[PAA-Discuss] FW: Garrison Keillor on the bail-out...

[Melinda Iley-Dohn]

This is GREAT. I am sharing this.

Lee Loe <leeloe at igc.org> wrote:       Wish I could write like Garrison! Sigh!!  Lee/Mom

  
---------------------------------
 From: June Zaner [mailto:velmaj at comcast.net]  
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2008 9:03 AM
To: Michael Godsey;  Melora Zaner-Godsey; Kathy Guest; Janet Caldwell; Caldwell,  Richard
Cc: Lee Loe
Subject: Garrison Keillor on the  bail-out...


 
  
 This piece, by Garrison Keillor, is so good it  makes my eyes water!  Hurray for the Old Scout!
 June/mom
  The Old  Scout
When Gimlet Eyes Look the Other Way
September 23, 2008  

It's just human nature that some calamities register in the brain and  others don't. The train engineer texting at the throttle ("HOW R U? C U L8R")  and missing the red light and twenty-five people die in the crash — oh God, that  is way too real — everyone has had a moment of supreme stupidity that came close  to killing somebody. Even atheists say a little prayer now and then: Dear God, I  am an idiot, thank you for protecting my children. 

On the other hand,  the federal bailout of the financial market (YAWN) is a calamity that people  accept as if it were just one more hurricane. An air of crisis, the Secretary of  the Treasury striding down a hall at the Capitol with minions in his wake,  solemn-faced congressmen at the microphones. Something must be done, harrumph  harrumph. The Current Occupant pops out of the cuckoo clock and reads a few  lines off a piece of paper, pronouncing all the words correctly. And the  newscaster looks into the camera and says, "Etaoin shrdlu qwertyuiop." Where is  the outrage? 

Poor Larry Craig got a truckload of moral condemnation for  tapping his wingtips in the men's john, but his party proposes to spend 5  percent of the GDP to buy up bad loans made by men who walk away with their  fortunes intact while retirees see their 401(k) go pffffffff like a defunct air  mattress, and it's business as usual. Mr. McCain is a  lifelong deregulator and believer in letting brokers and bankers do as they  please — remember Lincoln Savings and Loan and his intervention with federal  regulators in behalf of his friend Charles Keating, who then went to prison?  Remember Neil Bush, the brother of the C.O., who, as a director of Silverado  S&L, bestowed enormous loans on his friends without telling fellow directors  that the friends were friends and who, when the loans failed, paid a small fine  and went skipping off to other things? Mr. McCain now decries greed on Wall  Street and suggests a commission be formed to look into the problem. This is  like Casanova
 coming out for chastity. 

Confident men took leave  of common sense and bet on the idea of perpetual profit in the real estate  market and crashed. But it wasn't their money. It was your money they were  messing with. And that's why you need government regulators. Gimlet-eyed men  with steel-rim glasses and crepe-soled shoes who check the numbers and have the  power to say, "This is a scam and a hustle and either you cease and desist or  you spend a few years in a minimum-security federal facility playing  backgammon." 

The Republican party used to specialize in gimlet-eyed,  steel-rim, crepe-soled common sense and then it was taken over by crooked  preachers who demand we trust them because they're packing a Bible and God sent  them on a mission to enact lower taxes, less government. Except when things  crash, and then government has to pick up the pieces. 

Some say the tab  might come to a trillion dollars. Nobody knows. And Mr. McCain has not one  moment of doubt or regret. He switches from First Deregulation Church to Our  Lady of Strict Vigilance like you might go from decaf to latte. Where is the  straight talk? Does the man have no conscience? 

It wasn't their money  they were playing with. It was yours. Where were the cops? 

What we are seeing is the stuff of a novel, the public corruption  of an American war hero. It is painful. First, there was his exploitation of a  symbolic woman, an eager zealot who is so far out of her depth that it isn't  funny anymore. Anyone with a heart has to hurt for how Mr. McCain has made a  fool of her. Never mind the persistent cheesiness of his attack ads. And now  this chasm of debt and loss and the gentleman pretends to be shocked. He was  there. He turned out the lights. He sent the regulators home. 

Mr.  McCain seems willing to say anything, do anything, to get to the White House so  he can go to war with Iran. If he needs to recline naked in Macy's window, he  would do that, or eat live chickens, or claim to be a reformer. Obviously you  can fool a lot of people for awhile and maybe he can stretch it out until  mid-November. But the truth is marching on. A few true conservatives are leading  a charge against the bailout. Good for them. But how about admitting that their  cowboy economic philosophy was at fault here? 

© 2008 by Garrison  Keillor. All rights reserved. Distributed by Tribune Media Services, INC.  

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 Melinda Iley-Dohn
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a  little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin Historical Review of Pennsylvania 1759
 
 

    


      



       
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