The Transportation and Mortgage Messes

After reading an article in the Washington Post about public transportation and toll roads, I have decided to give the subject a stab.

Starting with toll roads, their main purpose apparently is to make money from owning and operating them. The very essence of free trade.

The aspect that I didn’t see addressed is that they encourage the good old American caste system. If you’re rich, or at least fairly well-off, who cares about spending a little more to make a faster trip on a less crowded toll road, especially if it is to get to work from a suburb to the city? On the other hand, if you can’t afford the extra change, it takes you longer to get the same distance on a slower and less comfortable means of travel. So the poorer people have to get up earlier and take longer to get to and from work for less.

It was Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko who uttered the famous American motto, Greed is good!, There was a time when it should have been considered as the national motto for the 21st century, but Bush hasn’t finished yet. His spirit-lifting encouragement following the tragedy of 9/11 and the start of WWIII was to urge us to go out and spend money. His leadership has made wealth appear within the grasp of all.

And so, people who cannot possibly afford expensive homes have patriotically rushed to his call and, with the help of a whole lot of crooked realtors and money lenders, have “bought” expensive homes from which they are now being evicted.
In fact, as I write, Bush is reassuring all of us that our economy is “vibrant and moving forward,” due to the fact that he and his advisers have been on top of the current downturn from the very first signs of trouble.

But there actually is a bright side to these tragedies, and it will not come from God. All we have to do, and I do mean ALL of us, is begin to use our heads and think about what our role on this Earth has been and should be. What has happened has been done to us by ourselves. We must come to the realization that greed is not good and the Earth and all its creatures, and all of its resources can only survive if we care for each other. (Isn’t it odd that when there start to be too many animals, the solution seems to be acceptable that we have to go out and thin them by hunting? We are doing the same thing with war, though few people seem to recognize that fact.)

It is incumbent upon EACH of us to start thinking of those things we have that we don’t need (or do) and stop acquiring any more, as well as sharing with others what could make their lives more bearable.