Collecting My Thoughts

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Use a land line for important presidential-type talk

"President-elect Barack Obama may not find it that hard to give up his BlackBerry after all. Verizon Wireless has announced that some of its employees accessed his personal cell phone account records. The wireless provider apologized to the president-elect and said it would discipline the employees involved." Story here. Read the DNS story in the December Wired, and you may switch to land line anyway. Maybe the Verizon employees will just get a wrist slap like Gov. Strickland's
pro-Obama employee who plumbed the depths of Joe the Plumber's records in our state data bases. Routine, she says, for people in the news!

Is required "voluntary" service marxist?

Obama's website has already backed down on the mandatory service idea, as he is backing down on many of his glorious ideals and themes. Personally, I think it will return in sort of a revised, refreshed WPA type thing. His campaign site was "scrubbed" so I won't look at the old version. I'm not sure bait and switch is more Republican, Democrat or Socialist, but we sure see a lot of it--although usually it's within the first 100 days of the administration, not the time between the election and taking the oath.

Maybe some of the Clinton retreads pointed out to him the bulging federal government give aways that already support millions of jobs at "volunteer" pay, particularly through faith-based agencies and non-profits carrying water for the federal government. The aid these programs supply to the poor and disadvantaged, the disabled and mentally ill, is so siphoned away by thousands of jobs in the chain between the grant and the hand-out, it's ~~criminal~~ a form of money laundering to bring home the pork to keep the elected folk in office. A side benefit is everyone from the president on down can feel warm fuzzies in a nation whose economy is over 70% built on consuming and very few people are truly poor.

The Obama administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.There are already so many organized volunteer agencies, groups and opportunities in place that your head could spin trying to select one that, 1) suits your skill level, 2) addresses a true need, and 3) doesn't bloat the state or federal government by asking for more taxes so it can give it back to you through block grants to churches, local agencies, and university studies.

I could work 40 hours a week, at no pay, just in USDA funded activities, not just distributing food, but on global warming hype, on questionable housing programs, and convincing old people to eat their fruits and veggies in hopes of slowing dementia. None of this would make an iota of "change" in the long run, but I could feel good about keep thousands of people "up stream" from the agency and the federal government employed.

On the other hand, the local and state regulators are making it very difficult to actually get physically close to a person in real need, so you may have to settle for raking leaves, licking envelopes, or shoveling snow.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

How to grow a government program

Many government programs fail. You can track these at the Expect More website. Unfortunately, I'm afraid it means "expect more spending," instead of expect more for the money already spent. There are way too many government programs, and the list has grown under President Bush. According to this website, 28% of Federal programs are Not Performing. A rating of Results Not Demonstrated (RND) indicates that a program has not been able to develop acceptable performance goals or collect data to determine whether it is performing.

Let's just look at one program--and even reading through its history you wonder why it was ever considered necessary, the Food Stamp Nutrition Education (FSNE).

"FSNE began in 1988 when cooperative extension faculty in Brown County, Wisconsin and University of Wisconsin extension staff discovered that by committing state and local funding and contracting with the state food stamp agency, an equal amount of federal dollars could be secured to expand the reach of nutrition education to low-income persons in that area. Other universities soon followed. In 1992, seven states conducted FSNE using $661 thousand in federal funds. By 2004, FSNE was conducted throughout the country using nearly $460 million, with $228.6 million in Food Stamp Program administration funds and the remainder contributed by the states.Here's why it got an RND rating:

unlimited matching source of funding

So here are the suggestions,

In other words, there were no measurable results for all that money, and it could be moved to another program. That doesn't mean the money stream will stop. And even if people misunderstood the program or didn't apply correctly, would they have misunderstood it to the amount of $460 million? Maybe the solution is to write the programs in understandable English?

Other government programs are listed as ineffective. They seem to be like wayward children--the government never gives up on them.

DNS (Domain Name System ) article

in Wired, December 2008 about a hacker, Dan Kaminsky, who discovered a hole in the system that would allow him to impersonate any website -- banking sites, medical, government, e-mail websites -- to attack unsuspecting users.

