BRAD LISTI (b. August 1, 1975) is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestselling novel 'Attention. Deficit. Disorder.' (Simon & Schuster). He has a BFA from the University of Colorado and an MFA from the University of Southern California. He was raised in the Middle West, but his kinfolk are from the Deep South. He teaches creative writing and English composition at Santa Monica College, and he can be found online at Myspace, Facebook, and www.bradlisti.com.
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Posted 3 years ago.
See this poll on: http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/blisti/2009/01/the-great-n…
"Freebie Jeebies"
The free lunch mentality has been at the heart of the crisis from inception, to bursting bubble, to bailout,
to stimulus. Unfortunately, a free lunch is often followed by indigestion...or a bill in the mail.
I emigrated to Canada because of the corruption and repressive policies of the Bush administration. If I'd not had the blessing of spousal sponsorship, I'd have applied as a refugee. No disrespect intended to refugees from war zones, but with a chronic illness and no health insurance, my options were bankruptcy or death. To be honest, I'm not so sure Mr. Obama can pull the US out of the mire any time soon - it's way too deep - so I'll be staying here, in a nation whose citizens are taken seriously by their government.
In time we will call this crisis Peak Oil because that is the underlying cause. The world has just experienced an oil price shock much more severe than any resulting from the mid-east oil embargos of the 70s and 80s. Before this long event, way back in 2004 when the price was still in the normal range, it was widely predicted that prices even as high as $50 a barrel would be so recessionary that the world economy would shrink dramatically. Oil prices then went super-high and stayed up for years until the world economy collapsed. The world credit bubble was a smaller secondary event, a desperate response to the terrrible economic climate created by the oil shock. The bubble did succeed in postponing the inevitable for a few years.
Why not call it like it is. The "Bush Depression" would remind everyone of the tradgedy of the last 8 years and that we should never become so complacent as to not take our votes extremely seriously. Afterall many of us will suffer and work for the next 20 years to reestablish our lives.
My husband and I were the American dream. We came from so very little and worked so hard to provide for our family like all of our friends and neighbors....all for naught. To think of all that time spent away from my children, the hours upon hours of physical and mental labor as a nurse to see it all fall apart.
My dear grandparents lost everything they worked for in the Great Depression and could not send their four girls to college. I remember my Mom talking about the loss of her dreams of becoming a teacher and then to witness my oldest sister graduate college as the first in our family. She was the best English teacher who walked the face of the earth because she new what it meant to have this privlege of an education. Now I wonder too how we will manage college for my children. Dreams live on and I guess we will all pick ourselves up by our boot straps and go on. BUT I will never forget the ignorance of so many, I will never forgive the Supreme Court. May they go down in infamy with Bush and share the sins of this administration for all time. The juxtaposition of Al Gore to G. Bush makes us wonder ,"if only."