Category Archives: Politics

The National Mall – The National Disgrace

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A few weeks ago we visited Washington D.C. and while there we took the time to visit the National Mall. It had been years since I’d seen the White House or that Lincoln Memorial, and I had yet to see new memorials such as the World War II memorial and the Vietnam War Memorial. You visit a memorial to pay respects and the be impressed. I left the mall feeling a bit sick to my stomach at the condition of the mall.

Some of the things I saw:

  • The reflecting pool is filled with green, fetid water
  • Duck and geese feces litter the areas surrounding the pool
  • The grass that immediately surrounds the pool has been worn to a 15 foot wide dirt path

Word is that there was $200 million removed from the stimulus package that would have been dedicated to fixing major problems. According an article from the Philadelphia Inquirer article, earmarks are another issue. One thing I do know is that this is a disgrace. Many people will say that we have other things to worry about in this day and age and I don’t disagree. But worrying about other things doesn’t mean your forget everything else; we pay our public officials to multitask? It’s as if we have decided to not clean or take care of our house because we have to work. When someone walks into my house and it hasn’t been cleaned or taken care of, I’m embarrassed. I feel the same way about the mall – I’m embarrassed to allow visitors to see it. We’ve been lazy and derelict in our responsibilities.

I found a  picture  of the  reflecting pool facing the Washington Monument  from 2005 – a few short years ago, and the difference is remarkable. Just because “these are difficult times”, doesn’t mean we can simply ignore all of our responsibilities. As much as we need to keep things up for today’s sake, we need to maintain our cities and infrastructure for future generations. Because the District of Columbia doesn’t have representation in Congress, it’s the responsobility of our elected officials to maintain the house in which they work and that has come to represent our country to others.

If this is how we treat a national symbol – imagine how we treat the rest of the country.

The first shot  is a picture found on Wikimedia Commons that shows the National Mall as recently as 2005. The other shots were taken 3 weeks ago by myself on our visit.

The new America

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Obama Supreme CourtToday I saw a black President of the United States present a Puerto Rican woman as his nominee for the Supreme Court. Today we saw more of the new America.

The conservatives are going to have a hard time with Sonia Sotomayor. She works in a district where the death penalty isn’t used and abortion rights aren’t challenged much – so there isn’t a lot of mud on her record to sling.

Conservatives will find some reason to hate her but what people need to remember over the next few months is that most of what you hear is entirely partisan. If Obama had nominated a Republican old white male, the conservatives would find a problem him. It’s the old rule – object to everything; but this is the new America –  the old rules don’t apply here.

When Obama was nominated he gave people all over the world to feel proud, for they could look at themselves, their children, their community and say the top floor doesn’t seem so out of reach now. Now Sotomayor’s nomination confirms that swelling of pride. The best and brightest don’t need to come from prep schools in Connecticut – they can come from the projects in the Bronx.

I’m as proud today as I was on January 20. And I suspect millions of Americans feel that same way.

I dare the conservatives to take that on.

You versus the economy: Banks get the smackdown

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The big news coming out of Washington this week has to do with the Obama administration and congress industry putting the smackdown on the credit industry by actually attempting to reign in their predatory lending habits. A friend had the following comment on my Facebook page:

It’s insane that our entire banking industry relies so much on people being in debt.

I love that comment.   Over time our the health of many companies has come at the expense of tax payers.   Consumers are getting squeezed everywhere because corporations need to make more money.

A lot of people will say they don’t use credit cards – instead relying on debit cards.   Others will say that they will pay off their cards monthly.   Not everyone can do this though.   Many people rely on credit cards to make it through a rough stretch, and while it’s not a good idea, if you don’t have a choice, it’s a nice option to have. The problem is that the credit industry holds you hostage by ruining your ability to get more credit say to buy a house or a car, and in some cases can prevent you from getting a job through credit histories.   This is too much power to give over to banks.

What’s worse is that when the law was changed in 1979 banks moved to Delaware and South Dakota who attracted them by getting rid of usury laws. So your vote in your home state can do nothing to regulate these banks.

While the new law is welcome, it’s not enough.   Limiting interest rates on loans is a crucial next step. For some reason congress is loathe to really go after the banks even though they’ve brought the world economy to it’s knees. A lot of these banks are getting bailed out so we need to use the new found leverage we have to make these companies more consumer friendly.

This is change this country need.

Bleeding jobs

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This feels like I’m blogging for the first time. Anyway, I picked the most action two weeks since the election to not blog. The list of things I haven’t blogged about – The Obama Inauguartion, the first 10 days, Rod Blagojevich, Rush Limbaugh?

