Friday, July 23, 2010

Getting it off my chest

I really try to stay away from politics (I really don't count my post about the Tennessee gubernatorial election as political -- yes, it was about an election, but more about the peculiarities of human nature) and I know my political posts get the least comments than any of the others.

That should tell me something. Still, sometimes I need to express an opinion and, well, this is my forum. I never, ever mean to offend and I understand there are those who disagree. That's fine.

Here goes:

-- This new Financial Reform legislation is a stinker, that's all there is to it. It contains upwards of 2,000 pages of new regulations that will apply largely to financial institutions that had NOTHING, I repeat, NOTHING to do with the financial crisis through which we have just lived (and are still living, to a large extent). To the average consumer, it's just going to make banking more complicated.

To me, a lawyer for a bank, well, maybe it's job security, but right now it just stresses me out. I get e-mails every day from law firms and consultants just dying to tell me what it all says and what it all means -- for a fee, of course. Like they know!

All I know is we'll have a new regulator to deal with on top of the other one I deal with every day. I just don't get how that's going to help anybody.

-- Would someone please explain to me what the State of Arizona did wrong by passing a law that requires immigrants to, essentially, be legal? I just don't get what's wrong with that, and why President Obama felt like he had to tax the resources of the federal government and sue Arizona (other than, perhaps, being -- get ready for this -- politically motivated????)

My friend Steve wrote a great post about this a while back. His reasoning makes perfect sense, which is why I'm just hijacking it for your perusal if you want to read more.

I will add what I have long told my children: there are rules everywhere, whether at home, school, in the workplace, or wherever. We might not like those rules, but that does not mean we do not have to observe them.

If the feds are successful in overturning the Arizona law, then somebody on the federal level better get busy enforcing the rules so states like Arizona won't have to take the action they took in the first place.

OK, I feel better, and I promise to return to lighter topics.

2 comments:

Kelly said...

Please.... don't get me started!!!

I'm in total agreement with you on the majority of this.

Pam said...

Well, we've got to find SOME viable way to deal with illegal immigration! Might as well start somewhere.

Of course, we could start by ENFORCING many of the laws already on the books. One thing we could do is punish those who hire illegals.

About the financial reforms..... From most of the commentary I've heard in the past couple of days it would appear that there's not that much that will help the consumer and just a lot more layers of things that can and probably will go wrong.

All we need is MORE bureaucracy..

Sometimes a do-nothing Congress is the best Congress..