If you think 9/11 was scary, if the September 2008 meltdown of our government and finances frightened you, just read this article. [shiver] Kaminsky’s bug was squashed, but it makes you wonder how many more might be out there waiting for some who had enough time to think about it and play around (he was recovering from a shattered elbow).

“Collapse,” by Joshua Davis, Wired December 2008, p. 200

I don’t see December on their archive page yet--you read it in the library if you‘re not a subscriber. But the story has appeared in tech blogs and other magazines in July and August, which I never read. Davis is a good writer--of suspense.

Big Green Tent

See what I mean about greengoes?

Here's the Greenbuild 08, November 19-21 hype

Never mind that Obama will tax them to death if they try to make any money. Dream on silly architects and building trades.

We look like a Hallmark card

my husband said this morning. "The table is set with the good china, you're preparing food in the kitchen, and I'm putting up the Christmas tree." Celebrating birthdays tomorrow, so I'm getting the food ready today so that we can all go to church. Usually, this doesn't happen, but each year I can hope. It's pretty awkward. I go to church at 7 a.m. to pray, my husband ushers at the 8:15, and then we are all supposed to meet up for the 11 a.m. traditional service. Then it's back to the house for dinner. This year, we hope that 1) everyone gets to church on time, and 2) my husband can keep them busy decorating the tree while I put everything in the oven to warm up. It's sort of like eating leftovers since everything except the meat is prepared today. Here's the menu:

Boneless pork roast with orange sauce
dressing with apples, bacon and onion
buttered, spiced carrots
mashed potatoes
scalloped corn
pumpkin pie with whipped cream
I tried a new scalloped corn recipe--the kind you make with a corn muffin mix. I used to make it from memory, but the memory's shot. Not sure how that is going to work out--it sort of looks like a cake. My husband hates corn so the only time I fix it is when there will be someone else to eat it. And bacon. No matter what brand I buy it seems so tasteless. Has anyone else noticed this? It never gets crispy and yummy--just lies there and takes up space. Is it low-cholesterol pigs? Too many antibiotics and hormones? I wish they'd stop messing with our food. Maybe it's just my taste buds. They are my age, after all, and probably wearing out.

When I looked on the internet for a corn recipe, and bunches of happy cooks were contributing theirs (all with canned corn), of course one of the grow-your-own vegans drops by and insults everyone by saying she would never eat that garbage, but "y'all have a good day." Don't you just hate that on bulletin boards? Everyone's chatting and exchanging ideas and being so friendly, and then Mrs. Poo Poo I'm better than You chimes in.

Fall 1971, probably taken for birthdays

Our son has been battling a cold, and possibly the flu, so we may be a very small group. He's dragging to work, and then goes home and goes to bed. He never eats much, but at least I can send home the left overs. My cold seems to be undercover for now with the Zicam and the Clariton and extra sleep. At least, it hasn't gotten to that stage yet where I'd call it a cold.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Friday Family Photo

It's a dictionary! Merriam-Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition, unabridged (1948) Here's the story of Merriam-Webster. My recollection is that this was a gift from my maternal grandmother Mary to our family for Christmas 1949, with a set of encyclopedias the next Christmas, although it's possible they were together, perhaps a 2-fer special. It remained in my parents' home for over 50 years, and was often used because my father was a cross-word fan, and they both would turn to the dictionary to answer questions just like we might use google today. Dad died in 2002, and I was probably the only one who requested this--at least I don't remember anyone else asking for it. It is sitting in my dining room on my mother's sewing cabinet, which she probably gave me sometime in the 1970s. Behind the sewing cabinet are the sliding glass doors for my early 1960s Paul McCobb china hutch which I don't use anymore, but didn't know where to put them. Ordinarily you don't see them, but they show up gray in the photo.

The last time I used this dictionary was this morning about 5:30 a.m. Here is the sentence that stumped me: "Psychopannychia emerges as relevatory of the young Calvin's thought." I had never seen "relevatory" before. Neither had Mr. Webster. And if it isn't in Webster's 2nd, I don't need to know!

