All right, let’s get back to the real issues. As you might now, there continues to be a big fight in New Orleans as residents.

Last month, activists from the Coalition to Protect Public Housing clashed with police to fight for the rights of public housing residents who have continued to be displaced by plans of the department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to tear down three housing projects. So, what we continue to see is a big land-grab, causing the ranks of the homeless to swell.

For example:

Since Katrina, the homeless population of New Orleans has doubled to more than 12,000 people. Despite what the New York Times on Dec. 2 called an “acute rental shortage,” HUD plans to spend $762 million to demolish public housing and replace it with only 744 new units of affordable housing. HUD will spend an average of $400,000 for each new mixed-income unit, while statements by HANO’S own insurance company have shown that many of the multiple-unit buildings to be demolished could be repaired for less than $10,000 per building.

So, with all the talk about “change” and “hope” going on right now, I “hope” that one of these candidates can tell me how they are going to “change” things for the better for the people of New Orleans.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Just in time for Christmas, George Bush again proves that, while wasting hundreds of billions in Iraq, he thinks that spending money helping kids at home is too expensive:

The Bush administration yesterday eliminated about $700 million a year in Medicaid reimbursements to schools, sidestepping an attempt by Congress to block such a move.

The new rule, issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is expected to save the federal government $3.6 billion over five years, transferring those costs to school districts.

Lawmakers this week passed legislation to place a six-month moratorium on Medicaid implementing the rule change, but President Bush had not signed the bill.

A wide range of medical services, such as speech and physical therapy, are furnished to students in schools. Medicaid, the government’s health insurance program for the poor, will continue to pay for those services for low-income children.
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But the new rule will restrict when schools can bill the federal government for clerical work associated with providing health care. For example, schools can no longer expect Medicaid reimbursement for planning student immunizations. Schools also will not get paid for transporting students getting speech or physical therapy to school or back home.

So, while Republicans bemoan the fake “war on Christmas” and claim that people are forgetting the meaning of the holiday, here’s a prime example of what the holiday is not about and smacks of the very antithesis of what Jesus was about.

So much for good will toward men or, in this case, children.

Popularity: 32% [?]

Once again, home foreclosures are up. The California-based company Realtytrac monitors trends in the mortgage industry and have concluded that, nationwide, home foreclosures in November increased by 68% over the previous November’s filings.

In November 2006, 120,334 foreclosures were filed. In November 2007, there were 201,950 foreclosure filings.

This meant that, for November, this was a rate of 1 foreclosure for every 617 households, which is a pretty substantial number.

This trend is not likely to reverse soon so, we will continue to see news about families across America, a disproportionate number of them black and brown, losing their homes.

Popularity: 18% [?]

A few weeks back, the President vetoed the Democrats’ domestic spending package. He accused them of acting like kids with a credit card.

I found this to be quite ironic, considering how he is paying for his war in Iraq. You see, he makes you believe that, because he cut taxes for the rich and is not raising income taxes on the middle-class, the U.S. must have enough cash on-hand to pay for war. But, this is not true. In actuality, we are borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars. So, if you don’t see Bush say anything about lead paint or asbestos in kids’ toys from China, you’ll just have to understand. You see, it’s hard to criticize someone when you owe them over $900 billion.

Please understand, while the President talks about Democrats “wanting to raise your taxes”, let’s be real. If you take out a loan, you have to pay it back or face the consequences. The bill will come due and we are going to have to pay up. The only issue is that either you pay now or pay later — with even more interest accrued.

I say all that to say this — Bush and Congress are burying us in debt. Right now, the national debt is rising at a rate of $1 million per minute. Think about the following:

It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.

Even if you’ve escaped the recent housing and credit crunches and are coping with rising fuel prices, you may still be headed for economic misery, along with the rest of the country. That’s because the government is fast straining resources needed to meet interest payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing $9.13 trillion.

And like homeowners who took out adjustable-rate mortgages, the government faces the prospect of seeing this debt — now at relatively low interest rates — rolling over to higher rates, multiplying the financial pain.

So long as somebody is willing to keep loaning the U.S. government money, the debt is largely out of sight, out of mind.

But the interest payments keep compounding, and could in time squeeze out most other government spending — leading to sharply higher taxes or a cut in basic services like Social Security and other government benefit programs. Or all of the above.

Like I said pay now or pay (more) later. Don’t you think it’s long past time for us to ask the serious questions about our economy?

Popularity: 20% [?]

