In Search of Good

The New York Times published an Op-Ed piece, written by Barbara Ehrenreich, titled, "Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor? "

The article makes the point that today's troubling economy has made us all a little less tolerant, and those who suffer the most are the poor.

She writes, "In defiance of all reason and compassion, the criminalization of poverty has actually been intensifying as the recession generates ever more poverty. So concludes a new study from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, which found that the number of ordinances against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with ticketing and arrests for more "neutral" infractions like jaywalking, littering or carrying an open container of alcohol." The author seems to be asking, where is the good in all this?

When times are tough and people are hurting in so many ways, as they are in today's economy, outrageous arrogance, driven by hubris, enables those in power to inflict immeasurable suffering upon the innocent, usually under the banner of good. And, so often they do so with impunity. Remember the infamous lines, "never waste a good crisis;" the statement itself suggests that the powerful are somehow advantaged when the public is suffering.

When corporate malfeasance created a national financial crisis, the natural order of free markets would have been to allow the poorly managed institutions to fail. However, as we know, they were bailed out with stimulus money funded by taxpayers.

When the financial crisis that hit the financial institutions, in turn, created a financial crisis for homeowners, guess who got stuck with excessive mortgage debt?

No mortgage relief for the homeowner however. What's good for the lender is not good for the borrower. Banks foreclosed and homeowners became homeless.

Now, let me see if I understand this correctly. It's okay to use taxpayer money to bail out the banks when they take financial risk, but it's not okay to use taxpayer money to bail out working Americans when they take financial risk. Is this as ridiculous as it sounds, or am I missing something? And, I don't want to hear from anyone about "too big to fail." Please!

To add insult to injury, the former homeowner, now a homeless victim is subject to arrest because he opens a beer on the public sidewalk.

Of course, the corporate managers who got us in this mess still have their homes, their jobs and maintain their upper class status.

Somebody please tell me where is the good?

Doug Wallace is an attorney, a successful entrepreneur and a published author. His book, Everything Will Be All Right is a memoir, scheduled for nationwide launch on October 1, 2009. Doug chose to write his story of growing up in poverty as a way to call attention to the unimaginable hardships for the generationally impoverished. Launched October 2009, available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders Kindle, Sony Reader, and retail book stores everywhere