Foreclosure counseling

Yesterday I was listening to 700 am in Cincinnati and heard an ad for Hope Now Alliance which was all warm and fuzzy about helping people facing foreclosure. "Betcha they put them there," was my response to the radio. So today I looked them up. Yessiree, same old gang that put people into homes with "gift" downpayments, and balooning mortgages and probably did no credit checks or background sifting are part of this group, thrown together to get more government money for foreclosure counseling when they were about to loose their sorry ~~as-~~ jobs in the mortgage industry.

So how does a floundering GSE with ties to Congress and in the tank lobbyists for Obama (if no party is mentioned, assume Democrat, because Republicans are usually noted) put on a Santa Claus face?

Not all these apples are bad, but I wouldn't want to be in the same basket with ACORN and La Raza, one a communist agitation group spoiling many elections with illegal voters, the other wants the SW to return to Mexico.

Members:

**Who is Fred? The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC) (NYSE: FRE), commonly known as Freddie Mac, is an insolvent government sponsored enterprise (GSE) of the United States federal government.

The FHLMC was created in 1970 to expand the secondary market for mortgages in the US. Along with other GSEs, Freddie Mac buys mortgages on the secondary market, pools them, and sells them as mortgage-backed securities to investors on the open market. The U.S. government seized control of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE), called GSEs, in September 2008, placing the liabilities of more than $5 trillion of mortgages onto the backs of the U.S. taxpayer.

From Community Organizer to President of the World

An amazingly brief journey when you consider how little we know about the building blocks of Obama‘s political DNA. Consider this. Barack Obama:
A Radical Leftist’s Journey from Community Organizing to Politics

The better term for "community organizer" is community agitator working within a 501(c)(3) frame work* as a non-profit. These organizations are very powerful now within the frayed fringes of the federal and state government because of their non-profit status which allows them full use of government funding without any security clearance or oversite. Unless a group gets more than $500,000 a year, no one questions what is done, and records only need to be kept 3 years, so good luck in tracking their activities or even their names. They split, reorganize and morph into new organizations eligible for additional grants. They were able to be participants through the various housing and home grants to threaten banks which brought down our economy with the aid of the 2006 Democratic take-over of Congress, who with the exception of Pelosi, Reid, Frank, Dodd and Obama, seemed unaware of the tainted salad bowl on the buffet table of pork. However, the chef's help was there from the Bush administration which grew these programs to unheard of amounts from the Reagan era and combined them with private partnerships which fueled the building boom.** In this way, the eight years of George Bush directly built the frame work for the Obama take over.

And the Communist Party USA hack intones the party line and fills in the bridges to somewhere--Kansas, Hawaii, California, Africa, Chicago, to Washington DC:

“. . . an African-American poet and journalist by the name of Frank Marshall Davis, who was certainly in the orbit of the CP – if not a member – and who was born in Kansas and spent a good deal of his adult life in Chicago, before decamping to Honolulu in 1948 at the suggestion of his good friend Paul Robeson. Eventually, he befriended another family – a Euro-American family – that had migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago. In his best selling memoir ‘Dreams of my Father’, the author speaks warmly of an older black poet, he identifies simply as "Frank" as being a decisive influence in helping him to find his present identity as an African-American, a people who have been the least anticommunist and the most left-leaning of any constituency in this nation – though you would never know it from reading so-called left journals of opinion. At some point in the future, a teacher will add to her syllabus Barack’s memoir and instruct her students to read it alongside Frank Marshall Davis’ equally affecting memoir, "Living the Blues" and when that day comes, I’m sure a future student will not only examine critically the Frankenstein monsters that US imperialism created in order to subdue Communist parties but will also be moved to come to this historic and wonderful archive in order to gain insight on what has befallen this complex and intriguing planet on which we reside."
-----------

*501(c)(3) exemptions apply to corporations, and any community chest, fund, or foundation, organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition, or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals. Technically, they are not supposed to use government funding for political advocacy , but that is a joke considering they can use it for “educational” purposes. Also, other 501C groups can set up a 501c3 for more money for education.

