I had to write a LTTE regarding a political cartoon

[jmowreader]

This is it...



And this is what I said:

We need to talk about the Michael Ramirez editorial cartoon in Sunday’s paper. It shows a car careening out of control toward a cliff and the president screaming, “we can’t turn the keys over to the GOP.”

Republicans built the cliff with deregulation, California Proposition 13, the Kemp-Roth Tax Cut of 1981 and tax incentives for offshoring manufacturing. They then parked the car at the edge and stuffed the driver in the trunk with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, which allowed banks to deal securities; and finally drained the brake fluid and put a rock on the accelerator with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which prohibited the regulation of derivatives.

Thanks to the Republicans, it was perfectly acceptable to sell a retail clerk a $400,000 house—you almost had to because they quit building starter homes. The bank could then lump the clerk’s mortgage with twenty or thirty others and try to sell derivatives against it. You could take the derivatives that didn’t sell, and make new derivatives, protect them against default with still other derivatives—and keep doing that until the derivatives sold, or until people realize you’re running a casino that takes bets against a guy who stocks motor oil at Walmart being able to pay off a $400,000 mortgage and take their money out of your bank, which happened to WaMu.

The Republicans want to give us all a storybook existence, but the only storybook they have is by Dickens.

[Rhiannon12866]

1. K&R! Excellent points!

However, I'm afraid that your LTTE is probably over most readers' heads, assuming they even understand the cartoon. :(

[T Wolf]

2. Very good. And while I doubt the public's ability (or willingness) to grasp facts, you gave them

an impressive list of specific actions that directly produced the mess we're in.

Maybe a few will learn something.

[jmowreader]

4. I also added a footnote, which I didn't put here

I offered to send them a quick half-page on what a derivative is. Knowing is half the battle, as they say, and the more you know about derivatives the more likely you are to fasten the nearest elephant's trunk to the floor of your bathtub with a nail gun.

[liberal N proud]

3. K&R

[tomp]

5. yeah, and the dems gave us nafta and the repeal of glass-stiegel.

they are working hand in hand for the rich.

[CLANG]

6. You think Teabaggers read Dickens?

You went so far over their heads they thought is was the second coming of Christ coming to rapture them!
:rofl: :spray: