There used to be an old TV show that in its narration included the phrase, “there are 8 million stories in the naked city”, and I was trying to riff off of that to begin a piece on gays in the military, but I just couldn’t make it work.  There are a million gays in the naked military?  There are a million naked gay stories in the military?  Naahh, this was not going anywhere.

But neither is this subject.  Repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell will probably be a first 100 days agenda item for President Obama; at least the executive order part of it.  Although no doubt the actual law (Public Law 103-160, Section 654, Title 10) will come up in the new Congress as well.  Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher has already stated she plans to introduce legislation this year to repeal the law.  So one way or another, DADT is going down.

But as to those stories, there are a lot of them.  DADT policy creates a weird loophole that allows gays to serve, in violation of Public Law 103-160 which prohibits homosexuals from serving in the military, as long as they keep their gay shit quiet.  This creates all sorts of ambiguity for the military, Commanders, and gay service people themselves.

Several years ago, there was an active duty Army unit  that was turning over several items of equipment to a local Reserve unit.  I was in the Reserve unit at the time and was part of the group being trained on the new hardware and software.  Now I hate to pull out stereotypes, however they are a lot of fun and in this case accurate.  Our trainer was a female Sergeant who just looked lesbian.  At a distance, and close up for that matter, it was hard to tell if this was a dude or a chick.  Needless to say, we waited on following the lead from other people in her unit before determining which pronoun to use.

Driving from one location to another, a bunch of us were in a car following hers, which was festooned with pink triangle, rainbow, and other assorted and like-minded bumper stickers.

“Ha!  I knew it!”

“Know what?” replied my crusty old Warrant Officer.

“She’s gay!” I replied.

“Just because she seems kind of mannish?  That’s not really fair.”

“No, because of all the gay bumper stickers.”

“Eh?”  As far as following pop culture, and its various buttons, stickers, and icons, he had lost track shortly after the smiley face.

As we pulled up to the next training facility, he decided to trump me and my alleged bumper sticker lore.  “I’m going to go ask her what those stickers mean.” 

“No don’t!” said everyone in the car in unison.  But he wouldn’t be deterred; he walked right up to her, ready to prove his point that I had no idea what those stickers meant.

“Hey, Sergeant, I was meaning to ask, but what do all of those bumper stickers on your car mean?”

Sergeant Deer-in-the-headlights froze and her eyes got big.  “Uh… those are uh… about people, and uh human rights…”

“Thanks.” Replied the crusty old Warrant Officer.  He turned to me and smiled all smug like.  “Told ya.”

Later I was speaking with one of the other people in her unit.  Yes, everyone knew she was gay, including the commander.  How could they not considering her bumper sticker plastered car?  But she was good at her job so everyone minded their own business.  Someone doing temporary duty at the unit, a new arrival, or some meandering crusty old Warrant Officer could have blown that at any time though.  No doubt that Sergeant thought her military career was in jeopardy the moment that Warrant started asking about her bumper stickers.  That was probably not the only time she had one of those moments.

Not surprisingly, most of the time military people are cool about that.  People know, and just don’t say anything.  Sometimes people are actually protected.  One time years ago, one of the guys in my unit was spotted by some off duty MPs kissing another dude in a downtown club.  The MPs decided to report that to my unit’s security officer, wanting the kissing bandit’s security clearance pulled and his lips and all processed out of the military.  After having to answer our security officer’s question of, “What were you doing in a gay club? (working security),” she promised she would take care of it and then promptly tossed the complaint in the garbage.

But what about “good order and discipline,” the standard answer for those who oppose openly gay people serving in the military?   For people who have never served in the military or who served in the Air Force, it’s a meaningless statement meant to hide bigotry.  But there are real issues that arise in having openly gay people serve in the military.

It certainly brings sexual harassment to a new level.  At the post where I had advanced individual training, one of the girls in the class ahead of me would leer and make comments and gestures to the girls in the common shower area.  This was relayed to me months later by someone who was subject to this almost daily display of abuse.  “Why didn’t you just complain to someone about it?”  I asked, using dreaded guy logic.  “I just didn’t know what to say.”  She replied.  Harassment is a hard charge to make when the harassed is more embarrassed about it then the harasser.  If there had been a naked guy coming into the female shower area, giving the old once over, the situation would have ended almost immediately.

And that’s part of barracks living, not college dorm living.  I spend two and a half years living in a barracks showering in a common open shower area with half a dozen other guys.  None of them were gay (that I knew of) but it would have made for an uncomfortable showering time if some of them had been openly gay.

These two lesbians walked into a bar… well actually it was their Company Commander’s office.  Taking advantage of the open door policy, they met with the commander, and rather than just explaining that they wanted chaptered (discharged based on various military regulations) out, they proceeded to make out in front of the commander.  Rather than freak out, the female commander got the message instantly.  “OK got it, you want out.  I’ll start the paperwork.  Dismissed.”  Of course the wheels of military bureaucracy turned slowly so they were not actually discharged for several months.  In the meantime, they shared a room, their own lesbian love nest in the barracks. Policy for that unit was that sex was not allowed in the barracks.  On the other hand, who else was comfortable with sharing a room with these two?  And how would you enforce it?

By the way I knew both of these gals and neither one was hot. 

Just thought I would toss that out there.

Being gay in the military is easy if, like the bumper stickered gay training Sergeant, you go home to your own place every night, and the personal is easily separated from the professional.  Not so easy is showering together and living together.  In many military situations, and I could probably say in most cases on the two major deployments we have going on right now, it’s a little more difficult.