**Read through this advertisement Rally for Home Ownership which promotes "gift" downpayments and their relationship to "private" lenders (under threat using CRA guidelines) and home builders.

Blue skies and sunshine in Columbus

My husband is creeping along on Rt. 4 about 10 miles an hour. Says it is very slick and icy (called to let me know where he is). He's returning from Lakeside and four hours of leaf raking, a fall routine he's had for 10 years--although most of our neighbors there close up on Labor Day and reopen in April or May, and don't worry about leaf pick up schedule.

Gorgeous fashions! I was watching El Gordo y La Flaca last evening and their guest/side kick Steve(?) had a clip of a fashion show interview he'd done. Oh my! Clothes so feminine and graceful and fabrics so lush they recalled old 30s movies, or trimmer times of the 1950s. I certainly hope that trend will spread. Not that I could afford them or have a place to wear dressy clothes, but there is a trickle down effect. I don't know enough Spanish to catch the event or the designer, but let's hope it catches on. So tired of sloppy and casual. I left the room for a few minutes and when I came back the news was on. Those info-babes on Spanish language TV certainly dress differently than ours. Eye popping, if you get my drift. The man, however, was completely covered.

Also flipping through the channels I got the last few minutes of the Republican Governors Conference last week on c-span. They do seem excited about Bobby Jindal, and were praising him for the Gustav response. We keep passing out my homemade Palin-Jindal 2012 pins.

Feels like I might be coming down with a cold. I'm overdue. Haven't had one since September 2007. So I've been trying Zicam--a friend swears by it. If I could get 1 week colds like other people, I'd be happy. Mine usually last 3 or more weeks.

I had a long chat with one of my uncles last night and caught up on the family news. I think he's closer to my age than my father's--maybe 10 years older than me. He mentioned some grandchildren I didn't know about and a change of address for one of my aunts in California, so I suggested he write down the children's names and birth dates and mail them to me. I seem to be the only person in the family that does much with genealogy. Doesn't make much sense to know who was where in the 17th century if you don't know where the 21st century cousins are. I don't care much for my new version of Family Tree Maker 2008. I don't seem to be able to do the old functions I knew under the 7.0 version.

I volunteered at the Senior Center lunch room yesterday. They really have nice lunches--we served choices of hamburgers, hot dogs, chicken salad, an Italian soup, broccoli soup, creamed chicken on toast, applesauce and usually someone brings in cookies or cake for a dessert to share. Although I have a regular service day, I've subbed a number of times, so don't seem to have a regular partner yet. Harold, my Tuesday partner, says I'm good. I think it's my experience at Zickuhr's Drug Store counter when I was in high school and college coming back to me. I have worked a few times with a woman who has a disabled daughter, and hope to help her out a bit so she can get out of the house more. On both Thursday and Friday there is line dancing right before lunch, and I enjoy watching them. I'm not going to figure this out, since even the medical journals can't, but I notice all the dancers are trim. Now are they trim because they exercise, or do they exercise because they're trim? One woman is 92 and seems to be having a lot of fun.

Advent's just around the corner, so I'll be helping on Wednesdays at church with lunch and communion. You don't ever want me in charge of the kitchen, but I can set a table and stir the soup.

Note: Here's an interesting Google trick. If you type "Zickuhr drug store" into Google and click on images, the first batch of photos that come up are all from my blogs, although I think only one is a photo of the drug store. I guess the other photos are on the same page as an entry about Zickuhr's.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Lady, you don't need us, you need a miracle

He says he really told her that, but I'm sure he didn't, otherwise she'd report him to his boss. You know how people hate to hear the truth. He is a service worker who regularly sees the inside of people's homes, from big mansion to shabby duplex to apartments, from attic to basement to garage. This one, he noted shaking his head, looked like a herd of cattle had been driven through the living room. Mud. Animal feces. Filthy clothes. Bad odors. Trim and weather stripping broken or missing. The home was built in 1995--nice area, working father, stay at home mom. Two young children. If he'd been an animal protection officer and the children were pets, he probably could have removed them. He says he waited after giving her an estimate while she called her husband. He could hear him screaming at her through the phone from the other side of the room.

