Financial Crisis

My daughter asked me to help her study for a high school civics exam this evening. One of the duties of the president was listed as helping the economy to improve. She said that her civics teacher said that "the president really is not able to affect the economy that much." It seems to me that I have heard a number of Republican friends make similar statements. Essentially, the economy was good under Clinton by accident or because of policies set in place by Reagan (!) years before. The economy is not doing as well at the end of Bush's term because of 9-11 and Katrina. This takes some willful suspension of rationality as far as I am concerned. President Bush's policy of not using the surplus he inherited to fund any of the country's long term obligations has helped to put Social Security, for example, in worse shape than it needs to be. His cutting taxes while increasing spending due to two wars while, at the same time, contracting out military duties and paying via credit card definitely contributed to massive deficits that did not have to be there. It seems obvious, which does not make it true, that he directly negatively affected the economy. For that matter, our present mess need not have grown so large as it did. Last year in January and February there were a number of people saying that we were in trouble. He chose to claim everything was great, the fundamentals were sound (repeated by John McCain in the summer) rather than doing anything real to address the situation. When he did finally address the situation it was to give everyone some money and tell them to spend it - had the economy only needed a shot in the arm, maybe that would have worked. Since the economy was heading for a lot more trouble than that it would have been nice if his economic stimulus package had actually done something to help with infrastructure and employment.

Wow.

I was one of those people who, despite the overwhelming projections for Obama to win this election, remained nervous and unconvinced. I am glad to see my cynicism misplaced for a change.

I worked at the polls for the Milwaukee Election Commission at UWM today from 6 am to 2:15. There were a lot of voters. There were some shirts and buttons but I did not hear anyone really talking politics. There were observers from the Obama and McCain camps but also people from various groups using names that told you nothing about who they supported. While I was there there were long lines in the morning and then it was sporadic with extra voters coming in between classes and a small burst of activity at lunch time.

My brother called me when the network coverage started. He said the drinking game word of the night is "historic." He was right on with that one. There was not enough booze in the house. Of course, it was still low from that Maverick/My friends game.

I am watching McCain's concession speech. This is the guy that I admired in 2000. I talked to a friend about this election last night. My feeling is that had McCain kept to the high road and perhaps been more prudent in his selection of VP we would have seen a much closer race. His audience keeps booing his kind or congratulatory words to Obama. He shuts them down though.

I hope that this is a new morning in America and we can get back to the promise of being America. The America another Republican called "the last best hope of earth."

McCain tells voters, "Come back to me baby, I have changed, it will be different this time."

Get out and vote for Obama. I took a look at some major polls today and www.cnn.com, www.pollster.com, www.fivethirtyeight.com, and www.slate.com all still show Obama winning which I think is a good thing.

I have been surprised that this race is as close as it is when McCain's basic argument is, "come back to me baby, I have changed, it will be different this time." While on the campaign trail he aims for ugly and his policies are not very different from what Bush's policies. I read someone call him Bush lite and I think it is the other way around. He wants to make permanent the upper income targeted tax cuts that were not successful for the country under Bush. It looks to me like he adds some middle class tax relief, but he offers far less than Obama's plan does and does not pay for it, or to be more accurate, he proposes to pay for it by cutting programs that won't nearly pay for the cuts he proposes. He is more of a Bush to the maximum and unfortunately if he wins, we will see the Bush related problems escalate.

I understand that higher income people pay more into the system but that is the price of civilization. I own a home and pay property taxes which finance our city's school system. I pay more than someone with a less valuable house. I subsidize kids in that house. So what? Don't they deserve a good education as well? Isn't it better to provide opportunity to everyone's children so that it is your effort that gets you ahead rather than how much money your parents make? If there comes a time when I am outraged by the taxes I pay I can either make a big stink about it and try to wreck the system for my advantage and the direct disadvantage of other people's children or I can move to a less valuable property. Or, I can remember that I too struggled when I was putting my children through school and give my neighbors a break.

