New Orleans Being on the road and out of the country for a month is a bit of a Rip Van Winkle moment despite the best intentions and mainlining internet to keep connected.  Some notes.

• Still seems to absolutely be no progress on real plans for loan modifications to prevent foreclosures.  Reading old papers it seems there were yet more studies that were released in recent weeks that say that the chances of doing even 500,000 modifications that actually prevent foreclosures looked like a long shot.  None of the models and systems were ever designed to deal with massive unemployment, especially now that foreclosure notices have spread past sub-primes into all other conventional mortgages in the Great Recession.  What an abysmal failure all of this has been!

• The “public option” continues to be on life support though has a heartbeat thanks to some herculean efforts by progressives to try to hold on to some semblance of real reform.  It’s hard to be happy about a fake “trigger” as backed by Senator Snowe and one worries that Senator’s Reid’s provision to allow states to “opt out” just means that those of us in poor, broke-ass states like Louisiana where the conservative demagogues even try to deny us stimulus triggered unemployment benefit increases, will also abandon our health care needs as quickly despite all of the evidence of how desperate we are for comprehensive coverage.  No happiness here.

• The date for 287g came due so finally the Department of Homeland Security after constant diddling seems to have still allowed Sheriff Arpaio of Maricopa County (Phoenix) to hold on to some of this action despite all of the abuses.  The voices for discontinuing the program are going to get louder with this abandonment of basic human rights and dignity for immigrants and any others in the way.  In the meantime not much progress on comprehensive immigration reform other than a nice action by 5000 folks in DC raising the issue on the streets again, which will hopefully be a reminder that patience has been exhausted and we’re only a year away from another election.  Change going to come here!
• Even reading all of the ACORN meltdown stories on the internet and some of the aberrations flowing from what now seems like a total systemic breakdown in the organization and its basic operating principles and practices, it is still surprising to see the actual stories on the front page of the paper as the main item in the news.  Yeow!

On the road, I always hope there’s something I’m missing and when I get back I’ll be able to put together the pieces and get it.  Back home, it turns out too much of all of this simply defies understanding.