Maybe one of those marriage 101 workshops the federal government is funding could help. Or a daily cleaning service. Or that English nanny we see on TV. Slobs come in all classes and income brackets. A friend of mine was a "home manager," she cleaned, baby sat and ran errands for a wealthy family in Dublin with 4 rotten to the core children (both parents were professional--doctor and lawyer). She couldn't stand it. She quit because each day she came back to work and it was a worse mess than the day before, even after she'd put everything in order. She was told she couldn't remove the pet dog from the kitchen counters where it would eat the butter. Some people are beyond slobdom. They do need a miracle.

If only this could happen in restaurants

Cell phone karma

HT Bob C.

Off shore drilling ban lifted

on July 14, 2008 and prices immediately began to plummet. I'm not sure even one drop has resulted from this, but all the naysayers who said it wouldn't affect prices at the pump obviously were wrong. Gasoline is below $1.70 at some stations in Columbus. Adjusted for inflation, I think that's cheaper than when I was in high school.

This makes greengoes unhappy because Algorists were using this to push all the oil and gas sky-is-falling stories (it's God's stored sunshine, but they are pantheists). Obamites aren't happy either, because there go all the billions in taxes that the government's been so dependent on, right when all the rich folks are losing their income, too. Even Governor Palin might be in trouble and see her popularity drop (highest of all the governors), since Alaskans each (yes, even the kids) get part of the profits from their oil bounty.

Just in time to hop in the car and drive to Grandma's--or in our case, to the home of niece Joan in Indianapolis. Although we'll be staying in Columbus this year and having a wonderful turkey and/or ham dinner at our daughter's home. I just love that part about having kids--when they grow up they can cook for you.

A most awkward acronym

Acronyms are wonderful--whole committees can spend time designing them, others are delightfully accidental. Whether the SOB Alliance (State of Ohio Blogger) of which I'm a part was intentional, I don't know. I've written entire blog entries about acronyms. In my early days (mid-1980s) as Head of the Veterinary Medicine Library, which made me part of Heads of Undergraduate and Departmental Librarians at The Ohio State University Libraries (head of VET, member of HUDL, at OSUL) I had a computer, but it was stand alone, not connected to any other libraries and the internet in its present form and World Wide Web (WWW) were still a fantasy. But there were encyclopedias of acronyms and reverse acronyms, and I could sneak away from my duties to browse, just as today librarians all over the world find reasons to poke around the web, read their e-mail, listservs, and blogs and experiment with social networking (all in the name of better service to the library user).

All this as introduction to one of the best in describing what it was finally worth before someone renamed it after 40 years. COCU. That stands for Consultation on Church Union, but bears a striking resemblance to cuckoo, or cuckholded, indeed, cocu is French for cuckhold. Both words come from the French and mean unfaithful, whether laying eggs in another's nest or adultery, link.

No word better describes the irrelevance of the modern church's ecumenical movement and it's proclamation of authority as it fled both the authority of Scripture and the authority of the Roman Church than COCU. For a while it fueled the rise of the evangelicals who stood in the gap created by liberal protestants and catholics, but even they have been marginalized and warrenized, attempting to "emerge" but from what and to what they aren't sure and don't agree.

Usually, I don't cite Wikipedia as an authority because--well, it isn't--but in this case, COCU is so insignificant and so funny, I'll send you there. Wikis can be edited by no one in particular, and this entry is begging for editors. So if you're an expert on failures in Protestantism, have a go.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Why George Bush isn't a fiscal conservative

The man spends like a Democrat. And they didn't even like him for it. A huge number of these were for poverty, environment, education, health, etc., indirectly and under the table adding thousands to the government payroll and subverting state and local control. That's why Obama's campaign of concern and caring for us po' folk who could barely walk and chew gum without the federal government's help was so odd. It can only grow, and yet more of what didn't work under a Republican will work under a Democrat?

From Chris Edwards, Cato at Liberty, Dec. 4, 2007.

