Re: LA Times: No, there is no evidence that thousands of noncitizens are illegally vo
GOOD LUCK? SUCKER!
From the Atlantic:
The Original Underclass - Poor white Americans’ current crisis shouldn’t have caught the rest of the country as off guard as it has.
Excerpt:
Sometime during the past few years, the country started talking differently about white Americans of modest means. Early in the Obama era, the ennobling language of campaign pundits prevailed. There was much discussion of “white working-class voters,” with whom the Democrats, and especially Barack Obama, were having such trouble connecting. Never mind that this overbroad category of Americans—the exit pollsters’ definition was anyone without a four-year college degree, or more than a third of the electorate—obliterated major differences in geography, ethnicity, and culture.
That flattering glow has faded away. Today, less privileged white Americans are considered to be in crisis, and the language of sociologists and pathologists predominates. Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 was published in 2012, and Robert D. Putnam’s Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis came out last year. From opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, they made the case that social breakdown among low-income whites was starting to mimic trends that had begun decades earlier among African Americans: Rates of out-of-wedlock births and male joblessness were rising sharply. Then came the stories about a surge in opiate addiction among white Americans, alongside shocking reports of rising mortality rates (including by suicide) among middle-aged whites.
Equally jarring has been the shift in tone. A barely suppressed contempt has characterized much of the commentary about white woe, on both the left and the right. Writing for National Review in March, the conservative provocateur Kevin Williamson shoveled scorn on the low-income white Republican voters who, as he saw it, were most responsible for the rise of Trump ...
Yeah, let's blame it all on Trump!
Nope, he just took advantage of the situation, despite the fact that he is one of six "unelected presidents by a popular-vote".
The problem can be chased back to the causes of the Great Recession (2008/10). And that was due to the crass-stupidity of investment bankers who packaged and sold junk-credit
rated Triple-A to the world. And why did that happen?
Because the oversight authorities at the Fed did not bother to verify the contents
of the packaged bonds being resold to the world as "Triple-A Investment Packages". That was the Fed's job, called market oversight verification. Now you tell me how some people who knew full-well that the Triple-A ratings were a whitewash and they made no effort to blow-the-whistle!
Which means what? Fraud was committed.
Mainstreet bankers were falsifying
mortgagor financial data so that they could offer clients loans to buy real-estate. Who cared, they figured, they could always confiscate the property since the mortgage-agreement foresaw the problem of non-payment.
But, what they were doing is selling mortgages on many properties that were not resellable in a down market due to their condition.
These properties (and their mortgages) were therefore worthless.
Did anybody go to jail? Nope - the banks just paid a ginormous fine and we can only hope that they have learned a lesson.
I, for one, do not believe they have - nor ever will. Taking risk is their business, they do it hundreds of time a day on multiple markets. Do they look at the underlying viability of the instruments? Nope, they buy them "on faith".
MY POINT
*If you think that
putting all your money into stocks (not guaranteed by nature) or bonds (other than guaranteed by governments) is a good thing then think again.
*Never put more than third or perhaps half of your savings* into any risk-related adventures.
*And if you disregard those rules, then "Good luck, sucker ... !"
*Defined as total net-after-taxes and common expenditures.