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Yesterday, U.S. Representative Maxine Waters reintroduced the Systematic Foreclosure Prevention and Mortgage Modification Act so that it may be considered by the current Congress. Referred to by shorthand as H.R. 37, the legislation would authorize the FDIC to cover one thousand dollars in expenses for lenders who renegotiate more sustainable terms for the mortgages of people who are nearing foreclosure on their houses. The FDIC would also guarantee half the worth of renegotiated mortgages.

The best part is where the money to pay for the FDIC’s mortgage restructuring costs would come from - money originally allocated for a Wall Street bailout. Instead of handing out money to Wall Street investors, as part of a liquidity scheme that has failed to work, government assets would be used to provide the structure necessary for ordinary Americans to stay in their homes. (I’m basing this statement on funding from the original bill, H.R. 7326, introduced to Congress on December 10, 2008, without enough time for consideration before the 110th Congress closed up shop for good. The resubmitted version of the bill, H.R. 37, is not yet available to be read by the public.)

Waters’s legislation looks like a plan that could responsibly protect our nation from true economic disaster. But will it have the lobbyists required to gain passage?

Today, President-Elect Barack Obama has gone to Capitol Hill to urge Congress to pass an economic stimulus package based on huge tax cuts.

When he became President, for the sake of economic stimulus, what did George W. Bush do? He worked with Congress to pass an economic stimulus package based on huge tax cuts.

Think now - how well did Bush’s tax cut economic stimulus work?

How does Obama’s tax cut plan qualify as change?

I asked these questions of one of my childhood toys, Bernard the Giraffe, and here’s what he said to me:

For the New Year, I received as a gift the ornament you see here, a hand-decorated gourd in the design of an owl, with striking red and black colors that make it stand out on our Yule tree. This gift, however, wasn’t just given to me. The choice to purchase this gift also provided to others worthy of and in need of support.

First of all, the ornament was purchased at a nature center operated by the National Audubon Society. The proceeds from that sale have gone to help support the operation of that particular center, and through it, the Audubon Society.

The ornament wasn’t made by the Audubon Society, however. It was made by local artisans in Peru who work with an operation called Lucuma. Lucuma is a fair trade business. That means that they engage in the right kind of globalization, connecting people around the world who are ready to buy with people who are ready to produce, but doing so in such a way that the workers who produce the items for sale are fairly compensated for their labor. Lucuma focuses in particular on selling items made by people in Peru.

The person who chose this gift accomplished a great deal with their selection. I got a unique ornament. The Audubon center got a bit of funding. Workers in Peru got fairly compensated for a bit of their labor.

This selection could have ended with a very different result. I could have received a mass-produced ornament from a store like Wal-Mart, which abuses its workers and takes money out of the local economy while providing few services to the community. Then, the proceeds would have gone, through Wal-Mart corporate headquarters, to a company running a sweatshop somewhere in China, which dumps toxic wastes into the local water supply and spews pollution into the air. The workers who gave their labor in the dangerous conditions at that sweatshop would have received, in return, far less than a living wage.

This owl ornament is a reminder to me that the decisions we make about what to buy and where to buy it have the potential to result in a series of gifts or a series of curses.

The myth of the honor of military service just got knocked down another rung with an announcement from the U.S. Army that people no longer need to be of a healthy weight in order to gain admittance. So, now middle aged, overweight high school drop outs with criminal records are being allowed to join the Army.

Why? Well, that’s because even with unemployment numbers at a height unseen for a generation, most young, fit, bright Americans still are not so hopeless that they would consider joining the military. Even after years of progressively lower standards, people are deciding that they’d rather do just about anything than join the Army.

Still, according to reports, the Army has hopes that, as the economy gets even worse, Americans will finally have no choice but to enlist. Those people at the Pentagon sure know how to look on the bright side.

It appears that prostitutes are suffering from the economic recession along with everyone else, with a reduction in their wages. I found the following advertisement on Facebook:

A prostitute for just 50 to 100 dollars per hour? I assumed that the rate would be a little bit higher than that.

But really, the people like you comment hits a little too close to home. What are they trying to say, that I could only have a career as a cheap hooker?

Never has a mayor’s name been more apt than that of Michael Nutter, mayor of Philadelphia. Mayor Nutter is a major nutter, intent upon closing libraries in Philadelphia as a way to save money when, in fact, there are many other ways for the city to come in with a good budget.

Closing libraries is a community killer. Kids’ educational opportunities are impoverished when libraries are taken away. Adults lose a good source of reading material too, as well as a public place where they can meet without having to spend money or become dependent upon the support of corporations or ideological organizations.