Maintaining good order and discipline is not the worry of either the incoming President or the incoming Congress; politics is.  But at the unit level where these policies have to be enforced, I expect Commanders, Sergeants Major, and First Sergeants are going to have their hands full dealing with openly gay service people in extremely cramped conditions where privacy is a luxury.  Will it be no sex in the barracks, unless you are gay and sharing a room, or will there have to be special gay shower hours for open shower areas?  Are you being harassed if you are straight and have to share a room with a gay guy, or is the gay guy being harassed by having to share a room with a straight guy?  If two gay lovers can share a room; why not two straight ones?  Would it be better for a male gay soldier and a female gay soldier to share a room?

Having worked along side gay soldiers I would hazard that most of the time it’s a non issue.  But if I were responsible for implementing any policy for removing DADT I would prefer that it be handled the same way policies regarding female soldiers are handled, such as not be allowed to serve in low echelon combat arms units or being excluded from combat arms military occupational specialties.  That would never happen of course.  It will be all or nothing, and given the prevailing political winds, I would guess “all” over “nothing.”

It’s a lot easier for the military to handle gay military members (heh – I said handle members!) when they have an incentive to be in the closet.  It will be a lot tougher when track lighting is installed in barracks rooms. So, follow the Milblogs.  That’s where the real story will be told of how these policies will be implemented.  Only the successes or clear examples of discrimination and bigotry will be in the main stream media.  I expect some entertaining reading.

Now the newsies want a government bailout.

Government aid could save U.S. newspapers, spark debate

Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro sees saving the local newspaper as his duty. But others think he and his colleagues are setting a worrisome precedent for government involvement in the U.S. press.Nicastro represents Connecticut’s 79th assembly district, which includes Bristol, a city of about 61,000 people outside Hartford, the state capital. Its paper, The Bristol Press, may fold within days, along with The Herald in nearby New Britain.

That is because publisher Journal Register, in danger of being crushed under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, says it cannot afford to keep them open anymore.

Nicastro and fellow legislators want the papers to survive, and petitioned the state government to do something about it. “The media is a vitally important part of America,” he said, particularly local papers that cover news ignored by big papers and television and radio stations.

To some experts, that sounds like a bailout, a word that resurfaced this year after the U.S. government agreed to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the automobile and financial sectors.

I can understand the sentiment. Without the media around to keep every aspect of this country, in fact all countries under a microscope things would get out of hand. We need the media around. Tobacco’s Jeff Wigand or Watergate’s “Deep Throat”, these sources would have had nowhere to go had the media not been there to take the story. Dick Cheney wouldn’t have been able to out Valerie Plame had Scooter Libby had no one to leak her identity to. But what happens to our impartial watch dog if it’s master is the very entity it’s supposed to be checking and balancing?

But let’s put that aside for the moment. I’m not too worried that the media would somehow become overly partisan in a government bailout. All you have to do is turn on Fox news, whose Sean Hannity has once again been chosen as the ‘misinformer of the year’ or look at MSNBC’s Chris Matthew’s tingling leg to see that boat has already sailed. There is a danger of course of all media in this country going to these extremes and a ‘Government funded media’ is a scary fucking thought, but I’m naive enough to hold out hope that there would be some kind of rebellion out there that would still exist to balance everything out.

Of course I’m talking about blogs here.

There is always going to be some argument as to whether “Blogs” are real news or not, but I’m not going to get into that arena today. Suffice it to say that I believe some are just as important as the Wall Street Journal or the Washington post. I think 10 years from now the majority of the readers out there will agree with me.

But, that’s not what I ‘blogging’ about today.

Should the Government bailout the media? No, and here’s why. It’s because of the media that we have some of the most worthless creatures ever to walk this planet. Abominations that are raised onto some kind of pedstal where they think they are entitled to any and all things their hearts desire. There are so many of these worthless pounds of seed out there that it’s hard to just pick one. So I am picking the one who is a Hack headline today.

Party girl Paris defends Australian shopping spree

American socialite Paris Hilton has declared herself a saviour who shops for the greater good in tight economic times. In Sydney to host an exclusive New Year’s dance party, the 27-year-old heir to the Hilton hotel fortune this week drew criticism for spending 5,560 Australian dollars (3,844 US dollars) in a 40-minute shopping spree.

Local charities accused her of callous excess but Hilton Wednesday defended the splurge.

“I’m in Australia, I think it’s important to help out, you know, the economy out here, everywhere in the world,” she told reporters, ahead of her New Year engagement.

“And what’s wrong with doing a little shopping? It’s New Year’s, I need a New Year’s dress.”

What reason on this planet is there for this person to be a headline on any reputable news source? In fact, other than the cover of The Weekly World News sharing the spotlight with “BatBoy” what reason does she have to be anywhere in the Mainstream Media. What accomplishment, other than her grandfather’s money, has she contributed to society that we need to follow her every move in the Mainstream Media?

I don’t mind Paris,Britany, Lindsey or any of the other showing up in the gossip rags. I enjoy watching the Olsen Twins waste away and can’t wait until a strong gust of wind removes them from my frontal lobe forever. But for the Mainstream Media to report on Paris’ expenditures is just too much to stomach. It’s also the reason why they should not get a Government bailout. The Government, my Government cannot be responsible for funding a story on who Paris Hilton is screwing now, how sheltered she is to the world around her that she spends $5k on a dress she’ll never wear again, the color of Brit’s new pubic hair and how many times Lindsey fell down drunk last night. If there was ever a true capitalistic,free-market item, Gossip is it.

Ray Bradbury said of his book, Fahrenheit 451,

This, despite the fact that reviews, critiques and essays over the decades say that is precisely what it is all about. Even Bradbury’s authorized biographer, Sam Weller, in The Bradbury Chronicles, refers to Fahrenheit 451 as a book about censorship.

Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.

“Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was,” Bradbury says, summarizing TV’s content with a single word that he spits out as an epithet: “factoids.” He says this while sitting in a room dominated by a gigantic flat-panel television broadcasting the Fox News Channel, muted, factoids crawling across the bottom of the screen.

