More tax cuts?

I just read that the Senate is tacking on tax cuts (with no compensatory spending cuts) to the bailout bill in an effort to appease Republicans. Business as usual. I am appalled. Could our so called leaders be any more irresponsible during this time of financial meltdown?

 

Racism swaying presidential vote

Last night, my daughter was messaging back and forth with a friend on MySpace, a young man who’s had a crush on her for a couple of years now. But the crush isn’t mutual; she just wanted to be friends, not lovers. But now, she’s not sure she can even remain his friend.

They were going back and forth about the upcoming presidential election. He said he’s going to vote Republican because Obama will raise taxes. She countered that he’ll lower taxes for more than 90 percent of us, and only raise taxes for the wealthiest, the ones who can actually afford to pay more taxes. He said he doesn’t identify with the 90 percent, he identifies with the top 10 percent; he’s going to school and will be making good money in a couple of years, and he’s going to vote with the leaders. She said middle class people making a decent salary aren’t the ones whose taxes will be raised. It’s the ones heading corporations, the ones who are very wealthy, the ones who end up paying very little tax due to loopholes—those sorts of people. He replied that he intends to become very wealthy and he’s not a loser, and he’s not about to vote with the losers.

So, things went back and forth like this for a bit longer and then he said, “Well, we let them on the bus, but we’re not going to let them into the White House.” She was stunned by this and ended the conversation shortly thereafter. He’s of mixed race: Philipino and Northern European stock. He lives in a thriving multicultural community. He has friends of all backgrounds. How many more like him are there whose votes will be driven by racism? How do you go about changing these people’s minds? What would you say to this lad if you were sincerely trying to get him to change his mind?

 

Mortgage meltdown mess

I drive to and from work in the California town I call home, and on just about every block at least one home is for sale: RE/MAX, Century 21, Coldwell Banker, all the big real estate names are represented on For Sale signs swinging in the breeze, along with a smattering of local outfits, each one with a number plastered across in red, black or white. Call, call, call they request, but their phones aren’t ringing much.

One corner where a stop sign halts my forward motion for a few seconds each morning has two homes for sale side by side. Unlike some farther down the block, these are still occupied by two neighbors about to say farewell. How many Saturday morning conversations have they had while washing their cars or trimming their rose bushes? Do they have children playing in the schoolyard across the street? Are they retirees seeking to live, in part, from the proceeds of the sale of their beloved, long-time home? Are they first-time buyers who took a leap of faith, buoyed by the infectious, frenzied optimism of the market a few years back? Did they lose a job, experience a debilitating illness or simply miscalculate their ability to make their payments after an initial low teaser rate expired?

Each home with a sign out front has a story all its own. How many children are being displaced? How many individuals are blaming themselves, how many spouses are blaming each other as they cram their families back into rentals, move in with relatives or hit the road in vans or trucks, parking on a different street each night, hoping no one taps their window and tells them to move on?

I think often of these people interrupted, disrupted. How can I not when the signs of distress are literally all around me? But they’ve been even more on my mind in the past couple of days because bankers are predicting an even larger number of foreclosures to come as interest rates adjust upward for alternative-A mortages taken out by the tier of borrowers just above subprime. These are borrowers who, unlike subprime borrowers, have good credit ratings but who didn’t meet all the criteria for a conventional mortgage. The initial low-interest period tends to be longer for these loans is longer, so higher payments are starting to hit this group.

It’s hard to predict what will happen, of course. A good credit rating might indicate an ability to plan ahead for such things as mortgage rate adjustments. However, if bankers really expect an even greater number of borrowers to default in the coming months and years, why don’t they do something to prevent it rather than let it take its course the way they did with the subprime borrowers? Haven’t they learned anything?

My idea is for the financial institutions holding the mortgages to restructure them proactively. Review each mortgage case by case and find a fixed rate that is higher than the teaser rate but that is one the borrower can afford to pay. This would mean the return on investment would be reduced for entities that invested in mortgage-backed securities. I don’t know how these things work, but I imagine there might be a need for lawmakers to get involved if investors won’t willingly take a lesser return. But, really, wouldn’t it be better all around if investors earned a little less money instead of having a tsunami of people defaulting on loans, real estate prices plummeting further, banks failing—and then we, the tax payers, bailing out the financial institutions?

