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Buddy Can You Spare a Dime, is About Empathy.....and Listening to Each Other.
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I wrote a post the Other Day , actually it was a Letter that I sent to David Plouffe that reflected my feelings about being asked to go Canvas and Promote The Obama Budget to my neighbors. I wrote some of my concerns, I hinted that I am worried that Obama's People, his Advisors, don't get How Bad it is out here on Main Street. When I say "Obama People" , I mean Geither, Romer, and Summers. I realize Obama inherited a Titannical Mess, but I worry his people, his Team are not recognizing the damage and pain on Mainstreet.My Expression of Concerns in no way means I don't support Our New President that we all worked So hard to get to the Helm.
One once loyal reader of almost 4 years wrote me and said that I "don't understand Politics" and that I was "moaning", and that he "gives up on me", according to him I am "petulant and have let my own life/Personal problems WARP my view". I was really struck that he has the Same Problem as Some of the Obama Administration, he is not Listening to me as a Virtual Neighbor, although he is Sure Judging My View of What is Going on in Our Country. He is not seeing what I see Everyday Around me..... But on another note Obama's people should come to my hood and listen to People and talk to People, We The People. Obama is right to have Town Meetings, but His People should be attending them and walking neighborhoods too...and coming to Joblines,Tent Cities, Soup Kitchens and Homeless Shelters and Listening to The People.
When I blog .....I blog about The People around me Everyday, I Blog the Human Condition,because I see it as a Nurse, always.I Blog My Neighbors, the Older Folks paying for food with spare Change,The VET around the Corner who can't look me in the eye and limps to the store to buy beer and the classifieds with a broken heart, I see that his spirit is crippled.I blog about the Unemployed New Nursing Graduates, who I encouraged and gave advice and now they can't find work, because there is a Hiring Freeze at the Hospitals Here.I Blog about Neighbors that have lost their homes, and I still look at their empty homes...... I Blog about What is Real, From Homelessness, to Joblessness, to VETS with PTSD to Folks, Millions of them without Healthcare....And yes, I blog about How Politics Effects and Collides with Our Lives....
But I also Blog Hoping to Keep Our Collective Soul Alive, Our Hearts and Minds Open, that ALL still Listen to Each Other and take of Each Other. That We The People work on Our Humanity, and Our Empathy....because we are In Hard Times. Our Grandparents got through the Depression because they took care of each other....It is a Spirit that is worth Preserving. That is why I encourage all of us to "Tend Souls". It is about Nursing Our Spirits. And most of all I encourage us to Listen to Each Other....and Not Give Up On Each Other...we need Each Other to get through these Hard Times.
Instead of asking us to hit the Streets this week, Obama Administration, and yes Our Elected Reps should have hit the streets this weekend, and visited Some Soup Kitchens and some Tent Cities and some neighborhoods full of foreclosed homes and come to some Job Fairs and JobLines and listened to What People Are Going Through....MainStreet Is Hurting Right Now, Badly and Worse than the DC Bubble seems to want to admit. Empathy, the Empathy Deficit that Obama always spoke of on the trail does extend into DC, and that is The Problem. DC seems to be in a Bubble and not able to see What is Really Happening....8 years of Hell , of an Illegal EXPENSIVE War has drained people's bank accounts and Spirits. People are tired, but also Tired of DC Not Listening....
Do read Distributor Cap's post "A Free Man in Paris"....it really captures how alot of people are feeling right now. And also let him know he not alone in his angst.( Also Frank Rich's post is up this am linked to the title and worth the read)....We The People need to take care of each other....BUT that Means that DC, those we elected and Obama's People also need to Wake Up....
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Please do read my Posts Below on Tent Cities and Homelessness, I am covering them from ALL over the Country. Tonight Chris Hanson is covering The Financial Foreclosure Mess tonight on Dateline at 7PM ( Chris Jansing has also been covering on NBC morning segments)..and also more and more of the Media has finally been covering, CNN, MSNBC,ABC and CBS and for that I am grateful...very. Do also read the Article by Frank Rich linked to the title.
