But what has that to do with affordable housing?
Posted By: oldtimer on 2008-09-26
In Reply to: Google ACORN and voter fraud.... - sam
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It can end with affordable healthcare for kids.
I would like to see more affordable healthcare for all Americans, but really if kids got free or very affordable healthcare I would be happy. We spend outrageous amounts of money on the space program, the war, gourmet food for Congress, etc. I don't agree with the hoards of money going to those things, but I would think we could ALL AGREE on money being redirected to provide healthcare to all American children, because that is obviously a good and just cause.
Yes, I think ALL kids deserve affordable healthcare.
I know a little 5-year-old boy with a cancerous brain tumor. His family owns a local construction company and makes decent money, maybe even the $80,000 you speak of. They still have had to have 2 fundraisers just to cover costs associated with saving this precious little boy's life, and they have "decent insurance."
So yes, I think ALL FAMILIES, regardless of income, should have access to more affordable insurance. What happens if one of the parents becomes unemployed? They lose their healthcare coverage. I do not like the fact that most insurance is covered through your employer. Many people have to work the whole time they are fighting cancer or other diseases for fear of losing their health insurance. Even people making $80,000 per year can drown in medical bills that total in the hundreds of thousands, so I don't think their children should be excluded from CHIP healthcare either. People making $80,000 would not get on the program for free, but at a much more reasonable cost than most insurance companies would charge.
When I say I think ALL children in the USA should have free or affordable healthcare, I mean ALL children, rich and poor.
You keep saying I don't want affordable health care for children...
I have said the opposite. What I don't want is expansion of a program that is already NOT working. WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE NOT WILLING TO WAIT SIX MONTHS FOR A BETTER PROGRAM? WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW?? See, we could yell at each other over this from now on, and never agree. I would like the waste to stop. Yes, I would. I would like to see Social Security fixed. Yes I would. The war in Iraq is going on, and until our troops are home, I don't want funding pulled from there, that is right, I don't. I would like for goverment to be in my pocket less, yes. I would like to see a push toward individual responsibility again, yes I would. I don't think the government should provide health care for adults, and yes, it scares me to make the government responsible for kids health care. Look how they managed Medicare...Medicaid...good grief!! Why not try to get this program RIGHT? Why just throw more money at the waste? Basically what you are talking about is socialism, and that is more scary to me than anything else we have discussed here. And, frankly, as far as common sense goes...I think you are not thinking in the long run of where government run health care leads. It leads to lines, it leads to substandard care...I hate to say it, but look at the VA system. Tell me THAT government-run health care is working?? We know it DOESN'T. Veterans have to wait very, very long lengths of time for care, for appointments...what makes you think government run health care for children would be any better?? It is better to leave it in the private sector where there is competition and the care is better? Let's reward responsibility and give those $80K families tax relief. Make it mandatory for parents to cover their kids like it is mandatory that they ride in car seats and wear seat belts. Let's reward responsibility and keep level of care where it is. Please, please let's not go down the socialized medicine road just to get free health care....I honestly, as God is my witness, do not think it will benefit kids in the long run if they are all in some kind of government health plan.
As to Bush, I could care less what the headlines are. All I am saying is that the Dems in Congress are using this as an election sound bite and the Republicans who voted with them are doing the same. Misguided, all of them, in my opinion. While I do not agree with Bush on a multitude of things, I do agree with him on keeping health care in the private sector and the government OUT of it.
Hurricane housing, a way to help!
Just got this email from my brother:
We are forwarding this information about hurricanehousing.org - it was assembled by the progessive people of moveon.org and has been publicized by local mainstream media. While we are unspeakably upset by the lack of timely federal emergency aid, we are gratified by grassroots caring and hope that this disaster will serve as a moral reawakening beyond its terrible pain and loss. Please consider the following....
We're sure you've seen the horrifying images on TV of destruction left by Hurricane Katrina, and the many, many people left with nowhere to go.
You can help. MoveOn.org just launched a website, www.hurricanehousing.org, to connect your empty beds with hurricane victims who desperately need a place to wait out the storm.
You can post your offer of housing (a spare room, extra bed, even a decent couch) on http://www.hurricanehousing.org or search there for housing if you need it.
MoveOn will pass requests from hurricane victims or relief agencies on to volunteer hosts, who can decide whether or not to respond to a particular request. The host remains anonymous until they reply to someone looking for housing.
The ______(this was my brother's name) just posted an offer. We hope you will too, or pass this on to people you know in the Southeast:
http://www.hurricanehousing.org
Housing is most urgently needed within reasonable driving distance (about 300 miles) of the affected areas, especially New Orleans.
Thanks!
Housing people
People all over this nation are opening up their hearts and homes to try to help these people.
I wonder how many people could be housed in a certain ranch in Crawford.
The truth about the housing crisis...
I will warn you this is long, but if your interested in the truth this is a good place to start.
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Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
By Orson Scott Card
Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist,
and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current
state of journalism.
An open letter to the local daily paper - almost every local daily paper
in America :
I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's
journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before
the public, because the public has a right to know.
This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague
emanation of the evil Bush administration.
It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late
1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more
accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized
to approve risky loans.
What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to
be able to repay.
The goal of this rule change was to help the poor - which especially
would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these
people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a
house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -
along with their credit rating.
They end up worse off than before.
This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it.
One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried
repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such
attempt and tried to loosen them.
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political
contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to
make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were
allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to
contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support
increasing their budget.)
Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who
produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a
position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700
billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which
politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage
lending?
I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party
or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a
vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."
Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank,
both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused
Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these
agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost
up to the minute they failed.
As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts
Matter?" ( ]" target=_blank>http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com<http://snipurl.com/457to>]
): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of
the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's
Secretary of the Treasury."
These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The
party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic
Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.
Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican
deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to
account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took
offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!
What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?
Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who
is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.
And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million
while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one
presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on
housing.
If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have
called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper
every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.
But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried
this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an
"adviser" to the Obama campaign - because that campaign had sought his
advice - you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain
of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to
the Obama campaign.
You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.
If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles,
you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all
Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically
selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including
Obama.
If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you
would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow
Republicans were to blame for this crisis.
There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration
never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not
stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension - so you pounded
us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you
created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that
there was a connection.)
If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American
people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they
tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama
because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as
hard to correct that false impression.
Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim
you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your
paper.
But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie
- that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and
the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame
everything bad - even bad weather - on Bush, and they are responding as
you have taught them to.
If you had any personal honor, each reporter and Editor would be
insisting on telling the truth - even if it hurts the election chances
of your favorite candidate.
Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth
even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what
honesty means . That's how trust is earned.
Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He
has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time - and you have
swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.
Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin,
reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried
daughter - while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery
for many months.
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know
what honesty means?
Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will
throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?
You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women
threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his
well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who
listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no
principles.
That's where you are right now.
It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and
the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven
and earth to get the true story out there.
If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list
of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been
getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with
its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its
lending practices.
Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories
will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which
put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about
helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.
You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a
Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the
truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once
to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.
This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton
administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and
blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.
If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe -
and vote as if - President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis,
then you are joining in that lie.
If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats - including Barack
Obama - and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants
were Republicans - then you are not journalists by any standard.
You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and
it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we
can actually have a news paper in our city.
This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro ,
North Carolina , and is used here by permission. |
Hey there! I like it, but what about clothing, housing, medicines......sm
baby products (I nursed all three completely so THAT was cheap, but not an option for everyone), I don't think the MREs were meant to nourish little children, so I would worry about that. You still need utilities of some kind, because we all can't go out and cut down trees, so there is a lot to think about. I think if they INVESTED in hiring more social workers who were monitored to really do their jobs and fish out all the bogus welfare claims, get those people jobs or job training and paying back into the system, that would be wiser, because let's face it, there are some families that spend their welfare money on wasteful or indulgent stuff, but with this economic depression the Welfare is going to go more and more to unemployed families who were "let go," and I do worry about the nutrition and health of the little ones.
And did you know there are waiting lists for subsidized housing? Why do you think there are....sm
so many newly-poor families on the streets? Getting on the rolls these days, cutting through the red tape, can be a daunting and long task, but what about the families in the meantime? The shelters are overflowing. In my state, the food banks actually have to close now from time to time because times are hard, less people are able to donate, more people need the help, and there is just not enough to go around.
I just want DESERVING FOLK to get their needs met while they get back on their feet, and the kids do not have to live a nightmare. Yes, I, too, have seen some welfare folk buying inappropriate things, but perhaps if we had a voucher system that monitored purchases, if they only got reimbursed on the back end after submitting their receipts to make sure they were buying needed, healthy, appropriate goods....I don't have the answer, or I would be applying at the White House, but we need social safety nets so badly right now.
They did not cause the housing crisis. They did, however, fail acknowledge the problem
and they most certainly failed to tackle the problem in a timely and effective way.
One of the major factors in the housing crisis was the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the implementation of Graham-Bliley Act. The lack of oversight, the deregulation that allowed lenders to lend without being subject to oversight rules because the type of financial institution they were doomed us.
The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents. "Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories," California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.
I am not a fan of Frank, Dodd, or Pelosi. I am not a fan of TARP, especially because there was/is no built-in oversight or accountability. Shoot, the some of the same predatory lenders that were put out of business by their own practices are up and running again, passing out toxic loans to desperate people, because they managed to get their hands on bailout money.
Obama Administration Launches Housing Plan
Hope this helps those of you that need help.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123617623602129441.html
Housing market on upswing - good news!
Part of an interesting article on housing market upswing - inflation slowing down. Good news if it stays the course!
www.truthout.org/031709C
Tuesday 17 March 2009
by: Lucia Mutikani | Visit article original @ Reuters
US housing starts rose sharply in February, providing some good news for the struggling housing industry. (Photo: AP)
Washington - New U.S. housing starts and permits unexpectedly rebounded in February, according to data on Tuesday that provided a rare dose of good news for the recession-hit economy and fractured housing market.
The Commerce Department said housing starts jumped 22.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 583,000 units from 477,000 units in January. That was the biggest percentage rise since January 1990 and also marked the first increase since last April.
"That is an encouraging sign for the U.S. economy. It is good signal of what is to come. With the rally in equities we hopefully have seen a bottom for the economy here," said Matt Esteve, foreign exchange trader at Tempus Consulting in Washington.
U.S. stocks have been on the rise over the last several days and the major indexes opened flat on Tuesday. U.S. government bond prices trimmed gains after the data and the U.S. dollar fell against the euro as risk aversion eased.
Hate to dampen the spirits but housing upswings
always take place in the beginning of spring. They usually don't do house construction in the winter unless it's a year round warm climate. You have to look at charts and/or info for housing starts in those states to see if it's true or just wishful thinking...and as you said, they will still sit empty.
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