Jill Rants and Raves

smortgagebord

Ok, I'm not an economist - no shit - and I didn't pass a single math exam in my disrupted school career. I use a calculator even when I know the answer to a simple multiplication, and when I worked as an ice cream vendor at the Richmond Odeon when I was 18, I used to give a shilling to one of the cleaning crew to add up the sales column at the end of the night.

So, having got that little disclaimer out in the open, I wanna say - I'm not an idiot either. I understand some of how the stock market, speculation, selling short, futures trading, mortgage lending, IPO's, hedge funds and simple balance sheets work. And I notice that CEO pay doesn't appear to be impacted by the collapse of institutions those same suits are meant to be shepherding. Even if you are dumped as the CEO or CFO of a failed multinational company, you can hit it big and keep striking it rich in the topsy turvy world of Wall St and executive boardrooms of the global economy. A bit like a pitcher who has little to offer but keeps getting signed to multi million dollar contracts just because he throws sidearm and can get Alex Rodriguez to hit into a double play. 

I'm also one of those much maligned people who got a no stated income mortgage - long before the implosion of the mortgage and housing markets. It was the only way I could get a loan to stay in the house that I already owned (in title) after the collapse of my 12 year relationship. I didn't have enough years of tax records since becoming a legal resident, and I had worked for myself for 25 plus years.

That the discussion of the bailout, which, by the way won't prevent another imminent financial collapse - has spiralled down onto the heads of people just trying their best to own a home is a large part of the knotted root ball of the problem.

Those who can seamlessly pay their bills each month have no idea what it means to choose between the mortgage and the utility bill, cannot feel the tightness in their chest as they open the mailbox, are not able to imagine the sense of gloom and hopelessness. And yet, it is those very people who determine whether or not you and I can stay in our homes, can go to our jobs, or buy a small gift for a beloved friend.

A supercillious discussion about personal responsibility is clogging the air on talk shows while the commercial breaks are filled with cheaply made ads about buying foreclosed houses even if you can't afford to pay your rent, or paying off your credit cards at pennies on the dollar. At what point are the regulatory bodies going to have the guts to impose true reform? The bailout is essentially nationalisation of our financial markets to prevent an even greater collapse. Democrats - why aren't they saying a monumental 'no' to the new Bush Doctrine? - will (and should) pay a hefty price for this panic driven decision. But one price legislators won't pay is losing their personal homes or their taxpayer provided family healthcare. They cannot pretend, any of them, that they have not known the nagging details of this crisis for a lot longer than most of us. 

'Personal responsibility' has become the code phrase so that Conservatives can spew venom about people trying hard to get by. Most of the loans promoted to and sold to lower income communities should have carried the kind of 'health and safety' warnings we now take for granted on other consumer goods, like tobacco, alcohol and food. 'Caution', it should read in large black letters on a yellow banner. 'This loan could result in losing your home through foreclosure causing lifelong paralysis and guilt'.

I don't hear the neo-cons complain about the heads of companies like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG pulling in 10 - 40 million dollar a year salaries. But these are not companies like Apple or Ford whose product is clearly labeled, regulated and warrantied - these are financial service companies who have been allowed by de-regulation to create a smorgasbord of tempting loans for a society which has lost sight of what the consequences are. But it's those who have created the menu who know what the calorie content is. Is that a weird analogy? I'm trying to stick with this food concept I've got going....you get the idea...you're smart people. You'd never get stuck with a bad loan.....

