Top Down or Bottom Up?

I'm not sure about this 700 billion bailout plan. Like the email article, it seems to be helping large companies who got too big for their pants. What about say, the independent trucker who is going bankrupt because the high fuel prices are killing him? He's the one who brings our groceries to market you know.

And the small businessman who is closing his doors because he can't get a loan to buy needed equipment. And the salon operator who is refused credit to add some chairs.

All these scenarios take away jobs, lose tax revenues, and aggravate the problem.

A Time Magazine article on CNN this morning (where I got the photo above) argues that there are certain types of securities that should not be rescued (ie. bought by us taxpayers) because they are "derivatives" or "claims" on mortgages and not owned by the risk-taking banks themselves.

I don't claim to understand this but together with my concern for the homeowner with a mortgage, maybe Congress feels the same way.

Another GREAT IDEA for our Politicians

(from an anynomous forwarded email):

US BAILOUT OF AIG
I’m against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.

Instead, I’m in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in
a We Deserve It Dividend.

To make the math simple, let’s assume there are 200,000,000
bonafide U.S. Citizens 18+.

Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman
and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up..

So divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billon that equals $425,000.00.

My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a
We Deserve It Dividend.

Of course, it would NOT be tax free.
So let’s assume a tax rate of 30%.

Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes.
That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam.

But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket.
A husband and wife has $595,000.00.

What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family?
Pay off your mortgage – housing crisis solved.
Repay college loans – what a great boost to new grads
Put away money for college – it’ll be there
Save in a bank – create money to loan to entrepreneurs.
Buy a new car – create jobs
Invest in the market – capital drives growth
Pay for your parent’s medical insurance – health care improves
Enable Deadbeat Dads to come clean – or else

Remember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+ including the folks
who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company
that is cutting back. And of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces.

If we’re going to re-distribute wealth let’s really do it...instead of trickling out
a puny $1000.00 ( "vote buy" ) economic incentive that is being proposed by one of our candidates for President.
If we’re going to do an $85 billion bailout, let’s bail out every adult U S Citizen 18+!

As for AIG – liquidate it.
Sell off its parts.
Let American General go back to being American General.
Sell off the real estate.
Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up.

Here’s my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn’t.

Sure it’s a crazy idea that can "never work."

But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party!

How do you spell Economic Boom?

I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 Billion
We Deserve It Dividend more than I do the geniuses at AIG or in Washington DC .

Mountain Lion Reports in Lake Shastina

A neighbor told us this morning as we were walking the doggies that one of these animals had been spotted here in our neighborhood and that large cat tracks had been seen after the sighting. This is the second time I've heard about pumas as they are also called in Lake Shastina. The other incident was on Indian Hill but as I understand it only scat was found at the scene.

This time however the neighbor said a lion kill was found on Zen Mountain. It was a deer she said but if combined with the tracks and sighting here in Unit 7-3 some precautions are in order. For one, these cats like any predator, target the easiest prey; newborn deer, housecats and dogs, sick or injured animals. So if you have a cat that is outdoors at night you might keep this in mind.

We for example keep two of our dogs in the garage at night but they can go out through a doggie door to do their business. We'll block the door now, at least until we hear from some more news about this series of event.

If any readers can contribute to this story please email me.

Editor

HeroRATS

(adapted from an article in the October National Geographic)

Some people cringe when they see a rat but Bart Weetjens smiles. A Belgian product designer, Weetjens devised a way for these often reviled rodents to help solve a global problem: how to locate land mines, some 60 million of which are scattered in 69 countries.

Dogs are often deployed to sniff them out, "but I knew rats were easier to train," says Weetjens, who bred them as a boy. Rats are also light, so they don't detonate the minesthey find; they stay healthy in tropical areas too, where many of the explosives are buried; and they're cheap to breed and raise.

In the late 1990's Weetjens chose the African giant pouched rat, with its very sensitive nose, for Pavlovian training: if the rats scratched the ground when they sniffed TNT, they got a reward.

