It is with great relief that we reach the first day of the new year with our minds and hearts intact, at least to some extent. 2009 was a shit of a year thanks to the banks, wall street, the big pharmaceutical and medical insurance companies and giant agricultural-businesses like Monsanto.
We foolishly believed that with Obama in the White House, the U.S. government would magically grow some balls to protect the lower and middle classes against the barons of industry who rule the world. Not so. Obama got in and caved in, instantly, and with the same zeal as those who came before him. Congress didn’t help. It never does.
Monsanto goons control our food supply and are willing to destroy the environment, people’s health and the livelihoods of small farmers everywhere, all for the sake of huge profits and their comfy lifestyles as they shove thousands of pesticides and genetically modified foods our way.
Health care reform was a joke. Medical insurers and pharmaceutical giants won out over common sense and humanity. The US deliberately pays the highest prices for drugs, most of which are unnecessary, don’t work or worse, kill. Why? Obviously to reward the pharmaceutical companies for getting many of our officials elected AND because the industry spends the most amount of money to bribe our officials into making obscene legislation in their favor. Same with Monsanto. With former Monsanto executives now heading up government offices and making all the decisions without oversight, what hope do we have?
And finally we must bow to the banks and Wall Street for tossing everyone they could get their hands on out into the streets and out of their homes via mortgage meltdown/evictions, a problem THEY created, causing more homelessness than we’ve seen since “the Great Depression”. Our legislators do love using that depression phrase. It makes it seem as if they weren’t in control of anything and that it’s merely been a huge vortex of strange events that bombarded us throughout the year. Give those scum another huge bonus. Earning millions of dollars a year apparently is still not enough! But will the government initiate oversight of this industry? Nah! Besides, it’s too late.
Which leads us to credit card interest rates and the rush by the banks to screw everyone over again before the measly rules Washington did enact take effect in February and August 2010. One credit card, Premier Bank, was offering a card worth $250 of credit. You had to pay upfront fees of $256 to acquire it and pay 79.9% interest. Can you say USURY? For those not familiar with the term, it means the illegal action or practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest. Many other credit card companies increased their rates to 30% and Obama said boo-hoo. Then all the legislators wrung their hands in dismay and said “what shall we do?” and then proceeded to do nothing. The new rules soon to take effect are so watered down and convoluted they’re absolutely worth nothing. And the banks win again!
And to the automakers who stood hat in hand begging for money, we say bah, humbug, you assholes should have been paying attention to the environment instead of continuing to build your crappy cars.
Will we thrive in 2010? Will we even survive? How many more people will be living under freeways or in tent cities while the rich have money to burn?
