Letters to the Editor
kuhnigget
Published Letters: 125 Editor's Choice: 2
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100% accurate, but still missing the mark
[Read the article: This Modern World]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As with others, I can't let the dupes who listened to these hucksters and actually bought houses they couldn't afford under credit terms that were disasters in the making off the financial hook. Stupidity has consequences! I've worked too damn hard all my life, educating myself, living on a budget, not spending what I don't have, doing without those nice shiny new cars and plasma screen TVs and oh, so hip electronic gadgetry, not because I didn't want those things...but because I couldn't afford them!
So pardon me if I sit here in my modest but comfortable home, partially paid for with a sensible 6.5%, 30-year fixed rate mortage (after a reasonable down payment to give myself some equity), and politely tell the morons who put themselves and their families at risk by doing something incredibly stupid and the government nitwits who want to save them from their own ignorance to keep your greedy hands out of my well-worn pockets!
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@FilthyHarry
[Read the article: This Modern World]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I understand that point of view, but I don't agree with it. We're surrounded by these charlatans from the day we're born! Buy this! Buy that! Spend! Spend! Spend! You can't walk down the street without being bombarded by come-ons of every sort. It's in the mail, it's on your phone, it's on the TV, the radio, billboards, stickers on the floor of the supermarket...hucksterism is everywhere! So, do you have to buy into it? Do they hold a gun to your head, forcing you to sign on the dotted line? Or can you use your power of reason to filter out the b.s., read the fine print, and do what's right for you and your family?
My point is, when do people have to take responsibility for their own lives? I don't like the credit sharks, and I certainly don't want the government (meaning me) bailing out their dirty little operations, but when all is said and done those people didn't force anyone to buy their crap.
Hell, if we're going to start pointing fingers at anyone except the poor saps who bought into this nonsense, why not single out the crappy public school system that can't seem to educate the citizenry about basic finances? Why not throw the bailout money, or the "economic stimulus package" at public education? Why keep punishing those of us who learned our lessons early and are tired of everyone else who didn't getting a free ride on our nickel?
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@truthorconsequences
[Read the article: This Modern World]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, gosh, I guess my "arrogance" was getting the better of me. Good thing I didn't go to college, or I'd really be insufferable. (Might have reached that stage already...oops.)
Since when is common sense in such short supply? (Oh, wait, 51 million people voted for you-know-who last election...never mind.) Or limited to those with college educations? How on earth did our poor fathers and grandfathers get by?
The "experts told us" argument is valid, to a point, but that still doesn't take the ultimate responsibility off the shoulders of mom and pop America. "Experts" don't pay your bills, or raise your kids, or do your jobs for you, especially when those "experts" are talking heads on the tube or mass-mailing cranks stuffing your inbox with too good to be true spam.
Hell yes, if "shysters" break the law and pull a bait and switch on someone, or do something that is clearly against the law, the U.S. government (meaning you and me) should come down hard on the bastards and help their victims out with some aid. But...is that really the case in the majority of these foreclosures? Which laws were broken? And does the situation call for a blanket bail-out of every single person who made a bad judgement call?
No, there's something bigger going on here, and it goes way beyond the mortgage industry. Let's face it, when the president of the United States goes on national television urging people to "spend spend spend," and that's the crux of his plan to prop up the economy, something's wrong at a very fundamental level. People -- like those who got themselves (enabled by others, perhaps) into dire straits by mortgaging their future -- have got to get out of the habit of blindly assuming they have the right to whatever they want, whenever they want, regardless of whether or not they've got the resources to pay for it. All-American McMansion, jumbo screen TV, new car every 2.5 years, whatever. If you can't afford it, don't buy it!</>
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There's mad, and there's mad as hell
[Read the article: "History will not judge this kindly"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Stevio has it right: Pelosi, et al (and I'm including my own especially heinous senator Feinstein), are the ones I'm really pissed at.
Bush and Co. are creeps and make no attempt to hide it, other than the red white and blue cloak they wrap themselves in.
The democrats in Congress, however, were supposed to be the good guys. That's what the landslide in 2006 was all about. By so blatantly ignoring the will of the people and allowing the Bush reign of terror to continue, in fact enabling it even more, I wish them all a central place in hell.
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@Phoebe
[Read the article: "History will not judge this kindly"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Often I fear we are dissipating our real power typing comments to an article like this one. "Impotent" and "closed circle" comes to mind. I don't know what to DO about it, either.
I hear, you Phoebe. I have practically given up trying to sway my so-called reps in Congress. Phone messages dissolve into the ether. Email is returned with boilerplate spam. Marching around in front of their home offices seems to elicit no response whatsoever. Congressman Adam Schiff's "townhall" meetings are jokes of mindless platitudes and concerned head nodding...preludes to more of the same back in Washington.
And yet, so long as the MSM (now a handy acronym!) covers protests such as those in San Francisco as novelty events, circuses in which the usual band of freaks parades around for the amusement of normal folk, will such displays ever again be effective?