rainydaynews

So I heard a great plan today to fix the economy.

It would solve the economic crisis and revitalize the American car industries. I endorse Crystal’s plan.

Instead of spending $700 Billion to bail out the banking industry, send each American household that makes less than $350,000 a year a million dollars. Crystal and her husband’s plan was to set some restrictions on the spending of the windfall. The first portion of the money would have to be used to pay off debts. Then, of the money that if left, one third would have to be invested for the person’s retirement and one third could be spent as the person desired, as long as it was spent on American made goods.

Since most people when they have that kind of extra money will buy a new car, so the restrictions would also include the proviso that people would have to buy an American car, thus revitalizing the American car industry.

Sure, there are problems with the plan, but it’s better than anything else I’ve heard…my plan is vote for Crystal.

Alina Fenandesz uses the name of the man her mother was married to and not the name of her birth father, Fidel Castro.

Alina spoke tonight at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale as part of the university’s celebration of Latino Heritage month. Her life story begins when her mother and Fidel, both married at the time to other people, began a love affair that lasted decades.

Her mother supported the revolution and in 1959 when Castro took over the country, the man that Alina had known for four years as her father fled the country with her older sister. Over the next few years, she would learn that the “hairy man” she interrupted her cartoons with tanks was her father.

The problem with being the daughter of a man like Fidel Castro is that by the time she was 10, people were coming to her asking for her to help with their concerns. Over the years, she would watch her mother light up when Fidel would come to visit and watched her country fall apart.

In 1993 after the fall of the Soviet Union left Cuba in dire economic straits, friends in the Cuban community in Miami helped Alina and her daughter flee to the United States.

So what does that ahve to dow ith America today? Alina may have huge political differences with her father, but she udnerstands the impact he ahd on the world around him. For almost 50 years, he was the biggest enemy of the United States in the United Nation and in the world community. He was the speaker of the unaligned states in the United Nations and instilled the idea across the Middle East and North Africa, and in Latin America, that the United States was an imperialist oppressor.

Even now, his influence continues. With her uncle Raoul as the new president of Cuba, Alina said things are not much better. Though he has lessened some restrictions on the people including the first ever use of cell phones on the island and allowing some private growing of food, the changes are not extreme enough to make Cuba a better place to live.

No matter which Castro controls Cuba, the next American president will liikely have to deal with the repurcussions of Castro’s Cuba for years to come.

Last night the mayor in Carbondale took action. It’s too bad that Obama and McCain can’t learn from his example.

In the last week, within two days of one another, two shootings took place in the predominantly black northeast section of Carbondale. Residents there told the newspaper they heard gunfire on a regular basis and were concerned about the safety of their families.

The mayor didn’t issue statements or make promises. Instead, on Saturday night, just after dark, the mayor, armed with a flashlight and his cell phone spent about an hour and a half walking through the affected neighborhood. He stopped and talked to residents, got their opinions and listened to their complaints about everything from the city police department to his own office.

It was, without a doubt, a publicity stunt designed to give the appearance that something was being done in that neighborhood. He wasn’t alone, as at bare minimum a newspaper photographer and a reporter accompanied him on his patrol.

However, Mayor Cole did something that neither presidential candidate seems to be able to do. He led by example. He did something. If nothing else, seeing the mayor in their neighborhood gave the people there the impression he cared. It’s like going to the Gulf states after a hurricane or visiting the site of a killer tornado. it’s about the inspiration of the visit, the symbolism, not the visit itself.

Mayor Cole in tiny little Carbondale, Illinois, gets it. Why can’t Barack and John?

In December, 1986, the bank in my hometown in Colorado was closed by the FDIC for some irregular lending practices. My mother banked there, but as a single mom with three kids, her account didn’t have a lot in it when the FDIC said it could take 30 days to release assets in the bank.

However, her employer, a construction firm, was a partnership and one of the partners was a huge shareholder in the bank. The company had its accounts at the bank. And so, one week before Christmas, my mother found herself out of a job because of a banking scandal.

