Seriously. I'm so glad that a local bank helped a small business but the part that gets me all teary is that the people who run this business are willing to sacrifice so much to keep their employees. It just shows what is possible and that capitlism doesn't mean selling your values to the lowest bidder.
But the part that galls me is thinking about a boss taking a six figure bonus the same year he gets a raise (well, we haven't had one in three years) and lays off six people two weeks before Christmas. Is there something wrong with me? I don't get this and I can't understand this and I'm on the verge of losing it because the disconnect is so fucking real.
Sure, you know, I'm not perfect. But hell, I will toot my own horn. My husband is fighting for part timers right now. The way his college works, the full time falculty can keep their over time as part time teachers lose those classes. So the people with a gauranteed salary can chose classes for overtime above those who may rely on that one class for their very survival.
I don't get it, my heart doesn't get it. Gary took no overtime this semester for this very reason. It's the same time that I had to cut my horus 25% and we're managing to get by. What's so difficult about this concept?
I'm not a matyr, I'm not perfect and I get frustrated, this is not to say that I'm better than anyone else. I think part of it has to do with a short sightedness that can never be repaired.
A lot of peope come to Daily Kos to lay it on the line with their personal stories and I can't help but galled with all those "Devil's advocates" who have to show just how smart they are by asking the "tough questions". Really? What happened to compassion?
Shit just happens and you know you can prepare all you want for that rainy day but sometimes the floods still come. Do we stand around as the water rises and ask people, "Well, sorry to play Devil's advocate, but why did you buy a house here? Why are you living here? Hey, didn't you know it was going to rain?".
Well hell yes, we know these things but sometimes we just can't get out of the way fast enough and the ruins left behind are not helped by your preaching or your finger wagging. Talking about all those buses in New Orleans did not do anything to help clean up the endless number of bodies floating in the waters.
So I just don't know. I am having such a hard time piecing this all together. From our President saying "not all of these jobs are going to come back" when it's unclear what jobs he's talking about. I hope he's not talking about those manufacturing jobs that helped people put their kids through college. I hope he's not talking about those jobs that allowed my Grandmother to make gloves and buy her own home in a small town in Missouri. Those jobs matter too because we made them matter.
So as I sit here, I'm having such a hard time making it all connect and keeping my head in the right frame of mind. I'm tired, I'm tired of Devil's advocates who offer only judgment and no answers. I'm tired of homeowners being blamed when real estate gurus can just walk away from one of his twenty homes, not because he can't afford to pay for it but because it's just too much of a loss.
"I can make the payments. That's not the issue. It's a business decision," Watts said. "I tried to work with the lender. The lender didn't help. They said, go ahead, do a short sale. It's strictly business."
But what about all those people who live in that one home????????????? What about those people who can't walk away or can't refinance? What about them guru boy, you who led the call for home prices going up and up, you the one telling real estate agents to keep pushing the meme that real estate is never a bad investment, oh wait, until it's your money, right?
* In 2006, Watts forecast a 15% price jump. Instead, sales dropped 28% and prices rose a meager 2.4%.
* In 2007, Watts predicted that local house prices would increase 7%. Following the subprime mortgage meltdown, and prices ended the year down 10%.
* In 2008, he thought gains of 3-5% were conceivable for houses. By year's end, the whole economy had tanked, and Watts had issued an apology. Home prices fell 30%.
I know, I go through a lot of connections in my diaries, maybe I bore you but I see all those things being connected and in the end, who gets screwed? It's not people like Watts or the CEO's of AIG, it's the people who rely on one bus service as their lifeline to the outside world. It's those people who see their lifeline torn away because it's just not good business.
Are you tired too? Can't we just get a good rant going, I know I can't be the only one fed up with all the disconnects, such as Reporters asking the President how Americans can sacrifice more, why hasn't he asked them to make sacrifice?
Because you don't have to ask good people to sacrifice, they do it because they have to, they do it because they know it's the right thing to do and they know that so many others, who haven't been asked, don't have a choice, they are watching their wealth, their homes and their hope crumble before their very eyes because so many refuse to see how their six figure bonus is connected to the very decline of our shared sense of community and shared sense of responsibility.