This chart updates a longer article he published in October 2006. I noticed in that article one of the biggest new initiatives of the Bush Administration was $150,000,000 for "Healthy Marriage Promotion," which provided grants to states, non-profits, etc. to provide counseling, workshops and celebrations of events such as National Black Marriage Day.

Healthy Marriage Grants will range from $250,000 to $5,000,000 depending on the scope of the project. Average award: $1,000,000. Responsible Fatherhood Grants will range from $200,000 to $2,000,000 depending on the scope of the project. Average award: $700,000. Tribal TANF Child Welfare Grants will range from $25,000 to $100,000. Average Award: $80,000. Children raised by married parents have a very modest chance of growing up in poverty, whereas an unmarried mom almost guarantees it. However, I think this was an open invitation for misuse of the taxpayers money. The required audits will never try to judge how many teen minority fathers married the mothers of their children because they attended a workshop. Churches have been working on this problem for years even with middle class families, and losing ground. I don't think throwing $150 million at it will change much (unless they throw it at Hollywood or TV which seems a bigger influence than church or parents). As in all these subsidies, very little makes it to the problem, and most goes for overhead like salaries, rent, utilities, food, consultants, printing, publishing, research, etc. Here's an article in the Columbus Dispatch of how $500,000 that came to Ohio was spent.

Here's a list of the top 10% of CFDA searches. I've been writing a lot about the housing grants, so here's a few from that list. All would require partnering non-profits with with business or state agencies or alone.

10.442 USDA Housing Application Packaging Grants

10.410 USDA Very Low to Moderate Income Housing Loans

14.313 HUD Dollar Home Sales

14.247 HUD Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program

14.235 HUD Supportive Housing Program

97.048 DHS Disaster Housing Assistance to Individuals and Households

in Presidential Declared Disaster Areas (must have been the mother of housing boondoggles: FY 07 $189,366,831--probably could have completely rebuilt NOLA with this grant--it's just one year figure)

10.417 USDA Very Low-Income Housing Repair Loans and Grants

14.311 HUD Single Family Property Disposition

14.239 HUD Home Investment Partnerships Program

14.149 HUD Rent Supplements_Rental Housing for Lower Income Families

10.433 USDA Rural Housing Preservation Grants

14.195 HUD Section 8 Housing Assistance Payments Program_Special Allocations

15.633 DOI Landowner Incentive Program

14.401 HUD Fair Housing Assistance Program_State and Local

10.415 USDA Rural Rental Housing Loans

14.901 HUD Healthy Homes Demonstration Grants

10.427 USDA Rural Rental Assistance Payments

14.871 HUD Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers

This is an old one--originally authorized in 1937--FY 09 est $16,253,000,000--yes, that's 16 billion for 2 million families, and they only get part of the rent--wonder where the rest of it goes? That's some overhead!

14.401 HUD Fair Housing Assistance Program_State and Local

10.415 USDA Rural Rental Housing Loans

14.181 HUD Supportive Housing for Persons with Disabilities

14.169 HUD Housing Counseling Assistance Program [FY 09 est $60,000,000]

14.856 HUD Lower Income Housing Assistance Program_Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation

10.411 USDA Rural Housing Site Loans and Self_Help Housing Land Development Loans

14.157 HUD Supportive Housing for the Elderly

[FY 09 est $791,303,000] Based on the numbers of units built in 2007 (3,857) I figure they cost about $195,000 each--not bad for single resident, low income.

14.250 HUD Rural Housing and Economic Development [FY 08 $17,000,000 The only accomplishments listed were 854 jobs]

81.042 DOE Weatherization Assistance for Low-Income Persons [FY 07 $204,356,661 this one is about $50,000,000 less in FY 09--must be that global warming benefit]

93.568 HHS Low-Income Home Energy Assistance

14.142 HUD Property Improvement Loan Insurance for Improving All Existing Structures and Building of New Nonresidential Structures

14.110 HUD Manufactured Home Loan Insurance_Financing Purchase of Manufactured Homes as Principal Residences of Borrowers

Change we can count on

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm feeling much better about Obama's change these days. All those Clinton retreads. It's like a family reunion, although they never really left the beltway, just opened "think tanks." Not that the Bush people will be any different. It's what keeps that place going. Also nice to see that they'll probably opt for private school for their daughters. God forbid a wealthy politician who owes the NEA big time should ever support private education for the poor or middle class with vouchers. Nope. The only change I see is the value of my 403-b and my stock portfolio. Just a dab of change left. And he's promising to take even what little's there by taxing more businesses to give me itsy-bitsy perksies. Thank you Democrats for all you've done for us to make our investments worthless while you sat on your fannies.

