Just Asking

By now, the entire population of at least one planet knows that the New York Post printed a "racist" cartoon last week which, it is charged, likened President Obama to a chimpanzee. The racism hustlers like Al Sharpton have been operating at full boil, and there continue to be demonstrations and calls for the cartoonist and editor to be fired.

I only heard about the cartoon from a TV report on the controversy, which means that I could not see it "fresh" so to speak. But I think I would have taken it literally: this was a satirical jab at the stimulus package by a right wing paper, and it condemned everyone connected with the bill. I would not have seen a racist subtext which pointed to the President. After all, it was Congress that actually "wrote" the bill, or at least wrote more of it than Obama did. You might even say that people who actually read that imaginary message were seeing a "missing link" (sorry).

But truth is irrelevant to this mob. Even Julian Bond, nobody's idea of a showboat, pushed the wacky (and potentially dangerous) suggestion that it was an implied call to assassinate the President.

But something else is missing here, and it relates to why I haven't heard any public figure or anyone in the media mention it at all. The most glaring omission in this entire brouhaha is the President's own reaction to the cartoon. After all, he is the one who is supposed to be offended. Why has'nt he made a public comment? And, much more important, why has nobody asked him what he thinks?

I think I know why. It is because the power groups that feed off of our cultural divisions, including the media, are afraid of what he might say. By now, we are pretty confident that someone as practiced in "togetherness" jargon as Obama would rephrase the conflict into something that would be so bland that nobody would be guilty of anything! And yes, that even includes the New York Post!

A circle of protection has formed around the President. Racism is simply too profitable a product to lose, and public outrage is one of its biggest moneymakers. President Obama threatens "white guilt" peddlers like Sharpton because his soothing academic demeanor is a real buzzkill. Instead, better to let the self-appointed guardians of their race speak for him. You can be sure they never asked his permission.

No TARP for Mortgage Deadbeats

It's already too late to get indemnity for the TARP debacle, or at least the first part of it. There were no clearly defined rules for the use of the money, and probably billions have gone into the pockets of the very same goof balls who got us into this hole in the first place. So be it.

But now, President Obama is proposing a new influx of taxpayer money to keep people in their homes. Yes, the next bailout goes to homebuyers who face foreclosure because they can't pay their mortgages. This is supposed to be justified by the credit crisis because, it is argued, the banks won't issue new loans and mortgages until the housing market is stabilized.

Not good enough. As a taxpayer, I want attention paid to what I get out of this gift. It wasn't me who signed a loan contract in order to buy a house I couldn't afford. Nobody called me up to ask me to guarantee that mortgage. But now, all taxpayers are supposed to take over part of the mortgage payment so that another goof ball can enjoy the benefits of this crisis.

Obama needs to complete the circle. Provided that the government payments actually do the job instead of going down a big hole because the deadbeat defaults again ( a big IF), how does the taxpayer ever see the money again? Will the U.S. government get an equity share in the house that will be repaid upon the resale? If so -and I think that is likely to be in the law - I still don't think that's enough. I want a rebate on this one. The taxpayer should demand a full refund, including interest, for this bailout money. The President and Congress should remember that the economy is being saved by the very people who did not engage in the behavior that caused the crisis. We are never going to live in those homes. We are too busy paying our own mortgages, our debts AND the taxes that will go to bankers and deadbeats whose selfish, greedy and plain dumb habits have resulted in the most painful economic episode in this country since the Depression.

It's time our elected leaders demonstrated a genuine commitment to the real victims here. After all, we can only recover economic stability, and a sustained growth, if we continue the kind of behavior that is conducive to renewed prosperity. This includes honesty in contracts and a sensible balance between ambition and financial prudence. We should be rewarded for that.

Financial Dinosaurs in Pain

And why shouldn't they be? How would you feel if a giant glacier was crushing you into amber?

The fact is, these big overleveraged banks are dying because of their own obsolescence. These banks encouraged and exploited an American economy that not only continued to make money, but HUGE amounts of money, even though our population had stopped living within its means long ago. Somehow, financial institutions were able to become even wealthier by selling the idea of American economic strength to their investors, even though our productivity had been falling for years.

But, optimist that I am, I think we're better than that. I think America is on the verge of an economic Renaissance because of the new opportunities available to future-oriented business entrepreneurs. Unless, of course, government intervention prevents us from competing.

Don't get me wrong. I am no free market dreamer who denies the importance of governmental involvement. In fact, the most important reasons for America's economic dominance was because government did subsidize new and developing industries. We've been doing this since even before the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Why stop now?

But the latest plan to bail out the banking industry -- at least a day after Treasury Secretary Geithner's announcement -- looks like a loser. The one thing we know about dinosaurs is that they become extinct. That's what is happening now. The question is whether the American economy can only be saved by saving them.

I don't think so. What amazes me is the absolute certainty -- going back to the creation of the TARP Plan last October -- that the best way to avert a possible depression is to put the dinosaurs like Citigroup (my bank, by the way) into rehab therapy until they can start acting like healthy dinosaurs again.

What I'm getting at is this. This country has thousands of banks that are NOT dinosaurs. They are not leveraged up to their eyeballs in debt, and they continue to make loans to the American people. It's just that they were never capitalized enough to compete with the dinosaurs. Until today, that is. They have lessons for us on sound financial management that has allowed them to survive the coming Ice Age. Why haven't we been hearing from them?

Instead of just pouring taxpayer's money, and our future wealth, into the dying behemoths of the past, let's subsidize the leaner, smarter banks that are surviving. Instead, we've been introduced to huge new programs that totally ignore them.

I think the American people are losing out by ignoring them. I would like to see the Administration design a program that would guarantee the expansion of loan activity for banks that are continuing to make loans and do not need a bailout from the government. Why not get testimony and suggestions from them instead of the braindead CEOs testifying before Barney Frank and the House Retribution Committee?

There's still time to tap into this resource before pouring trillions more taxpayers' dollars into a prehistoric swamp, where it will disappear forever.