I’m not dismayed anymore. I’m sad. I’m sure I’m not alone. The weasels are in the hen house and have eaten all the chickens and wonder why there are no eggs.

More interesting than the fine is the underlying lie. The company, and apparently the big five are all involved, took money from investors, short sold the investment (this means they bet AGAINST the investor making money), told them how wonderful the packaged securities were and then laughed at them for their folly.

Ho Humm. Business lying as usual. Whats the news here?  We’ve suspected for some time that the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) was bought and paid for, but now having raped the American economy and managing to blame the poor outcome on the suckers who bought into their racetrack scheme, the government fails to even slow down this juggernaut.

I agree with comedian Lewis Black who said “You should expect of your leaders what you expect of an experienced canoe guide.  We’re going down that fork in the river and not the other because down there there’s a *#$(* waterfall!!”  What we have are disneyesque leaders pushing us off the cliff like lemmings, to make a ‘good show’.  We should preserve the banks because they’re our salvation. HAH.

I watch, from the poorest census district in the United States, not 40 miles from nearly the richest, with the realization that we have always blamed the poor for our outcomes. They’re the ones who did this. They created the financial collapse, not the liars at the banks, not the conniving realtors who sold properties they knew would never be repaid, nor the investment banks which rolled all this compost into securities, laughing at the unicorns and morons that would buy such stuff that they themselves had bet against! Imagine that.  An so they have left a trail of devastation and destruction that will take years, if ever to recover from. The folks, trusting their employers to look after them had very low social security payouts but good supplemental income from investments made by their employers – now all vanished at the racetracks of the banking world.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it ws the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way.” I’d hope there would be some public outcry, anger at the blood in the streets. How Dickensian this has all become.

Sadly folks, the Puritan’s didn’t have it all that wonderfully. Life was hard but it was short. There were no antibiotics, no x-rays, no casts, no real surgery (with anesthesia). Hospitals were to be avoided as pest houses and physicians themselves at the time knew they did little for their patients. Some cures were probably worse than the diseases.

If we have modernized medicine, why can’t we modernize the way we provide care for our citizens. Why do we in the land of the brave, home of the free, live with a 3rd world medical care system. Sure people come here. The Sultan of Brunei came here and got wonderful care. M. D., a fictional name, in the north end of Hartford got turfed. Hmmm. Would the divide and provision of care have to do with money?

Indeed it does. The wheels grind exceeding slowly for those with limited funding.

She must be 15, maybe. She swirls out the door of the rattrap that fucntions as home slamming the door, wearing nothing to deceive the immagination. She would be pretty but she has mean and hungry eyes.  They aren’t child eyes of wonder, that luster long gone. The inquisitiveness of memory is locked away. Hunger. Money. Use me. Now.

She clambers to a car, her high heels a misery to satisfy yet another customer. Hunger. Money. Use me. Now.  They are off but it is not long that she appears again, on the street, long legs up and down the block this child lost grown too fast.  And yet again in but a few minutes she is gone from sight. Hunger. Money. Use me. Now.

And so this long afternoon progresses. From time to time, as we all do, I look out my window at some block familiars and some I haven’t and will probably never again see.  They are all hungry. All waiting.  And then she appears but in new colors and new shoes, striding out with her hard child-long-gone eyes.

I see her walk down the block. A throw away child.  I doubt that there is a want ad which reads “Join the fun life, you too can be a street prostitute at 15″.  Yet. There she is.

Hungry. Money. Use me. Now.

Yesterday one of my patients arrived all smiles and cheery… yes.. he just got a job. A real job in a field (food service) he wanted to work in. There’s something radiant about someone who just got a job, a glow and an aura about them. He had been jobless for nearly 1 1/2 years, looking looking but not finding much of anything. A sniff a lead and he was overjoyed.

I hear much talk about how the poor make themselves that way. I see something quite different. I go to the stores in the neighborhood where change is made poorly and incorrectly. At first I thought this an oversight but it happens so frequently that I realized that this is a way of doing business to increase profits, since many don’t check the change. There is loansharking for food, an egregious plot on the poor where 30$ in groceries on Thursday becomes 60$ (or more) on Monday. It doesn’t need much enforcement since there really isn’t much alternative place to go. Additionally the stores carry such small cans of items (2 ravioli in a can), that the prices end up enormous for minimal nutritional value.

Work is hard to find in this poor urban area. Transportation is available but not always convenient. There are dangers, the indolent prey on the poor. There aren’t many but ripoffs and knockdowns occur regularly. Most people travel with one hand free.

My guy. All smiles. He’s looking forward to work. I think most are. Its depressing being marked ‘poor’ and then no places to work. Poor areas become poorer. Business shys away from the area. Poor areas become poorer yet. The spiral continues.

I wish that all the folks here could feel the joy … pleasure … of work, of a job.

Its Monday. Everyone SHOULD work on Monday