Saturday, September 20, 2008

WTF, Karl?!




So, let me get this straight:

-- Tens of millions of people don't have health insurance, those who do are afraid that they'll one day get injured or so sick that they'll insurance companies will drop them and they'll go bankrupt trying to pay off their medical bills.

-- Our bankruptcy restrictions were tightened back in '05, at the time considered a big gift to the credit card companies.

-- Our government spends tens of billions of dollars (through the National Institutes of Health) funding biomedical research. Pharmaceutical companies producing drugs from that very same research can charge us tax payers whatever they want, Congress refusing to haggle.

-- Thousands of 18-year-olds can end up with six-figure debts by the end of their college careers while our nation's colleges and universities make hundreds of billions of dollars in endowments alone.

The only help for these people (aside from the Hope Credit, which will give you a tax credit of up to $1,800 a year and the Lifetime Learning Credit, which is worth $2,000 a year--though you can't apply them for the same student in the same year) is "the market will handle it." But when those notorious Free Marketeers on Wall Street come begging Washington to save them from themselves, our government dedicates $1 trillion (or the equivalent in the Chinese yuan) to bail them all out. And now we American taxpayers own the vast majority of our country's financial "free" markets.

Rumors also have it that Detroit is about to come groveling on Capitol Hill, crying, "You did it for them! Why won't you do it for us?" Never once contemplating making a better car.

Hm ... very little to no aid for the poor, working poor, and the "middle class" we keep hearing about during every campaign. But when the top 10% come calling (though they already make 48.5% of the dollars--or yuans--in this country) ...

I'm starting to think that America has got to be the most ass-backwards Socialist state in human history.




And watch all these assholes start bitching when Congress starts talking about regulations.

3 comments:

Ron Strelecki said...

You know... The Government has too many important things to do to quibble over a trillion here, a trillion there...

Anonymous said...

Just wait. Before it's over, we'll all own the airlines, as well.

Again.

boukman70 said...

Completely forgot about them. We were just talking about the airlines yesterday. I'm starting to think that maybe you just can't make money in air travel--just like the passenger trains. After all, we heavily subsidize them and nobody's ever made a profit.

Detroit, on the other hand, has had, what? 36 years since the first oil embargo? And they still can't get their act straight? It's time for them to go!