Simpler Way of Life

I want to share with you some ideas that my fiancee and I have discussed over the past year. One of the things I said was that living on earth is free

Buying Black Has its Benefits (BBB)

I just read the Ebony Experiment webpage about an African-American professional couple in the Chicagoland area who have pledged to buy only from Black-owned businesses beginning January 1, 2009 throughout the entire year.

Interestingly, as I renovate a recent investment property, I have done the same thing. So far, all of the people I have worked with have been Black and somehow affiliated with my church too.

• My real estate agent, Betty Clayton, is Black.
• My real estate attorney, Lynette Lewis, was Black.
• Ted Billings, who installed my wrought iron fence was Black.
• My current contractor, Tony Carter, is Black.
• My home insurance is from, Charles Cathey, Jr., a Black franchisee of State Farm Insurance.

They all either attend my church are affiliated with them and although, I have had my issues with them, like any other service contractor, I would not do it differently.

Why? I trust them. Since they all know me and are affiliated with me in some way, they will look out for me. It turns out that that my fiancee, who knows everyone in Chicago, was good friends with Ted Billing's son. I found out about him from a neighbor and he did good work for me.

I could have gone with a Mexican contractor for the fence work but it turned out that after viewing both guy's work, I liked Billing's work better and he had 17 years experience. He helped me think through some logistical issues.

Understand that I also thought about the fact that MY MONEY, large amount of cash was going to one group and here was an opportunity where I could choose where it would go. It could go to the Mexican family or the Black family and I chose to send it to the Black family. It was truly conscious.

With my contractor, I was torn between a Polish contractor and a Black contractor who attends my church. I am happy that I picked who I picked although we got into some arguments a few times. At critical points, I realize that he was looking out for me. He is my choir director at church and also has a radio show on 106.3FM every Sunday. He has had to do some additional critical work that I appreciate and I like that my money is going to support his three children who also attend my church. It feels good.

My real estate agent is the same way. She tends to use Black services too.

Unfortunately, I did not use a Black bank to finance this deal. In retrospect, I should have searched one out and in the next deal, I think I will do exactly that because this is not my last real estate venture.

I like using Black businesses because I have seen that they actually do know what they are doing when given a chance. Their business may not be the most organized, but their work reflects expertise. But more importantly, I can talk frankly and casually with them and work with them better.

Not all Black businesses are scrupulous as my fiancee found out, but neither are all businesses from many other ethnic groups. American is already a witness to the finance crimes of Bernard Madoff who swindled billions of dollars from over 150 people. We have watched our government give $700 billion dollars to the banks that have caused our financial crisis which I mentioned in a previous post.

But I digress. The point is that the least we can do is take a chance on our own people who really overall want to please and contribute to their community than work with strangers who don't care what happens to you nor will ever put money back into the Black community.

Some Intuitive Thoughts

I will just say that we are living in strange American times.



We have an African-American man and a Republican candidate whose vice-presidential candidate is a woman and both have an equal chance of becoming president. Unfortunately, the American economy has been shattered into a thousand pieces.



What is insane is that our economic crisis looks very familiar.



I read an article about how America is deeply indebted to China, Russia, and the Middle East. And I thought of another place in a similar situation. The continent of Africa is constantly paying all of their revenues to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to the point where they cannot effectively develop their own nations.



If the countries who own our bonds decide to pull our strings, what would make us any different from the nations in Africa?



I read a book called, "A Game as Old as Empire", that explained how banks purposely made bad loans to developing nations such as Indonesia to "help" build the country's infrastructure. The purpose was to indebt the country to the banks. Because of the country's debt to the bank, all of the country's resources had to be directed towards paying off the debt.



America is in debt up to its ears. Can anyone even conceive of how much money nine trillion dollars ($9,000,000,000,000.00) is? That is how much we have to pay back to someone if they ever decide to collect. There is a website that keeps tabs on the amount of debt we are accruing every day. On the site, the author explains that 40% of our debt is held by foreign investors. Forty percent of our debt equals 3.6 trillion dollars. Wow!



U.S. currency is nearly on par with Canadian currency. Our dollar has quickly fallen below the value of the euro. With the nationalization of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the U.S. government has taken on all of those bad loans erroneously (or purposely) made to Americans hoping to own their own home. We weakened our world reputation as a fair, just, yet powerful nation when we invaded Iraq using the world's credit.



