Hard Times
Prior to the 2000 presidential elections, candidate George W. Bush assured all Americans that he was “a uniter, not a divider.” When America elected Al Gore with 596,000 more votes—which somehow allowed Mr. Bush a back-alley pass into the White House—our new president assured us once again that he was going to unite America. In the disastrous seven years since, President George W. Bush did not keep that promise. Rather he divided this country like no president before him. Any conversation nowadays of a political, social, or religious nature is defined by red vs. blue, Liberal vs. Conservative, love Bush or hate him. We have become a country divided. Proof can be heard any time some right wing pundit or talk show host insists that Democrats or those on the left are hoping for failure in Iraq, fearful of being hurt in the 2008 elections if the situation in Iraq improves. This is a pathetically partisan pile of nonsense pontificated by the war mongers, and a sad illustration of the fact that not only has President Bush divided our country along political lines, he’s divided us along intellectual ones as well.
Mark J. DeRoin
Springfield
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This letter is in response to the recent news concerning the sub-prime mortgage meltdown and its impact on the rest of the economy. Until recently I was an underwriter for a sub-prime mortgage company that is about to close. It seems that most media outlets and government officials feign ignorance about the real cause of the problem. There is either a tendency to blame the borrower or act as though no one in the industry (or outside it) saw this coming. They fail to mention that those who gained the most financially got off scot free while leaving the mess behind for everyone else to clean up. In my former company, the sales managers and loan officers “held the keys to the safe” while deciding which guidelines to ignore, sometimes going so far as to bribe fellow underwriters to “look the other way.” Sales managers often overrode an underwriter’s decision they did not agree with. Fellow underwriters would be threatened with loss of their jobs for “impeding company growth and progress” because they refused to go along with the flagrant disregard of guidelines. I complained to the sales managers about the bribing but all I got was a formal write-up for making “inappropriate comments.” As a result of the corrupt management of this company, I and several hundred others were laid off. I believe the federal government needs to investigate this company and bring to trial those individuals who broke the law. This would set an example for the rest of the mortgage industry.
Joe Bialek
Cleveland, Ohio
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Correction: In our Sept. 27, 2007 cover story, “Presidents, Pundits and Propaganda,” we misidentified the Vietnam-era senator who stood up against the war. His name was Wayne Morse, not Wayne Morris. In 1964, Morse, the U.S. Senator from Oregon, was one of only two senators (the other was Alaska’s Ernest Gruening) to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which enabled further U.S. involvement in the war.