Reading benefits the community. Educated workers are productive workers. Illiteracy is an economic drag. Yet, Mayor Michael Nutter is, in effect, creating a tax on readers. People who want to read will now need to either spend money to buy books or spend money to travel within the city to a distant library location that will be serving more people without an increased budget.

Travel within the city… that gets me thinking. Instead of taxing reading, why not tax those who contribute to the traffic problems of Philadelphia? Owning a car in a city like Philadelphia isn’t necessary, but many Philadelphia residents own cars anyway. They slow down the functioning of the city and pollute the air. Why not tax that negative behavior instead of taxing reading?

There are about 1,134,000 residents of the city of Philadelphia who are over the age of 18. About 13 percent of households in Philadelphia have no cars, but let’s be generous, and assume that with the economic troubles and high gasoline costs, that 25 percent of Philadelphia households will be car-free.

That brings us the figure of 850,500 residents of Philadelphians who live in households owning at least one car. Let’s make the further generous assumption, however, that these residents are all living in households with two adults, and that each household owns just one car, not two. That cuts our figure of car-owning residents of Philadelphia in half, to just 425,250.

If Philadelphia would institute a $1,000 annual tax on car owners, then it could raise over $425 million dollars every year. Sound excessive? Consider that Philadelphia is of the most expensive cities in which to drive a car, in large part due to high insurance costs there. Many Philadelphia residents already pay well over $1,000 every year for car insurance. They pay parking fees too, and for gasoline, and car for car repairs. Give all that, another thousand dollar annual cost wouldn’t much of an increase - not for those who can already afford to own and drive a car.

Keep in mind that owning a car in Philadelphia isn’t really necessary. There are opportunities like PhillyCarShare, for one thing. There are also Zip Cars in Philadelphia. Of course, there’s public transportation, and alternative forms of transportation, like bicycling or walking, as well.

Still not convinced? Okay. Let’s knock the Philadelphia car ownership tax down to just 100 dollars per year. Even at that minimal level, even with the very conservative estimates I’ve made, that car tax would bring Philadelphia revenues of more than 42.5 million dollars every year.

Now, guess how much Mayor Michael Nutter estimates would be saved by closing down city libraries - just 8 million dollars from the annual budget. If Nutter would just institute a hundred dollar car ownership tax, he could keep those libraries open, and improve their services as well. Nutter could also keep open some of the fire stations and public swimming pools that he’s proposed eliminating.

Philadelphia could have reduced traffic, cleaner air, better educated citizens, improved public safety, and kids who know how to swim - or it could save car owners one hundred dollars every year. Nutter is nutters for choosing cars over community.

Mother Davis adjusts her bifocals to obtain a sharper view, and observes,

Proponents of abstinence-only sex education have long claimed that their approach leads to reduced sexual activity among teenagers. Their idea is that if only adults can get teenagers to promise not to have sex, then the teenagers won’t have sex.

The problem is that the research that the abstinence-only crowd cites was pretty shoddy, failing to control for additional cultural and demographic factors, thus mixing up association with causality. So, there hasn’t been any reliable research to indicate that virginity pledges actually lead to prolonged virginity.

This month, an article published in the journal Pediatrics addresses this gap in sex-ed research, with a model that controls for pre-existing patterns in behavior and ideas. The results: Teenagers who took virginity pledges were no less likely to remain virgins than similar teenagers who did not take virginity pledges.

Furthermore, the study found that most teenagers who took virginity pledges lied about it. When asked, 82% of virginity pledgers said that they had never taken a virginity pledge.

Virginity pledgers were just as promiscuous as non-pledgers - meaning that they had just as many sexual partners. The only big difference between pledgers and non-pledgers was that non-pledgers were more likely to use birth control than pledgers.

So, what do you get when you push teenagers to promise not to have sex? You get just as much sexual promiscuity, but more teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Under George W. Bush’s presidency, the federal government has been spending 200 million dollars every year to promote abstinence-only education programs that include virginity pledges. In his first year, Barack Obama ought to work with Congress to end these programs.

The benefits won’t just be personal. Ending abstinence-only education programs can be part of economic recovery as well. I’m not talking about savings of 200 million dollars in the annual federal budget - that’s just a drop in the bucket. But, reinvest that 200 million dollars in comprehensive sex education programs that will encourage teenagers to use birth control when they do have sex, and our economy will benefit significantly from reduced teenage pregnancy and parenthood.

I also suspect that our country will prosper more when we treat knowledge as a gift to pass on to our children, rather than a danger that must be withheld from them.

