Circling the School. Not that School. Us.

"Hi, folks! I'm Fred Thompson. Like me, you've probably been wondering how to give your house back to the bank."

(Like John Kyl, I did not intend those quote marks to be factual. I intended them to be needles.)

About fifty years ago, when I was a much holier men than I am now, I tried to convince an old couple to sell their adjoining property to our church, at full price, giving them the money immediately, together with the right to live in their house for so long as they pleased. They chose not to sell.

Reverse mortgages are contracts with a bank that calculates how much money the bank will give you, over time, for your equity in your home, while you continue to live in it. There are deductions and fees, of course. Sometimes you live too long. The bank thought of that. Sometimes your kids suggest you are spending their money. Kids think of that. Sometimes--not always--there are horror stories, and fine print.

What offends me is what should not offend me. Fred Thompson projects a likeable personality, and like a lot of other seemingly-likeable people, he accepts a lot of money to sell things. He has a right to do that.

Maybe it is "the sucker be damned" attitude that irritates me. It is hard to believe that the likeable hucksters care that the banks have hearts of gold--real gold--not warm, thumpy heartbeats. Perhaps it is the odor of smart people dealing with old people who might, or might not, realize the trade-offs.

Maybe it is that what used to be good, old-fashioned Republican banks that stored your money, and paid 3% for the privilege of using it, have become cash cows for their chief executives. They hire folksy, believable actors, and use them to bait their hooks.

It isn't Fred Thompson. He is just a well-paid shill making a lamentable living, acting. It is the sharks, circling the school.

Comments

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy. Those were skills to be learned and practiced. I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop. He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes. He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade. Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore. The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up. I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth. I knew how to do that. Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down. On the second try, aimi

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. Even when all they wanted to do w

SmokeSound

Search This Blog