Free-Marketers Come Knocking on Government's Door

Were it not so serious we could laugh at those right-wing free marketers whose mantra is 'Get the government off out backs!' Well, it USED to be. Now they regularly appear at the Welfare Door of the government.

It is just irony albeit a nasty downfall from grace. Trouble is, they took quite a lot of Americans down with them. The news today is that Citibank is about to make another appearance at the Welfare Door, otherwise it may go belly-up.

Were it not so serious for the ordinary American we might get a good laugh at it all. Sadly we cannot laugh. This American-style greed and narcissism has ruined the lives of millions of our citizens, some permanently.

These fat-cat free-marketers remind me an awful lot of the kinds of people that the Republican Party likes to denigrate: the so-called socialists. Better yet, the GOP target is often those 'lazy' people who 'like to be' on welfare.

I've got one more analogy that I think better suits this sorry knot of gangsters- the irresponsible adolescent or the young adult who didn't outgrow his adolescence. He's the one who wanted to 'get out on his own' and made risky decisions, but then, facing failure, runs home to mom and dad and asks to live in their basement. That symbol of a basement-dwelling young adult has been a theme of the right-wing in its attempt to stigmatize the irresponsible liberals in society.

But now, the chickens are coming home and roosting in the basement.