STICKIN' IT TO DA BANKS!

The radical shift in presidential politics in this country has really driven home one undeniable fact: Those who consider themselves entitled to unbridled, unregulated and destructive success have nothing but contempt for the rest of us.

The AIG bonus debacle aside, banking institutions in general, and I’m including credit companies since they are also banks, truly believe themselves to be above the rest when it comes to what they should be able to get away with. They have become convinced, by all appearances, that they are indestructible and irreplaceable. The banking system in general isn’t broken, though. You can’t break what was never intended to work.

Watching these executives bask in government bailout money like Roman senators during the final days of that empire’s dominance in the known world is disgusting, yes, but it ain’t the cause of the problem. These arrogant, smug SOB’s are merely a symptom of a disease that began at the turn of the Twentieth Century.

Banks used to be independent operations, sometimes linked through a networking system, sometimes consisting of more than one location, but certainly not the massive institutions we know of today. In fact, corporations as we know them today didn’t exist either. It would have been impossible, of course, to create multinational conglomerates in a world without telephones in every building not to mention slow transportation, so the slow emergence of corporations was confined to the United States at first.

You might laugh, but corporations were only allowed to exist for the public good in those days. Their purpose was to consolidate the resources and materials of more than one company so a common goal could be achieved. Here’s the best part: Once that goal was achieved, they were to be disbanded within a timely fashion! That’s right. In order to avoid monopolies and companies with too much power over the entire country, corporations were supposed to be heavily regulated, temporary entities.

However, greed always prevails in America. Working with what must have been the sleaziest and most unethical attorneys in this nation’s early history, corporate moguls found a way to use the language anti-slavery amendment to cause corporations to be seen as individuals with the same rights as you or I. Eventually, as they gained power, their rights exceeded ours to the point where they now have the ability to destroy lives in the name of economic progress. It doesn’t help that there are generations of people who go along with this without question because they can’t imagine a different or better system.

This insured that banks would rise to prominence. They are, after all, the ones that control the flow of money to the other corporations. Sadly, with the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank, which is not really a bank at all but a series of privately –owned companies loosely connected and unanswerable to the federal government, banks became the policy-making bodies we know today. I lean left on most issues but even I’d like to kick FDR’s ass for that one.

Seven decades later we have the mess inherited by President Obama. “Inherited” is a word he uses quite often and with good reason. Republicans tend to blame Democrats for bad economies begun by Republicans and ignore good economies begun by Democrats by claiming some previous Republican kick started the whole thing. That’s not to say that either party is always in the right or in the wrong but the facts speak for themselves. Clinton’s economic boom was supposedly due to Reagan’s discredited trickle down approach while Bush II’s downturn was supposedly due to Clinton’s policies. Despite logical inconsistencies like that, Fox News continues to be allowed to renew its broadcasting license.

For too long have corporations and bankers held this country hostage with downsizing, outsourcing and societal pressure. For too long have they bought our politicians, judges and police officers while forcing their victims to form activist groups with little to no influence in the corridors of power. The last straw was when they started buying up our supposedly free presses and consolidating them into corporate-friendly conglomerates.

The top executives of these companies exist in another dimension than the rest of us. It is a dimension not of sight and sound, but of arrogance and self-entitlement, a dimension of unconcerned assholes sucking up resources we can’t spare so they can live the good life. But these same people will turn around and blame everything on the supposed “lazy poor.” They’ve been so effective at this that many Americans are convinced one must be lazy in order to be poor at all.

We now have a president who seems hell-bent on making these people accountable for both their actions and their inactions. Sometimes I have to pinch myself because I have trouble believing this is really happening. A sitting president whose main focus would traditionally have been on appeasing Big Business to ensure re-election is actually cracking down on them like a federal agent on a task force? Have we finally elected one of our own?

Too soon to tell, wouldn’t be prudent at this juncture, as George HW Bush would have said if Dana Carvey was speaking for him.

However, I do feel confident enough to say I’m feeling something I’ve never felt before, although I can’t quite place my finger on it…Oh, I know…INCLUDED! I feel like this country might actually be partially owned by me and that my elected officials are my employees. I know, I know. It’s muy loco but I can’t help myself.

My God. I think I’m in love~

(More on this as the romance deepens)