I therefore have some fairly strong feelings about banking bailouts. In 1986, nobody offered to bailout Buena Vista Bank & Trust. The biggest employer in town, outside of the state government (prison) and the school district just about went belly-up. They fired or laid off dozens of employees. The ones that were fired were told they did so to make the employees eligible for unemployment. One was an accountant with 18 years experience; another was my mother.

The company limped along and was eventually reformed under the single ownership of the guy not involved in the bank scandal. Mom moved to Michigan and limped along until she found a job where she has been for about 20 years now.

So when I heard that the FDIC had seized WaMu, I initially felt bad for people who banked there. Then, the news told me that banking is continuing, business as usual, with a new owner JP Morgan Chase overseeing it. Okay, I’m glad that 22 years later the FDIC is more efficient, but I don’t want business to continue as usual.

No, we don’t need a fullscale panic, but some reaction would be a good thing…some reaction from the average citizen or the average customer. We heard from employees that they worry about their job security under JP Morgan and some business reporters said it means WaMu stockholders are wiped out, but what does that really mean to me? I don’t bank there. Don’t have stock in the company. But there is some relevance to Reagan’s trickle down economics theory and what screws the big boys eventually screws the taxpayer.

So what does the WaMu failure mean to me? Or to you?

I haven’t spent a lot of time watching David Letterman since I was in college. Oh, I’m still up that late, but I really don’t watch a lot of televion. My TV is primarily for watching movies.

But today, thanks to The Relevant Rhino, I was able to get a dose of last night’s Letterman. The whole McCain suspending his campaign thing makes me angry. It is such a blatant attempt to play on the fears of the American people (and the world) and gain political ground. But I’m not nearly as ticked off as David Letterman is.

I think Mr. Letterman is attempting to teach John McCain a lesson that most people learn at their first job. Don’t cancel with one group of friends claiming you have to work and then go out in public with someone else. Yup, Mccain said he had to work and then ditched Letterman to hang out with Katie Couric. Generally, when a friend does this, at least in my social circle, we call then a “Liar!” and stop hanging out with them.

Can we stop hanging out with McCain?

I know he can’t solve the economic crisis and so does he. Why pretend otherwise? An economic crisis is not saved by an expansion of the national debt to bail out private industry. The economy is solved by sound economic policies. My husband who has never taken an economics class understands the concept–deal with the trade deficit and there will be more American jobs. Is that what you meant, John? Are you fixing the broken trade policies?

No, I didn’t think so. How about offering actual incentives for alternative fuels–like solar and geothermal power. There aren’t even tax credits for geothermal power even though in many regions you could use it to heat and cool your home. How about tax cuts to make Ford’s new diesel-powered car–the one that gets 65 mph profitable to sell in the US? How about building green refineries to better use the resources we have? Sure, that’s what you meant, right?

Nope, you want to throw money at the problem. Well, that always works. Let’s see—it worked for Iraq? No. It worked for education? No. It worked, hell, I don;t think it has ever worked, except maybe in the Cold War when we threw money at the military and bankrupted the enemy while they tried to keep up.

Suspending the campaign is just ridiculous, but doing it so you can go campaign with Katie Couric instead is just plain dumb. We don’t need another president like that.

The same day that an ABC News poll showed that Barack Obama is 9 points ahead in the national polls, based largely on economic issues, John McCain called on Obama to suspend politicking and cancel or postpone the first presidential deabte. McCain said he thinks the candidates should work together on the economy.

In fact, he said unless the $700 billion bailout package is complete by Friday, he won’t be attending the first debate.

I guess that even Republicans understand “It’s the economy, stupid.”

And, I’ll give McCain credit. Stopping the politicking when you are clearly losing and grandstanding about the economy is a bold and probably needed move. All his claims of experience in Washington don’t help when he has openly admitted he doesn’t really udnerstand how the American economy works. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Obama gets all the intracacies either, but I do think he knows that two days of attention from the Congress will not solve two years of economic woes.

