The more things change…
The new year is feeling remarkably like the old year in all of the worst ways. It’s the old “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” I had really hoped some magic would happen at midnight December 31st. Really.
So much for magical thinking. Maybe I should have listened to Oprah and bought The Secret.
The first working day of the new year I got an increase in my health insurance premium. Up 20 percent from December. Should it really cost me $1,000 a month for an HMO? Really? Who can afford this? Certainly not me, an under-employed writer who makes crafts to supplement my income since two of the newspapers I had worked for for over 16 years went bankrupt at the end of 2008. I’m doing more writing for less money than at any point in my 30 year writing career.
The news, then, that six of the major Wall Street banks, including AIG and Bank of America—which the Obama Administration and the taxpayers bailed out handsomely—are currently preparing to give out $112 billion in bonuses kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Severely, as my ten-year-old niece would say.
I listened patiently (I can’t afford to replace my TV) as a member of the Bank of America board explained why these bonuses were necessary to maintain the best and the brightest in their industry. And besides, he noted, the banks paid back the money they borrowed from the government and you and me.
So they did. But they were not being charged the 30 percent borrowing rates compounded daily that most of us are paying on the credit cards we could not survive without. Credit cards we can never really hope to pay off or sometimes even down unless we win a lottery.
Try paying $12,000 a year just for your HMO plus 30 percent for your credit cards that pay for your groceries. Then I will believe you deserve a bonus.
As unhappy as I am with Wall Street, I am that much more unhappy with Washington. Some Democrats/liberals are pooh-poohing the heavy media intonations over the resignations of two Democratic senators.
I agree. It’s over-kill. The resignations of Dodd of Connecticut, who was never going to be re-elected anyway, and Dorgen of North Dakota (I still cannot believe that a state with a fifth of the number of people in my city gets two senators) who clearly just never wants to go back to North Dakota again (and who can blame him?) are really not in and of themselves life-altering.
But while some liberal pundits have been going all smug about this and saying that the right is over-reacting (as they are wont to do), the fact is, the left is under-reacting (as they are wont to do).
Where will we be in November 2010 when the mid-term elections take place? Who knows. Everything might change. I hope it does. But some realities obtain. Every year Americans get more fed up with how crappy their lives are. I’m not the only under-employed person with health problems, stupefyingly high medical bills and maxed-out credit cards. In fact, I pretty much typify a lot of Americans. Plus historically speaking–not that we ever pay attention to historical precedent in this country–mid-term elections knock the pins out from under the party in power. And although they never, ever act like it, the Democrats are the party in power.
All of which makes me profoundly unhappy with Congress and anyone else in Washington who I voted for (yes, that means you, Mr. President). That the interneccine fighting that gets nothing done supercedes my very real bread and butter issues on a daily basis is frustrating at best. After all, these people have health insurance.
I cannot afford to pay for my health insurance any more. I have to continue to pay for it with money I don’t have because I am sick and need it. What kind of American Dream choice is that?
Oh right–it isn’t one. Someone should tell Washington and both sides of the aisle that you don’t have to be a crazed teabagger to be pissed off at how things are. My vote is all I really have to fight with. So for those whose names will be on the ticket in November, it’s a good thing that the mid-term election isn’t today. —VAB
