[Vision2020] Where is the Outrage? (Garrison Keillor)

[Tom Hansen]

The following was forwarded to me by a friend.

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Where is the outrage?

John McCain decries greed on Wall Street and suggests a commission be 
formed to look into the problem. This is like Casanova coming out for 
chastity.

By Garrison Keillor

It's just human nature that some calamities register in the brain and 
others don't. The train engineer texting at the throttle ("HOW R U? C U 
L8R") and missing the red light and 25 people die in the crash -- oh God, 
that is way too real. Everyone has had a moment of supreme stupidity that 
came close to killing somebody. Even atheists say a little prayer now and 
then: Dear God, I am an idiot, thank you for protecting my children.

On the other hand, the federal bailout of the financial market (YAWN) is a 
calamity that people accept as if it were just one more hurricane. An air 
of crisis, the secretary of the Treasury striding down a hall at the 
Capitol with minions in his wake, solemn-faced congressmen at the 
microphones. Something must be done, harrumph harrumph. The Current 
Occupant pops out of the cuckoo clock and reads a few lines off a piece of 
paper, pronouncing all the words correctly. And the newscaster looks into 
the camera and says, "Etaoin shrdlu qwertyuiop." Where is the outrage?

Poor Larry Craig got a truckload of moral condemnation for tapping his 
wingtips in the men's john, but his party proposes to spend 5 percent of 
the GDP to buy up bad loans made by men who walk away with their fortunes 
intact while retirees see their 401K go pffffffff like a defunct air 
mattress, and it's business as usual. Mr. McCain is a lifelong deregulator 
and believer in letting brokers and bankers do as they please -- remember 
Lincoln Savings and Loan and his intervention with federal regulators on 
behalf of his friend Charles Keating, who then went to prison? Remember 
Neil Bush, the brother of the C.O., who, as a director of Silverado S&L, 
bestowed enormous loans on his friends without telling fellow directors 
that the friends were friends and who, when the loans failed, paid a small 
fine and went skipping off to other things? Mr. McCain now decries greed 
on Wall Street and suggests a commission be formed to look into the 
problem. This is like Casanova coming out for chastity.

Confident men took leave of common sense and bet on the idea of perpetual 
profit in the real estate market and crashed. But it wasn't their money. 
It was your money they were messing with. And that's why you need 
government regulators. Gimlet-eyed men with steel-rim glasses and crepe-
soled shoes who check the numbers and have the power to say, "This is a 
scam and a hustle and either you cease and desist or you spend a few years 
in a minimum-security federal facility playing backgammon."

The Republican Party used to specialize in gimlet-eyed, steel-rim, crepe-
soled common sense and then it was taken over by crooked preachers who 
demand we trust them because they're packing a Bible and God sent them on 
a mission to enact lower taxes, less government. Except when things crash, 
and then government has to pick up the pieces.

Some say the tab might come to a trillion dollars. Nobody knows. And Mr. 
McCain has not one moment of doubt or regret. He switches from First 
Deregulation Church to Our Lady of Strict Vigilance like you might go from 
decaf to latte. Where is the straight talk? Does the man have no 
conscience?

It wasn't their money they were playing with. It was yours. Where were the 
cops?

What we are seeing is the stuff of a novel, the public corruption of an 
American war hero. It is painful. First, there was his exploitation of a 
symbolic woman, an eager zealot who is so far out of her depth that it 
isn't funny anymore. Anyone with a heart has to hurt for how Mr. McCain 
has made a fool of her. Never mind the persistent cheesiness of his attack 
ads. And now this chasm of debt and loss and the gentleman pretends to be 
shocked. He was there. He turned out the lights. He sent the regulators 
home.
 
Mr. McCain seems willing to say anything, do anything, to get to the White 
House so he can go to war with Iran. If he needs to recline naked in 
Macy's window, he would do that, or eat live chickens, or claim to be a 
reformer. Obviously you can fool a lot of people for awhile and maybe he 
can stretch it out until mid-November. But the truth is marching on. A few 
true conservatives are leading a charge against the bailout. Good for 
them. But how about admitting that their cowboy economic philosophy was at 
fault here?

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho


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