What leverage we had as a country worth doing business with is weakening. If our president continues the economic policies that created this situation, foreign investors may call in our debts and request the money back in euros. That would put America into a tailspin. All of our revenues would go towards the debt we owe foreign investors. Our economic crisis would then look no different than the insane policies that grip struggling nations in Africa.



It would be the destruction of a great country.



Luckily despite all of this economic madness brought on by the greed of a capitalistic society and a Republican administration, if all hell breaks loose and our economy fully collapses, one fact remains true.



Living on God's earth is free.



Peace.

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Wall Street Fallout

I guess the fat lady is singing - loudly!

Today the stock market dropped 500 points! That hasn't happened since 9/11 which was over 7 years ago (almost to the date, hmm...). I remember the stocks dropping sharply because when the stock market came back online, I decided to buy stocks for the first time. Can we say, "1/2 off sale"?

But today, there was no collision, no explosions, no planes crashing into buildings, and no buildings crashing down. Therefore, the stock drop of today is not caused by the same knee-jerk reaction as happened with 9/11.

This is worst.

When I invested in the stock market after 9/11, I knew that investors were reacting to catastrophic event that was, for the most part, unrelated to the economic heartbeat of Wall Street. The Dow Jones was around 10,000 points and went up to 14,000 points as of July 2007. I guess the powers that be decided that was as high as it should go because the stock market tumbled down,
down,
down...to hover between 11,000 to 11,600 points over the past year.

But dropping 500 points in one day is over the top.

As I write this, my mother has told me of a young man who was just hired by Lehman Brothers and was immediately downsized due to the bankruptcy. They were moving to California to buy a house when he received the news. Luckily they didn't buy the house yet!

I watched CNBC as they discussed all the reasons why the federal government should bail out Lehman Brothers. Doesn't bail out simply translate into continued high wages to the CEOs who caused this mess in the first place?

I guess I am thinking that if the government had regulated the mortgage industry and helped out homeowners by underwriting their loans to a fixed and affordable interest, there would have been fewer foreclosures and therefore less behemoth financial institutions going belly up.

Why should the large financial institutions get help while the homeowners buying overpriced houses be left out to dry? Obviously, the federal government had the money if they could assist Bear Stearns and take over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. A little regulation could have gone a long way.

Instead, the government under Bush's "Ownership Society", let banks have at it. They were giving away loans. And now look at was has happened. Our economy is in the toilet!

But why do the banks get federal assistance and the thousands of people in foreclosure are on their own? Why is it that regular individuals, including some first-time homeowners, were expected to know what they were doing when they bought that $500,000 house with no money down and therefore get no help from the government, while the CEO who is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to f*** up get bailed out?

You want to know why?

I do too.

Watch: McCain's YouTube Problem Just Became a Nightmare

Jennifer Thompson invited you to watch this video at bravenewfilms.org:

McCain's YouTube Problem Just Became a Nightmare

Description from robertgreenwald:

There's no question John McCain is getting a free ride from the mainstream press. But with the power of YouTube and the blogosphere, we can provide an accurate portrayal of the so-called Maverick. We can put the brakes on his free ride!

Since we first released The Real McCain a year ago, our REAL McCain series has garnered close to 2 million views, with over 13,000 comments and tens of thousands more in petition signatures! Clearly, John McCain's record is something the public wants to discuss, and yet the corporate media is doing NOTHING to present the truth. We feel obliged to continue countering the mainstream media's love of McCain. And so we thought it was high time for a sequel: The Real McCain 2.

We're doing everything to get the facts out there about McCain. Join us in making a concerted effort to tell the story that corporate media refuses to tell. E-mail this video to all of your friends and family membe! rs, news blogs and other local media outlets. And don't forget to Digg it!

According to Cliff Schecter, author of The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him And Why Independents Shouldn't: "It is dangerous for a democracy when a presidential candidate can lie with impunity, change positions on a whim, and physically and verbally threaten others and virtually none of it is reported by a besotted media eagerly awaiting the next moment when he might slap their backs in friendship."

The mainstream press may not do their job, but we can surely do ours. It is crucial that we alert the public to the REAL McCain, and it is crucial we act now, before it's too late.

Watch the video →

Please forward this on to other people who might like it.

Obama - Political History in the Making

These are exciting times in political history. On Thursday, August 28, 2008, Barack Obama was the first African-American to be nominated as the official presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. No one expected this moment to come easily, but when Americans are in a situation where all indicators of a country’s success are running low, people often are more willing to take chances. Anything is better than what we have now.

