New Orleans

A conservative blogger asked me my opinion of why the Tea Party was getting traction, and the Minutemen were not?  My answer was simple:  guns.  You cannot build a mass movement in America to create political power with guns.  Period!  End of sentence.  The majority of Americans understand guns, and many of them own guns and are comfortable with them, especially in the West and South, as opposed to the East, but nobody, absolutely nobody in their right mind believes that guns should be anywhere around politics.  This is a bright line dividing principle of contemporary American politics and separates the citizen activists from the right wing nut.

Despite the success in Massachusetts and lively pressure being applied by Tea people in a number of states with the Republicans trying to hijack the movement in every way possible, Barstow and the Times had no problem putting their story in the wild, wooly, West and bringing it to Idaho.  Except the rich and Sun Valley, the rest of coastal America is scared of Idaho.  This is big mountain, Mormon country in their view.  It is also the home of one violent, fringe nutcase group after another (and the Unabomber?), and it was easy for the Times to bring them into the story as fellow travelers here.

But, as I say, they didn’t need to work hard.  A Republican candidate for the Senate in Indiana (Bayh was too selfish to stand in front of these kinds of folks?) was quoted as saying he was getting his guns ready – just like his audience – if they didn’t like the results in upcoming elections.  And, there were other stupid comments from Tea people putting guns in the mix.

Barstow could sneak around on this story because he could slip in a paragraph that reflected real understanding like:  “They are frequently led by political neophytes who prize independence and tell strikingly familiar stories of having been awakened by the recession.  Their families upended by lost jobs, foreclosed homes and depleted retirement funds, they said they wanted to know why it happened and whom to blame.”  Those are fair questions begging for answers, but most buried in the blunt blows of this story.

ACORN gets its mention as a scourge of the right with the fabrication that it is “stealing elections” in the same slap as Obama “trying to control the Internet and restrict gun ownership.”  (Does anyone but the Times capitalize “internet” anymore?)  I hate to see it when we are on the brunt end of this slick sell, and it’s painful to read even if the Tea people deserve it and brought it on themselves.

The real questions will still remain about why people are being moved like this and where they are going and what can be done to meet their anger and needs.  The Republicans trying to seize control and leadership will be brought down by the fringers – and the guns – if they are not very, very careful, and thus far they have been sloppy and stupid as well.  Meanwhile the Democrats will tut-tut about it all and still not move forward in the way that makes sense, but instead too often desert the battlefield with the Bayh kinds of politicians.

What a mess and now there are guns firing in the background!

San Jose

Ask me I and I think there are a couple of other pieces to this puzzle.

For one in an economy where tourism is a central driver, the real key to happiness for workers is the fact that they weld on an automatic 10% on all purchases at restaurants (while the country benefits from tourism exploitation by adding 13% for itself, which is smart too).  The tips are pooled among the wait staff which produces decent professional staff without people being subservient to the little bit extra from the tipped economy.  Furthermore from what my shaky Spanish could determine, wait and similar staff are still paid what passes for the minimum wage as well as the special “solidarity” pay which is an end of the year bonus that is part of the legal framework for workers.  If a country is going to allow tourism to be a huge economic driver, guaranteeing tips will produce big time happiness!

As usual in Kristof’s touting of the virtual unmitigated benefits of globalization he advertises for how wonderful it would be to have more English speaking ex-pat communities throughout Costa Rica who could benefit from the emphasis on the educational systems requirements for additional language training in schools.  Hmmm.  Might be worth paying some small attention to what the “happy” Costa Ricans are saying about this as well.  Nobel Prize winner and current Costa Rican President Oscar Arias was quoted recently about how Costa Ricans have “lost Tamarindo” the beautiful Pacific Beach area that has now been overrun by tourists and upscale second home developments.  Costa Ricans have been pushed out of the area by hotels, condos, and soaring prices outside the reach of the Ticos who have lived along these coasts as fishers and framers for generations.

The “green” piece of Costa Rica’s marketing is mainly just that along the intentions and rhetoric are good, and certainly good enough to make Kristof happy.  Seeing a sign on the ferry to the Nicoyan Peninsula that said “recycle now” along with a big arrow to the huge garbage can said a lot to me about the state of the current practice.  The national parks also seem to be pricing out Ticos and their own patrimony in many areas.  Talking to Costa Ricans there is a huge fight to not pave roads to places like Playa Manzilla and even the Monteverde area with its famous cloud forest in order to keep tourists out.

Kristof’s continued blind advocacy of “dollar diplomacy” is not a prescription for the future happiness of the Costa Rican people, though as usual he could probably find a way to be happy as a pig in stuff as long as he enjoys his drive and windshield survey of the world.uaran

G

San Francisco

At least this year almost all of us can say that we have done our part, since even if we didn’t slip below the poverty line, most of us can see we did do our share to pull down family income averages by making way less money over the last year.  Next year of course will be worse.

More people also lost health coverage.  The only bright light there was that poor children were better covered.  Huh?  Well, the expansion of the SCHIPs program made a difference, and it shows up in the numbers.

Although this seems obvious, I can’t help pointing out that these citizen wealth investments are not like bank bailouts where after the handout, you get no change, a slapdown, and new reports of more trouble.  When the government invests in the citizen wealth of the poor, it actually makes a difference and people are better protected and less poor.

With about 40 million people below the poverty line in the USA and 45 million without health insurance, I would argue those are numbers worth doing something about.   If we can worry about Wall Street bankers and spend big money (rightly!) to prevent 9 million foreclosures, why can’t we spend money making sure that families are pushed back above the poverty line and get health care protection?

Yesterday, I talked about the money that is being lost in states from the bailout because of the problem some states are having making the 20% match.  In a disaster like Katrina, the government has the authority to waive the match to allow access to FEMA funds.  We have a poverty disaster now.  Why don’t we bailout the poor with a billion or so to allow citizens in all 50 states below the poverty line to get a hand up?

If not, let Health and Human Services simply reclassify the poor as casual employees of AIG, and they could share in the gazillions there enough to crawl back to a level of higher income security.

New Orleans

Here’s a big mound of poppycock piled on top of balderdash.  The nerve!

An article the New York Association of Mortgage Brokers managed to spin into the Times last week was a classic example of criminal types without remorse.  The number of times, now depressingly well documented, that mortgage brokers scammed unsuspecting borrowers with flannel mouthed tales about their supposedly fixed interest rate only for them later to learn a couple of years down the line that their rates were adjustable and ballooning, is now inestimable.

The number of times that borrowers found that brokers had puffed up their income in “stated income” loans to justify mortgages that were preposterously unaffordable has also exceeded calculation.

The real shame is not the extra three days, because many of the scam artists, that the broker associations and lenders do little to curtail and police, will simply talk their way around the obvious in these situations for borrowers desperate with desire for credit.  The real shame is that there still is not some mandatory borrower counseling available to assist in assuring that fairness exists, the law has been upheld, and the interests for the borrower come first, rather than last on this list.

If we are going to call the law “Truth in Lending,” then it’s time to back the title up with action.