His fear in 1953 that television would kill books has, he says, been partially confirmed by television’s effect on substance in the news. The front page of that day’s L.A. Times reported on the weekend box-office receipts for the third in the Spider-Man series of movies, seeming to prove his point.

“Useless,” Bradbury says. “They stuff you with so much useless information, you feel full.” He bristles when others tell him what his stories mean, and once walked out of a class at UCLA where students insisted his book was about government censorship.

Yes Mr. Bradbury, we have suckled from the diseased whore for too long now. But we haven’t the willpower to walk away from the table so we have created vomitoriums so we can keep spreading our stupidity to every corner of the country. Paris’ $200,000 hot pink Bentley is more interesting than the 66% drops in the death toll in the war.

If the Mainstream media fails I will be sad. The loss of the great names of journalism will sting. But out of the ashes of their demise a new,more powerful Media will emerge to take the place of the lazy one we have now and new respected journalistic names and integrity will be brought back.

Allowing the banks to crumble was not a good idea, allowing the auto market to fail was not a good idea. Letting the media choke on it’s final tingle, it’s last ‘misinformation’, it’s last cooter shot? Well that… is a good purge.

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Last year around this time I wrote a story called “Not so ho-ho-ho”. It wasn’t the beginning of the financial troubles for the country, but I felt that it was going to be a growing problem with many more Americans and I wanted to put what I felt at the time into words that everyone could understand in the hopes that somehow just that small thing could make it better somehow. I know that’s naive of me, but some times you just never know what will strike the right cord in the right person. Besides, it was the dawn of a new year, could you really blame me for hoping?

That story resonated with a few people because they were feeling the same way. But it wasn’t enough, it didn’t find the right person who could change the way our world was going.

Almost a year later I wrote on this subject again and called it, “A Poor Story” . This emphasized the worsening of life in the country from the previous Christmas to the present Thanksgiving. I have written many blogs in between. Some about the nomination and subsequent election of our new president. Not all of those were in favor of him either. I was..am a Hillary girl. I love her and think she could be an amazing President. Barack was not my 1st choice, but I have come to believe that right here, right now, he is the right choice.

I have written about bailouts and greed,hacks who steal other bloggers stories and does not give them

Image via Wikipedia

credit. Cars, mortgages, and the spiraling destruction of our civil rights in this country. I’ve written a three part saga about things that might have been better off left unsaid, but I wouldn’t be me if I left something ‘unsaid’.

When I dedicated a story to a very special couple who experienced one of the greatest blessings two people in love can experience, my wish was to just give everyone a moment to share in their happiness. We don’t have enough of that kind of ’special’ in our lives.

This year has been a crazy time for everyone who has not lived under a rock the entire time, even my

partner in print had an awakening and found out that things aren’t always what they seem, and his party is in desperate need of change.

It’s been a great trip and I thank everyone who has taken it with me, with us. There will be more fighting, more comedy, more anger and more sadness in the year to come. I hope you will stick with us through it all.

…and like it’s said and proven on the MucheDumbre forum again and again, hang on tight… it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

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In this day and age of excessive greed by our political leaders, trusted investors, and big businesses are there any more stories out there that can anger us? Bailout after bailout, private jets,lavish parties, exorbitant bonus packages… have we had enough? Are we so saturated by the misuse of our money that we just don’t care anymore? Well, I think I have one more story that may be the apex on the ‘era of Greed’.

Brevard County Property Appraiser Jim Ford, who was re-elected last month, is using a clause in

state law that will allow him to retire his official current position in order to collect stateretirement benefits. Then, when he takes office again, he’ll receive his new salary.

Yes, you read that right. Our diligent property appraiser is retiring from his old job as property appraiser, so he can start working at his new job of… Property Appraiser. What’s the big deal about this?

Oh, you’ll love this…

Ford is using a program called DROP. He will get a lump sum check of $337,192. He will also get a retirement check of $6,892 a month.

and it’s not only a $7,000 retirement check he gets each month, he’ll also be getting his new salary for his new job (which is the same job he’s just retired from) that pays him $139,000 annually. .

Who is paying for this? We’ve had to cut $300 million from our school budget this year and if things don’t change, that number will soar to a total of $780 million next year. So who is paying for Jim Ford’s scam?

Maybe who is paying isn’t as interesting as why there is a loss of all this money. Among other things, $266 billion is how much statewide property values are expected to fall next year. Property values that were inflated by nefarious property appraisers.

What was Jim Ford’s title again?

Now, I am by no means blaming Jim Ford or his office for any of this. In fact, Lance Larsen Deputy Property Appraiser was acquitted on charges that he misused his office by giving tax breaks as political favors.

The last blow for prosecutors was when the judge would not allow them to have a witness testify that Larsen kept separate files for people he was allegedly favoring by lowering the value of their homes and property.

Prosecutors met with the judge in his chambers to discuss that issue and when they returned to court, the judge acquitted Larsen on seven counts of misconduct and one count of grand theft.

It must have been some other uncontrollable event that led up to this budget deficit that is going to effect every single aspect of our society in this state. What I will blame Jim Ford and the other 211 elected officials who have used the DROP law to charge the state $300 million since it’s passage, is being a part of the larger problem facing this country. Just because the law is there doesn’t mean you should take advantage of it. Especially in this day age when most American aren’t sure how they are going to feed and clothe their children this winter.

There is another Ford in the news these days trying trying to prove that they need a helping hand from Congress because of the financial abuses by Wall Street and her banks. That Ford is being dragged over hot coals and is as close to being drawn and quartered as you can get for not being more market savvy and fiscally responsible. When are we going to put all the corrupt players under the same microscope? From the giant banks who have broken their promises to the tax payer, to the bought and paid for property appraisers who were the first pebble that started this whole sub-prime mortgage avalanche, all of whom are still raping the system with our consent.

