IN order to fish, the fish have to be biting. In order to “pull your self up by your boot straps”, you have to have boot straps. We are still losing jobs. Even after jobs return, it will take years to absorb all of the unemployed. Right now, the fish are not biting, and there are no boot straps.

I feel for people in these difficult times. I am fully employed. I have a very stable, highly specialized job in the health care field. I will never need to use unemployment insurance, but I fully empathize with those less fortunate.

As for the “living free” in the inland empire, I think it is a perfect temporary solution to a huge problem. Its probably the best non-government legislated stimulus possible. Its actually a better stimulus than anything the government has done to date. It helps keep people off the street, including innocent children. Many of these people are probably eating, that otherwise might not be eating very well.

And the banks are dragging their feet, for debatable reasons, so what difference does it make? And I don’t feel sorry for the banks, and I don’t feel sorry for greedy investors. But I certainly do feel sorry for average people, that bought an overly price inflated house, who have since fallen with the difficult economic times. Before we condemn average people for making a “poor economic decision”, remember that the drum to buy, with the messaging that “housing will never go down”, because “it never does”, and “if you don’t buy now, you’ll be priced out forever” was beating loudly for several years. Banks, realtors, and the Corporate Media all colluded to fool the public.

And how have we asked them to pay for what they did?