Beggars Banquet

The absence of leadership in the United States was painfully apparent when New York and the Pentagon were burning while W read “My Pet Goat”.

At least now we have HOPE.
Jim

New York Times
OUTPOSTS
November 19, 2008, 10:00 pm
Beggars Banquet
By Timothy Egan


VALLEJO, Calif. — This city is broke. Bankrupt. A ward of the courts. The police have pared their ranks, and every day two fire stations temporarily close, a rolling blackout of basic services.
Do we bailout Vallejo?
What about Philadelphia, Atlanta or Phoenix? They want $50 billion in emergency loans.
Years ago, when a close friend of mine lost his 75-year-old family retail business in Pittsburgh with the collapse of the steel industry, the federal government was nowhere to lend a hand to small business owners.
When aluminum factories in Spokane, Wash., folded after a corporate raider picked them to the bone, destroying the best middle-class jobs for blue collar workers in the city where I grew up, the government’s advice to people losing their homes, cars and dignity was: Learn how to say, “You want fries with that?”
And when this city of 120,000, one of the few places in the Bay Area where someone with a middle income could live well, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, it became little more than a talking point in the debate over bloated public employee unions.
We like to think the free market picks our winners and losers. In its purest form, this is only true in Republican Disneyland. What was left of that illusion was swept away with words that will begin many a master’s in business theses in future years: “When President Bush nationalized the banking industry back in 2008 …”
More at:
http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/beggars-banquet/?ref=opinion