Sadly, Jim Ford may not have broken any laws but that doesn’t mean what he did was righteous either. This bleed needs to stop. This kind of cancer needs to be cut out. The days of extraordinary privileges, ridiculous ‘golden parachutes’ and unchecked greed needs to end, Rome is burning people… and we need to rid ourselves of the elected officials who are sitting and playing the fiddle while she cooks.

UPDATE

This is worse than I expected.. How much more corruption can this state pay for without going broke? How much more school funding can we take to pay for these rogue characters to live the life of Riley? Damnit this is my kids education as much as it’s yours. Isn’t it time to do something about it?

TALLAHASSEE — A growing number of elected officials are quietly taking advantage of a loophole carved into the state retirement law a few years ago that allows double dipping — collecting a state pension while still getting a regular paycheck from taxpayers.

Records indicate that 211 elected officials in Florida — including legislators, judges, sheriffs, circuit clerks, school board members and county commissioners — have taken advantage of the benefit. Thirty-one signed up in the past six months.

They are ‘quietly’ taking ‘advantage’… It’s time to bring this into the light isn’t?

What could that money have paid for?

Gov. Charlie Crist’s top budget advisers are floating lists of potential budget changes, including “saving” $436 million by suspending the Bright Futures college scholarship program, FLORIDA TODAY’s capitol bureau reported.

Well yeah, I mean it’s more more important that our elected officials recieve this money rather than letting poor kids get scholarships to college… But that’s probably ok though, since we we’ve run out of money to teach them while their in public schools.

To date, our district has been forced to cut programs/make reductions in the amount of $76.4 million ($31.4 million cut 2007-08 and $45.0 million cut thus far in 2008-09) in order to offset state and local revenue shortfalls, as well as budgetary shortfalls. An additional anticipated state holdback of $9.8 million, a loss of $1.4 million in school recognition/lottery funding, and a reduction of at least $2.9 million in lost state monies due to declining enrollment bring Brevard’s two-year loss to just over $90 million. Now, we were informed at a meeting last week that the state’s “per student allocation” may be cut by another $150 per student-this action may result in a special legislative session early next year, and will likely mean an additional $10.8 million cut prior to June 30, 2009, in addition to all of our previous budget reductions. All of these cuts total just over $101 million and more importantly, $70 million for the current school year.

As you know, we have been able thus far to maintain staffing and avoid layoffs. If this latest reduction comes to pass, reducing our budget without a reduction in personnel will be a challenge of enormous magnitude. It is my intention to make reduction recommendations to the School Board in January. We will communicate with you again at that time.

What are we doing? When does someone stand up and finally say “Enough!”

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oI was sitting around the Muche News desk complaining of writer’s block; I just couldn’t push anything out of my brain and onto the keyboard; when my fellow muche columnist said, “You don’t have writers block.  There’s just nothing to write about.”  I guess that’s true.  Sure there is the auto bailout, but there is no mystery there.  Chrysler and GM will get their bailout from somewhere.  The White House, Obama, and the Democratic leadership want it to happen, so it’s hard to imagine that it won’t in some form or another.  Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s scandal can’t get much worse than the tapes that have already been released, and the only tantalizing part, what did Obama know and when did he know it, is under lock down by Obama’s Praetorian Guard Press corps.  It’s unlikely that Obama had anything to do with this, but the rush by the press to get between Obama and Blagojevich and shield him from the scandal is embarrassing.  A non infatuated media would at least wait and see where the scandal takes us.  Is this how the media is going to cover scandals for the next four years?

So with nothing current catching my fancy I turned my eyes to the future.  Wow, that was a good line!  I would have loved to have worked that into some English paper to turn in for college. Take that Professor! 

But seriously; the future.

Baring stunning breakthroughs in longevity, I should probably be dead in 50 years or so.  But I care what happens to this country after I’m dead, and would like it to continue to be a great power.  Not just a good one, or an “OK power” but a great one.  So I thought of a couple ideas that I think would help to guarantee American dominance through the 21^st Century and beyond.  Not by any means a complete list of course, but just a couple of ideas to get us started.

Getting our fiscal house in order

This should be a no brainer, but given that we are heading for our first trillion dollar deficit, it’s clear that we are a nation that wants far more government than we are willing to pay for.  How we got in this situation is easy to see:  Republicans are no fan of taxes, but have made little headway (none actually) in cutting spending.  Democrats have a limited ability to raise taxes because the country doesn’t like to pay them, but have an unlimited appetite for Federal spending.  Add both parties in power; simmer for a few decades, and presto! A national debt of over 10 trillion dollars.  Of course that doesn’t even count the unfunded liabilities of our Social Security and Medicare promises, that we have no ability to pay, now, or in the future.  That’s about 50 trillion dollars and growing.

Fixing this problem should be a national priority of the first order.  It’s not of course but it should be.  The first and best place to start is with a balanced budget amendment.  We (both the Congress and the American people) have proven that we are not mature or responsible enough to handle an allowance without adult supervision.  We need some rules and that would be best one.  Just like we self righteously tell someone in credit card debt to cut up their cards, we need to cut up our national one.

In addition we need to redo the way federal budget is handled.  Social Security is a trust fund in theory.  In practice we spend the surplus from that every year, and in return give the Social Security Trust fund an IOU.  That’s not the only one.  The federal gas tax is supposed to go to a transportation trust to fix our roads and bridges.  What happened to that money?  Same place as the Social Security money, into the general pork fund.  I’m not an accountant, but even I know that taxes that are being collected for dedicated purposes, like the gas tax and Social Security, shouldn’t even be in the federal budget.  They should be in off budget separate accounts.  Fix this problem and maybe a dollar will still be worth a dollar 50 years from now.