 

GoDaddy’s Website Tonight works

I just put together a simple website using GoDaddy.com’s Website Tonight tool. And if someone as technically challenged as I am can do it, I figure anyone can. GoDaddy has a number of templates to choose from, adapted to different professions and interests. Mine isn’t the greatest author site on the Web, not even close, but it’s not embarrassing either, and it provides a Web presence for my memoir, Reversible Skirt, which will be published by RockWay Press at an, as yet, undetermined date.

So, if you’ve happened upon this post and you’ve been wanting to get a site together but haven’t done anything about it, check out GoDaddy (or a site with similar tools), and get going. I wish I’d done it long ago. And if you want to see an example of one of GoDaddy’s templates applied and live on the Web, visit www.lauramchaleholland.com. Feeback is most welcome.

 

Website almost ready

Watching “Without a Trace” on TV. Puppy sharing the recliner with me. Been working on getting a website together using GoDaddy’s Website Tonight tools. It’s going very well for someone as technically challenged as I am.

In a few days, I’ll have a simple website for my book, Reversible Skirt, up and running. It won’t be fancy, but it’ll do until my sister Kathy, who is a design phenom, has the time to turn it into something beautiful to behold. Anyone bumping across this may think I just, you know, feel that way because she’s my sister. But check out her website: www.mchalecreative.com, and you’ll see what I mean.

For a couple of weeks I’ve been wanting to write something about a Scio treatment I got from my friends Naomi and Doug (she’s an acupuncturist and herbalist, and he’s a masseuse who also does Reiki treatments), but I haven’t been able to find a way to come close to evoking the experience at all. It’s a sort of biofeedback thing where you’re hooked up to a computer that measures the energy levels of all your body systems and treats imbalances it finds. It had a very soothing effect on me, like a particularly effective acupuncture session and a great meditation session combined … only that doesn’t fully describe it. Anyway, I hope to have more treatments and to read up a bit on it, so I’ll have a better sense of how it works and what it can do, which, I’m sure varies from person to person, as is the case with all healing modalities I know of.

 

Nothing much

I’m neglecting this blog. Perhaps I should write a sentence or so a day, or maybe a poem just for the discipline of it, to sort of sum things up, if that’s even possible.

Fires still burning here in California, thousands of them; got the dogs groomed today, cost $7 more than last time; prices inching up, up, up everywhere; wish I could groom the pups myself (I’ve tried it; the dogs suffered, I suffered, everyone who saw them suffered); wish I could give up steamy mochas, cook more from scratch, buy in bulk, walk more, take on more work; I’m so full of wishes, not enough action. Read a little blurb in the paper today that AAA is lowering its homeowner insurance rates in Californian, average savings expected: more than $100 per household this year. AAA is my insurance company. Hot cha cha.

 

Take me sandman, please

Being awake in the middle of the night is a relatively new phenomenon for me. For some of us, I guess, it’s just another aspect of getting older, like forgetting where we left the keys a moment ago or getting a bit thick around the middle. It’s fine being up right now; I’ve had a cup of tea, been getting a few things done, the dogs are frolicking at my feet, my husband and daughter are sound asleep and the world outside is deliciously quiet. But, oh, tomorrow at my desk at work, 2 p.m. or so, I’ll be fried, and there’ll still be stacks of articles needing to be tweaked before they can go to print, questions to answer, decisions to be made. Just thinking about that makes me tired. Perhaps it’s time to tuck in next to my beloved and see if the sandman will take me away.