The Republicans seem to think (and of course I generalize) that having wealth is a moral virtue and not having wealth shows a lack of moral virtue. For a party that is so quick to call itself religious and patriotic, they sure seem to dislike the poor and paying to keep the country on top.

I have heard several Republican friends making the I worked for what I have and those people take advantage of the system. They want to blame poor people for moral failings but don't want to give them any breaks to help them out of that cycle. It reminds me of the scene in Repo Man where Harry Dean Stanton thinks that the country's financial problems can be solved if you could just make all those homeless people pay their debts.

I am one of those people who admired McCain 2000 and became appalled at McCain 2006-2008. I cannot give him a pass like some do and say that this is just the election and it his advisors that are making it so ugly. That would indicate to me that a McCain presidency is not run by McCain but by poorly chosen advisors. One of his worst picks in my mind has been Palin. She can turn a rally into a mob scene and is bringing out the worst in people at her rallies. A Palin presidency is short on policy, short on understanding of history, and long on scapegoating someone for the country's problems. That is a strong reason not to vote for a 72 year old man who has been fighting cancer and heart problems for a few years.

Nanowrimo Day 2

I did well the first day of rambling on paper. I put 2042 words towards my 50,000 word goal and, perhaps started clarifying some of my idea. I notice that now that I am out of school it is not quite the chore to write that it was last year. Or maybe I just want it more this year. I mean, I added a blog to my output solely to clear my head while pumping out a novel.

Today is day 2 of the journey and I managed another 1721 words. I did find a cool (in theory) widget that displays a running total of your Nanowrimo output along with a bar showing your progress towards goal. Unfortunately it did not work when I tried to put it on this web page. I notice that the Nanowrimo web site has been terribly unresponsive this time. It was supposed to be improved over last year but so far it is a lot worse. I understand they had some power failures on the first day that they had to recover from. I hope it is not a trick to get people to donate to them. Yeesh, I'll have to slip them a tenner for the privlege of stressing my self and my family out for a month. I am sure it will be money well spent.

NaNoWriMo in 10...9...well, closer to 45

National Novel Writing Month is about to begin. I tried last year and failed. I had a bet with another participant to motivate me last year. Unfortunately, she finished, I did not and it cost me a tee shirt from the NaNoWriMo store. However, I had a trip to Florida the first week of November and a trip up north the 4th week of November. It was the eternal optimist in me that thought I would squeeze out time on my trips to write. This year will be different. Somehow I will squeeze out that writing time. Or confess failure to a wider audience.

I think that I have to think about it more as an endurance test than a purely creative endeavor. Like making your self run or exercise. Flexing the creativity should be a benefit of the nanowrimo exercise but it is the forcing yourself to the keyboard for the daily jog that gets you there. I am going to see if I can find a word count widget for this blog. Otherwise I will just make dozens of short posts with date and count.

Hello world.

This is my first blog post. I am so attached to the online world now I thought it would be better to join it that to just lurk through. Plus, I won't have to subject my family and friends to endless emails telling them to look at this post picture story gadget etc... on line any more. So, this slice of the web will help unclog the tubes a little. I have read that it is best to have a focused blog or multiple blogs for various interests. However, I am not sure that that is the way I want to go. That would imply some kind of restriction on what I place here. That is not how my brain really works. To put this into perspective, I started this blog last night, was not sure how I wanted to start it and reopened it today. I then spent about 40 minutes looking at the features and gadgets that are available through blogger before it occurred to me that the blog looked a little silly without any text. So I place this text before I go out to enjoy the unusually beautiful late October weather today in Wisconsin. 

The picture for the post was taken on a family trip to Hawaii several years ago. However, the title is from a poem I remember hearing somewhere - Robert Bly I think - who  said a prayer on the lines of (and I paraphrase until I find the poem) "Help us Lord, for our boats are so small and your seas so vast."