Stuff like the The Collapse of the Worldwide Financial Sector doesn’t sneak up on a governing body or an executive board.  To suggest that we “found” ourselves in this mess is ridiculous.  Really, with all the analysis and measurement available?  All the formulas and ratios?  Not seeing this coming is akin to saying that Katrina was a surprise…BAM, outta nowhere.

Keith Fimian, running for Congress out of Virginia, trumpeted for indictments on FOX whereupon Neil Cavuto objected that Congress is only stupid, not criminal. Since when is ignorance a defense?  Since when is it okay to deflect allegations of corruption in office with claims of stupidity?  Ocean’s Eleven, the remake…”I say I’m a thief and you call me a liar.”

I say that we have the attention spans of humming birds but, in our defense, so much crap comes at us…not just steadily, but worse and faster…we are like Lucy and Ethyl in the chocolate factory. We mean well when we say we will not forget but anyone who has ever suffered a great injustice or a grave loss will confirm that, with heartbreaking matter-of-factness, the collective We goes on about the business of living as though nothing happened.

Something definitely happened, and I am here to serve as reminder…in a bumper sticker sort of way:

EXPECTING GOVERNMENT TO FIX THE PROBLEM

IS LIKE ASKING THE BURGLAR TO FIX THE LOCK

That said…not moving on, but broadening the scope…I will argue that, even setting cost aside, owning a home is not really or rightly the dream of all Americans.

But there is no setting THOSE costs aside, eh? Owning a home will max-out credit cards that were acquired to make payments on maxed-out credit cards.  Hardware, software, yardware, electrical, plumbing, furniture, cabinets, bath tubs, toilets, window treatments, flooring, insurance, taxes, improvements, renovations, add-ons, tear-downs…begin again.

It’s hard to know which things are such common knowledge that piping up with them almost causes the reader/listener to cringe with embarrassment for the writer/speaker, and which things are cool-you-learn-something-new-every-day.  The Did You Know Or Do You Care Department.

A crew is always painting the Golden Gate Bridge.  They work their way from one end to the other, I was told, and by the time they get TO the other end, it’s time to go back and begin again.  I was told that there are people who have spent the whole of their adult working lives painting the Golden Gate Bridge.   

Houses are like painting the Golden Gate Bridge.  After the nesting costs, the repairs begin. By the time you get the sprinklers fixed, gates and doors are swollen shut.  While you’re getting the gates and doors shaved down, one of the handles comes off in your hand, right before the upstairs sink stops up, which is probably related to the water spots that are appearing on the kitchen ceiling.  Copper pipes demand new electrical just as surely as new paint cries for window washing.  By the time you get it all done, it’s time to update the bathrooms and re-upholster the furniture.  Projects beget projects, chores beget chores…it is RELENTLESS.

Re-upholster…how quaint is that?  NEW, we want new.  So much new stuff that ostensibly non-profit thrift shops are picky and choosy about which donations are good enough for them.  God forbid that, in addition to ringing up sales, non-profits should freely facilitate getting superfluous Stuff into the hands of people who can’t afford Stuff.  ”If it isn’t in resale condition, we can’t accept it”…what kind of a charitable sentiment is that?  Tell me again, why exactly are they tax exempt?

Obviously, I am not proposing that everyone bail on the housing industry and take up nomadic camping.  I AM saying that it was misguided short-term profiteering to PUSH houses, like drugs.  A tranquil suburban lifestyle, with lots of buying and arranging and gathering and rearranging is right for domestic-type people, but decidedly not right for not-domestic-type people.  I will even gently suggest that the tedium and repetition attendant to home ownership…not just maintaining one’s spot on America’s “normal” track but, beyond that, keeping up with the Joneses…is the source of no small amount of unhappiness and not a few divorces.

Me, I’m a big fan of Specialization of Labor.  I’m the kind of person who really oughtn’t to own a home unless I have enough money to, without anxiety, hire whoever needs to be hired to do whatever needs to be done.  I can relish results with the best of ‘em…I’ve got a perfectionist streak that is wide and unforgiving…but the operations don’t INTEREST me.  Special as we all are, blah blah, I cannot believe I am the only person who feels thusly…give me reasonable rent and a conscientious landlord any day.  

The No Headache Zone.

Housing is a pillar of the economy, sure, but I will suggest that HOUSES are as prominent as they are because of the tax advantages associated with them.  There are more than NINETY MILLION single people in America.  I realize that some single people want to own homes…some people are domestic-type people…but I will guess that just as many single people gravitate to homes they will rattle around in because “paying rent is throwing your money away.”  Landlords, I think, don’t think that paying rent is throwing money away.  Why shall the renters be penalized?  Why shall the childless underwrite families?