I admit it. I come from a long line of autoworkers. My grandfather was a Ford retiree and grandma still gets a Ford pension. One uncle is a GM retiree and another retired from Ford. The company my mother works for makes some parts that are sold to the automobile industry, though thankfully that is only a fraction of their business.

I have a great interest in the economy of Michigan even though I don’t live there. People I love do live there. So you’ll have to forgive me if I can’t get excited about the bailout of banks and lending institutions. It will help some people–maybe–but it is not an economic solution for this country and I resent the hell out of John McCain and George Bush for trying to pretend this legislation fixes everything.

Yes, John, please get to work on the economy. It needs it. But don’t grandstand and tell me you are suspending your campaign to do it. You ahve theoretically been able to do your job while campaigning for the last year. Now, it’s time to prove it.

I live in a very small community in the Bible belt. There are 30,000 people here, maybe 60,000 when the local university is in session.

I also live in a region where hate crimes are a significant portion of the local history. The KKK once held a formal viewing and funeral for a fallen member in the nearby community of Herrin. In the 1960s, nearby Cairo, Illinois, saw an economic boycott of white-owned businesses by African-Americans because the businesses wouldn’t hire blacks. Neither side would budge and the economy of the community was forever destroyed.

Locally, legend has it there was ashoot out between Black Panthers and the Carbondale Police during the turbulent ’60s.

To be sure, we are no strangers to hate crimes.

So the story I heard today made my blood boil and my mind demand WTF?

On the morning of September 13, a local business owner, Crystal, had a young woman walk into her shop and ask for assistance with the essential oils and bath salts. Crystal is the owner of a shop called “The Country Goddess” which some might call a new age or alternative religion store. She sells jewelry and belly-dancing paraphenalia and stuff from several different religions, including Wicca.

After helping the young African-American woman with her questions about the bath salts, Crystal rang up the sale. While she was facing the register, the woman unscrewed the lid to her water bottle and dosed Crystal with the contents.

“Your mind goes numb and doesn’t want to believe it. It tells you that she accidentally knocked the bottle over,” Crystal said. “But when I smelled the kerosene, I started screaming and running for the door.”

A malfunction in the young woman’s lighter is all that save Crystal from flames. Instead, she suffered chemical burns from the kerosene and the young woman fled when assistance came from a neighboring store.

Now, here’s where the story gets truly terrifying. Right now, my local police department is not classifying this as a hate crime. They initially said it might have been a gang initiation or just a random (though clearly pre-meditated) attack. The connection between Crystal’s faith and the burning seems to be lost on local police.

Duh! Ummm, somebody get me a new police officer, please.

There is no way, knowing the facts of this case, to put it off as a random attack. And, even if it were a gang-initiation, couldn’t it still be a hate crime?

As for Crystal, she’s fine. She suffered some chemical burns from the kerosene and has upgraded her personal security, but I still want answers. Why is this not clearly an act of hate?

Now, they are claiming that they were misquoted and threatening to sue for libel, but two weeks ago, the officials of the Republican party in Macomb County, Michigan, were talking to the press about their plans to create a voting mess in Michigan like the ones that we witnessed in 2000 in Florida and in 2004 in Ohio.

The plan is quite ingenious and certainly legal, but slimy as well. The intent of the party was to get the list of recent foreclosures in Macomb County, that’s suburban Detroit and one of the areas hardest hit by the mortgage crisis, and then send a flyer to each of those folks whose homes were in foreclosure.

The flyers, all stamped prominently with “do not forward” would go to registered voters who had lost their homes. If the flyer was returned to the party, then come election day the party would challenge that voter’s right to vote in that precinct. It is, above all, legal. Technically, if people move more than 30 days before the election, they are required to change their voter registration.

A challenged voter is given a “provisional” ballot and election officials can easily decide not to count that ballot. So, some Michigan Republicans were going to be sure that people who lost their homes lost their right to vote as well. You can read the full story here

As I said before, it is technically legal. But is it right? Hell no. When you are losing everything you worked for, do you really stop to think about your voter registration? of course not. You think about putting food on the table and getting a roof over your head. The laws were put in place to avoid voter fraud, but this isn’t about people trying to vote twice or dead people voting, this is about American citizens who lost everything be denied the right to vote.

