Choices

On life's journey, each twist and turn presents us with choices, and opportunities. How wisely we choose, how open we are to exploiting opportunities, will determine
our success or failure, and the quality of our lives. This is true for society as for
individuals.
Over the last 8 years the overwhelming majority of American people came to realize that the policies by which they were being governed were failed. Those failed policies caused them to lose their jobs, their homes, their nest eggs, their self respect, their pride, their confidence, and their sense of security at home and abroad.
So, in record numbers they voted for change. Now that change is imminent they have panicked. Out of fear, many have concluded that they prefer to stay with the known , but failed, policies of yore than risk new ones which "might" fail in the future, but which also are ones that hold out hope for turning this country away from the downhill spiral it is now on. This fear is fostered and nurtured by the vested interests which have profited from the status quo, at the expense of the public they
are frightening.
For eight years the large financial institutions worked diligently to erode all regulations protecting the public from dishonest and predatory practices. Once they
accomplished that mission greed took over and ran rampant. The result was a collapse of real estate values, which made up much of the wealth of the middle class, the
disappearance of credit which lubricates the gears of business, and a massive loss
of equity values in retirement plans and personal savings.
Having suffered such massive loss of wealth, it would seem logical that the public would clamor for government intervention to rescue the economy and limit the damage.
But the few who have gotten obscenely wealthy under the system as it was, want to keep it as it was. They have the media power to indoctrinate the gullible that the
government, the ONLY institution with enough power to ward off a major depression,
is evil, too big, too wasteful, and too profligate with the public's money to be
trusted. Only the private interests who brought us to this state have the ability, and the resources to solve the mess they put us into.
They are fighting on all fronts, be it health insurance, and regulations controlling derivatives and other toxic investment
products they foisted on a greedy and uninformed public. Even some states, Florida, New York among them, lost huge sums from their employee pension funds under those
nefarious schemes.
Only an awakening by the public that they are being manipulated in assisting in
actions against their own best interests offers any hope that they will wake up
from their thrall before the opportunity to make meaningful changes is lost.