These words were used in a political cartoon wherein a son uttered those words to his father. The father calmly replied, "Are you considering the private or government sector?' Ouch!!! This should be a "funny parody" as the friend who sent it to me suggested, but it hits too close to the reality of what is going on in our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. recently stated that Americans "are being robbed of their freedom" and that we are now a kleptocracy. I had to look that one up. It is a word used to describe corrupt and exploitative governments that steal ruthlessly and relentlessly from the people. It is not a word that anyone would have used to talk about the American form of government until now. As William Astore, a teacher of history at the Pennsylvania College of Technology, wrote, "It is usually applied to flawed or failed governments in Africa, Latin American" or other areas of the world where governments are"led by autocratic strong men who shower themselves and their cronies with all the fruits of extracted wealth whether stolen from the people or squeezed from their country's natural resources".
Humm...that sounds like the mortgage meltdown, where Wall Street bankers, the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs), i.e., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and many others received taxpayer "bail out" money to rescue them from their own bad performance. It is so amazing that one can bankrupt their company yet still pull in a huge salary and expect a fat bonus paid for by taxpayers who now have no jobs. And people have no jobs because of others' bad actions. One would think that the Wall Street people, bankers, lenders, and government officials who acted so irresponsibly and perhaps even criminally, and Congress -- who voted on a myriad of the bills that took away restrictions that allowed all of this to happen, would at least feel contrite, be embarrassed, show remorse, maybe even shame, but no, we have seen none of that. They act just like organized crime bosses -- they had nothing to do with nothing. They continue with their opulent lifestyles while the rest of the country is in peril -- and they do not care.
I think that is what bothers me most -- no one cares -- they care only about their own self interest -- and that narcissistic self interest stuff has spread to almost every level in our society. CEOs in private corporations care about the stockholders making money so they can get their big salaries and bonuses; government workers care about raising their pay as high as possible so they can get the highest level of retirement; hopefully they can retire early enough so they can go to work somewhere else. Then they can earn another high salary while receiving their retirement, plus working on another retirement. Is any city, county or other governmental official really worth $400,000+ per year?
As my friend said, "the message that he got from the political cartoon is that crime against society in general is okay and stealing public funds (which we should all hold sacred because it is our tax money) is acceptable."
I think that we have turned into a society of "Greedy Bastards". More on that next time.
2 comments:
What makes you think this is something new?
I do not believe it is anything new. It is merely a return to the not so distant past. It is Tammany Hall with the leader “Boss” Tweed who ran an efficient and corrupt political machine based on patronage and graft. It is the Robber Barons so named because of the criminal element (robber) and the aristocracy (baron). We are reverting back to the Gilded Age –where few had much and controlled everything and everyone else had barely enough to scrape by on.
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