Taking advantage of the brain drain

We are a nation of dummies.  We’ve allowed the K-12 educational system in this country to fall apart and since we still don’t have a national consensus on what the problem is or how to fix it, I don’t expect that to be solved soon.  However our system of colleges and universities are still some of the best in the world.  As a consequence they attract the best and brightest from all over the world to come and study.  Foreigners dominate our technical graduate and PhD programs. On the world market, a degree from a US University still means something.  So naturally, as soon as one of these foreign students graduates from a degree program with useful technical skills, what do we do?  We kick his or her ass out.

We do have a Visa program to allow people with technical skills to come to this country, but we limit it to 65,000 per year.  That’s a drop in the bucket compared to refugees, family “chain immigration” and other categories that allow people in this country.

And that’s not even counting the illegals.

What should we be doing?  We should gradually increase the number of H1-B technical skills visa and reduce the percentage of the other categories of Visas.  We should also make it easier to allow foreign students to convert their student visa to an H1-B.   Since we can’t produce enough home grown professionals and technically trained people, let’s just import them.  If we are going to maintain our economic dominance in science and technology, we need engineers, IT professionals, and scientists of all types.  We are able to provide domestically all of the sociology and feminist studies graduates that this country will ever need.  Maybe we should export those.

This country is still the number one destination for immigrants worldwide.  As long as that is the case, we should take advantage and get the cream of the crop.

Tax haven to the world

With New York losing its battle with London as the financial capital of the world, we should be concerned that capital is finding other places more attractive than the United States.  We are losing to a European country?  There are a variety of reasons, the financial crisis, Sarbanes Oxley, and even Elliot Spitzer gets some blame for chasing away companies from New York.

And of course there is the tax treatment.  US corporate taxes are among the highest in the developed world.  Although personal income taxes in most of Europe are far above the US level, we make it up by kicking in the crotch the companies that provide jobs and economic growth.   I’ve always found it interesting that “socialist” Europeans want their businesses to succeed worldwide, while in the “capitalist” United States we hate and incessantly attack our most successful companies.  We attempted to break up Microsoft and investigated them for years for anti-trust violations; one of the most successful US companies of the 90’s.  One of the other successful companies, Wal-Mart, is on the liberal ‘sue’ list. You don’t see Finland attacking Nokia for having too large a market share of the cell phone market. 

We need to redo our regulatory and tax structure to encourage capital to come to the US to invest, not chase it away.  There are several options to do this, such as the fair tax, or a flat tax.  We should have as a goal to reduce and gradually eliminate the capital gains tax.  Basically, whatever rules and regulations that successful tax havens have, we need to emulate them so people worldwide will want to put their money here.

These are just a couple of ideas and I’m sure other people have their own wish lists for what they would like to see and this is by no means a complete list.  But we need to start recognizing that the US continuing as a superpower isn’t inevitable.  It will take much effort and work to continue that status.

Why do they need a bailout?

Because even though I’m a die-hard Mustang girl….

I want my new fucking camaro…!

Sweeeet!

The front of this car looks like it’s saying ‘fuck you’..

…and that beautiful ass looks like it’s saying “No really, Fuck you!”

Why else do we need to bail them out?

3 words….

American Muscle Baby….

But most of all?

Because of this…

the 725hp Super Snake Mustang….

Yes….. you read that right 725hp in a mustang….

The Automakers didn’t create cars we didn’t want. They didn’t force us to buy the Hummer,Escalade and Expedition and make them some of the most popular cars on the road while plunging conservative cars like the Chevy Cobalt into the crapper. That was us people. You and I. We’re Americans! Bigger,Badder, Faster is what we live by. People ask, “where is the market for this kind of gluttony?” The market is us. The big 3 wouldn’t have kept making them, Bigger,Badder and Faster if we didn’t buy them and demand more.

No, this wasn’t the Automaker’s fault. It was ours… And now that we’ve decided to go from “teen-age boy” to “old-woman” overnight… it’s our duty to give Ford,Chevy and GM some time to catch up.

Of course, using something  until we toss it like a worn-out old whore is also the American Way…But we can’t do that this time.

Because this…

can never die.

Any questions?

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When I was younger I went to my parents and I asked them to loan me some money. Ok, not really ‘loan’ I mean it was my parents.. so I guess it was more like I asked them to ‘gift’ me the money. I really needed help with my bills because I was being overwhelmed with them.I had fallen on some pretty hard times because of some pretty stupid decisions I’d made. But I knew that if I could just get my bills down to a ‘zero-due’ level I could climb out of the hole I put myself in. My parent don’t like just giving out money to people but they saw that I really was in trouble so they helped me out.

I took their money and went to Florida Power to pay my bill. By that time I was so far behind in my payments that that single payment alone was going to eat a large chunk out of the loan from my parents. As I was standing there in line I realized that I had another 2 weeks before that payment was technically due to be shut off. I knew I’d have the money to pay it in 2 weeks, so I left the line.

Water on the other hand..well they were coming out the next day, so I went to pay them. I didn’t pay the entire bill of course, I didn’t need to. I only needed to pay the minimum due to keep the water on. I did the same for cable and phone. I knew paying the whole bill was better but paying just minimum kept the service on and I could pay the rest in a couple of weeks no problem. I just needed this quick bailout. If I didn’t have the money in a couple of

weeks, well that wasn’t a problem either because I still had the rest of the money my parents gave me, which I was going to save for just this problem. Besides, it just didn’t seem right to pay all of these bills down to a ‘zero-due’ level anymore.

You know what I’m talking about. You have this giant wad of cash and there are so many things you could do with it that you don’t want to waste it all on paying the bills. Hell, doing that is like a crime or something.

