The Lost Decade
Harry Hope
http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/2168
Wed, 12/30/2009
by Brent Budowsky
..................................................................................................................................
The lost decade now ends with a huge bubble of shameless greed and
wanton wealth that was labelled the greatest crash since the Great
Depression, and was accompanied by huge paydays, mammoth bonuses, and
lucrative stock option deals for those who caused it, while working
stiffs paid for this largesse with giant bailouts and suffered from
this greed with 17% real jobless.
Try this.
Most people don't realize it, but a date can be Googled, and one can
reread all the news and stories from that date.
Google March 10, 2000 and add NASDAQ, which was the time when that
market reached 5,000.
The stories might as well read from today.
Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are destined to
repeat them.
Near the beginning of this lost decade, a President was warned about a
terrorist who planned to fly airplanes into buildings in New York and
he ignored those warnings and showed contempt for those who gave them.
And now, near the end of the decade, we spend Christmas worried about
another attack from terrorists who plan to explode planes over the
oceans.
Near the beginning of the decade, we could have killed the terrorist
at Tora Bora and we had won the Afghan war.
But then, our leader chose an unwise war that should not have been
fought in Iraq, and the terrorist got away, and now, we face a long
hard slog in a war that was won years ago, before victory was given
away for a quagmire.
From the beginning of this lost decade until the end, the
powers-that-be learned nothing.
So a decade that began with greed ended with greed.
A decade that began with terror ended with terror.
A decade that began with war ended with the same war, once won, but
now a war that seems destined to continue in perpetuity.
A decade that began with a giant surplus of budget and finance ends
with the nation debted like a banana republic, owned by a nation we
once called communist, and for what?
Those who build the nation with their hands are under siege, while
speculators who shuffle the papers of the homeowners they foreclose
will raise their glasses of champagne on New Year's Eve, toasting
themselves for a job well done, savoring the bubbles that were paid
for by taxpayer money while slandering those who object as socialists!
Meanwhile, while some celebrate their vast unearned income, others
suffer the Grapes of Wrath.
While those who profited so handsomely from the beginning of the
decade until the end live in glory and splendor as masters of the
universe the numbers of homeless vets rise, the armies of hungry
children grow, the noose of joblessness tightens around the neck of a
fifth of the nation, real wages fall and real pain soars throughout
nation in this decade that was lost.
Imagine if our $12 trillion of national debt had been used to educate
the children, to create jobs for the workers, to better the health of
the people, to grow food for the hungry, to tap the sun and the wind
to fuel the nation still imprisoned, at the end of the decade as we
were at the beginning, by the dangers of pollution and the
dictatorships of oil!
Imagine if we had used even a trickle of these trillions of dollars of
debt to buy body armor and humvees for noble and heroic troops, who
died preventable deaths while those with neither nobility nor heroism
gorged on greed with tax cuts that enriched their fortunes, during a
war drenched in profiteering that should have been prosecuted as
crime, at a price the nation could not afford, with consequences the
nation did not deserve.
Imagine what we could have done, but did not do, in this lost decade
where the good should have been so much better, where the greed should
have been rejected so long ago, where the pain should be so much less,
where the price will now be paid for a generation by those who did not
profit a penny from this outrage, and who are forced to subsidize this
gluttony that the leaders of the nation should have protected them
from, but didn't.
History will judge harshly the burdens, the guilty have crushed onto
the backs of the innocent, the wrongs the old have crushed onto the
backs of the young, and the injustices that those with the most have
crushed onto the backs of those with the least, turning the Biblical
injunction on its head.
It is sad and sorry but true.
This has been a lost decade, by standards of what this nation can be.
The winners are those with the greed that began it, and end it, in a
decade that should have been so much better, in a nation that deserved
leaders so much wiser.
But history has its turns, and maybe the next decade will be better.
As the man we miss so much once told us, the cause endures and the
dream shall never die.
______________________________________________________
Harry
zzpat
> http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/2168
>
> Wed, 12/30/2009
>
> by Brent Budowsky
>
> ..................................................................................................................................
>
> The lost decade now ends with a huge bubble of shameless greed and
> wanton wealth that was labelled the greatest crash since the Great
> Depression, and was accompanied by huge paydays, mammoth bonuses, and
> lucrative stock option deals for those who caused it, while working
> stiffs paid for this largesse with giant bailouts and suffered from
> this greed with 17% real jobless.
>
>
We spent the better part of the last decade fighting a war in Iraq, A
war based entirely on lies. And to thinks, that war, a war based on
lies is their crowing achievement. Along with that war was it cost.
At the height of a war based entirely on lies it was costing us about
$3000 per second. Did they raise taxes to pay for what they spent?
Hell no. Every conservative (and I means every single one of them) are
cowards. They refuse to pay for what they say they support. Instead
the passed trillions of dollars of debt on us...debt we'll never be
able to pay off.
And why did they create so much debt? Because the GOP is made up
entirely of cowards?
Not Sure
> On Dec 30, 10:04 am, Harry Hope <riv...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> >http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/2168
>
> > Wed, 12/30/2009
>
> > by Brent Budowsky
>
> > ..................................................................................................................................
>
> > The lost decade now ends with a huge bubble of shameless greed and
> > wanton wealth that was labelled the greatest crash since the Great
> > Depression, and was accompanied by huge paydays, mammoth bonuses, and
> > lucrative stock option deals for those who caused it, while working
> > stiffs paid for this largesse with giant bailouts and suffered from
> > this greed with 17% real jobless.
>
> We spent the better part of the last decade fighting a war in Iraq, A
> war based entirely on lies.
There were no lies. Sorry that your Anti-Semitic ass continues to fail
in your propaganda :)