Feeling her squint-wrinkles ease,
Mother Davis

A few days ago, my family and I were in a bad car accident. No one got hurt, but our car rolled over three times, and got totally wrecked.

This accident gives us an opportunity for change. Our discussions of that change started out with appreciation for the way that the frame of our Subaru Forester protected us during our crash, to the realization that it might be most economically wise for us to get a less expensive used car. From there, we’ve come to the point where we’re seriously considering living without a car at all, at least for awhile.

There would be some difficulties involved. We don’t live in Manhattan or San Francisco. We live in a small village in upstate New York. There’s a bus route that my wife can use to get to her work, but I often need to go to an airport almost two hours away for my work. We also need to get our daughter to a preschool that’s about ten miles away, and the nearest grocery store is a mile away - a grocery store that was just a five minute walk away went out of business last year.

There are ways that we can overcome these obstacles in order to successfully live car-free, and the benefits of car-free living are many. It’s not just an abstract environmentalism that makes me want to avoid a life of internal combustion. The price of gasoline is bound to go up again, sooner or later. Biking to the store for food instead of driving would bring me a good amount of exercise. Besides that, since the crash, I have the sneaking feeling every time I drive that I could slip off the road again - and not survive this time.

If anyone has advice about this decision, I’d appreciate hearing it.

Back in the summer 2004, Adbusters had spent months telling the world that it would be selling sweatshop-free sneakers. Kalle Lasn and his crew of “culture jammers” had put forth a lot of attitude on their move, but hadn’t followed through with the production of an actual sneaker. I gave Adbusters a fairly hard time for their empty talk. At the same time, an organization called No Sweat Apparel (that would rebrand itself as Bienestar corporation) had with fairly little fuss and no mention of “culture jamming” or “kicking Nike’s ass” gone ahead and arranged for the production of a shoe in an Indonesian union shop. So I gave No Sweat a bit of a kissy-face in an interview.

Fast forward to the winter of 2008, and No Sweat has stopped selling its brand of union-made shoes. On the other hand, Adbusters’ Blackspot shoe, made in a union shop in Portugal, has gone right on trucking. Three varieties of Adbusters shoes are now available, and they’re not only sweatshop-free, but made of organic hemp to boot. Well, only one of them’s a boot, but you know what I mean.

You can buy them in the UK, too.

Slow and steady (and, ok, ok, culture jammy) wins the race.

I don’t own and don’t plan to buy this toy, so I have no personal axe to grind. I’m just asking: why is Target selling — even at a steep discount — the Net Jet Online arcade system from Hasbro when apparently the online servers for Net Jet Online will be shut down on January 1, 2009? There appears to be something to the rumors: even the typical buy now button has been switched off for Net Jet Online on Hasbro’s own website. So again I ask: why is Target selling these seemingly soon to be defunct systems? What’s the ethical standard behind that?

The banks said that they needed hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare from the government, or else they would go out of business. They said that credit would remain frozen unless the tax revenues were handed over. Then, when the money was handed out to them, the doom they said would take place without a bailout came about anyway. Credit markets remained frozen.

Why? It’s as if the money that was supposed to thaw credit markets was, in fact, used for other purposes that have had little, if any, large-scale economic benefit. It’s as if the bailout money was taken to support the wealth of a very small number of people who already had plenty of money to spend, instead of being used to help the overall system upon which most Americans depend. Yes, I’m getting a very as if feeling about this bailout.

And so, I’ll leave it to you to piece together the failure of the Wall Street bailout with these three bits of news, conveniently revealed late on a Friday evening at the beginning of the winter holiday season:

First, it seems that none of the banks that have received bailout money are willing to reveal how they’re using that money to prevent economic disaster. They’re just taking the money, and doing what they want with it.

Second, at least 1.6 billion dollars of bailout money has been used to give new multi-million dollar bonuses to top executives, to reward them for their failure and endangerment of the American economy.

Third, many of the financial firms that received government welfare checks are using corporate-owned jets to fly executives around on personal trips.

Ray, of Tom and Ray on NPR’s Car Talk, has got a message that needs to be heard, and so I’m going to summarize it here: The USA needs a 50 cent gasoline tax.

Why? First of all, our government needs the extra tax to pay for energy conservation research.

Won’t that deal a hard economic blow to taxpayers? No, not really. First of all, taxpayers can easily find ways to use less gasoline, as they proved this summer, when gasoline was at about $4.50 per gallon - far above the price where a national gas tax would place us today. They can plan their shopping instead of hopping back and forth across town. They can carpool. They can use mass transit. They can… gasp… drive the speed limit.