Also Obama is on 60 Minutes tonight....and just to be clear, I am still very grateful to Obama, and have faith in him, but that doesn't mean that I can't worry about his Team and the Titannical Mess they have inherited from Bush and Repug Leadership and the GOP Obstruction that is continuing ( and Dem Passive Syndrome)....and Obama has done alot in 60 days...but I also see that Time is of the Essence and we are running out of time for DC Ostrich Syndrome.....
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This Video has been seen by Obama , I don't know if his People Saw It. the story of this video has been told on ABC and MSNBC.
Highschool students share with Heart and Honesty what the Economic Plight has meant to their lives, it is haunting, it is called " Is Anybody Listening ?".....
13 comments:
The Story of the Is Anybody Listening Video:::
A Dream Comes True! See President Obama's reference to Village Academy in his first speech to the nation about education. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/...
Also, don't miss ABC's 20/20 coverage March 20, 2009 7pm east coast time.
This project sprang from discussions held in our Advanced Placement Literature and Composition class during the reading of F. Scott Fitzgeralds novel The Great Gatsby, says Mr. Steinman, AP Lit. teacher at Village Academy High School (Pomona Unified School District). They opened up, shared deeply touching details of their current travails, and felt compelled to share their sentiments with those who were in a position to not only listen to them, but implement policies in order to make things better for them and the country they love dearly. The sentiments expressed in this project are true, heartfelt and totally unscripted. Students sat themselves down, the camera began to roll, and the resulting footage is as true as it gets. Spoken with innocence, directly, and with the courage rarely seen by teenagers today, the video was totally edited by students and is meant as a means of expression by which positive action will hopefully be inspired to evolve.
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I am grateful that I saw their story on ABC the other night.......
thanks
and thanks for that video
and you are always welcome to refer to me......
a mensch! (now that you know what it means!)
thanks DCap...
and all that you do...
the world needs more menschs.....
;-)
okay so this morning I watched Christina Romer - Obama 's Economic Advisor ...omg....WHY is she in this role ? I have to research her- I know Nothing about her .....she said there in her pearls with her shrill Voice and I don't think she gets it at all.....it was awful....
I will post the Interview if I can find it....
Here s my dumb question if anyone is out there...
Why Can 't Robert Reich and Paul Krugman Advise Obama ???? Is their advice or wisdom sought at all ?
Okay so I researched her- she is an Economics Genius....but she needs to talk to Mainstreet maybe ???:::
Christina Romer (née Duckworth; born on December 25, 1958 in Alton, Illinois) is the Class of 1957 Garff B. Wilson Professor of Economics at the University of California Berkeley. On November 24, 2008, President Barack Obama designated Romer as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers upon the start of his administration.[1][2]
After her nomination and before the Obama administration took office, Romer was tasked with co-authoring the administration's plan to recover from the 2008 recession. With economist Jared Bernstein, Romer co-authored Obama's plan for economic recovery. [3]
She graduated from Glen Oak High School in Canton, Ohio, in June 1977. She obtained her bachelor's degree in economics from The College of William & Mary in 1981, and her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985. Upon completion of her doctorate, she started working as an assistant professor at Princeton University. In 1988 she moved to University of California, Berkeley and was promoted to full professor in 1993.
[edit]Family
She is married to David Romer, her classmate at MIT and her colleague in the Economics Department at University of California, Berkeley. They have adjoining offices in the department[5], and collaborate on much of their research.[6] The couple have three children together. She is not related to Paul Romer, the economist famous for his work on economic growth; although she has a son with the same name.