What brings me out of my shell are layoffs. They’re everywhere – hitting very close to home for all of us. One thing that has bothered me is the massive number of layoffs and location closings hitting the news. Starbucks, Circuit City, Home Depot, etc. A few years ago these companies couldn’t find a location they didn’t like. Across the street is another Starbucks? No problem.  The growth of these companies during the last 10 years has been dizzying.  Their growth has also been foolish.  

Here’s the analogy I’ve been using –  Say someone bought a lottery ticket and won a thousand dollars.  Good right?  What if this happened the next month and the month after that?  Excellent huh? Here’s the question: What would you say if that person, looking at their recent track record decided that the winnings had to coming month after month, and buys a bigger, nicer home based on the belief that these winnings were coming month after month?  You’d think that person was a fool.  Well this is essentially what many companies did.

Instead of growing at a sustainable and manageable rate – they grew thinking the good times would never end.  Fueled by a low interest rates, cheap money, an insane real estate market, these companies grew without any regard for the future.  Shouldn’t companies grow at a rate that allows them to withstand the bad times without upsetting the apple cart? Didn’t these have a responsibility to be there for their employees?  But greed won out and all they could think of is more, more, more.

All this is too late – people are losing the jobs, over 100,000 this week. The people in charge should be in jail, but they’re living off of their crazy bonuses.  One report had Wall Street bankers taking in $18 billion in bonuses last year.  How much is that?  Enough to give the automakers the bailout they asked for plus an additional $4 billion to “buy something to make themselves pretty”.  It’s enough to employ 300,000 people at $48,000 a year and pay for their health insurance for their family of four.  It’s enough to buy every Major League Baseball team and have enough left over to buy 10 or 11 NFL teams. In other words – it’s a lot of money.  I don’t want to get on a rant here – but maybe these guys didn’t need a bailout.  

I hope this ends soon – I fear that it will bring us all under.  But part of me wonders if that pain wouldn’t be good in the end. Maybe the past two hundred years  we were the  caterpillar  (the insect, not the company that has cut 22,000 jobs). Maybe when this is all done, we’ll be a pretty butterfly.

Or maybe Bernie Madoff will still be smiling?

Our last day in hell

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I’m sure if there is a hell, its inhabitants don’t believe that there will be a last day and even if they think there might be, the worst thing would be is to hope or believe in it.

It’s been a long 8 years, from the Supreme Court deciding who the 43rd President of the United States would be. We’ve experienced the horror of 9/11; the subsequent and emotional rush to war in Iraq; the “Mission Accomplished” and the next six years of trying to accomplish that mission; the re-election of George Bush so that he would become the worst two-term President in history; the negligence of the government’s post-Katrina response; the implosion of the economy to its worst state in 70 years.

Yes it’s been a long eight years and now we get to count down to the end of Bush not in days, but hours. Right now he’s having his last dinner on the tax payer’s dime. It’s amazing how excited I am for him to leave, go to Texas where he should stay for the rest of his days, and not screw things up any further.

We’ve survived and after 8 years of nowhere – we can finally say “Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of our lives”.

Mission accomplished.

50 States, 50 Bloggers Project (Spencer in video)

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I was asked to participate in a project for the website Purplestates.tv. They asked one blogger from each state to participate and I got to be the Pennsylvania representative. I’ll write more when I’m less busy, but for now – here’s my video.

Lynching Illinois

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blago2This will be short and quick – it’s late. It’s hard to be disgusted by politicians in this world of “Barack the Magic Negro” – but Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich has taken it to new level. He has nominated Roland Burris to become the Senator to replace Barack Obama in senate, ignoring the pleas from everyone, in and out of his party to not do so and yet here he goes.   He doesn’t want us to base our decisions on Blagojevich’s issues, but on Buris’ own resumé. Illinois Democrats are brazenly bringing up race to goad the Senate into approving him. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill actually said “I would ask you to not hang or lynch the appointee as you try to castigate the appointer and separate the appointee from the appointer.”   We are being told that there are no black senators so we need a black senator.   As a black American this notion is appalling – that just any black man will do. Just as Sarah Palin isn’t a replacement for Hillary Clinton – Roland Burris is no replacement for Barack Obama.

I know I don’t know him – but earlier this month he had the following to say:

“I certainly applaud her actions,” he said of Madigan in a December 13 press conference, according to WBBM. “Illinois is too important to its 18 million citizens to have a chief executive who is now incapacitated.

“The evidence that’s been presented is pretty appalling, should that come out to be the case of what our governor is attempting to do,” he said, according to WBBM.

Today he said he has “no opinion on the governor’s problems.”

Wonder what changed – oh yes, now he’s been nominated to be a Senator. I wonder what passed hands.