Always we rob from Peter to pay Paul, rather than steward social and commercial reconfigurations.

Not that I don’t have cupboards and closets and ROOMFULS more to say…especially do I have things to say about the Single Sector, Doll Houses, Musical Apartments and Mobile Mankind… but I am instructed that shorter frequenter posts are desirable, so I will quit on two points:

1.  We are going broker than we already were, trying to keep people in houses they already couldn’t afford.  With the economy worsening and joblessness rising, with houses as with cars, we fight to keep people wrongly positioned.

2.  It is not wealth but resources that want redistribution.  As time is a person’s most valuable asset, people are an economy’s most valuable resource.  Optimal distribution of resources requires maneuverability.  People are TRAPPED in their homes.

Over the course of this wild and wacky Campaign-O-Rama…a two-year spending frenzy that has served as our principal economic stimulus…I have actually heard the legendary American Dream redefined as “owning your own home.”  See here, I thought it was more along the lines of starting with little or nothing and, through superlative effort/energy/aptitude/ingenuity coupled with extraordinary opportunity/serendipity/providence/timing…voila…a productive, fulfilled, happy and secure personage who commands the respect of and enjoys the benefits of Society.  What do I know?

Which brings me to Plan B, for Bailout.  I know the Great Bailout constitutes privatizing profits and socializing losses, I do know that much.  I know that if crime pays, there will be more crime.  And I know that, so far, crime pays.

That doesn’t work for me.

I dare claim universal recognition that it is rather harder to be honest than dishonest.  It is rather more difficult to continually endeavor to do the right thing…when time and money are short and expediencies regularly present themselves…than to do whatever you please, whenever you please, however you please.  A lotta people could get over a lot better if they did not feel morally obliged to tow the line.  Government would tell us that not only can the Elite NOT tow any lines, but that they shall be REWARDED for unrestrained free-wheeling with other people’s money?

Like I said, that doesn’t work for me.

Ergo, Plan C…for Cells.  Not the terrorist cells that have caused a certain amount of mayhem and that have, in my opinion, been marketed to create OTHER mayhem.  Prison Cells.  Note the distinction between prison cells and jail cells.  I’m talking about federal penitentiaries, not country club jails that serve almost as much needed R & R after all that raping and pillaging.

For real, I have a plan.  I not infrequently remind me of Lucy Ricardo…”I’ve GOT it!”  

“What have you got?” Ethyl would reliably ask with telltale skepticism.

“A PLAN.”

I am not precisely sure about blogging etiquette, nor about the Findability Factor.  I expect I will do myself a favor on both fronts by providing lots of links to correlate with my remarks.  I actually DO have quite a lot of research…completely inefficiently clumped at present…and I expect I shall improve rather than deteriorate as a Citizen Journalist.  I heard that term on what-passes-for-news…I kinda like it.

In the meantime, though, until I DO become more adroit, I will suggest that many of my remarks are intuitive and general and that demand to cite sources is usually the your-mother-wears-army-boots equivalent of “PROVE IT.”  As well, I hear this on the radio, I read that in the coffee shops, this farmer talks about that, that driver talks about this…some of my remarks don’t have “sources” more specialized than My Life. 

I declare that I am not a Liar.  I’m a piece of work, to be sure…an acquired taste for a niche audience, and even THEN only in limited doses…but I am not a Liar.  Easiest thing in the world to say.  The next easiest thing is to spot a discrepancy between words and deeds.  In real life, that’s the way it is, is it not?  You come up against a new person in whatever context, you gotta decide whether they know what they’re talking about and whether they mean what they say.  If a person’s word is no good, really, what more is there to say?

Liars lie.  It’s what they DO.  Babies cry, birds fly, people die and liars lie.  Psychopathic Liars, several of whom are numbered among our Conscienceless Uber Rich, lie even when they don’t have to.  It’s like chasing mercury.

Which brings me to Plan C, for Cells.

Must I dig up statistics to back up the assertion that America has the largest prison population on earth?  MAYBE it’s the largest per capita but I don’t think so, I think it’s the largest in the world.  Here is something I WILL pull from the dreaded Documents labyrinth of my computer, which has steadily deteriorated into an unsavory blend of the junk drawer in the kitchen and the wrong side of the tracks.

 ”When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness: when these things can be said, thn may that country boast its constitution and its government.” 

Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part II, 1792 

.

America…keenly principled and freshly independent…was one of Thomas Paine’s expressed inspirations in writing Rights of Man.  Neither he nor any of our Founding Fathers would be anything but horrified by the State of the Nation, I’m pretty sure of that.  I expect they would urge resurrection of public stockades.

