I had wanted to take the day off and not write on my blog, but something happened on CNBC yesterday that makes my silence impossible.
There was this outburst by this TV talking head yesterday on CNBC about the fact that the Federal Government now has a program to help people who are having trouble with paying their mortgage. This man, his name is Rick, mouths off in front of a bunch of guys who are working on the commodity exchange in Chicago, and naturally finds a very like minded response from the men around him. Rick thinks that the people who can not pay their mortgage and need government help are a bunch of losers. Sure he is entitled to have his opinion, but is he right to call people who may have lost their job, their health insurance and can’t find a job right away losers? I do not think these people are losers.
Rick and those assholes like Rick need to walk in one of the millions of people that have lost their jobs shoes for a while. I have no problem with Rick or any one else having their own opinion about the role of government in helping people. In a free society, we can have millions of opinions. But I do have a problem with calling people that have worked their whole lives, paid their taxes, done volunteer work for their community and perhaps even served their country in the armed forces, to be called losers because they need a government program to help them pay their mortgage to stay in their home.
That NBC would continue to rerun Rick’s outburst even the next day causes me to question the sensitivity of the people running NBC. If Rick loses his job with CNBC for whatever reason, is he a loser?
Corporate welfare is OK, but helping to keep American families in their homes is wrong? I do not see it that way. NBC and Rick need to realize that the quality of life for all Americans is linked. We, as a nation, need to keep as many families in their homes as possible. Everyone has lost money in the market, but that is no excuse to call people, who have lost their jobs and need to take advantage of a government program to keep current with their mortgage, losers.
Stay tuned.
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3 comments:
Absolutely, positively, correct.
It's not right to label people...you mean like Biden who implied if you weren't willing to pay more taxes, you were unpatriotic? I think we've gotten to a point in this society where we can't hurt any feelings and we can't make intelligent generalizations. I aplaud people who have the guts to call things like they see them, even if it offends some. We need to quit being a bunch of cry babies.
Mark, thanks for your comments. Those two words you ran together make for some interesting discussion, "intelligent generalization". While you live in one of the original 13 colonies, life in the 21st century has become a lot more complex than in the centuries before. With 3.6 million people out of work, and more under employed, the quality of life for all of us may depend on our collective wisdom, and to look upon each of us as a brother in a foxhole with us. There are a lot of good decent people that have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, and at this point, it is my opinion, that we need to come together as we do in a war, because our survival as a nation may be just what is a stake. We, as a nation, need to stablize our economy. That is the first thing. We have stopped the deflationary spiral now, and housing prices are pulling this economy down.
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