite side of the store is a candy aisle filled with the most astonishing collection, it will keep a kid occupied with just wishing for hours. If you tell your kids they can have just one, you have an instant baby sitter; better than television; as they agonize over their choice while you catch up on the gossip with your neighbor. We also receive a lot of tourists, a lot of foreign visitors. They are usually amazed at this first sign of Alaskan rural life style beyond the insulating hub of the Anchorage bowl. Many of them like to hang around and chat. They gawk at our thieves wanted posters. They laugh at our jokes and camaraderie with our customers. I’ve learned another lesson while working there. You don’t have to go out and find the world. If you wait long enough, it comes to you.

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