If a dog poops on the living room rug, you don’t take the dog out back, point at the flowers and start hollering, “NO! Bad dog!”  And you surely don’t, whilst pointing at the flowers, commence lip service to beauty, “We want to keep the living room rug as fresh as flowers so…NO MORE POOPING IN THE HOUSE!” 

If a kid swipes another kid’s toy at the park, you don’t take him AND the swiped toy home, sit him down amongst all his toys plus the purloined toy and deliver a speech about sharing.  And you surely don’t, whilst delivering the speech on sharing, give the kid an early birthday present.

I am DELIGHTED to hear of more and more calls for Executive Retribution…Mario Cuomo in New York, Keith Fimian running for Congress out of Virginia, a couple different Congressmen on C-SPAN.  Otherwise, we’re not only letting them keep the toys they swiped, we’re giving them early birthday presents.

Let the punishment suit the crime.  That is wisdom of the ages.

At the root of creative accounting and juggling books and scattering risk and bundling debt and fudging incomes and fibbing rates and winging appraisals lies Greed.  Greed is one of the seven deadly sins, that is also wisdom of the ages.

In the couple years that I have been posting online, I have more than once been presented with the argument that a certain amount of Greed is good.  Bollocks, to quote Christine Lagarde.

Greed is intense, selfish insatiable desire that exceeds need and warrant alike.  

People also argue, rightly I think, that too much of a good thing is a bad thing.  But it does NOT follow that the right amount of a bad thing is a good thing.  Virtues can be rendered vices.  Vices are not rendered virtues.

The offenses are assorted…collusion, insider trading, price fixing, tax evasion, fiduciary malfeasance, conspiracies in restraint of trade, racketeering…but they all trace to Greed.

As a paradigm for punishment, seizure of ill-gotten gains suits crimes attributable to Greed like it was bespoke on Jermyn Street in London.

We now know that when motivated by truly important matters, like the collapsing of America’s financial sector or the pulling of Terri Schaivo’s plug, Congress is able to pass landmark legislation lickety-split.  Who can forget the Patriot Act?

When hard-core, bullet-ridden drug traffic hit Ireland, Ireland just said NO and, unlike us, meant it.  Seizure of assets…not only those proven to be ill-gotten but those that could not be traced to legitimate sources…nipped that action virtually in the bud.

We can do the same here, AND make a dent in our deficit at the same time.  Are you kidding me?  We LOVE two-for-one specials.

But the Truth is, though they care about money more than anything, taking their money is not enough.  Y’know why?  Because they think they are above the law, at the same time that they are diabolically clever.  Because their measure of self is obtained via their holdings, they will be motivated unto greater dastardliness to reclaim their greatness.  I was once told by a Player that their idea of gossip is counting one another’s money.

Rather than get into long, drawn-out Marcia Clark-style legaleze over which assets were ill-gotten and which were honorable, seize everything except:

1.) the cost of running the family’s lifestyle and primary residence for one year

2.) one million dollars for when the Bad Guy emerges from his year in prison, hopefully reformed. 

That is what I propose…seize their assets and send them to federal penitentiaries for one year; their families will be covered while they’re “inside” and they’ll have a million bucks to work with when they get out.  Nuthin’ cruel or inhuman about that.  

The sins of the father will be visited upon their sons.  If families are AT the table, families are ON the table.  It is sad about the children, I agree, but the Scoundrels should have given that more thought.  Spouses, on the other hand, get no sympathy from me.  Think aiding and abetting, think accomplices.

It can be hoped that a year in prison will teach humility, but that is out of our control.

This is not.

I heard on the radio within the past year that the literacy rate of our extraordinary prison population is…get this…THREE PERCENT.  It doesn’t even seem possible.  MAYBE it was the literacy rate of a convict subset, but I don’t think so, I think it was system-wide.

How on earth do we propose that illiterate people with prison records will earn a living, once they are returned to Society?  It practically guarantees reversion to a life of crime and a return to prison.  Three strikes, they’re out, you say?  And they have two strikes against them at the gate?  Who on earth hires illiterate ex-cons?  Our credit is shot, so now we borrow trouble.

Like-minded people resonate with one another.  Athletes, I think, have more regard for coaches who played the game.  Soldiers, I presume, respond better to military officers than to gardeners.  Alcoholics, I would know this, get through to other drunks. 

Let the criminals teach the criminals.  The Bad Guys are bad, not stupid.  Let them spend one year in federal penitentiaries teaching those illiterate convicts their letters and numbers.  How to fill out a job application, what is an interest rate, stuff like that.

I’ll bet half a dozen disgraced executives won’t have to be raped before there will be a long overdue call for reform of our Draconian prison system.  Incarceration Incorporated is decidedly not Christian, it’s not American…it’s not even decent.