In the long run, taxpayers will lose money if serious energy conservation research is not conducted. Energy efficiency improvements allow people to use more energy for less cost, after all. Eventually, that 50 cent per gallon gas tax would be paid right back into the pockets of taxpayers through this means alone.

But, that’s not the only way the gas tax would help the economy. That extra government spending on energy conservation research would fund jobs - and good jobs too. The people in those jobs would have money to spend in other ways, helping to keep the economy afloat.

Then there’s the savings that would come through reduced pollution. Make energy more efficient, and there’s less air and water pollution. Air and water pollution are deadly. Air pollution, for example, is known to be a significant contributor to heart and lung disease, among other ailments. That’s not just bad for the people who get sick and die. It’s expensive to the economy.

Besides that, a 50 cent gas tax would reduce consumption, just as high gas prices did this summer. And what happens when consumption goes down? Bingo - gasoline prices go down as well. Thus, a 50 cent gas tax would not actually increase gasoline prices at the pump by 50 cents per gallon. The price increase would be something less.

When gasoline consumption goes down, dependence on foreign oil goes down, and our flexibility in foreign policy increases. Global warming also slows down, and all the very costly problems already associated with global warming slow down in their growth as well.

American citizens have more money.
We gain more efficient energy.
The world is a little less toxic.
What’s not to like?

Thanks, Ray, for saying what needed to be said.

Saturday, December 20 just may be the busiest day of shopping left before Christmas at malls and plazas around the nation. With that in mind, Join the Impact has called for a nationwide set of demonstrations at shopping places around the country on December 20. The events are being give the collective name Light Up the Night for Equality, and the plan is to appear in shopping places with t-shirts that read “2nd Class Citizen,” to make the point that as Americans go about their Ho-Ho-Holiday shopping in a festive spirit of the season, there is a class of people — gay and lesbian Americans — who do not possess the full set of rights held by everyone else.

There’s a fair amount of dissatisfaction among the rank-and-file local organizers of this event with the “2nd Class Citizen” message, and Join the Impact’s justification of the slogan — documenting the many ways in which gay and lesbian people are treated like second-class citizens in this country — doesn’t address the core of the complaint: for people to label themselves, even bitterly, as “2nd Class Citizens” is defeatist. I agree: the message really ought to be a strong statement that gay and lesbian people are NOT second class citizens, and that they should have the same rights as everyone else.

With that in mind, I’ve designed and made an alternative available: an I am Not a 2nd Class Citizen t-shirt. Further, recognizing that for numerical reasons alone the movement for same-sex marriage equality just won’t succeed without the participation of a variety of allied straight people, I’ve made similar designs available that declare my son/daughter/mother/father/sister/brother is Not a 2nd Class Citizen. They’re all available on our Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Affirmative t-shirt page. Wear these to express your activism in a positive and affirmative way.

Last week, Senator Ron Wyden was unavailable to vote on whether to bring the Detroit automotive corporation bailout to a vote in the Senate. Without him there, the vote on cloture failed, and Detroit didn’t get the billions of dollars it wanted.

That’s fine by me - and besides that, it looks like George W. Bush is planning to dole out some corporate welfare to Detroit on his own through previously approved money. Still, the day after the vote, Senator Wyden felt obligated to explain his absence, and to express his strong, strong allegiance to the agenda of the Detroit CEOs.

The loops in Wyden’s justification of an automotive corporate bailout left me feeling whiplashed. Wyden explained, “While I continue to have concerns about ensuring that taxpayers are protected if this loan is to occur, I believe that if the President can unwisely provide $700 billion of taxpayer money for the investment banks that took horribly unacceptable risks and helped trigger an economic collapse, we certainly have a duty to attempt to preserve a cornerstone domestic industry and the jobs of hundreds of thousands of working people whose personal actions are in no way responsible for the current economic crisis.”

Wyden’s argument:

1. I am concerned that taxpayers would not be protected from the negative consequences of sending billions of dollars that may never be paid back to Detroit’s car corporations.
2. However, I believe that the government has a duty to fund private businesses as big as Ford, General Motors and Chrysler…
3. …because George W. Bush was unwise to give hundreds of billions of dollars to other risky, irresponsible big corporations.

Wyden’s logic suggests that he believes that a wasteful, risky corporate welfare scheme for Detroit is justified by the face that there has been a previous risky, wasteful corporate welfare scheme. In other words, once our government makes one bad mistake, it’s important to make some more, similar mistakes.

This kind of sloppy thinking on the part of a United States Senator frightens me even more than the prospect of granting billions of dollars to an industry that has proved that it’s not skilled at anything but losing money.