 

Little by little big things can get done

There’s nothing quite like taking a walk, especially on a crisp, sunny morning when you’re not in a hurry, and there are plenty of trees, shrubs and flowers nearby and hills to please the eye in the distance. That’s what I did Saturday morning on the way to downtown Cotati to get a hair cut. Most days it’s rush, rush, rush, feed the dogs, write a little bit, shower, water the pansies in the yard (how I love their colors!) and try to get a few other things done before work, where I sit in front of a computer for hours, editing articles and managing a small editorial/writing staff. After the hair cut, I bought “Chicken Soup for the Father’s Soul” for my husband, Jim, for Father’s Day, which we celebrated with two of our children today, like so many other families. We were thankful to be together in our home, everyone smiling and healthy. It’s quite a contrast to last year when we were all in Kaiser Hospital, San Francisco, and Jim was recovering from his second surgery for colon cancer in 10 days; more followed as the months went on, one setback after another, some cancer-related, others having to do with other conditions that manifested. But the worst has passed, and nothing felt better than to be sitting in the living room today, no crisis, no pain, lots of love.

I wonder if there’s a Chicken Soup book for people who are trying to do too much. There are so many variations on the theme, something along those lines is probably in the mix. A Chicken Soup book for people who stay up late whenthey have to get up early in the morning would fit my situation right now, too. That’s what I’m doing at the moment, staying up too late. Jim’s already sound asleep; our daughter’s in bed, probably talking on her cell phone, but will be sleeping soon. Our little dogs are sprawled out on the floor, sound asleep at my feet; I can hardly keep my eyes open right now, but I don’t want to go to bed, don’t want to say farewell to June 15, 2008, yet. In less than an hour I won’t have a choice; the day will be gone, never to return. Did I make the most of the day? Did I live the best life possible? Probably not. I did write a little bit on the sequel to Reversible Skirt (which will be published by RockWay Press), and so far I’ve got about 50,000 words on the first draft. I don’t think this second book will be more than about 80,000 words. It feels good to be moving along with that project, despite all the other things going on in my life. Little by little big things can get done.

 

Thought I’d be happier

As an Obama fan, I was expecting to feel elated tonight. But I don’t. I guess I thought when he finally secured enough delegates to get the nomination Clinton would concede the race (maybe even gracefully), and we could all begin to focus on the general election. But no. She’s going to drag things out. It’s a big energy drain, hard to fathom, so much ego. I know there’s talk of a dream ticket, with Obama picking Clinton for VP. But I hope he picks someone unexpected and exciting, someone who also will be certain to respect and back him, not compete with him or try to one-up him. Maybe after a good night’s sleep, I’ll read Obama’s victory speech, and my feelings will be more in keeping with the historic and hopeful step his impending nomination truly is for our country.

 

Falling home prices

Yikes. Every so often I check zillow.com for the estimated value of my home. Prices have been falling, but since I last checked, they’ve gone way down in my neck of the woods. So, at the moment, at least according to zillow, our home is now worth $92,500 less than what my husband and I paid for it in 2004. Plus one of our neighbors just parked a huge trailer on the front of his property. He’s got it on gravel in front of one side of his little home, so he’s probably OK as far as codes go around here, but the thing is massive, as tall as his house and maybe a third as wide as his home (a quarter if you count the garage, I suppose) and sticking out all the way to the sidewalk. It’s a eyesore and brings down the curb appeal for all the nearby homes. But, he says, he can’t afford the storage fee for where he used to keep it. Oh well. we’re not planning to move anyime soon, so hopefully by the time we do need to sell this place (many years down the road, I hope), it’ll be worth at least what we paid for it. How much longer is this real estate freefall going to last, anyway? If I were longing to be a homeowner, it seems now would be an ideal time to jump into the market because of low prices and low interest rates and the likelihood that interest rates will rise when the fed decides to try to do something about inflation, but obviously people who are thinking about buying homes don’t agree. Otherwise they’d be traipsing through all the open houses on weekends, imagining what their furniture would look like inside, what kind of landscaping they might like to do, whether they like the local schools — all that. But that’s not what’s happening, and home values continue to sink. At times like this I remind myself real estate, like many other things is cyclical. Up and down it goes, and we all just make the best decisions we can given the conditions we perceive.