The fallout that started with sub-prime loans has spread, as the mainstream media likes to say, to both Wall Street and Main Street. It ultimately caused the federal government to pass a $700 billion bailout bill. People are seriously discussing whether the nation—indeed the western world—is headed for another Great Depression. How did we get here?
There are many factors, but the chief reason is that Americans have a fixation on home ownership. Owning a home is part of the “American Dream.” People rationalize it by thinking about the tax breaks and the fact they have equity. And all this is buoyed by an irrational faith that housing prices will always go up.
“A home is a great investment,” we’re told by real estate agents, loan agents, and other homeowners. But let’s think about the key word “investment.” No intelligent person would plunk down an equivalently huge percentage of their net worth on a stock without pouring over the financials and analyzing risk. But people don’t think about their home the same way. Homes are different—they’re safe as, well, houses.
But buying a house is an investment—the biggest one most people will make in their lifetime. Just as overleveraged speculators bought overpriced stock in the 1920’s bubble market, overleveraged homebuyers paid more than they could afford for overpriced houses in a bubble market. Adam Smith would say they deserved to lose their investment because they made a bad decision. But when we’re talking about someone’s home, it’s just not that simple.
People made bad decisions, but they were also given bad advice from an institutionalized fixation on home ownership. The “Ownership Society” is how President Bush described it. "We're creating...an ownership society in this country,” said Bush in October 2004, “where more Americans than ever will be able to open up their door where they live and say, welcome to my house, welcome to my piece of property."
But while America has had a political, financial, and cultural drive toward home ownership, Europe has largely stayed a population of renters. Indeed, many Germans, French, and Dutch see private home ownership as aristocratic. One big difference between the U.S. and Europe is how FDR and his New Deal tackled the issue of housing. While Europe decided to build “council houses,” basically public housing, FDR created Fannie Mae to lower the cost of home mortgages.
This fundamentally different approach demonstrates how Roosevelt can be seen as a fervent capitalist when viewed from the other side of the Atlantic, but as a socialist by American conservatives. It also reveals how the seeds of American ownership-entitlement were sown so long ago that most people alive today don’t remember any alternative.
Renting an apartment doesn’t make you less of a person. Not driving a SUV doesn’t make you weak. Taking mass transit doesn’t mean you’re a loser. Among the many paradigms Americans need to shift, that house in the suburbs 30, 40, or 50 miles outside the city that we commonly call the American Dream needs to be reevaluated.
This is shocking, but unfortunately not surprising. There is, in our mostly wonderful nation, the vestigial remnants of absolute ignorance. The GOP wants to play it down, but Al-Jazeera reporters have exposed the racism that is out in the open at a Sarah Palin rally in Ohio.
If it was hard to understand was some of the individuals said, here are some of the shocking statements:
“I’m afraid if he wins, the blacks will take over. He’s not a Christian! This is a Christian nation! What is our country gonna end up like?”
“When you got a Nigger running for president, you need a first stringer. He’s definitely a second stringer.”
“He seems like a sheep - or a wolf in sheep’s clothing to be honest with you. And I believe Palin - she’s filled with the Holy Spirit, and I believe she’s gonna bring honesty and integrity to the White House.”
“He’s related to a known terrorist, for one.”
“He is friends with a terrorist of this country!”
“He must support terrorists! You know, uh, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. And that to me is Obama.”
“Just the whole, Muslim thing, and everything, and everybody’s still kinda - a lot of people have forgotten about 9/11, but… I dunno, it’s just kinda… a little unnerving.”
“Obama and his wife, I’m concerned that they could be anti-white. That he might hide that.”
“I don’t like the fact that he thinks us white people are trash… because we’re not!”
As mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin began billing sexual-assault victims for the cost of rape kits and forensic exams. How can a woman have such a suspicious and misogynist view of women reporting a sexual assault?
It isn't that the cost of swabs, specimen containers, and medical tests were breaking the Wasilla budget—it came to just a few thousand dollars—when Palin pushed through a tax increase to fund the $14.7 million Wasilla Multi-Use Sports Complex.
More likely, Palin's extreme religious worldview has shaped her policy decisions. She is adamantly opposed to abortion, and victims of sexual assault are typically offered the "day after" emergency contraception pill—which the anti-choice zealots equate to abortion. So, helping a traumatized woman, gathering evidence to catch a sexual predator, and safeguarding her community take a back seat to her personal religious opinions.
But she's not one heartbeat (of a 72 year old former smoker with a 40 percent chance of dying in office) away from the most important job in the world. Now, the following video would be funny if it weren't concerning the possible future VP:
Add to her lack of foreign policy experience a religious, fundamentalist worldview. She stood in front of her church, Wasilla Assembly of God, and described the Iraq War as a messianic effort with the United States acting out the will of God. She believes in teaching creationism in schools. She sought to ban books from the local library.
She believes in abstinence-only, as opposed to sex education, for teenagers. Not to draw too fine a point on this, but maybe if she had talked to her daughter about condoms, Bristol wouldn't be an unwed, pregnant teenager.
She believes you can "Pray the Gay Away." Her church is promoting a conference that promises to convert gays into heterosexuals through the power of prayer. "You’ll be encouraged by the power of God’s love and His desire to transform the lives of those impacted by homosexuality," announced the Wasilla church's bulletin.
Pastor Problem Palin's pastor, Ed Kalnins, the senior pastor of Wasilla Assembly of God since 1999, has made some amazing statements:
"What you see in a terrorist—that's called the invisible enemy. There has always been an invisible enemy. What you see in Iraq, basically, is a manifestation of what's going on in this unseen world called the spirit world. We need to think like Jesus thinks. We are in a time and a season of war, and we need to think like that. We need to develop that instinct. We need to develop as believers the instinct that we are at war, and that war is contending for your faith."
Kalnins repeatedly preaches about the "end times" —an apocalyptic prophesy laid out in the Book of Relevations. You may have heard this...Satan takes over the Earth, 666 and the mark of the beast, everyone dies except those who are faithful and saved by Jesus. During his appearance with Palin in June, he declared, "I believe Alaska is one of the refuge states in the last days, and hundreds of thousands of people are going to come to the state to seek refuge and the church has to be ready to minister to them."
Sarah's Witch Doctor This video from Palin's hometown church Web site shows her being blessed by a Kenyan pastor who prayed for her protection from "witchcraft."
Bishop Thomas Muthee is seen in the pulpit of the Wasilla Assembly of God church, holding her hands open as he asked Jesus Christ to keep her safe from “every form of witchcraft.”
“Come on, talk to God about this woman. We declare, save her from Satan,” Muthee said as two attendants placed their hands on Palin’s shoulders at the Pentacostal church. “Make her way my God. Bring finances her way even for the campaign in the name of Jesus.
The upside of Palin's affiliation with Muthee and his ability to practice "spiritual warfare" is that instead of invading Russia, he can create a voodo doll and stab it with a hat pin.
If you never realized this blog is from Houston, Texas...know now it is. And we're mostly without power. parts of Downtown look like a war zone, with debris from the Chase Tower—the tallest building in Texas—scattered across the streets like the aftermath of a Beirut bombing. Glass, silver mini-blinds, chairs, waste paper bins, and employee manuals are among the myriad bits of business life strewn across the central business district for blocks and blocks. Police have cordoned off the area, but it still has official and unofficial photographers walking around taking pictures. Water was out in Midtown until Sunday morning. Without A/c it is miserable, but luckily a cold front came in to make the nights bearable.
