Rant on the bailout

For weeks, I've been seeing blogs and posts about how

* "all those deadbeats don't pay their bills" and how
* "no one forced people to take out those mortgages" and
* "you have to be stupid to think you can afford X on an income of Y" and
* "what happened to personal responsibility" and so on.

Well, the investment banker/Wall Street types were SUPPOSEDLY the most savvy people out there, but now we're all supposed to bail them out because it's the middle class' fault for defaulting on sub-prime mortgages?

No way.

This truly is class warfare - more of the same. The savvy and wealthy get the middle class to bear the burden. The top 20% own 84% of the wealth and pay only 64% of the total tax burden. Then they get middle class nuts (who continually vote against their own interests) to repeat their talking points that they pay so much more of the income tax burden than they earn in income. (Of course, they don't earn income. They earn capital gains, etc. Or, I mean, their shell corps. in the Caymans earn that money. Don't tax them! That would be socialist!)

Then, when the wealthy get what they want (deregulation), they rev up the system for short- term gain, loot the system via their annual bonuses and options, and then, when it comes crashing down, you and me, and worse yet, our kids and grandkids, will get to pay for it.

And if we complain, we're just "jealous" or "class warfare-mongers." Darn right I'm jealous. I work and pay my bills and my taxes. I don't get the government to pay my bills, and I don't get to shelter my money from taxes with all kinds of schemes. And I'm going to end up paying for their greed. So yeah, I'm jealous. And it's pretty rich (pun intended) to accuse the middle class of tax warfare when you've been lobbing grenades since the Reagan years.