[edit]Research
Romer's early work focused on a comparison of macroeconomic volatility before and after World War II. Romer showed that much of what had appeared to be a decrease in volatility was due to better economic data collection, although recessions have become less frequent over time.[7]
She has also researched the causes of the Great Depression in the United States and how the US recovered from the depression. Her work showed that the Great Depression occurred more severely in the US than in Europe, and had somewhat different causes than the Great Depression in Europe. Romer showed that fiscal policy played a relatively small role in the recovery from the depression in the US, because taxes were raised in the US almost as quickly as government spending increased during the New Deal. However, accidental monetary policy played a large role in the US recovery from depression. This monetary policy came first from the devaluation of the dollar in terms of gold in 1933-1934, and later from the flight of European capital to the relatively stable US as war in Europe became more likely. [8]
She has done extensive work on fiscal and monetary policy from the Great Depression to the present, using notes from the meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and the materials prepared by Fed staff to study how the Federal Reserve makes its decisions. Her work suggests that some of the credit for the relatively stable economic growth in the 1950s should lie with good policy made by the Federal Reserve, [9] and that the members of the FOMC could at times have made better decisions by relying more closely on forecasts made by the Fed professional staff.[10]
Her recent work (with David Romer) has focused on the impact of tax policy on government and general economic growth. This work looks at the historical record of US tax changes from 1945-2007, excluding "endogenous" tax changes made to fight recessions or offset the cost of new government spending. It finds that such "exogenous" tax increases, made for example to reduce inherited budget deficits, reduce economic growth (though by smaller amounts after 1980 than before).[11] Romer and Romer also find "no support for the hypothesis that tax cuts restrain government spending; indeed ... tax cuts may increase spending. The results also indicate that the main effect of tax cuts on the government budget is to induce subsequent legislated tax increases." [12]
[edit]Career
She is a former vice president of the American Economic Association, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship recipient, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a winner of the Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award. Professor Romer is co-director of the Program in Monetary Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research [13], and was a member of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee until she resigned from this position on November 25, 2008.[1
For the longest time, we kept hearing about job losses and the recession- it all sounded rather doom & gloom - it was something happening somewhere else.
But then it arrived in this county. Businesses- big businesses with more than 1000 employees- family wage jobs started to go away. The next few months after the loss came the wave of other smaller businesses going under. Business that had been around & successful for many years.
It recently landed on our doorstep- my husband, actually 2,200 people who worked at the same place were first given temporary lay off notices, then 2.5 months later- morphed into termination notices.
Now we see firsthand that ripple effect in our own lives. Not only did the company terminate most all of the employees, but 3 days later, they also filed for bankruptcy. They pulled the plug on health insurance the day the filed for bankruptcy- without notice to the employees.
Two Class Action lawsuits have been filed against the company, and the bankruptcy judge will oversee all that. Maybe in 2 years we will get a check in the mail as part of the settlement?
The employee then gets the double whammy-- no health ins coverage & the dreaded "lapse of coverage" which makes it harder to get insurance AND the pre existing condition clauses kick in.
No job
No health insurance
The county saturated with thousands of unemployed all at once.
And now we see a new wave of other businesses going under. The Saturn dealership is closing.
The lumber mills are on partial schedules because new housing starts are flat lining, and the RV industry was a big client as well.
Many of the businesses that were suppliers to the RV mfg companies (2 major companies are both in bankruptcy) have lost major business and are owed huge sums of money from backorders.
Until it hit here, it was all just stories on the news.
But once it actually hits a community, county, state... it can't be ignored. We have ben through hard times, or lean times before. We are creative & resourceful "bootstrap people", but this is a whole different level of financial collapse. It's one thing when you lose your job, it's quite another when
literally thousands are all in crisis at the same time.
I watched the 20/2 special that aired on Friday night... all about people mired in the depression- and a little clip about this video.... Obama swung by & visited this school because he viewed the video.
A visit is not the same as taking solid action.
Pull the plug on war funding and get help to people struggling to keep a roof over their heads NOW.
Thank you for this heartfelt post.
