THE CAVALRY TO THE RESCUE

The government's rescue plans to buy shares, up to 270 billion dollars, in American banks. There is a 5% guarantee to taxpayers that interest will be earned on the loans. The government guarantees to pay, fully, to those who received loans but default on them (like the reasons for the home mortgage foreclosures. While this seems frightening, if loans are made wisely, we have to assume that some will default for reasons beyond their control.

It goes back to 'Give me a fish, I will eat for a day; teach me to fish and I will eat everyday.' Many people have advocated that the money should go directly to taxpayers to save their homes. That qualifies for the 'give me a fish'. It is what welfare used to be....feed them every day and assume they will never have to do anything but live on the dole and be trapped at their poverty level. Over 50 years ago, black mothers (as well as a few impoverished white mothers who were referred to as white trash) in Chicago, were forced to tell their teen-age daughters to get pregnant so that welfare would give them housing of their own and care for the child. No more was expected of them. Their housing and living expenses came from the tax that those of us who were working mothers, among all the taxpayers, and not even able to have the childcare we paid be tax deductible. I remember being told by a total stranger one day, "You are a mother. How dare you work?" My reply was, "Would you like to support me on welfare?"....not that I would ever have chosen that as an alternative as long as I could support my own family as well as take care of my children with hired help!

We have made some social advances. There are those who would like us to go back to values and beliefs that preceded those advances. I beg people to move beyond that mentality and allow
people to make their own choices about their bodies, have health care when needed (at least as good as that the Legislators have voted for themselves), and educate our children so that we will not sink into the class system of the 1800s of England.

I agree with Bill Maher; I don't want to be governed by people who believe in talking snakes. Religion is definitely not the Cavalry which will rescue us.