This is far from scientific but, it is a disturbing sign of the times.

Recently, at the Steelyard Commons shopping center in Cleveland, Ohio, some 6,000 people applied for 300 positions at a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Now, we are not talking executive position or highly-skilled roles. We are talking about low-paying retail jobs.

This pales in comparison two what happened at two Illinois Wal-Mart stores even smaller than the one in Cleveland. There, they had 25,000 and 15,000 applicants, respectively.

Experts say that this is “an indication not only of a less-than-stellar economy but also of a workforce short on marketable skills.”

So, what we may be seeing is an indication of what happens as the gap between rich and poor increases. Sadly, this is not the stuff of political stump speeches so, we’d better not wait for a candidate to address these concerns. For our families’ sakes, we need to speak on it, now.

Popularity: 38% [?]

As I think about the housing crisis, I can only think of the words of one of my favorite talk show host, Joe Madison, saying that black people are “undervalued, underestimated and marginalized.” You see, for many years, members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been railing against predatory lending. Of course, their warnings went unheeded. Now, we stand on the edge of financial catastrophe in this country, largely fueled by a lot of bad home loans — with a disproportionate amount of them made to people of color.

However, the question that’s not really been pursued in the mainstream press is “where minorities steered into bad loans when they could have otherwise been offered more conventional loans?” An article I read causes me to think that this was very likely the case.

In September, the Federal Reserve released a study that found 52.8 percent of African-Americans got a high-cost home loan when they refinanced in 2006, compared to 37.7 percent of Latinos and just 25.7 percent of whites in the same year.

A similar study by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known by its acronym ACORN, in September found the same pattern even when income was equal.

According to ACORN, upper-income blacks were 3.3 times, and Latinos 3 times, more likely than upper-income whites to have a high-cost loan when purchasing a home in 2006.

“I keep hoping one day I’ll do a study where race doesn’t play a part,” said Liz Wolff, author of the ACORN study.

“But clearly, there is a racial bias,” she added.

So, the foreclosures climb and more and more Americans are losing their homes. But, we have to ask, how many minority families are going to lose their homes because they were steered into loans by people who felt that it was okay to, basically, rip off people of color.

Popularity: 31% [?]

Sometimes, it’s hard to wrap one’s brain around the amount of money being spent in on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, a while back, Xinjo.com published some illustrations to give some idea about what this looks like. I’d suggest visiting the site for the full listing but, here’s a quick and dirty excerpt of what they offer in this piece.

The first photo shows what $9 million might look like with the following caption:

Nine Million dollars … The pile is 5 feet tall, 10 feet long, and 6¼ feet wide. A single stack of dollar bills in this amount would be 3,000 feet high.

This horde is comparable in size to a single compact car. You could buy 489 of them for the amount, though, with enough cash left over to fill up the gas tanks of 162 of them.

But this amount of money is more than four times what you can expect to earn in your entire life, if you are an American with a college degree.

But, wait, there’s more… Read More… »

Popularity: 32% [?]

Check the temperature! Hell must have frozen over — I find myself agreeing with someone in the Bush administration.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson had some strong words and dire warnings in relationship to current housing crisis. Paulson warned that the government and the financial industry should provide immediate help for homeowners who are at risk of foreclosure before the rates increase on their adjustable rate mortgages.

However, he also said a couple of things that I found particularly heartening. The first is that he called for tougher laws that prevent lenders from continuing to make the bad loans that created this crisis. The second was that the federal money going to help out homeowners should not be used to bail out lenders or property speculators (hmmm…where have I seen this before?)

Mark this date on your calendar. I have actually agreed with someone from Bush Co.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Riddle me this — if the economy is doing so well, why are home foreclosures going up? I mean, if there is so much money going around, am I left to believe that people, in record numbers, are just choosing not to pay their mortgages?

The real estate information company, RealtyTrac Inc., of Irvine, CA, has released its foreclosure figures for the time frame of September 2006-September 2007 and the findings are disheartening. For the month of September 2007, alone, 223,538 foreclosures were filed. Then number for September 2006 was 112,210, which just missed doubling last year by a mere 882 filings. RealtyTrac did say, however, that this number was lower that August 2007 — in that month 243,947 foreclosures were filed.

However, the company is also saying that, despite September’s numbers being lower than August’s, this should not be seen as an end in the cycle of foreclosures. With the rates on adjustable rate mortgages increasing, it would be expected that more will lose their homes due to an inability to afford the higher mortgage payments.

Popularity: 27% [?]