When we live in a society where my bank calls me and asks 'How can we help you stay in your home? What mortgage payment would work right now?' will be the moment when real reform has taken place. Meanwhile, with a little help from my friends I've managed to keep afloat. But the US economy? It'll need more than this bailout to keep its head above the watermark. And five years down the road, the CEO's will still be throwing sidearm and walking away a winner.

the kid god refused

I grew up in a household where my father could recite Genesis in Hebrew but only to evoke the beauty of the language and my mother hissed about the corruption of the church and the stupidity of religious devotees. My paternal grandparents were cultured wealthy German Jews in Berlin, and my maternal grandfather was a tough abrasive Scot, one of 12 children of an Aberdeen cattle trader. Somehow he married into an upper middle class southern English family which included a pastor ministering to the British in Ceylon - where my granny Florence Dulcie, the only grandparent I knew, was born. The Middletons and the Poseners. This would not have made especially good family weekends. Of course, had it not been for Mr Hitler, these two cultures would never have conjoined in the first place. My father would probably have married a good Jewish girl and my mum, working as she did as a chamber maid in London's hotels, would have hooked up with a succession of abusive older men who reminded her of her dad.

My parents were distinctly without religious adherence.

Between the day I was baptized in Greenwich and the day I was left by my mum at the boarding school in the Titsey Hills in Surrey when I was 11 or 12 (honestly I don't really know), I doubt whether I had stepped inside of a church. But St Michael's School For Girls, founded in the 19th century to educate the girl children of poor and absent missionaries, was centred around the chapel on the second floor and on the observance of every possible Christian event. I had been abandoned, and worse, I had been placed in a Church of England boarding school, with chapel twice a day and three times on Sunday, prayers by the side of your bed, and a reverend who rubbed himself up and down against the pulpit during his sermons to 200 young girls, with suspenders showing.

I went online recently to find out if this place which figured so strongly in my collapse as a child still existed. Somehow I was hoping that in some St Trinians way, the girls had bombed it into oblivion, or that it had been closed down in some scandal involving a hassock, a physics teacher and a Harvest Festival display. It hadn't. Instead, I discovered that it had been renovated and turned into luxury condominiums. I wonder whether the people living there are re-visited by the emotional terrors that were perpetrated within those walls.

I soon began to understand that if one embraced the religion, one could enter doors previously closed, one could feel some sort of love, some sort of attention. And belonging. I went to see the reverend, known to us as Sexy Cecil, and stated my desire to start the process of Confirmation. His approval, his sickly sweet smile reassured me. He assigned to me some slightly older girls to begin my rite of passage into the inner sanctum of the Church of England. I don't really remember the process, the reading and the learning and the preparation. I know that my mother was dismayed but took comfort from the fact that this relieved her of a certain responsibility to me, and my granny, the dear sweet Florence Dulcie became my supporter in this venture, sending me a white leather bound Prayer Book with an inscription. I went to the classes. I went to chapel. I consulted with Sexy Cecil, who always seemed to fidget behind his desk, and smile sweetly.

I invited my mum and my granny to be at the Confirmation service. Somehow, it felt like I could grip on to this appearance of normalcy and make it miraculously come true. Until of course one day, just a week before the ceremony. I was called into the headmistresses office, and there sat Cecil, unsmiling. 'Sit down, Jill'. 'We have decided' she began, 'to cancel your Confirmation. You are not ready to take this important step'.

I felt another layer of the fragile world I inhabited crumble underneath me. I staunched the tears as I felt my face reddening and my body trembling, and plunged out of her office into the red tiled corridors and out, somewhere into the woods. Not ready? What had I done? What and who was this god who would reject a child? The whole school knew, and I, who was already an outcast, had become marginalised to the point of no return.

At the end of the next term, a letter, which I still have, from the headmistress to my father asks a poignant question. 'What is to become of Jill? We can no longer keep her here'. 

I returned to my father's home in Berlin, where he lived with the housekeeper who was to become his second wife, and my alienation grew. When my grandmother suffered a stroke after hearing the news that I had run away, my mother couldn't help herself from carelessly blaming me. I wondered whether god was punishing me for being such a useless devotee that I couldn't even get past 'Confirmation'.

It was the last time I ever consulted him or valued his opinion.

dogs for democrats

produced by 'dogs for unleashed democrats' a PACk of totally PAWtisan activists  

no more trees to sit in

The twenty one month tree-sitting protest to save a grove of old oak trees on the University of California Berkeley campus is over. The last tree-sitters balanced atop a stately redwood are surrounded by police and tree cutters (euphemistically called arborists). News helicopters and hundreds of observers are gathered to watch the last few minutes of a protest which has captured the attention of people around the world - those who believe that this was an action worth taking and those who feel that Berkeley's reputation as the home of kooks has been solidified still further.

