Vegas For Change

September 18, 2008

Yesterday Ed and I brought Joey with us to see Barack Obama speak. We were worried we wouldn’t be able to get in becasue we had to show up minutes before the speech began. However, they opened up the baseball field and let people stand and sit out there, so there was plenty of room and we were able to get in to Cashman Center and see him.

Here is a video of his speech:

Key ideas:

Obama says, “If you make under $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increase one dime.”

Obama says, “If you’ve got healthcare, my plan’s going to lower your premium. If you don’t, you’ll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves. And I will stop insurance companies from discriminating against those that are sick and need care the most.”

Obama says, “I’m going to recruit an army of new teachers and pay them higher salaries and give them more support.”

Obama says, “If you commit to serving your community… then you can afford a college tuition. …We’re going to pass The Dream Act.

Why do we care about that stuff?

  • We don’t want our taxes to increase.
  • We pay for our health insurance out of pocket. It’s expensive.  And they REFUSE to cover anything related to my asthma, which is currently the most expensive part of our healthcare (because we’re young and healthy).
  • We bought a foreclosed home at a great price, but many of our friends and family in Vegas are struggling with their mortgage payments. Our neighbors weren’t as fortunate as we were and some got saddled with loans they didn’t understand and can’t afford. It affects all of us.
  • We want to have or adopt kids and we want to make sure they can go to college. I used AmeriCorps to go to college and it was good, but not enough. A couple thousand dollars doesn’t go very far when it comes to college tuition. I have serious student loans even though I worked one, two, and sometimes three jobs through college and also received grants and scholarships.
  • The Dream Act sounds like a great idea.

Moreover, I prefer Obama’s perspective on animal issues. He’s not terrific for animals, but he’s better than McCain and Palin. And perhaps more importantly, he’s better for animal advocates. Yes, Obama is less likely to restrict my freedom of speech than McCain. Obama is less likely to encourage the FBI to waste tax dollars by infiltrating vegan potlucks.

For more on where the candidates stand on animal issues, check out this and this.

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Miscellaneous 

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Comments

8 Responses to “Vegas For Change”

  1. Little Old Lady on September 18th, 2008 12:26 pm

    Yay for taking Joey to participate in a political rally! In 1960 when I was in high school I took my sister (then in jr. high) to see John F. Kennedy speaking in our town square. We had the day off from school to see the candidate (very Democratic, labor-union city in those days, even had several socialist administrations). We got there early and were able to stand just a few feet away from Kennedy. He made a HUGE impression on me, and probably on my li’ sis too. The next week Henry Cabot Lodge who was running for veep also spoke in the square, and we went to see him too. He wasn’t so impressive, but he was more so than Ms. WolfHuntress of the Skies will ever be. And when I was four my parents took me to hear Harry Truman on his whistlestop campaign. And his father and I took young Edward to see Dukakis on my campus. It’s really important to take kids to historic events when possilbe and to expose them to the political process.

  2. Debie Baxter on September 18th, 2008 4:10 pm

    I’ll be voting for Obama. The fact that I am a Democrat has come as a surprise to many throughout the years, since I am a born again Christian and somewhat conservative; moderate describes me best. This country needed the change that he has to offer yesterday, so 4 more years of a Bush type reign just CANNOT happen. I thank God that Bush lived through his whole term. He is bad enough but I truely feel that the country at the hands of Cheney would have been subject to pure evil.
    By the way Elaine, and other readers, I saw this bumper sticker on the back of a pick up today….it read: Carpenters build, plumbers fix pipes, Marines kill. At first I though it was an awful slam to the military and to families who have suffered loss (which it ultimately was). Next I see that this guy has a Semper Fi sticker and a The few, the proud ,the marines sticker, as well.
    I COULD NOT believe it. Apparantly he had mistook the marines kill sticker as a complimentary , pro military statement! Wow! I sure HOPE that wasn’t how it was intended! Sad but true.

  3. Mike on September 20th, 2008 1:41 pm

    “Our neighbors weren’t as fortunate as we were and some got saddled with loans they didn’t understand and can’t afford.”

    I know this happened, but I just don’t understand.

    If I’m signing a document that puts me into debt to the tune of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, I am going to make double damn sure I understand every word, nuance, denotation and connotation of said document.

    I simply don’t have a lot of sympathy for the people who signed these documents. It was greed, pure and simple, no different than the Wall Street types. That those Wall Street types won’t get what’s due to them, as well, is a whole different issue, and one that also makes me very angry.

    But I do blame people who signed up for insane loans they barely even read, and think they should also face the consequences of their own actions.

    No one held a gun to their heads and forced them to do the loan, simple as that.

  4. Elaine Vigneault on September 20th, 2008 4:58 pm

    Mike,
    Do you know what predatory lending is? They don’t use a gun, but it’s still coercive.

    Moreover, people drive on the freeways everyday knowing the risk inherent in driving. Isn’t it still a tragedy when someone gets into an auto accident and gets hurt or dies? Have some compassion, already!

  5. Debie Baxter on September 20th, 2008 4:59 pm

    I can guarantee that I wouldn’t understand the legal jargon I was reading. We purchased our commercial building on a land contract and even found the language in that confusing. The $150.00 we paid (probably more these days) for an attorney who specialized in real estate law to check it out was a great bargain and very reassuring.

  6. Mike on September 20th, 2008 10:48 pm

    Debbie,

    Exactly. If I didn’t understand something, I’d at least hire an attorney.

    I mean, come on, it’s not like your buying a soda down at the convenience store. Due diligence is de rigeur. Anyone who doesn’t do some due diligence pretty much deserves what they get.

    Driving on the freeway and taking out a loan are in no way comparable. With a loan, you can read the terms yourself, take the documents to an attorney, or just say “no.” With a traffic accident, you can’t take that to an attorney to see if you should get into that first.

    The problem is that too many people just didn’t say “no,” were living beyond their means, and then convinced themselves that they could somehow pay back a $400,000 loan on a $2,400 a month salary.

    I have sympathy for their plight, but I still think they should face the consequences — just as if someone had stolen from their employer, etc.

  7. Elaine Vigneault on September 21st, 2008 9:05 am

    Mike,
    1) They didn’t convince themselves they could pay back the loans. They were convinced by mortgage brokers and realtors that they could refi or sell.
    2) Moreover, many DID earn enough money to pay for their loans, but then they lost their jobs or were imprisoned/deported.
    3) Lastly, a great deal of these “bad loans” were “no doc loans”, an entirely new breed of loan created and not tested until now. This was the test. Who gets a no doc loan? Well, they’re people who can’t verify their income for various reasons. Stop and think about what those reasons might be.

    Your assumption that all these people who are getting foreclosed on simply signed up for loans they couldn’t afford is wrong. It’s not just a coincidence that some of the hardest hit cities by the foreclosure crisis have large populations of people for whom English is a second language. They, along with other no doc loan recipients, (young people who’ve never made this kind of investment, people with bad credit, people who don’t truly know their income because it’s so flexible, people with delusions about their money) cannot be expected to understand American Legalese. And surprise, they weren’t expected to understand.

    The people who gave out these loans knew it would explode later; they just made sure they weren’t the ones holding the bag at the end of the day.

  8. Elaine Vigneault on September 21st, 2008 9:10 am

    I’ve bought two homes now, a condo that I sold in the bubble and this foreclosure we bought after the bubble. I can tell you with absolute certainty that many mortgage brokers and real estate agents coerce and pressure people into bad decisions. I’ve experienced it myself. Luckily, I didn’t get myself into hot water, but I can easily see how someone else could.

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