Reply #24: Hey there [View All]

[autorank]

I'm not worried about negative or positive. I'm not surprised or feeling betrahyed. It's just what it is.

Couple of facts: 1) There was no relief on foreclosures despite the opportunity to help 1.7 million families with Dick Durbin's bill. His wasn't a radical effort and isn't the approach I preferred but I wish it had passed. 1.7 million families/1.7 million households (some of those families may just be an owner and bunch of cats). Couple of days after Arlen joined the fold, the vote was 45-51 and Dubin's bill went down. Was he being negative when he said the banks run the place? 2) For years we've had ultra low inflation but bank cards are at 29% when they feel like it. The process of getting there is made transparent by the bill but they can still do it. I use American Express and don't deal with these tricks. But the process of getting the interest rate up is as bad as the rate, but the rate's the thing.

A few weeks ago the IMF said we're in a depression - the US and Western European coutries. Is this the best Congress can do? Apparently there are a bunch of people there who think it's OK to vote with big money on the big issues consistently.

People are hurting, they're getting evicted. Here's what it's like:

What happens when you're thrown out of your home or apartment and you have no job?

To begin with, you're poor.

You can live on the street, move in with relatives, or seek to rent a home or an apartment. After a foreclosure, your credit rating will probably disqualify you from most opportunities at the outset. If you're in a warmer climate, you can live in a tent city which began springing up across the country last September.

You can and will enter an entirely new world where you're exposed to a variety of risks that will make it very difficult to put your life back together again. Crime, infectious diseases, underpayment for work, and increasing social isolation are routine.

You can become a crime victim. In your new world, that of the poor, you will find that you're among the group with the majority of violent crime victims.

You can seek and receive occasional "subprime" medical care in hospital emergency rooms. But the days of serious attention to an ongoing condition, arthritis for example, are over for you.

You can watch your life melt away and your family suffer, all without the prospect of any real assistance. Homeless shelters are full in most places. Public health programs have been overflowing for years. The "welfare state" simply doesn't exist. You're screwed.

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