Green jobs

My husband's architecture newsletters (via e-mail so they come to me) are so covered with ga-ga-green, I'm surprised they aren't moldy by the time I open them. All businesses are getting on this band wagon. Some of the ads are just ridiculous--"Great minds think green" Dow Chemical. (Librarians have 2.0, but architects have LEED v3) And if it were just business, I wouldn't care, but when the government is pushing it--look out--reeks of planned economy. Governments don't create--they take, and then send a little back to you in the form of block grants, subsidies, tax breaks, and civil service jobs. For real innovation whether it's in stem cell research or google, you need smart, young, know-it-alls who aren't afraid to ask questions and take risks.

It takes a lot of government green. . .

Dear University of Illinois Alumni Association

Sara Greenstein Vice President and Associate Chancellor, Alumni Relations sarag@illinois.edu Joseph Rank Vice President, Membership j-rank@uillinois.edu Dear University of Illinois Alumni Association: Until Bill Ayers is removed from the faculty of the University of Illinois, please remove me from your alumni mailing list. He is a disgrace and embarrassment, a threat to our legacy, and the personification of the depths to which the university has fallen.

Norma Bruce
'61, '66

Guys and dolls--paper that is

Collecting paper dolls is not something I do, but because I have scanned a few, my site meter shows that sometimes people interested in paper dolls do show up here at Collecting My Thoughts. I have a few of my childhood paper dolls squished into photo albums, and some that belonged to my mother which were cut from women's magazines. Paper doll collectors specialize just like other collectors of Ohio pottery, old quilts, or retro clothing (I seem to have a few of those, too--Hull, grandma's and mine).

Here's a bulletin board for collectors--very interesting to read even you aren't a collector. It's maintained by Joan, who has written a book on magazine paper dolls.

You can always tell when childhood memorabilia wasn't loved or played with--it's still in good condition! The dollies that survived my little girl loving were given to me when I was moving out of that stage, which is also why I have children's glass play dishes. The older ones were all broken or given away to younger children. So it is with these young men. My Mary Martin and Betty Grable and Gene Tierney paper dolls are headless, knee capped, folded and wrinkled. These guys are in near perfect condition (considering their age) and the tabs haven't even been folded on the little boy's clothing. Written on the back are Greg (2), Eddie, and Jerry, but I don't recognize the handwriting. We often renamed the paper dolls, even the movie stars, so those probably aren't the names they came with. From the clothing they came in, I'd guess they are ca. 1943-1946. What do you think?

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Will tax relief programs be eliminated under Obama?

Just about 2 years ago, December 20, 2006, President Bush signed the "Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006." Very little seemed to do with health except the expansion of HSAs and Obama intends to federalize health care, so not much to point out there. Most was about growing the economy through reducing or maintaining reductions on taxes on various businesses, expanding energy resources, overseas markets, and some help with college tuition. It was an economic stimulus--at a time when the President reported, "The unemployment rate has remained low at 4.5 percent, and the latest figures show that real hourly wages increased 2.3 percent in the last year, meaning an extra $1,350 for this year for the typical family of four with both parents working."

If tax cuts were considered important then to keep the economy growing, how much more important now. Will Obama cut? Expand? Increase regulations so he can by-pass Congress? Obviously, the markets are very afraid of him, as investors see the growth and tax benefits of the last 8 years slipping away. These were the provisions:

the coal industry

Outer Continental Shelf

View letter to President elect Obama.

Collecting My Thoughts

Sunday, November 23, 2008