Having worked so long with low-income folks, I’m constantly astonished at the ignorance of the average middle-class person of the effects of taken-for-granted practices on folks who may have been just a little less lucky, but who – like a certain fromer pres. — think they hit a triple all by themselves.

To me it was obvious why it was ridiculous to argue that she should’ve filed her claim after the first discriminatory paycheck — yet remarkable numbers of folks seemed to not know that employers go to great lengths to keep pay info secret. I’ve seen companies that make it a firing offense to disclose pay information to fellow employees. The employers obviously know the effect of information.

I really hoped to feel less despair after the inauguration – unrealistic, I suppose. Should’ve known the die-hard wingnuts (in Congress and out) would keep up their usual antics. Not to mention the trad media. Without FDL, Keith & Rachel & Jon & Stephen Colbert, TPM, Think Progress, Krugman and Baker, etc., I would be really depressed!
I’ll go to the phones in just a little while, and I see I have an email from SEIU–they probably hve a petition? I’ll sign that, and call my local MoveOn group and see what’s next up for us.
Thanks again for keeping us going out here in the hinterlands.

Of course, the MSM doesn’t mention it much, except maybe for Keith and Rachel.But then we don’t expect much better from MSM, do we?
Best of luck to you; I hope things work out for you better than it appears to be doing now.

Currently, there is a glut of REO assets around the country as foreclosures far outpace the demand for housing sales in the current market. How many senior citizens and other hardworking Americans have to become homeless before Congress will act on H.R. 1106 or some other effort to help regular folks?

I’m about ready to support a squatters’ movement. It’s horrendous to have people homeless while — other homes sit empty!

I see Dean Baker in his post just up at main page suggests that foreclosed homeowners would be better off moving into these empty properties than trying to renegotiate a new mortgage that will never get them equity.

That’s a step or two away from squatting, of course, but good grief.
If we were living in early historic, non-”civilized” times, without formal law, if someone in the village lost their home (hut?, cabin?) to fire or earthquake or something, and there was an empty one with no family to live in it, I doubt there would have been hesitation to move into the empty one.
But now we’re a huge society with only the rule of law to cling to, and that means if you don’t have the right legal documentation, or money, you are out in the street or your car, while houses, not to mention enormous mcmansions, sit empty.

I pass a number of new McMansions in my area, built after tearing down the older smaller houses, dominating the older neighborhoods they sit in. My DH and I were driving by one o those areas last weekend, noticing the houses are huge but barely any distance between them, or any yard.

We were discussng the psychological/status reasons people would choose such ways to live – you just gotta have 4000 square feet even tho’ your neighbors are 6 ft. away from your windows? Otherwise you’re a failure or something?
I can’t help thinking of how after the Russian Revolution the huge townhomes and palaces of the nobility and the rich were divided up into small apartments for the poor who had been living in squalor in “lower depths” slums.
It’s starting to look like a good idea. How many families can live in a 5000 sq ft. McMansion, now that the “owner” lost his banking job and can’t pay the giant mortgage?

Yeah, yeah – I’ll call Rep. Lamar Smith – all the good it’ll do.

I dropped an e-mail to my Congresscritter yesterday. He’s a likely Bluedog (and I really regret having signed his nominating petition, but I believe in contested elections…) being from the o’l patch in Eastern NM (yeah, I’m talking Harry Teague here).

I told ‘critter Teague that I am watching what is happening on HR 200 and will be particularly watching his actions. I’ll let you know what (if anything) I hear back from the ‘critter.

p.s. i don’t think i caught that black testimony before the senate ag committee (it’s not listed on their website, which is probably the worst of all committee websites). so thanks for that too – i will go back and see if i can find a transcript.

fair trials!