(From OldBaldLiberal’s Blog on The Smirking Chimp. C&C doesn’t normally publish articles by self-described liberals, but this deserves to be widely read.)
The Ant and the Grasshopper – a Fable from Aesop
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
Moral: Work hard and save for the future!
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Modern Repugnican Version
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC, MSNBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, It’s Not Easy Being Green…
ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, We Shall Overcome.
Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper’s sake.
President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper’s plight.
Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government GreenCzar and given to the grasshopper.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.
The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.
MORAL: Be careful how you vote in 2010.
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Based on Actual Current Events
The ant works hard to sell the grasshopper (whom the ant knows is unemployed) a mortgage the grasshopper will not be able to afford, and falsifies the documents so that the bank will fund the loan. He then sells the loan to a different bank, which combines and sells packages of mortgages to investment bankers who then slice up these securities into manageable instruments, which are then insured by other companies, who then sell shares in the insurance policies.
The grasshopper finally gets a low-paying job, works hard and pays his mortgage on time, thinking that he’ll be able to re-negotiate the interest rate or the loan terms when the loan comes due in the winter. Meanwhile, the ant thinks the grasshopper is a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the housing market has collapsed (based on the bubble created by so many home sales based on falsified documents), and the grasshopper is about to be foreclosed on. The ant calls a press conference to decry the lazy, foolish, and (possibly) criminal behavior by the grasshopper.
CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and FOX all show up to the ant’s palatial home and kiss his ass. America is not stunned at all by the toadying.
No one asks why one person who works hard and pays his mortgage on time should be evicted, when the crook who set the whole thing up gets to stay in his mansion.
Newt Gingrich appears on Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Glenn Beck, and blames Obama, Clinton, and Woodrow Wilson, respectively.
ACORN does not exist anymore, so they cannot come and help the grasshopper.
Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham ask their followers to pray for the ant, and hint that the grasshopper is probably a Muslim.
President Obama condemns the ant and tries to pass legislation that will prevent other ants from perpetrating such fraud in the future, but only a small fraction of his own party is willing to pass legislation that might deny them election funds in the future.
Mitch McConnell and John Boehner exclaim in an interview with Chris Wallace that the ant got wealthy by putting in long hours of hard work, and should not be taxed any more than the grasshopper.
The US Chamber of Commerce spends millions of dollars on attack ads aimed primarily at any Congressperson who would dare to investigate mortgage fraud in any meaningful way.
The grasshopper is evicted, and forced to move into low-income, subsidized housing, rather than having his interest rate renegotiated to something he could afford to pay. He is laid off from work, as the economy has collapsed. His home is confiscated by the ant, who has received insurance for losing the mortgage payments, and can sell the house for less money on higher interest rates to another grasshopper.
The story ends, but we don’t see the grasshopper at all. Later, the ant writes a memoir, for which he is paid a handsome advance, and which joins many other books about how to succeed at business without really trying.
Ultimately, the ant disappears to Antigua, taking all of his money with him, and never paying another dime in taxes.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, remaining unsold on the market until the bank can get a better price for it, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.
The entire nation, except for a few pockets of extreme wealth, collapses, while the rest of the world looks on in wonder at how stupid we got to be. Surprisingly, the rest of the world does just fine without us.
MORAL: Stop letting corporations run the damn country.