Right-wingers always want to leave important business to the states -- secure in the knowledge that it'll never get done

Shouldn't those state-level misappropriators of bankster mortage blood money be facing prosecution (and ideally execution)?

by Ken

Take most any issue of national importance to ordinary Americans, and the standard right-wing meme is: "It's best left to the states. Health care, for example. Yessiree, leaving those insurance exchanges to the states is going to result in really bang-up implementation of the pathetically modest "reforms" of the health care "reform" package. Notice how all the states you knew were going to drag their feet and/or screw it up to start with are banking on the Supreme Court to get them off the hook.

Of course one might ask, in how many of those states are backup plans being developed to improve health care delivery and control health care costs in the event that the Court strikes down all or part of the "reform" package? I don't have the exact number in front of me, but I would guess that it's in the vicinity of zero. A crisis in the delivery of affordable and effective health care? Never heard of it.

Leave it to the states, right! The perfect formula for not getting something done.

I read this report from The American Propect's Balance Sheet and was nauseated. Not surprised, mind you, just nauseated.

STATES GO ROGUE WITH
FORECLOSURE SETTLEMENT CASH

Big banks gave the states $2.5 billion to help homeowners facing foreclosure, but only 27 states plan to use the money toward that end. At least 15 other states have already funneled the money into work as a stopgap in their ailing budgets. Texas' $125 million was deposited right into its general fund, Missouri is trying to prevent major cuts to higher education, Arizona is using half of its money for prisons, and Virginia is giving its $67 million to local governments.

Homeowners are left to fend for themselves. "If you leave homeowners hanging out there to dry, then in the short term maybe you help to meet the budget gap this year,” said Maeve Elise Brown, executive director of Housing and Economic Rights Advocates, to The New York Times. “But in the long term the more people we have going through foreclosure, the worse it’s going to be for our economy as a whole.”

I suppose it's possible to have deep-rooted ideological objections to helping victims of the housing bubble and the economic meltdown stay in their homes. In which case, I guess, when you're offered some of that modest bankster blood money, you just say, "No, thanks, we're happy to see those people booted out of their homes. It's the American way."

You can do that. It would be nice to know whether your state's troubled mortgage holders agree, but still, I guess you can do that. What you can't do is misappropriate the money for other uses, like to try to plug the gaps left by the right-wing ideological sociopaths' war on government. That's stealing, and the offenders should be prosecuted and, ideally, executed. (What's the point of having a death penalty if you don't use it on people like this?)

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