In 1992, we were in a similar, although less extreme, predicament. George Bush Sr. had plunged America into an unnecessary war and consequently, we saw gas prices spike more than we were used to. His son, eight years later, repeated the same actions with the same consequences, and we are going to see Americans react the same way – by electing a democrat to the White House. Just as we picked Bill Clinton, America is going to pick a young, inexperienced man, (mixed Caucasian and African-American on top of that!) who engages us, fires us up, and displays the potential for wisdom and excellent leadership that even 70-year old men like McCain still don’t possess.

Sure there will be those who are hesitant about Obama’s inexperience as a national statesman and commander-in-chief, but because times are so desperate, most Americans are not going to let such doubts stop them this time around like they did four years ago when they mistakenly elected George Bush Jr. to a second term.

Four years ago, Americans voted pragmatically hoping that the president who put us in an unnecessary war would get us out of it. At the time, an unnecessary war was our only problem. The war continued unendingly while the White House steadfastly withheld from the American people a good explanation for why hundreds of troops were dying each year.

Now, four years later, the debate on the Iraq war has actually waned because there is no debate. Almost all Americans want the war to end. In fact, the Iraq war has taken a backseat as Americans deal with problems closer to home and their pockets like gas prices that skyrocketed from $1.50 before Bush was elected in 2000 to over $4.00 a mere eight years later. During the eight years that Clinton was in office, gas increased by fifty cents! We still have absolutely no explanation for this increase, but we do know that someone is raking in a lot of money!

The tax cuts that Bush enacted, lowered them only for the wealthy. Even Warren Buffett couldn’t understand what Bush was doing in giving the wealthy a tax cut. When McCain said that Obama would raise taxes, McCain didn’t tell the full story. Obama will simply level the playing field by removing tax cuts to the wealthy. Instead, Obama will give tax cuts to poor and middle class, a group that is struggling under the economic mess that Bush has left for the next president to clean up.

Did I mention that my next door neighbor’s house is in foreclosure? And my best friend can’t sell hers without losing money because her equity is upside down? Or that my brother-in-law was laid off along with his entire division from Countrywide Bank when they practically went bankrupt? Or that there are now only three major banks in this country – Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup? (Monopoly, anyone? I’ll take Boardwalk.) In my litany of problems, it probably slipped my mind….

And to add insult to injury, our once strong dollar has dropped below the euro. Didn’t this currency just enter existence about a decade ago? Furthermore, our currency is running neck and neck with Canadian money, further indication of our abysmal economic state and the abject failure of the Republican administration.

Remember when we were once the Superman of the World, where other countries saw us as the caped crusader who could save the day. Since our senseless invasion in Iraq , we are now viewed with suspicion by many in the international community and our motives questioned constantly. Obama’s mixed heritage opens the door towards effective diplomacy and gives him an opportunity to undo the damage that the warmongering Republicans have caused. It is to our advantage to have Obama as president since the majority of the people in today’s emerging economies resemble Obama’s family more than McCain’s. This may have escaped our notice because we were too busy chasing those adjusting interest rates!

This time Americans will send a clear and strong message that we need a change from the failed policies of the Republican Party. Wasn’t it Albert Einstein who said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results”? We will see if America has kept its sanity on November 7th, 2008.

Obama Did It!

You know, I just cannot get any satisfaction with the media. Here we have this historic moment where the first African-American is nominated as the democratic candidate for President of the United States and once again, all I here is Hillary, Hillary, Hillary! I was expecting a chronicled history of previous African-Americans who have run for president and set the precedence for this moment.

Instead, all I hear is what Hillary Clinton is going to do.

• She doesn't want to quit the race.
• Her backers reprimanded her speech.
• She will endorse Obama on Friday.
• Her backers plan to endorse Obama.
• Enough already!

Obama needs to talk more to the media. I am an outsider to the media, but what I am coming to realize is that Hillary talks to the media quite a bit and the media feels duty-bound to report everything she says. Obama, on the other hand, does not do that. Instead, he will do an interview here and there. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is always in communication with the media.

Obama needs to do the same. That way, everytime the news comes on, it leads with an Obama story. His name needs to be just as comfortable to American ears as the Clinton's were before. Obama needs to get close to the American public instead of hiding behind the issues. We need to see him laugh more, get angry, play sports, play with his kids. He needs to get personal. The reason why Michelle Obama is such a hit is because she lets us into her world and her childhood. She connects her experiences with ours.

Obama needs to tell us what it was like while he was growing up. He needs to show us how his life is similar to many other American's lives.

And then he can go back to that policy stuff.