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  • Politics Is Like Hiring A Hitman
    by Scott Woods inPolitical on2020-08-13

    For me, politics is like hiring a hitman. I have values and things I care about. I care enough about them to at least bother voting for 5 minutes every year for one issue or another. And because I care at least that much, I vote for people who align with the ability to realize the things I care about.

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  • Punching Above Our Weight
    by Roger Madison Jr. inPolitical on2020-07-24

    I believe our vote is the punctuation of our voice. Without that resounding exclamation mark, I believe our voices are just incoherent noise.

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  • BLACK PROGRESS AMIDST SOCIAL CHAOS
    by Roger Madison Jr. inPolitical on2020-06-16

    Recent events have raised the profile of historical injustice and inequities here in the USA. The entire world has taken note of the fact that BLACK LIVES MATTER.   We invite all of our friends to engage in actions that result in the greatest movement for change in our history. It is imperative that we take advantage of this opportunity to affect a positive change by ACTING IN OUR SELF-INTERESTS.

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  • Living in a Black No-Man's Land
    by Roger Madison Jr. inOur Community on2019-10-28

    There are many narratives that define the Black experience in America in this 2nd decade of the 21st century. Our striving over the centuries of our sojourn in this nation is a tapestry of every human experience -- oppression, enslavement, forced assimilation, dehumanization, exclusion, segregation, isolation, struggle, perseverance, achievement, excellence, celebration, mourning, despair, progress, setbacks, lynching, assassination, genocide, terror, self-hatred, low esteem, pride,...

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  • Fighting Racism
    by Scott Woods inOur Community on2018-10-25

    I had a boss who was racist. Not an outright bigot, of course; her toolbox was more subtle than most. We bumped heads a lot over inconsequential things. She frequently couldn’t keep my name out her mouth. Lot of gaslighting. You know…2018 style. I tried a lot of ways to combat or navigate her issues. None of them worked, and that’s saying a lot because I’m really good at fighting racism. But at the end of the day – every day – she was my boss, I had to deal with her, and that was that. Finally I...

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Obama vs. McCain -- 37 days to go. OOPS! Can We Have A Do Over?

Maybe the sky is not falling, but the worse day of losses in the history of the NY Stock Exchange -- PLUS Global Stock exchanges falling from 5% to 9% around the world -- is as close as anyone wants to get.  The ramifications of the U.S. House of Representaties Vote to defeat the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 are being felt around the globe.

The United States is facing economic paralysis, and we don't know what to do about it.  What is interesting is that the scale of the proposd solution is so large that the public reaction was -- "The tax payers shouldn't pay to bail out the greedy crooks on Wall Street."  The response of the market to this balky reaction was a $1.2 trillion loss in one day -- much worse than the $700 billion cost of the rescue plan.  Most taxpayers don't understand the necessity of this action, but perhaps a couple of days of reflection -- and a few more business failures -- will confirm the necessity to act.

SO, NOW THAT "THE MARKET" HAS OUR ATTENTION, CAN WE HAVE A DO OVER?

Our Presidential candidates are simply left to sound bites:

"This is a moment of national crisis, and today's inaction in Congress as well as the angry and hyper-partisan statement released by the McCain campaign are exactly why the American people are disgusted with Washington," the Obama-Biden campaign said in a statement released shortly after the vote.

"Barack Obama failed to lead, phoned it in, attacked John McCain and refused to even say if he supported the final bill. ... This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country," Holtz-Eakin, a senior policy adviser for McCain,  said.

Clearly, Presidential politics hasn't played a significant role in getting us closer to a resolution.  This crisis won't lend itself to a silver bullet solution.  It will require a broad-based restructuring of our fnancial markets, our consumption-based economy, and the housing sector, which is at the foundation of this collapse.

The question is which Presidential candidate is going to better handle the mess that gets handed to them?

Hang onto your job, and what little savings and investments you have.  This is going to be a bumpy ride for all of us.