Written by Jack Clark   

How about just ONE?

For our purposes, we’ll call her Mandy, but in reality her name could be yours, or that of your sister, or perhaps daughter or granddaughter.

Nothing out of the ordinary in Mandy: Not an intellect ... not a moron ... not a drug abuser ... not exceptionally pretty ... not exceptionally homely ... just an everyday female you’d see any day of the week at the grocery store, or in the parking lot at work, or picking up her two day-care kids at 5:30pm on weekdays. She’ll be thirty soon, and, as a single Mom carries some of the same financial baggage as others of her gender within the same marital status.

Mandy doesn’t make “demands” on anyone. She goes to work, does a better than average job to earn her paycheck, and has long since given up trying to chase down her former husband to make him comply with the court-ordered child support he owes. She’s resigned herself to accept that fate.

There are no welfare checks, no child support checks or alimony payments ever in her mail box. She works for every cent she gets, and pinches every penny – twice – before she spends it, and then only on necessities.

Her family’s apartment is small, but kept neat and clean, except for the seemingly endless stream of bugs squirming through the wood-work from her downstairs neighbors who apparently never, ever clean their apartment. When she can, Mandy takes the kids to her sister’s house, two towns away, and sets off “bug-bombs” before she makes the trip, but the insecticide residue worries her when she brings her kids home.

She has a small, used TV, and a partially working VHS tape player, but they can only be used for a maximum of three hours every-other day, because the electric bill becomes too high to pay otherwise. Mandy makes lots and lots of cold cut sandwiches and “just-add-water” boxed food stuffs, because they don’t require more electricity to prepare, and ... those things are the cheapest edible groceries she can find at the cut-rate stores.

Mandy wants only to raise her kids, feed and clothe them, see to their education and provide for their other needs, including medical attentions when required. She loves them more than anything in the world.

All Mandy knows is: The gasoline she MUST have to get to work, is over priced, and on the verge of breaking her financial back; The grocery prices, even at the cut-rate stores, have continued to rise over the last several months, and she’s been forced to make the sandwiches for her children with more mayonnaise and half the meat than before. She still buys milk for them, but most of the drinks they have are water-based mixes – and even the price of water has gone up. She’s been struggling for months to pay for the doctor visits and resultant medication requirements for her youngest daughter last winter. She uses “home remedies” most of the time, but this last time they didn’t help.

Mandy doesn’t understand the twists and turns of governments, and the votes for this bill, and the veto of another, or what all the political hoopla is about on the television news, or who is running for what office or why, or what the “platforms” the candidates recite in their endless rants. Financial terms thrown about in the news media with the same nonchalance as feeding pigeons in a park mean nothing to Mandy, nor should they.


Mandy isn’t a terrorist. She’s no threat to our government – or ANY government. She’s not a political activist, she’s not religious fanatic, she’s not a menace or danger to anyone or anything.

She only wants to enjoy her right to the pursuit of happiness, and be allowed to raise her children.

Our National Congress has become so deeply immersed in accusation throwing, finger-pointing, name calling and completely overrun with superficial, nonsensical, meaningless rhetoric there appears to be no up or down, no front or back just ... jabbering.

They have lost touch with the “Mandy’s” in our country. They refuse to believe that what bills they write, what they say, issues they vote on are, in reality translated to: ... two less sandwiches for Mandy’s kids ... two gallons of gas instead of four in Mandy’s car ... the ability for Mandy and her kids to watch TV shows and movies (the ONLY entertainment they have) for two hours every four days ... and maybe the loss of the only job Mandy could find.

Too often we all get mired in the gnashing of political teeth and the clashing of ideologies, and we all spew forth our outrage at our oppositions’ words and stances. But the truth can be seen in the price-per-gallon figures on the gasoline pumps at the corner station … at the dollar amount printed in stark contrast to the white price label on the packages at the meat counters ... at the glaring financial insult read on the pages of your electric and gas bills each month.

Mandy doesn’t know it, but the financial “speed-bumps”, the bureaucratic barriers and the roadblocks of greed she continues to encounter on the Roadway of her Life are not there by accident, nor happenstance. They are planned. They are orchestrated. They are designed and executed by her silent but devastating enemies: The Corporate Greed Mongers of Wall Street. And ... the financial avalanche they have initiated continues to roll ... destroying everything in its’ path.

And ... not one single investment banker ... jailed.