A few days later a new movie was coming out and I had to see it! I couldn’t be told what the Matrix was, I had to see it to understand. It was a phenomenal, ground-breaking movie. It’s the movie that birthed CGI. After I had seen it I just couldn’t stop talking about it and some friends of mine wanted to go see it but they didn’t have the cash yet. So I treated them.

It really was a great movie.

My husband and I also went to an amazing restaurant right after that. I remember it was at the same time because the waiter looked just like Keanu Reeves and we were joking with him about blue pills and red pills. The restaurant was a little fancier than the ones we normally eat at but it was worth the $100 check.

Wow, talk about some great steak!

Two weeks went by and during that time we had bought a couple of new things, not things we would have bought with our own money. Since we had this extra money left over from my parents we figured, what the hell might as well buy it now. Nothing big mind you. $5 here, $25 there. We were saving that money to be used later just in case, even though we knew that in 2 weeks we’d have the money to pay all the bills down again.

Image by Nick Slide via Flickr

It was the third week after the ‘gift’ when the power was cut off and then the water and finally the cable.

When I went to get the money left over from my parents, it was all gone. That was a surprise, I mean I had this huge wad of cash that I didn’t totally spend on bills so I could save it for future bills and now it was gone…. I hadn’t even bought anything, so where the hell did it go?

When my mother came over later that day she was pissed that the power was off. She wanted to know what I did with the money she gave me to pay the power. I told her I had paid part of the bill and had saved the rest. She wanted to see all my bills then but I was a grown woman.. I don’t have to show my mother my bills. C’mon… it’s not like I was 12 and trying to hide my report card. She asked where the money was that I had saved and I told her that it was gone. Yeah, she didn’t like that too much either. My daughter was just a baby then and my mother couldn’t stand to see her living in a house with no power or water, I mean what could she do? Just leave her there like that to suffer? Sure I had made the mistake, but it’s not like she could punish the one under me because of my mistake. So she broke out her Discover card and paid the bills off and they were turned back on.

It was about a month later, my brother, who was in graduate school called my parents. He was having some finanicail aid problems and couldn’t make his rent or utilities payment that month. He didn’t want them to just give him the money, he had a decent loan plan laid out. See, he couldn’t work during the school year because he had to devote all his time to law school, so during the summers he would live with my parents and work 3 jobs in order to have enough money to get him through the school year. What had happened though was that his student loan hadn’t come in yet and the registrar wanted him to pay his tuition until it did. When it came in, the school would cut him a check and he’d get his money back.

The plan he laid out to my parents was decent, like I said. He could pay his tuition if they could pay

his rent and utilities. They didn’t have to give him the money, he would give them the account numbers and they could call and make the payments themselves. Then he would have the registrar put the check from the student loan in their name and mail it to them for payment. The whole loan would be in my parent’s control. They would oversee every aspect of it. The registrar had already been told of the plan and had already noted that the student aid would go directly to my parents when it came in and only my parents could change this.

What do you think they should have done in this situation? Wasn’t this a great deal? A deal that pretty much secured the return of their money? A deal that was much better than the one they gave me where I horded and wasted their gift and even needed a 2nd extra gift to pay for what the 1st one should have?

If they didn’t help my brother, is that fair? I mean, they can’t be expected to help everyone right? Where do they draw the line? Me, my brother? My aunt,grandmother… or cousin?

What if you were in a situation where you gave someone money to help pick themselves up, but they didn’t exactly do that. In fact, they kept most the money for themselves and squandered the rest on stuff you don’t know about because they won’t tell you. They squandered it even though they were desperately going to need that money and more in the very near future. But now, here is someone else with their hand out, but he’s got a lot more to lose and he’s got a much better plan. Almost an airtight plan. He may also need money in the future, but you know that you’ll atleast get this money back.

Pop quiz, hotshot. What do you do?

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I had a very interesting conversation with my Tony Soprano mortgage company the other day. With the layoff and the client list dwindling, I’m paying about 65% of my income to my mortgage. Yeah I know, which is why I’ve been keeping up with all the socialistic mortgage aid programs. Think what you want about me but I’m not afriad to admit when I’m wrong or ask for help when I need it.

So the phone call when something like…

“Hello Mr. Soprano, this is EeKay Gee, how are you today?”

“Well Mrs. Gee, if you would stay on time with your payments I would be better.”

“That is exactly why I called…. I believe I have a solution to both of our problems.. I found a program that goes into effect on December 15, the plan is a basically a loan modification. These are already in existance for hardships, but this is a streamlined version that gets the process started and over with in a matter of minutes.”

A loan Modification can be for many purposes, but basically what they are is the borrower asking the lender for either some plan to repay their past arrearages over time, a reduction in the price that they pay or a payment deferment for X amount of time.

In order to get approved for a loan modification the borrow has to jump through many hoops like a

Image by Lori Spindler via Flickr

good little poodle. There is a hardship letter explaining why you want a loan modification and what you would like that modification to be. Past years tax returns,full financial statements including 401k,retirements,annuities,insurance benefits,bank statements,letters from your boss,medical records, stock and bond statements,pay stubs,disability,unemplyment-retirement and/or Social Security benfits you have applied for… and finally a credit check.

Because anyone asking for a loan modification is sure to have steller credit.

The new streamline approach forgives all of that and asks for 3 simple things,

• that you are able to pay no more than 38% of your income
• that you certify your gross monthly wages
• that you haven’t filed for bankruptcy

easy peasey-pudding pie.

Image via Wikipedia

“You see Mr. Soprano, this new system makes it all so much faster and easier.”

“Yeah, but Mrs. Gee this is for Fannie,Freddie and Indymac mortgages only.. By the way,Big Pussy will be stopping by your house later tonight.”

“Mr. Soprano, I’d love to have Pussy for dinner, but while this plan is only mandated for Fredddie,Fannie and IndyMac, many other major lenders are following the same plan. The FDIC is recommending all lenders, including private ones such as yourself, follow the plan.”

