Well, think again, government leaders and fellow citizens. There has been a dead canary in the coal mine for a long time — in fact there have been hundreds of thousands of us crying out that something is rotten in these United States when hard work and playing by the middle class "rules" results in financial ruin and loss.
When hard working families fail financially and try to get back up only to find junk insurance, junk mortgages, junk credit cards and junk lending as their options to hang on yet a while longer, the result cannot be anything but what we are seeing now. As night follows day, so too does this collapse of a fundamentally flawed system.
I support a single payer healthcare system because it is the smart moral and economic decision for my family and for my nation. I support fixing the broken systems with not more of the same — how does that old saying go? I don't want to throw good money after bad…
And if we pass a bail-out bill over the next few days, could we at least do so with some better and wiser protections for working Americans who have been stressed out beyond belief for many years? I think many of us opposed to the bill that failed would support a bail-out if we knew those who bilked America would pay the most for it and those who hung on tooth and nail to survive would be lifted back up.
As for the stress relievers? Well, I promise from my experience that one of the things you find out during a collapse is who to trust, who your friends are, who loves you and who would step on your mother's grave just to get to the top… I like the words to a song Janis Joplin used to sing, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose…"
Stress reduction during an economic restructuring (don't you love that?) is best achieved — in my opinion — with dignity and justice. If a future bail-out plan reaches toward those goals, well, I'm on board. If not, well I'll be eating a cinnamon roll, fighting for single payer and singing another verse from "Me and Bobby McGee…"