The majority of the grove is now gone and the final trees will be cut this week. That the administration of UC Berkeley decided that this was the only possible site on which to build their new athletic facility is bad enough, that they failed to negotiate in good faith with preservationists and with those who point out that the site sits on an earthquake fault was pure testosterone. The University Police showed a characteristically heavy hand when dealing with the growing encampment bubbling around the perimeter fence (erected around the grove once they started trying to flush or starve out the tree-sitters). Last week, after winning another court decision, the University began to chop down the beautiful oaks and proved yet again that it can impact the quality of life for every Berkeley resident and not be held accountable morally.

The last four tree-sitters, some of whom have been in these trees for 21 months are negotiating as I write this, so that they will not be arrested immediately upon hitting the ground. The newscaster calls this 'saving face'. I call it the least the authorities should do. It is, on top of everything else, a cruel reminder of activist Berkeley Council Member Dona Spring's death less than two months ago.

I drove by the protest a couple of times a week and it wasn't top of my list of political actions to get involved in, but it was nonetheless one of the reasons I am proud to live in the Bay Area (much as I complain about Berkeley's political correctness). While other communities barely muster a whimper about wars, environmental disasters, and political corruption, Berkeley will howl about cell phone antennas, Trader Joes grocery stores, anti homeless legislation and backroom deals involving parking lots and a transit hub. I, of course, continue to rant about anti dog code, burrowing owl habitat which everyone knows won't be used by a single owl, and the encroaching fingers of the state grabbing at my civil liberties.

But in Berkeley we expect nothing less. While the rest of the country shakes its' head at us, we remain firmly rooted in the fact that the Free Speech Movement started here - as a protest against the University.

The tree-sit is dead, as are the trees. Long live the desire of those who live here to do battle for every tiny thing.

palin-drome

Palindrome - a word or phrase which can be read the same backwards or forwards. In the case of the Alaska Governor with her growing political baggage and a history of forgetting what she did or said before she said it backwards, one need look no farther than the Greek root of the word 'palin'.

It means 'BACK'.

The most astonishing thing about the mania sweeping the moose hunting afficionados in America is that they were not going to vote for ancient Johnny. But will vote for him now that he has Sarah by his side. If ever there were evidence that the Republicans have so dumbed down the job of President (it means nothing to them aside from their ability to wage culture war on the majority of us, and nuclear war on everyone else) it is that Sarah Palin is deemed capable of inhabiting the Oval Office. The only thing going for her is that she's a better shot than Dick Cheney.

And as I am on the subject of words, does anyone else care that nobody seems to know what the word 'pundit' is anymore, and that because it is now used as a dirty word by Republicans, they have decided to 'change' it.
Palin who clearly thinks it is fun to mock the Press (presumably because conservatives have no intention of ever telling the truth to a journalist in any event) spat out the word as it spread across her teleprompter - but as they all seem to do - said 'pundints'. Look it up. It doesn't exist.

Palin may present herself as just an average mom with a rifle, a snowmobile and five children, but like the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party, of which she was proudly a member of, there's just a wee bit of delusion going on....

palintology

oops.

Let's get this straight. I think everyone, including me, needs to leave 17 year old Bristol Palin alone.

What is mind-boggling to me is that this young woman's personal crisis - being pregnant, unwed, to parents who are to put it mildly family values junkies - has through no fault of her own become front page news. It's her mother's blind ambition that has created a firestorm from which hopefully, this teenager will recover. The larger question is this - just when her family needs some privacy - why would Sarah Palin agree to be the lighting rod to rouse the evangelical christian movement for their least favorite candidate Ancient McCain? Did she think that the 'women should be home looking after their children' crowd was going to overlook the fact that she is heading off on the Presidential campaign trail when her teen daughter is due to give birth just after the election?