The plan is not only easy-peasy in it’s application, it’s simple in it’s problem solving abilities. The lender will rework the loan to make sure the borrower is not paying anymore than 38% of their income, there are various way to do this, as this .pdf explains. Lowering the interest rates and extending the term of the mortgage are just a couple of options. The idea is to keep people in their homes at a payment they can afford and keep the mortgage company from losing more and more money when borrowers default.Which leave their homes vacant and all the unsold homes bringing the market down even farther.

“Mr. Soparno, if you would lower my interest rate from 13% to 6 percent for 5 years and then raise that interest 1% a year until it reaches the Freddie Mortgage Survey Rate you would still be making money off the money you loaned me and I would be able to stay in my home”

“Let me get this straight, you want me to reduce the money I”m going to make so you don’t have to pay me back for something that you promised to pay back?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll give this, you have balls. But Mrs Gee, we don’t give free stuff to people in this country and you … “

“I’m not getting anything for free though, I’m getting something at a 6% interest rate for 5 years and then an increase of 1% until it matches the prime mortgage rate, that’s extra money for you off of your investment. I know this is non-tradional, but the biggie lenders are seeking out and cold calling their borrrowers and offering this to them in an effort to keep people paying on their loans and not defaulting on them. JP Morgan, Citigroup and WellsFargo all are using the program voluntarily. Which the FDIC hopes that all lenders will follow.”

“Mrs Gee, this program doesn’t benefit me in any way so why would I offer it to you?”

“But it does Mr. Soprano. I will be paying you back on your loan instead of not paying you anything and that is a benefit to you.”

“No, a benefit is when I get something out of what I put in, why would I reduce the interest rate to such a small level when I can make double that leaving it what it is now?”

“Mr. Soprano, you won’t be making double anything if I default on this mortgage, with this plan you will atleast get your investment back plus 6%.”

“Yeah, but I want 13%.”

“..and I want wishes to flow from my ass like raindrops, but I’m willing to let that dream go if I….”

“What did you just say?”

“nothing….”

“That’s what I thought. Look Mrs. G, as I said, this plan isn’t for your type of loan, I will send you the loan modification papers that we have always used and you get me everything on the requirement list, if you don’t have something, write a note explaining why you don’t have it and then take it to a notary and get the note notarized. Do this for each individual item, you can’t just make a blanket note covering all the things on one paper. After we receive this paper work from you, we will pull your credit report and if your credit is above average, we will go from there.”

“You would rather get nothing than get something.. “

“That’s the gist of it, yes.”

“Can I ask why”

“Because I do not believe anyone should get a free ride, I worked hard to get where I am at and if I can do it anyone can. If I reduce your interest rate I will be losing 7 points and I am not in the buisness to lose money, a 6% return is not good enough when a year ago I was getting 13%.”

“..and 6% will seem like a butt-load of money when you are getting zero.”

“Oh, I will be getting something..I will get your house.”

“Not right now you won’t. Now you’ll force me to file bankrupcty and while we are dragging that process out for 6-9 months you won’t be getting anything, and when congress approves the plan to allow bankrupcty judges to re-work mortgages into the FDIC plan, I will start paying you back your money with a 6% return on your investment”

“That won’t happen, you forget I have more money to spend on lawyers than you do..Pussy will be there to collect my return shortly”

He’s right of course, it was my responsibility to repay him the money he loaned me at the rate he charged. I have done that each and every month but now, through no fault of my own, I can’t keep paying 65% of my income out to one creditor. To give me and the millions of others like me this plan is not giving us scumbags something for nothing. It’s just smart buisness. According the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, the average foreclosure costs $77,935 while preventing a foreclosure runs $3,300.

When the best interest for all is to take a little less than you hoped to get.. isn’t something better than nothing? Especially when to do so cost pennies that can be put back on to the borrow compared to tens of thousands that can’t be put onto to anyone other than the lender.

I guess not…

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I know they’re cold, but there’s nothing I can do, the power’s been off for 4 days now. Maybe another blanket on them and one on the windows will help. It’s still November, it doesn’t get cold enough to freeze to death this early.

Image via Wikipedia

Oh, if only I could have made something other than cold potted meat sandwiches for dinner, maybe they could sleep easier. Atleast there were 2 cookies left, one for each of them. Milk would have made the cookies better, but that’s too much of a luxury to think about. Ha, even Spam is a luxury these days.

shhh…..shhh, I know baby, I know. Here, lay next to your sister, the two of you laying together will help keep you both warm. Yes, I’ll make something better than potted meat for breakfast. How does peanut butter and bananas on crackers sound? I know bread would be better but we ate the last piece at dinner… I know the store is open early, I’ll try and get some in the morning then. No, that’s your school lunch money, you keep it and eat a good hot lunch, really I don’t need it, I’ve got a couple dollars in change, I’ll get some bread. Don’t worry, just get some sleep.

I really don’t know what happened to us. We’ve never been rich or even well-off but we’ve always gotten by. What happened? Where did it go wrong. I try and think of a specific moment, a moment where I can say “AHA! Right There! Right There is where it went bad” But try as I might, I just can’t find that moment.

DAMN! The mortgage! It’s 3 months late today. 2 months is ok, but 3? What am I going to tell them this time? How many times can I beg for more time. Where will we go if they throw us out? The kids can probably stay with my in-laws. They can barely take care of themselves, but it’s better than the camp grounds, I don’t like it out there and there is no way I’m going to let my kids stay out there. I can live with whatever happens, but not them.