It's easy to criticize others already struggling in this crisis-- until those folks wind up living in a community & state that has been stricken.
Its just a matter of time.
We will fight like hell to keep afloat. But so many people struggling..... we are reaching a saturation level.
Oh! Bravo to the teacher who put this video project together. Those kids will always remember him as the teacher who cared, who had a clue & who gave them a voice.
Problem is, this is happening all over the country, not just Pomona California.
He probably just ignited a new wave of activists and community organizers. Now that is what teaching is all about.
Oh Fran...
What you said is so true Until Some People WALK in Other's shoes...it does not seem real...I am lucky- ok not the right word..but because of living all over the past 8 years I have seen more than most and yes, Cleveland has been hit very very hard....
and where you are has been hit hard...
I tried to post videos down below from all over- and when you listen to their stories- there is nothing there that could have perdicted what would happen to these people...Nothing....
I blog this because it matters and it is hitting Everywhere...
the number of folks in my hood without Health Care or Insurance is high, and the number of Foreclosed homes- I can not even count- and every other home has one or more family member out of work- this is a working class hood- with alot of medical and phds....and then the next street over- 3 VETS came home - and there are no jobs for them...
and yes- we need to get out of Iraq...and we all need to talk honestly that the Iraq War is a HUGE piece of this mess....because it is....
I am so sorry about everything you and your family and your hubby have been through....and yeah..
the young people in the video...
I thought of my son and yours...I couldn't help it....
( I have not gotten through it once without crying...such good good kids... we owe them so much more...)
No real upside to things right now, but if Romer thinks we are coming out of this sooner rather than later that seems overly leaning into happy talk, but perhaps we need some of that....
But getting out of Iraq will surely help, but we need our guys in office to burn some bridges, like with the folks who have benefitted the most over the last 20 years or so...
The real class warfare is no living wage, no healthcare, no housing...the Madoff's of the world and their greedy dupes will still get by...
it's the rest of us that need the Gov to kick it up a notch...
Tom::
hey there..
so I am watching her today and she was well...so well pearled and well- kind of syrupy and Prozaced if you know what I mean.....and I don't think she gets it...
really worried me- she is one of Obama's main Economic Advisors ????
so I thought well I will look her up....I think she is very educated....but that does not always translate into understanding Reality....
( it;s like trying to work a Red Cross Disaster with a RN that has a Masters In Community Health - but has never worked a disaster- there a basic Hands On Lack of experience- even though the smarts is there....and yes, I had the honor or working with such a woman at a flood disaster in Wash State- and it was cumbersome....frustating....but got in the way of rendering good care...)
Supposedly according to some experts here and in the UK there is a wave of Ponzi damage to come forth....( I am posting this week)...
I am more worried that Obama's people are not representing the transparency that was set as a goal- and that Paulson's Bailout is a Blundering greedy mess....I wish we could have hearings to hear HOW he set everything up before he left....
I hope that the Relief promized to the little people....like you and me - starts to happen...because the damage is hemmorhagic at this point- and the patient needs tending....serious critical care..not just lip service- ( and you know how much I support Obama-so this is not me being quick to rush or judge, this is me worrying about how to heal and care for millions...)
thanks tom....for caring...and understanding...
I worry about this stuff all the time. My company looks like it will be fine, so I'm not in danger of losing my job anymore. But it doesn't mean I'm out of the woods yet. Still can't afford to get sick or injured, and then there's the bills I can't pay anymore.
I really wish Obama and his staffers would listen to the American people. I may not pay attention to Tuesday night's speech. The last thing we need is more rhetoric. We need action and results.
RJ:::
good to hear from you....good that your job is okay....I am sorry that things are so tight and worrisome...and yes, I too wish that Obama's people would listen to The People....I don't know about Tuesday Speech...( I think I work...two places on tuesday anyway...) I don't need a speech- I need to hear that people... NOT CEOs are taken care of....
Hang in there RJ....we will all get through this somehow...
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