B4 we nu it, we landed in a shorthand world.

Forget about Ritalin jarring us out of micro-second attention span. No drug can keep up with technology. Blackberries and texting have abbreviated and hacked our vocabulary to minimalist nightmare - LOL, MYOFB, FITB and SOOI join old favorites AWOL, NIMBY and FOB (or, Fat Old Broad, an archaic, telling bit of sexism from our latter-day, politically designated Stone Age of Sinatra and Chesterfields burnin' all night long.).

But today, especially for us aging Boomers facing retirements with scarce nuts and berries stored up, the most relevant may be an acronym I first heard on CNN Money's Revell on Retirement in January. Nothing better sums up our new reality of enforced solipcism: YOYO... or You're On Your Own.

This harsh, revived "pull up your own bootstraps" social arrangement became evident in the neglect New Orleans suffered during and after the disastrous 2005 hurricane. Months later, in a story about the opening of the first storm season after Katrina, Time Magazine noted the lonely ecology in its followup:

Still, New Orleanians learned a valuable lesson from Katrina: Trust no one and nothing. They're not counting on the levees to hold or the government to rescue them this time... Self-sufficiency is everyone's mantra, from civic associations to city hall.

That may be applicable again today, as another storm - Ida - bears down on Big Easy. Or financial pressure drops on all of us.

In its fine series on the perfidy of Goldman Sachs leading up to the economic meltdown last year and disgracefully continuing now, McClatchey News notes the company, one of the beneficiaries of the federal bailout largesse, has

...dispatched lawyers across the country to repossess homes from bankrupt or financially struggling individuals, many of whom lacked sufficient credit or income but got subprime mortgages anyway because Wall Street made it easy for them to qualify.

These were the same mortgages Goldman Sachs used to back up its snake-oil "securities". According to McClatchey, in 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs "peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told buyers that it also was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting." Nice. Goldman Sachs pockets huge profits from the securities sale, and credit default swap "side bets" when the mortgage market went south. Now, they're prepping for resale the homes involved - just as soon as they liquidate the dreams of peasants foolish enough to believe they could own the roofs over their heads.

And where was and is the government, that cumbersome, expensive titan that would protect these mortgage-holders from predatory lending practices, or the securities buyers from bust-out fraud? Oh... our government? Well, Henry Paulsen, Bush's Treasury Secretary, was a Goldman alum, as are many of the Obama's current finanicial "brain trust"; quite a durable protocol, it seems. Wall Street and investment bankers are the voices Capitol Hill listens to, as well; they can afford the lobbyists who are, in realilty, architects of this cozy regime/finance paradigm. In fact, it's hard to tell where "public" ends and "private" begins at that transactional altitude.

Obviously, the government isn't going to protect us from itself. That would be counterproductive.

"Our government" isn't our's. Like any commodity, our government has been sold to those who can afford it. "Our government" does the bidding of the national plutocracy, all but certified as above redress, capable of holding in manicured hands the power of life and death. Unassailable... and very litigious, very aggressive and acquisitive. The sheriff, with his warrant, his badge, and, if necessary, his gun, is there to help the money changer throw you out of your house, not prevent a thief from committing fraud, or a fraud from sucking up everything of value you might possess.

The overarching symbol of detached rule and deprived subjection is health care. As a supply/demand "product", they don't come any more valuable. In our country, apart from every other Western country for more than a century, medical care - life itself - is available for those who can afford it, or the insurance that underwrites it. We are not to expect help from the government. This is a resource best plumbed by private enterprise. It's a ministry best availed for-profit. That, we are told constantly.

You're on your own.

The next time you try to wade through the dozens of pages of fine print that is your credit-card contract, or watch everything you've worked for auctioned off for peanuts, remember: You're on your own.

Which begs the question: Every April 15, just what the hell are we paying for?