U.S. politics

It’s Good to be the Prodigal Son


Not so good to be the responsible older brother though. Figuratively or literally.

Although it’s long past time to tackle this particularly big root of the current financial implosion which threatens us all, it still leaves me shaking my head and not just a little bit annoyed.

Team Obama announced yet another bailout, this to the tune of $75 billion for homeowners. Considering that this is where the problem started – a long time ago – it seems a bit like trying to stuff horses back through the keyhole of the lock on the barn door but better late than never, right?

According to Sheila Bair, who is chairman of the FDIC, it’s about time. Previous bailouts, I assume she means the ones to banks and investment houses, have failed because “We’ve not attacked the problem at the core.”

The core, of course, are all the Joe Six-Packs/or Prodigal sons who caused this mess by not being able to pay on mortgages and other lines of credit. Money is debt after all. Banks essentially lend money based more on what is owed them than the stuff that is actually on deposit with them. It’s an elaborate scam that goes unnoticed because it sits out in plain sight, pretending to be a sane idea.

Team Obama was quick to utter the right reassurances. No one will get bail out money for their mortgage if they were house flipping or bought more house than they could afford or are one of those horrid dishonest lenders who tricked people into buying more house than they could afford. 

Money will go to families who played by the rules. Oh! So the older brothers will get their reward then? Not so fast .

Thing is the “rules” during the great American housing dream of the early part of this decade clearly stated that one could buy more house than one could normally afford because houses where going to do nothing but appreciate in value. And with things like ARM’s or interest only loans – and a good job whose salary will only go up year after year -a play-by-the-rules family could buy more than they could really afford and refinance before the ARM came due using the appreciation of their home to finance it. 

Older brothers didn’t fall for that, so Prodigal sons win again. Because if you scrimped and did without – lived within your means in other words – then you are not one of those who are losing their houses right now. (Although you might be soon if you are among those downsized as a result of the reckless grasshopper like behavior of your credit-is-just-like-money thinking neighbor. Where you stand in the great Main Street giveaway is like the player yet to be named.)

I got the spiel on ARM’s when I bought my last house. I turned it down flat and still almost lost my house anyway when my late husband was fired from his job because of his illness and our income was nearly halved.

Which is my point. What about people like me? Who lost their homes through circumstances they really couldn’t control. People who really played by the rules as opposed to crying foul later when their gambles didn’t pay off as they hoped. Or the people who didn’t raid their equity piggybanks to pay off the credit cards they would just run up again or to take the family on a Disney Cruise.

What about us?

The Prodigal son’s older brother complained to their father that, essentially, being good didn’t pay off like being a screw-up who is sorry after the fact. He was sent off to a corner to contemplate his inability to be charitable.

Should people who over-extended themselves, much like the Wall Streeters and the banks, be bailed out?  Are we, the responsible taxpayers, mortgage payers and just bill paying in general half of the population just supposed to be glad the spendthrifts have seen the errors of their ways. They are victims only of their greed. They gambled on home prices rising forever and borrowed against equity that doesn’t really exist until a home is sold. They used credit cards to buy things now instead of saving up for the vacations and toys and treats. They might have been playing by the “rules” but the rules were fucked up. And deep down, didn’t we all know that?

No one teaches us in school about using credit cards, financing cars or homes. Heck, they don’t even teach us about paying taxes which is very odd for an education system that leaves little to chance by way of indoctrination into the American Way.

I know what you are thinking. The rich have been bailed out, and they knew what they were doing was wrong, so why not help out the little guy? And you are right. Why not?

Why not continue down the path of no accountability?

It’s clear that we are not worthy of our immigrant ancestors anyway. People who scrimped and saved and worked hard to get ahead. People who rode out the bad time and down turns without expecting someone to save them for themselves.

There are precious few innocent victims in the housing mess, but I will agree that there are a lot of stupid ones. People who didn’t quite understand the ramifications of the fancy financial terms, but simply trusted the realtors and the lenders when they were told,

“You can always refinance.” and that “Home prices will just keep going up.” or that “It’s never been easier to buy into that better neighborhood than now.”

Because believing that let them “get ahead” and live in that fancier suburb or take that vacation now instead of saving for it and buying it with real money and having it mean something more when they were finally able to do it without fudging around the edges.

Nothing will really be fixed by all this money that the government is tripping over itself to throw at consumers and lenders alike. The root of our problems lies within our twisted value systems and our inability to endure hard times because they are “too” hard and we are too soft.

It’s (semi)Official: Only the Middle Class Pays Their Taxes


Because poor people get most of their tax dollars back (and some even get more thanks to the magic that is the earned income credit*), I have come to the conclusion as yet another Obama nominee goes down in IRS flames that only we schmucks in the middle remember to file with Uncle Sam in the spring, declaring all to the best of our mathematical ability**.

I so want to be able to find some shocked bone in my body about the trouble our new POTUS is having finding qualified help that understands the finer nuances of paying taxes like hired help isn’t exempt from withholdings even if they are illegals and/or just the babysitter you sometimes ask to spray tan your naked body. Or, my favorite, living outside the U.S. is not a tax holiday for its citizens***.

