Author Susan Jacoby has proposed the following as a "little campaign speech" she'd like to hear from candidates running for President. In proposing this speech, she notes that she is taking it for granted that "the 2008 Democratic nominee will be a believer in God and a member of some…
How often have you heard this phrase: “powerful members of Congress.” It gets under my skin. It sometimes makes me seethe. I saw it on the front page of yesterday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch dealing with the President’s State of the Union address:
The prospects: Democrats in Congress have proposed raising the requirement to 60 billion gallons of 2030. Some experts say big reductions in gas usage won’t happen unless Bush orders much higher fuel economy standards, which powerful members of Congress would resist.
[By the way, I’m not trying to single out the Post-Dispatch. This is just an illustrtion. Almost every media publisher across America also uses this phrase]
So there it is. Some members of Congress are more “powerful” than others. What does that mean? Does it mean that they go to the gym more often so that they have big muscles? Or does it mean something more sinister? And if it’s a sinister thing, why is it so nonchalantly placed on the front page of the newspaper as though it’s not a scandalous thing?
There’s nothing in the Constitution that would give any clue to the mania of “powerful member of Congress.” To the extent that belonging to a particular political party makes one “powerful,” the Constitution is totally silent about political parties. The “power” of Congress should not be determined by reference to who belongs to what club. When it comes down to voting on issues, each member of Congress has the same number of …
Are people concerned about global warming now? Yes, indeed. Even crowds of people in traditionally conservative Idaho. Check out this piece by Melinda Henneberger on Huffpo.
People living in small rural villages in Uganda have found a practical solution to a problem which the greatest minds and vast resources of the United States seem unable to confront, let alone solve: how to make basic health care available and affordable. There's no national health insurance and people…
I’ve written before about how banking laws are for sale (some would say I’ve ranted before). In that post I discussed payday lending. I often hear that payday lending is not predatory and that such lenders must be offering a service, else why would people borrow money at 300%, 400%, 500% or even more?
I also hear people blame the victims of payday lending. Others say the borrowers are at fault for borrowing money at horrible interest rates. Even borrowers hold themselves at fault. When (if) they get out of the trap (and make no mistake, it is a trap with a cycle of borrowing the same money repeatedly, because the costs are so high people have great difficulty paying the debt without borrowing to do so) they still blame themselves for getting into it.
Many borrowers blame themselves for being stupid or taking the ‘easy way’ out. One person I know, when faced with the choice of becoming homeless or getting some money, said she thought the loan was an answer to prayer. “As I prayed for help,” she said, “an ad for payday loans came on tv. I thought God was answering my prayer.” Hundreds and hundreds of dollars later in interest, she thinks it was the devil.