And, you can claim it’s not racially motivated, but the plan came out of Macomb County, one of the three counties with the highest concentrations of African-Americans in Michigan. If it’s not racial, why not do it everywhere?

Congress is debating a bailout of the nation’s financial industry that could leave the Secretary of the Treasury with the power to spend up to $1 trillion, yup with a T, in taxpayers’ money and create the biggest move toward national socialism since the advent of Social Security.

Now, unlike some conservatives out there, i am not completely opposed to socialism. I like the idea of socialized medicine. I do not believe that who you are and how much you can should affect whether you are treated for illness or not. I am also coming around to the idea of state-owned utilities.

Several of the biggest oil companies in the world are government-owned, just not by this government. Sure, there would be a huge public outcry and repurcussions if we antionalized all America’s oil and natural gas, but look around the world at the nations that have done it: Saudi did it just after American drillers found oil there, Mexico did it in the 1920s to get rid of American-owned oil companies there. Venezuela’s done and well, British Petroleum is…British.

There are lots of worldwide precedents for it and it might be the biggest step toward solving the energy crisis that is developing in the United States. But, no one in any power is proposing that, so I can avoiding deciding right now if I think it’s a truly good idea or not.

What I do know, beyond a doubt, is that bailing out the financial giants that are embroiled in the sb-prime lending crisis is a terrifically bad idea. It results in the American taxpayer owning something that they have no idea how to control and extends a horrible precedent.

For too long, Americans have tried to ride the fence between capitalism and socialism. Now, we need to make a choice, either we believe in capitalism with all its ups and downs and sometimes people lose money or we don’t.

There is a growing economic divide in this country and by bailing out the big boys when they screw up, Congress is simply widening the divide. The bailout is unlikely to help the average investor, taxpayer or home owner. It will not keep people from losing their homes. It will give a single person, appointed by the president, huge control over the economics of the nation.

Treasury Secretary Paulson may be a great guy and a wonderful financial manager, but will his successor be? Is it really a good idea to subvert the power of Congress and the Constitution this way? Call me kooky. Hell, call me right-wing, but this form of liberal politics scares the bejesus out of me and I can’t afford to emigrate right now.

I know there are more important issues in the world today, but sometimes it’s the little things that upset me the most.

Apparently, some idiot who once almost played for the New York Mets and who appears in an episode of Sex in the City thinks that kciking and beating a cat after it bit him is justified. This article about the incident says he claims the cats death was accidental and yet the cat died with a torn tongue, collapsed ribs and a laundry list of injuries that made me ill, so I stopped reading it.

To be honest, I know nothing about this man except that he admits to kicking a cat. Assuming as a professional or almost professional athlete he is, well, let’s be generoius, and say about 200 pounds, he got angry because a cat bit him and then kicked it. I didn’t read enough to see if he admitted to doing it more than once as the injuries would suggest because the whole thing made me a little ill.

Okay, so it made me a lot ill.

It seems likely that if convicted the man, and boy am I using that term loosely, involved will pay a fine and maybe face a short sentence in the county jail. Unfortunately, animal cruelty is not taken seriously by many courts.

On further discussion with my cat Rain and I have come up with a punishment that we think suits the crime. First, we need an angry elephant, about ten times the size of this cat-beater. Then, we need a small enclosure so the cat-beater cannot escape from his tormenter. We might need to give the elephant a weapon too, since I doubt the cat-beater was naked when he killed Morris.

To be fair, I have tripped over my cat and accidentally kicked her. She was completely uninjured. So I have lots of trouble believing that this cat-beater did not mean to kill the cat. You don’t accidentally beat an animal to death.

The more humanitarian side of me wants to suggest that he needs anger management counseling and lots of it and psychiatric help, as it is pretty well accepted that people who hurt animals often move on to hurting people, but today I am not feeling that generous.

Rain tells me that the elephant analogy might be more apt if I made it a hungry tiger instead. Then, maybe this jerk could learn to respect cats.