Catholic Exchange

The ARM of Satan

Written by

T.L.

in

Dear United States of America,

I have decided to ask you, the government for a bailout.

My bailout will be considerably less than the billions the auto industry is requesting.

My bailout will be considerably less than the trillions the financial industry is getting.

My bailout will be even less than most government pork programs.

I want one million dollars.

I figure if the financial industry can make the mistakes that they made and get trillions, then I can be honest about my own failures and get my million. I am not even asking for a plural: just a single million.

Granted I have too much credit debt and that is probably crimping my cash flow, but the truth is, I am too important to fail. If I don’t pay off this debt then the financial institutions that I owe money to will have to fire people.

Granted I have a mortgage that has gone adjustable. I knew that was going to happen, but if the economy hadn’t tanked then I wouldn’t be in the position of having to owe much more than I planned in the first place. Sure that isn’t “responsible” in the long term, but isn’t the pride of home ownership worth it?

If I have to give up my house, my family will be homeless and a drain on the social programs of the state and the tenant that rents part of the house will be in the same boat.

You see? I am too big to fail.

mortgage.jpgI know that I am asking for a lot more than what it will take to “really” bail me out. Let’s think about this, though. I am only asking $.30 per taxpayer. I know that they didn’t do anything wrong and there are probably those who are in the same state that I am in, but my life is a priority!

Why should I have to make sacrifices in order to patch up my own mistakes?

Why should I have to change the way that I am running my house and my life in order to make ends meet?

Why should I have to change my behavior in order to do the right thing when for less than the price of a stamp I can succeed and continue in the behavior that got me here in the first place?

How many times have I listened to the temptation of the easy way out?

How many times have I thought that the short-term gain would be much better than the long-term price that I would have to pay because I could always make reparations in order to prevent the long-term effects from occurring. I could always prevent the worst from happening by getting by on more short-term solutions.

Hence the temptation of sin.

Take the easy way now! It’ll feel so good! Don’t worry about the consequences, we will fix those before they happen and then what we can do if they come about is spread the burden around so you don’t look as bad!

The price of fruit on a tree never looked so low.

The price of fruit on a tree never looked so good.

It is time that we got honest with ourselves in this era of financial decadence, especially at this season of materialism and consumerism — the celebration of a birth of the salvation of our souls at the price of our souls themselves.

Can we be just a little more responsible and take the consequences for our actions and repair the behavior so that we don’t fall into this mess again?

Maybe it is time we started to save, not to buy everything in the technology department attempting to make our lives easier by finding new ways to figure out how much debt we are in.

Maybe we need to invest in fruit that does not go bad, that does not lead to stress, ruin, and mishap. After all, sitting down to have a real conversation doesn’t require a payment plan.

Praying on fifty-four beads with your family isn’t nearly as cutting-edge as watching a fifty-four inch screen.

Placating our boredom with the latest phone that can do everything might not leave us with a soul that can do anything, and we may end up communicating less because of the phone that we bought to communicate better in the first place.

I know that this soul searching is pointing me in the way of reparations and penance, but it would be so much easier just to spread it around.

So what do you say about that million?

Comments

5 responses to “The ARM of Satan”

  1. madhattertea Avatar
    madhattertea

    Hey! Wheres MY million?

    Really, if you do the math, the bail out was more then enough to give each person in the US a million dollars. That would be only 300 million; A mere fraction of it. I read also that Obama has accumulated just about 3 hundred million personal dollars of his very own.

    He is so much for ‘sharing the wealth’, well…he should start sharing!!!
    That WOULD stimulate the economy! (note: I am not holding my breathe of course, Marxists are notorious money grubbers, and would never dream of sharing the real stuff with ‘proles’)

    All joking aside, All this ‘money’ floating around to keep the rich and powerful rich and powerful is actually creepy.

    madeline

  2. goral Avatar
    goral

    Marxists are notorious money grabbers, madeline; Hence the conclusion that Marxists are now making the decisions that cover their backside but give us a kick in the groin.
    Free market in this country is now a myth. It’s only true for the businesses with 50 or less ees., the rest is a gov’t-industrial-financial complex that has employed the allegiance of the Marxist media to bamboozle the working class.

    Pray and fast so that we can see clearly the maneuvers of the enemy.
    We’re still capable enough to help ourselves and do the right thing.

  3. guitarmom Avatar
    guitarmom

    Dear Madeline,
    I, too, have been hearing idea to “Give everyone a million dollars; it will only cost 300 million.” But the math is wrong. There are roughly 250 million people in the United States, so 300 million dollars only gives us each about a buck.

    The real cost of giving “everyone” a million dollars is $250,000,000,000,000. That’s $250 trillion. That’s three orders of magnitude greater than the government financial bailout!

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  5. blue8064 Avatar
    blue8064

    If one commits cold-blooded murder, one of the most serious crimes there is, he/she is considered innocent until proven guilty in the eyes of civil law. Even after conviction, he/she is fed and otherwise provided for at taxpayer expense for the rest of his/her life if sentenced to life in prison.

    It is time to insist that innocent until proven guilty also apply to ALL the economically vulnerable. This ought to be the case anytime but especially during an economic downturn. Even if some such victims do deserve some blame, the presumption ought to be on the side of assuming that they do NOT deserve blame. In other words, the burden of proof ought to be on the side of showing that the victim is to blame, if that is the case.

    Similarly, on the question of the deserving versus the undeserving poor, the presumption ought to be on the side of being DESERVING in case of doubt. In other words, the burden of proof ought to be on the side of showing that a poor person is undeserving, if that is the case.

    Also, especially during an economic downturn, the presumption ought to be that unemployment is NOT the fault of the individual. In other words, the burden of proof ought to be on the side of showing that unemployment is the fault of the individual, if that is the case. Assuming that unemployment is the fault of the individual even in a recession simply MUST STOP.

    Even if individual fault can be proven in the cases above, the faults cannot possibly be serious enough to warrant capital punishment. Practically speaking, the deliberate denial of the necessities of life to someone, such as denying food to those who refuse to work, is a form of capital punishment. Laziness may be wrong, but it cannot possibly be serious enough to warrant capital punishment.

    In an economy where there are not enough jobs to go around, some minimum income MUST be provided even to those who do not work. Welfare reform violates the presumption of innocent until proven guilty, and unjustly imposes the practical equivalent of capital punishment for actions that cannot possibly be that serious.

    A good starting point for providing such a minimum income would be to convert the standard deduction and dependency exemption from tax deductions into REFUNDABLE tax credits. In addition, the child tax credit ought to be 100% refundable. That way, even those who earn too little to owe income tax, including those with no income at all, would get the full benefit of those tax breaks.

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