That woman today, why did she look at me like she was better than I was? I don’t understand that. I work! I work harder than she does. All she does is sit there and check off the names of who’s next. I went to college damnit, I work 5-6 days a week and another 3 nights a week. I am not asking for a free-handout! Does she think I enjoy coming into the office and asking for help? Does she think that this is somehow fun? That it’s not the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done in my life? I am not a drag on society, I work! I pay my taxes, I save part of my check each week, I send my kids to school and make sure they keep their grades up! Yes, I am 3 months behind on my mortgage, my power is turned off and my other utilities are extended well beyond their grace periods, but I didn’t do anything on purpose! I couldn’t stop the price of gas from going up, the price of eggs from doubling, and the price of milk,bread,juice from tripling. Fresh fruits & vegetables? Those are exotic expenditures for us now. I didn’t do anything wrong! I worked harder than I ever had, I had to spend more money because everything cost more, I couldn’t help that the money I was making went down drastically. You can adjust when there’s a gradual incline but the prices tripled in a matter of weeks… my paydays didn’t.

At first it was just a trickle, nothing big. I managed the $20 loss here and the $15 loss there. That was ok because that was our weekly extra spending money and savings. A cheap dinner at Steak ‘n Shake and movie. Maybe a fancy dinner a Carrabba’s and a DVD rental. A little bit in the savings account. Sure, it was nice, but those things could wait. But then one week we lost another $50. That hurt, not much, really just a little but it wasn’t going to be a permanent thing it was going to come back and gas isn’t going to go much higher than $3.50.

Another 2 weeks, gas is up to almost $4 a gallon, total lost wages are now at $225 a week. I wish I could

Image by 54east via Flickr

pick up more than 2 nights at Burger King, but I’m lucky to have gotten that as a second job,  since this is the 1st summer they haven’t hired high school kids. It’s going to get better soon I know it.

How did I go from being comfortable to paying one bill a month and hoping and praying that I can get enough money to pay the others before they shut them off? I didn’t loose my job, in fact I have 2? So where is all the money going?

$7 for a box of tampons. $3.50 for a box of maxipads, $4 a bottle for midol and 3 girls living in the home.

$7 for instant coffee. $3.75 for the generic coffee creamer, $2.07 for a loaf of bread…. all luxuries, but also necessities. Atleast the coffee can be my breakfast and lunch and the girls can have some kind of sandwichs. The Salvation Army always gives us something that can go on bread.

Atleast gas is down to $1.95. I just wish the prices of everything else were going down also, but they are still rising.

I guess that’s where all it went. I was too accustomed to the luxury if having things like tampons,soft toilet paper, fresh apples,fresh broccoli. It’s healthier to eat turkey sandwiches for after school snacks or weekend lunches, but Ramon noodles are 5 for a $1 and a hungry stomach doesn’t care if it’s filled with junk or healthy food, as long as it’s filled.

I know that I should have paid the cable bill when it was 1 month old, but they let me go to 2 months, now I have to pay both and that’s just a fantansy. Same with water and power. I was doing so good too. I had it down to a science, pay water short by $10. Use that $10 to pay for school lunches. Let cable get to 75 days and then pay one month and get a pay arrangement for the rest and then use what’s left to pay power. I can turn the meter back on if they come out, so that gives me an extra week or two to pay that bill, that way if I have to, I can pay only the unregulated charges on the phone to keep it on. Cable and the house phone are not luxuries. How do I work without a phone? How do the kids do their homework without the computer? How do any of us find some kind of stress relief without a break that only a phone call from a friend or a comedy show at night can give?

It was all going smooth. It was even kinda fun, it was all small victories in a losing battle. I knew I would be getting a check at the end of the month and that would pay 90% of the mortgage, so everything was fine.

Unfortunately when you bounce on air like that, eventually you crash. Only I kept expecting everything to even out before it crashed. It’s my fault, I know it is. But hasn’t everyone made a mistake in their lives? Am I the only one who has ever made a bad call?

I never expected the little one to get sick and need medication. I’m not worried about the ER bill, what are they going to do? Hurt my credit? HA!HA! But I didn’t expect her to get sick the same time the baby sitter did. I didn’t expect to have to take off 3 days from work. Once that domino started to fall…they all fell. Tomorrow is going to be even colder, there is no money and there is no food and soon there will be no house. I didn’t do anything wrong damnit! Why did I lose everything? Why do people look at me like I am a lazy-good-for-nothing? Like I am trash! 10 months ago I WAS THE SAME AS THEY ARE! Don’t they get that through no fault of their own or very little fault … 10 months from now THEY COULD BE ME!

Why do we need to help the people below us? Because we don’t leave people behind in this country. We don’t leave a man or a woman down. We run back through the bullets and we get them. If they are injured and can’t get up by themselves, we carry them. We don’t leave our people behind.

There are a 1001 reasons why someone is in need. Some are lazy, some are unlucky and some are just as innonecent in their poverty as the guy with the great job,stable job, great benefits is as lucky in his. The unlucky ones worked just as hard, went to school just as long… but shit happens.

We don’t leave people behind. We’ve forgotten this. Along the way “poor” became synonymous with ‘minority’ and ‘uneducated’ and ‘lazy’. It became easier to get angry over our Social Policies. It became easier to say, “This is my money, why am I forced to give it to those people who refuse to help themselves”

It’s your money, yes. You didn’t cause these people to fall, I know. Yes, you did everything right. You pulled yourself up and so can they. I know, I’ve heard them all. But what happens when everything out there is working against you and you just can’t pull yourself up? What happens when you are begging to work, begging to make enough money to pay just a couple bills and feed your kids, not one or the other, but there is nothing out there. This isn’t a problem for certain demographics anymore. This isn’t being seen only in poorest,laziest and least educated of our community. This is being seen in every section of our society. I don’t know the answer. I’m not smart enough to figure out a plan that helps everyone and makes everyone happy. I only know one thing….

We don’t leave our people behind.

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