Recklessness and Greed
There’s been a great deal of finger wagging and tongue clucking in Washington about the bonuses paid by AIG after it dragged itself down through what President Obama himself called “recklessness and greed”. Was this not as obvious to Secretary Geithner as it was to the rest of us when he wrote the first checks to AIG? Or did they clearly understand they were rewarding recklessness and greed?
The peril for our country exists not because Washington will, ignorantly or corruptly, devour our children’s futures to reward recklessness and greed; this is not unexpected behavior from ambitious crisis-exploiters. The fundamental problem exists as President James Garfield accurately noted, “Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption.”
March 20th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
It certainly can be said that we brought this upon ourselves as a nation of free people. Maybe we were not paying attention, having too much of a good time living. Regardless, we are finding ourselves in quite the pickle. Now what?
March 20th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
We take responsibility, double our efforts, increase our *voluntary* sacrifice to educate the confused, focus on our individual passions/talents, and in the words of Samuel Adams, “Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.”
April 20th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Yes, the problem was too many wanted “change” of a non specific sort, except of course from Bush and by default the Republicans governing. The problem was one of ennui and fatigue with the last 8 yr, plus the constant barrage of negative media coverage designed to totally discredit all that transpired in the preceding 8 yr. Whilst I have differences with the likes of Ron Paul, too, he would have been a better choice than McCain.
April 20th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
My friend Hans, writes at his website, (www.w3taxi.com) a lot of rants of a libertarian nature, and he’s pro Ron Paul in a big way. Too bad, we’re Canadians and thus have no vote in it LOL
Seriously, we have first hand experience, 40 yr prior to you folk, (1968 Trudeaumania swept the nation of sheeple) of a charismatic socialist leader capturing the imaginations based on “CHANGE” and believe me most of it was for the worse!