Banks Get Preferential Treatment. Coincidence? I Think NOT!

I couldn’t agree with you more about our preferential treatment toward our banks. It is truly amazing how much our banking system has changed in the past year and a half. I took out a loan a year ago and paid it back on time. A year later, when my credit had not changed, I tried to take out another loan and was denied! In order to get a loan now your credit has to be damn near perfect with a steady income to even be considered. I completely agree that credit cards are like drugs to some people! Banks send out credit cards to everyone, no matter there age or financial status, constantly! This should be illegal. It gives younger and more irresponsible spenders another way to get themselves into debt. On top of that there are people who are “shopaholics” and actually suffer from this like an addiction. By giving these people free access to credit cards it’s basically like giving them drugs and encouraging their addictions. There should definitely be more regulations about the requirements to have a credit card because unfortunately everyone is not responsible. And those people definitely suffer the consequences. They lose their homes, cars, and dignity. I also believe that the bank should be more careful about letting people take out loans against their assets, especially their homes. I know that it is beneficial to them, but it is perpetuating a cruel cycle and again leaving people homeless. Oddly, we do not blame the banks. We blame the people for being irresponsible. Which I find particularly odd because there are documents that suggest that $84 billion of the taxpayer money AIG has received is unaccounted for! Why is AIG not being closely monitored? Why are they getting preferential treatment? Perhaps we should look at Obama’s new Tax Force on Tax Reform. One of its members is Martin Feldstein, a current board member of AIG. Coincidence? I think not!

America the Booty-full

America has done it again. Not only are we in debt, breathing in unhealthy air, wasting an immense amount of resources to support our overzealous lifestyles, unhappy, underpaid, overworked, we are now also FAT. Well, we have been for about the last ten years or so but now obesity rates are tipping the scales, mainly in children. This has become such a global epidemic that parents in Great Britian are now being charged with child abuse if their children are over a certain body mass index. But in America it’s worse. Studies show that an average of 70% of the population is overweight and 30% obese. That means that healthy Americans are a huge minority. In fact, the amount of obesity in children has tripled in the past thirty years. A third grade teacher recently reported that a number of her third grade students could barely fit in their desks. The line between a few Doritos and an entire package of twinkies has gotten very blurry. This is mainly due to a steady increase in consumption of fast food along with increasing size of food portions. In Houston you can get a free 72 oz. steak if you manage to eat the entire thing along with three sides. Similar food “contests” are all over America. Which begs the question, should America adopt a similar policy? Is allowing a three year old to reach a staggering weight of seventy pounds (the average weight of a twelve year old) abuse?

While physical abuse may have permeating mental effects, the physical and health effects of obesity are equally, if not more, dangerous. Not to mention the social effects of obesity in our overly image conscious society. We are encouraged to be a size zero in the media but then are bombarded with a plethora of commercials advertising overly processed food with huge amounts of calories and sodium. The result is fat, unhappy, self conscious and extremely unhealthy Americans. But are parents the only one to blame? I grew up going to an affluent school and our school cafeteria options consisted of “chicken rings”, tater tots, corn dogs, hamburgers and a number of unhealthy food options. On top of that, we were given free access to sodas, candy, chips and chocolate. There was also a small fruit bowl that was refilled weekly when the fruit went bad.

While regulations should be placed on what we eat since we clearly have lost the ability to know what to eat and how much of it, putting a child in state custody is not the answer. Changes are due everywhere, between the portions that restaurants serve, the meals that families eat and the food that schools serve. This is just another way for the government to deflect blame off of themselves for not limiting corporate advertising and blame the American people. We are encouraged to live an unhealthy lifestyle and in many cases not given a choice. Most of what a child consumes is at school. Some children reporting having up to three soft drinks a day and at least one candy bar. Changes are being made but on a very small scale. Recently, a school in Colorado adopted a food program which implemented salad bars, fresh vegetables and lean proteins. Vending machines were removed and soft drinks were also replaced with water, tea and fruit juice. The results were staggering. Test scores went up, students were more alert and focused, more active and overall much healthier.

While it may be easy to blame a parent, there is clearly no overt form of abuse or negligence. Americans are simply following the pattern which we have unfortunately fallen into due to a decrease in knowledge of healthy eating and in increase in food advertising, mainly for cheap, processed and high calorie foods. In 2005, the reported advertising budget for health food was two million dollars. The advertising budget for Pepsi was two billion. There needs to be a fundamental change in the way we live and eat. Surely this will not be accomplished by putting obese children in foster care facilities, it will only create a whole other set of problems.

The Truthiness Behind $11 Mayo

While the author may express some legitimate points in his blog (rant), he does not offer any opposing points of view nor does he offer much evidence behind his claims. Not only that, he has joined the millions of people in molding Obama’s name to make some kind of trite political statement, which I personally think is getting very old. And he’s only been in office for three months.

It seems in this entry the author is targeting the liberal, almost anarchical, government non supporters. He seems to support neither the left nor the right but offers no alternative solutions or sources of power. Is no Government the answer or a different one? The author doesn’t seem to have clear ideas on this, only that he is not happy with the current administration or the previous.

In his dissatisfaction with our presence overseas he mentions that we should pull out of all countries outside our borders, yet in his introduction he talks about the billions- or trillions- of useless spending. How does the author propose we finance abandoning all of our foreign bases at once? And then he goes on to talk about price inflation, which unless you are buying some type of organic mayonnaise made from truffle oil, just doesn’t seem logical. I personally have never seen mayonnaise of ANY kind over seven dollars and even that is extremely high. It seems the author is shopping at the wrong grocery store. And one could argue that the increased price of mayonnaise may be inadvertently meant to boost our economy as a decrease in consumption of pure fat (mayonnaise), will almost certainly lead to lower health care costs.

And then of course, he uses the argument that he will leave our country for one that practices sovereignty. However, the author fails to acknowledge, or realize, that the few places that do practice sovereignty don’t want Americans on their turf (at least not over 90 days) because they are afraid we will spread the disease of globalization or the countries are only sovereign because they don’t have the resources for it to be any other way.

Finally, the author argues that capitalism and war and politics remove the beauty from the world, but it can be argued that oppression is often a catalyst for art, music, literature and other forms of beauty. Just look at the 1960’s. Yes, the media generally offers generous portions of smut but the Internet and Independent thinkers of society have ensured that the feeling of being a GOOD person is never too far away. We may even be closer than we have in the past.

In all, as mentioned above, the author discusses some good points, i.e. the China problem, unchecked spending, the continuation of War in the Middle East, but does it in such a bitter way that his arguments lose validity. Any good political argument, in my opinion, should offer solutions, evidence and a certain amount of objectivity. It seems all this author wants to do is perpetuate the glass half empty mentality. Pessimism and bitterness surely will not solve the precarious situation in which we have found ourselves.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/20978