Vote for Joe

Ok, the Obama administration bail out is on the table.   While multi-dimensional, the crux is to help many banks  gain bouyancy again and inspire renewed consumer trust.   New York Times columnist David Leonhardt best summed up the primary dynamic that got us here:   “It’s your fault.   Part of it is, anyway.   You, the American consumer, spent too much money.   You bought too much house, took on too much debt and generally lived beyond your means.   Your free-spending ways helped cause the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.   And now you’re going to have to do your part to end the crisis.   How?   By spending.”   Wouldn’t this be akin to asking an alcoholic in the process of hitting bottom — to drink more?   Well, sure.  

Just finished an article about “Hip Hop” music.   It ran in National Geographic.   Writer James McBride categorizes some of Hip Hop as “social commentary.”   And he went to Dakar, Senegal, to search for the African roots of this music.   Upon arriving in Dakar, he notes:   “The stench of poverty in my nostrils was so strong it pulled me to earth like a hundred-pound ring in my nose.”   Just like the slaves in the South invented “the Blues” out of their pain, true Hip Hop eminates from the “quiet rage and desperate fury” of the Senegalese, McBride continues.   And he adds that desperation has indeed gone global:   “Today, two percent of the Earth’s adult population owns more than 50 percent of it’s household wealth, and indegenous cultures are swallowed with the rapidity of a teenager gobbling a bag of potato chips…”   And to spin off from this metaphore, therein lies the problem.   In the market at Senegal, McBride met a teenage beggar whose body was malformed by polio.   He crawled on his hands and knees like a spider, begging for scraps of food.   And meanwhile, people in our culture will think nothing of buying ‘bag after bag’ of non-nutritional junk food like potato chips — while this youth in Senegal (Biafra, Uganda, Burundi…) is in such tremendous pain and desperation.   Note:   As president, I would do everything possible to try to mobilize more people in America (and throughout the First World) to help that kid in Senegal.

The New York Times   today carried a front page article about Sacramento, California’s non-profit Municipal Utility that has come up with a creative strategy to get people to use less energy.   On their monthly bills, the Utility  include a “Last Month Neighborhood Comparison.”   That is, you are compared to 100 random homes of comprable size in your area.   The 100 homes are dubbed as: “All” — and you are compared against their mean average energy use.   Then there is another graph  where you are compared to  20 neighbors who were “especially efficient in energy savings.”   This is dubbed as “Green.”   A social pyschologist interviewed for the article said the age-old “keeping up with your neighbors” is a strong motivating factor, even when it comes to conservation…   Personally, our family tries to be as “green” as possible when it comes to home energy savings.   Our family of five lives in a relatively small two-bedroom apartment in Cleveland, Ohio.   We don’t use air conditioning.   We use energy saving flourescent lights and only turn them on (Wait ’til you hear this!) in just the rooms we’re using.   We don’t use a television.   Our refrigerator is half the size of most regular refrigerators.   For winter, we put plastic on all the windows.   Instead of using the central gas heating, we have a couple portable heaters that we just turn on in the rooms we’re using, at the time we’re using them,  during the day.   And in those rooms, we generally keep the temperature between 55 to 62 degrees, and often wear sweaters and hats.   (I read once that you lose 70% of your body heat through your head.   My wife Liz will say that with the ‘hole’ in my head, that might be closer to 90% for me.)   Sure we get a bit cold in the winter, a bit hot in the summer.   But in the face of  potentially more and more  global warming catastrophies, we think it’s worth the sacrifice.   What’s more, in the context of our spirituality (Catholic), sacrificing is actually a spiritually good thing, period. Note:   We would do well to become a Society of Conservers vs. a Society of Consumers.   For more on our environmental position paper…

I was talking with a Cleveland city school teacher yesterday who is also quite active doing social justice work  with the Catholic Workers here.   She said farmers will continue to grow coca plants in, say,  Columbia “as long as their is money to be made.”   Her point being that as long as people stay impoverished, in their desperation they will turn to whatever they can to feed their children and themselves.   Common sense.   Our administration’s ‘War on Drugs’ would, among other things,  be a tremendously stepped up humanitarian aid outpouring into the Third World.   Speaking of war…   Bumper sticker sighting:   “War doesn’t decide who’s right.   Just who’s left.”

I was on the St. Ignatius High School campus this morning and talked with youth minister Augi Pacetti.   He said this week that some of the students were doing “The Great Garbage Challenge.”     For five days, students will carry around a plastic bag (everywhere)  that they fill up with the garbage they generate.   This is to make  one’s waste visible and bring it to the forefront of one’s consciousness, Mr. Pacetti explained.   It should be eye opening for most of the students…   I couldn’t help but think how helpful it would be for many of us to be able to also   carry around a ‘bag’ for five days of all the carbon dioxide each of us emits from our vehicles, our home heating, our consumer purchases (it takes the burning of fossil fuels to produce most items).   Note:   The Obama Administration is moving swiftly on applications by California and 13 other states for much stricter automobile emissions and fuel efficiency, the New York Times   reported today.   While this is, indeed, a step in the right direction, our  environmental policy  on global warming would be  much more  agressive than  the Obama Administration’s, across the board.    Much of the  global warming data now indicates that these gradual, incremental shifts in policy —  “…is like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” I just told the Ashtabula Star Beacon newspaper.