Did she think that all the outrage about the movie 'Juno' which the right wing nuts condemned for 'promoting' out of wedlock teen sex was not going to be turned on her and her kid? What greater endorsement for teen pregnancy is there than going to the White House for dinner with your suckling infant, conceived out of wedlock - in a small town in Alaska no less.

24 hours ago Palin had every right wing talk show host oozing with greasy and slimy excitement - take Rush describing Palin as a woman' who won't remind men of their ex wives'. He should know. He's had 3 of them. Today, it's a slightly different story. Interesting - could it be that the boy bimbos who came up with the Palin VP selection were behind the discussion about whether to postpone the Republican Convention so as not to appear callous whle Louisiana got drenched. Now the real betting is on - how soon before she takes herself out of the race? Tomorrow? Maybe as soon as McCain gets up from the floor. 

sarah palin - the perfect antidote?

I can't find much to be upset about with Sarah Palin except of course that - while the economy is in freefall, energy policy in disarray, a debilitating foreign policy, trade agreements gutting the manufacturing industries, trashing American jobs and creating an even wider trade deficit with increasingly hungry economies like China, a domestic health policy which needs major overhaul - our aging Republican party decides that the only way to win an election is to wake the sleeping giant of simmering, angry evangelicals with a candidate who is Phyllis Schlaffly lite. It was a Karl Rove moment. It definitely wasn't a McCain moment, who looked down at his dirty fingernails as Palin spoke after being introduced. For a man like McCain, who was never meant to get to this position, it must have been the most shameful of moments. That a former beauty queen, moose hunter, school board member and small town mayor could win him the Prize he has sought for so long.

The population whom John McCain hoped he would never have to rely on has now woken with a huge Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage roar and the talk is of nothing but conception, Roe v Wade, gay marriage, 'life', family values, school choice, drilling in Alaska, and the stupidity of women who the GOP believes will abandon the Democrats in millions to vote Women Uber Alles. As long as the right wing could perpetuate the myth of Hillary Clinton just waiting to make her move to unseat OB, the neo-cons could pray for a divided Democratic electorate, with disgruntled Hillarites protest voting for Ancient Johnny. As the Clintons supersized their endorsement of Obama, the focus turned to a different type of woman. Bingo.

The manufactured campaign of Barack Obama has already come back to bite the dems in the ass, and it is just Labor Day.

Sarah will be flying off to Louisiana to help with the storms heading their way. And she will probably bring 5,000 moose burgers with her to feed the hungry. Palin is a smart woman, tenacious and fearless. And while the Democrats were running safety picking Joe Biden, a candidate hardly anyone could get excited about, the conservatives (who are running the GOP show), couldn't have thrown a more exhilirating pass to their supporters who have promised to stay away in the millions unless McCain did something - just like this. In some ways the real choice just got clearer. This is about Supreme Court Justices. This is about the politicization of the Justice department. This is about cronyism. And about Rove and Cheney.

Democrats just need to hope that all this newly registered electorate  actually bother to vote come November 4th. Only with the black vote galvanised is Obama a winner. And liberal talk show hosts are asking the rhetorical question that they already know the answer to but are too gutless to say - why won't whites vote black. Many whites can bring themselves to vote Barack, but others are extremely reluctant to 'empower' what they see as Obama's 'connections'. They don't want Ludacris in the Lincoln bedroom, they don't want Farrakhan at the Ball, they don't want Sharpton puffing up on the receiving line, they don't want Jeremiah Wright leading a prayer service on Air Force One. In short - I like you but I'm really not sure about the other people who like you.

Democrats need to get off their high horse about how many houses McCain has, Cindy as beer heiress, and his 72nd birthday, and begin to take a long hard look at how Obama's campaign, supposed to galvanise liberals round the country has deflated so fast, a little like eating a huge meringue and still feeling hungry. Unfortunately, Sarah Palin may show how you can feed the masses on just a couple of fish fresh from the freezing waters of Alaska.