And what really puzzles me is how all this dodging goes unnoticed by the IRS. Since my first husband died (sorry to go all dead husband, you-need-therapy on you but it’s my frame of reference so bear with me), I receive yearly missives from the government where I am asked to account for the survivor’s insurance my daughter receives or verify my marital status and sometimes they just want to remind me that I personally still don’t qualify for widow’s benefits****.

Yesterday, as a matter of fact, the IRS sent me a letter informing me that at some point I received $26.74 more in refunds over the past couple of years than I was entitled to and that I should remember to declare this as income when I file this year. So while the IRS apparently notices peanuts and the peasants, it fails to notice when people like Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner have a two year gap in their returns. Does that seem credible to you?

Me neither.

And what’s worse is there is no backlash outside a few weeks worth of right-wing pundits (who probably have a Mexican nannygate like scandal of their own in the closet) gnashing their teeth and screaming like hypocrites about injustice. Oh the humanity.

It’s a rigged world, people. Rigged.

 

*BabySis used to get refunds  to the tune of thousands every year despite the fact that she made almost nothing in terms of income. The EIC is voodoo economics at its finest.

**My math gene sent me running to H&R Block once I graduated from the 1040EZ form.

***It can be for Canadians though. They can have themselves declared non-resident for tax purposes while living/working outside the country. The U.S. won’t allow that. In fact, if you were to become a citizen of another country and renounce your citizenship, you would still be obligated to pay U.S. taxes for up to a decade afterwards. Resistance is futile.

****In the U.S. you basically can’t be employed and receive your late spouse’s SS and if you remarry, bye-bye benefits. Not so in Canada where Rob receives Shelley’s benefits regardless of income, age or marital status. She paid and he is entitled to receive. But their social insurance program is not quite the ponzi scheme that ours is.

Why Do I Care?


The Bush administration’s new rule to protect the tender consciences of health care workers at the expense of patient care is set to slide under the Obama wire at any moment. In a nutshell, any health care provider will enjoy the right to deny care, information or referrals to any patient under any circumstances they feel violates their religious beliefs or personal sense of morality.

For the most part this is aimed at women, infertile couples, gays and lesbians and the poor who are forced to rely on subsidized health care of some sort. This is not a surprise as the Bush regime doesn’t care much for any of those groups and has done its utmost to reverse women’s gains of the latter half of the last century and to deny rights to homosexuals this century. The almost former president and his compadres are no great friends of the poor either and have done little for them but increase their ranks.

And I ask myself, why do I care? I don’t need birth control. I am not hankering to do an end run around my ever diminishing procreative functions. I am not gay. And, knock wood, I am not poor. So why do I care?

There is that fable about the man who watched “them” come for his neighbors one by one but since he wasn’t being taken away, he saw no need to speak out. Of course, as it always happens, eventually “they” got around to him but by then their was no one left to speak out on his behalf.

Just because I don’t need many of the health care services this ruling will allow some zealous health care workers towithhold from some patients, doesn’t mean that at some point I won’t be a victim of this same ruling. What if I were in an accident and needed blood but the doctor on call in the ER didn’t believe in transfusions? Or the ICU nurse didn’t believe in turning off the respirator after I was vegetative even though I have a living will?

We smugly sit back and think this ruling is about abortion mostly, but it is so broadly written that it can easily be interpreted to cover a great many medical instances – minor as well as major – and it could catch anyone of us.

Well, any one of us who lives in the United States. Which brings me back to my original question, why should I care? I live in Canada. When I am lucky enough to see a doctor (we have our own issues after all) or visit the pharmacy, I will be served. No one can foist their morality or religion on me under the guise of freedom.

When I was  actively teaching I taught students whose parents never bothered to marry and who swapped live in partners as often as they changed addresses. My students were white supremacists, illegal aliens, members of religious sects that believed in the inferiority of women in practice as well as theory. Some were criminals. Some were casual drug users who acquired their attitudes from their parents. Some were parents themselves.

They were Christian, Muslim and Jew. They were black, Hispanic, Asian, African, Middle Eastern and East European.

I wasn’t able to just teach those whose lifestyles, values or religious beliefs lined up with my own. If I had problems with the differences I encountered I was welcome to find a new occupation. It was that simple.

Should health care workers be afforded freedom at the expense of the rights of other citizens?

Why should I care? Why should you?

We should care. Deeply. Every right that is denied our fellow citizens or right that is taken away puts us one step closer to the day when we will be denied ourselves. The slippery slope is not about other people because we are “other people” where someone else is concerned.

I admire people with deeply held beliefs or convictions, truly I do, but I admire them more when they suck it up and own these beliefs. If your conscience does not permit you to dispense birth control, find work outside of a pharmacy. If you cannot tell a rape victim that the morning after pill can prevent a pregnancy from occurring, don’t work in an ER. If you don’t believe in family planning that  involves anything other than calendar watching and mucous/cervical observations, don’t practice family medicine or go into gynecology or obstetrics.

There are ways to avoid compromising yourself which don’t involve forcing your beliefs on others. It’s really very simple when a person stops to think about it.