Oh, You Wacky Fascists and Your Outrage!

20score

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Fri Feb-27-09 03:58 AM
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Oh, You Wacky Fascists and Your Outrage!

Edited on Fri Feb-27-09 04:24 AM by 20score

Rick Santelli was outraged at the “losers” getting money from the government. Give their cars and houses to people who could prosper down the road, he said. This from a corporate shill who thinks “Real America” is the floor of a stock exchange. Yeah Ricky, your populism is really tugging at my heartstrings, you’re a regular Huey Long - fight the power and all that. Or, fight the powerless, if you will.

There is also a video making the rounds of an irate Stuart Varney taking on ACORN activist, Bertha Lewis, challenging her, “Do you think these people have a right to these houses?” He joins countless right wing hacks and corporate shills taking on these poor people who have purposely ruined the economy. If only they had left corporate America alone, none of this would have happened. Those shiftless poor people, always thinking up ways to profit by changing the rules; and who’s left holding the bag – the bankers, and billionaires, who were just minding their own business when the poor and middle class destroyed the economy. Took them completely by surprise. Well Stuart, good job on protecting us and taking the moral high ground. You showed her!

Now to do this outrage correctly of course, there are a few handy tools at the propagandist’s disposal. First, misdirection. Focus only on the homeowner who can no longer afford their mortgage payment at the increased rate. Second, and most important, omission. Don’t mention what the rates are now and don’t talk about what they started at in the first place. If the homeowner was making the payments at a six or seven percent rate, and the bank was making a profit - then the rate was raised to an unmanageable eleven percent, well, that’s the homeowners fault. The fact that the bank will take the bailout money from the goverment, make a token offer to the homeowner of a one or so percentage decrease and still foreclose – well that’s the homeowners fault. The fact that no one reads all the pages in a loan document and the fact that almost all contracts are written purposely so that the average person can’t understand what they’re reading… again, the homeowners fault.

Still under the heading of omission is an obvious fact that needs to be avoided at all costs. The bankers and congress wrote the laws that allowed predatory lending and legalized usury. The bankers and loan officers steered people into loans they could not afford, and many times into much worse loans than were available. A 2001 Fannie May study estimates that about half of the subprime loans could have been at better rates, and a 2004 Freddie Mac study stated that 38% would have qualified for prime loans. It’s gotten worse since those studies.

So, you wacky corporatists, keep on gittin’ angry with the people losing their homes. But save some anger for the people losing their jobs. I have a feeling that’s just around the corner.