More than 30 trained sniffer rats, aka HeroRATS, have started sweeping minefields in Mozambique, where they've cleared almost a quarter square mile. Weetjens also trains rats to screen human saliva for tuberculosis and is mulling new missions, such as finding earthquake victims in rubble. Lives saved, health improved, mines defused__ nothing to cringe about here.

The Blackbird is Coming

Actually I meant the Brewer's Blackbird. The bird, not the plane. That was just a teaser lead-in to get your attention.

Have you noticed that a)there have been fewer songbirds this season and b)the blackbirds are passing through. They seem to gather in small flocks and pretty much blanket a lot, going almost in line across the landscape looking for I guess, seeds and insects.

So what happened to the grosbeaks, the bluebirds, the finches even? Is something going on? Property taxes too high? Transient occupancy tax being applied to birds now? What?

Sheltie Party

People who own Shetland Sheepdogs once again strutted their stuff at Dennis & Pat Sbarbaro's home in Lake Shastina last Saturday. Members of this herding breed are affectionately called "shelties" and are often mistaken for toy collies. They are very social and extremely intelligent; they also do well at agility and obedience trials all of which being reasons they are considered such good pets.

There are perhaps half a dozen sheltie owners in Lake Shastina but the "Roundup" began in Mt. Shasta when Bruce & Sally Batchelder gathered some sheltie lovers for a backyard potluck in 2001. Word got around, people started asking friends, and as things do, the party sort of took on a life of it's own.



This Roundup is the 7th one and there were people (and dogs) from as far away as Grants Pass and Elk Grove, CA. The puppies shown belong to Karen Coombs from Elk Grove, for example. There were perhaps 18 or 20 dogs (they get kind of hard to tell apart as you can see in this picture) and a few less people since some own more than one.

The Sbarbaros handed out gift bags full of toys and treats to each dog and special prizes to various categories such as oldest, farthest away, tallest, shortest, etc. Needless to say the doggies went right along with this in true party fashion. At one point maybe a dozen dogs got into a soccer match (sort of, they couldn't get their mouths around the ball) with the guests.

If anyone owns a sheltie here in the area, or knows of someone who does, please let our group know by calling Bruce Batchelder at 530-938-0385 so we can add their name(s) to our ever-growing guest list.

Gorillas in the Mist

This is a movie I saw recently from Netflix starring Sigorney Weaver (of Alien fame) and it is based on the life of Diane Fossey, the primatologist who devoted her life to studying and preserving the endangered mountain gorillas in Rwanda and the Congo. I think there is a book with the same title.

The photography was dramatic, especially the many shots of wild gorillas up close and cuddly with Weaver. I'm sure some were staged shots with mock animals but surely not all. And the scenery and support actors were most realistic and believable.

The film also brought some key moral and political issues to the fore, one example was when an African official admitted selling a baby gorilla to a zoo. An enraged Fossey confronting him demands to know why and his compelling reply is to raise cash to feed his starving people. Although it didn't calm her in the film it sure stopped me in my tracks. Who comes first here? Is it okay to preserve an endangered species at the expense of human suffering? Who has the moral high ground here?

Weaver portrayed Fossey as an increasingly neurotic, obsessive, and ultimately self-destructive woman who, as in a Greek tragedy, insured her own death in the end. Railing against poaching for example she stages a mock hanging and alientates not only the natives she is trying to frighten but her own followers as well.

The poachers who by the way had been hunting gorillas and other creatures inside the park for generation after generation for food, are being denied that same food by Fossey. She springs their traps, burns their village, and hires scouts to arrest them. Yet it is revealed time and again that poverty and hunger are rampant, that native people die of malnutrition everywhere in the region.

So here we are again; don't we have a right to feed ourselves? Once more, who comes first? For eons humankind has driven species to extinction by over-hunting. It's not that we are not "educated", it's expediency.....you take the nearest and easiest food. "Teaching" native peoples is not going to make it,we need to feed them first.

And here ends my review. You might try the book too, I think I will.

Mac and Cheese

How can you not love this American icon? My mom made this casserole long before they discovered how bad cheese and sodium were. And so I sort of bonded to it. And now, voila! Burger King has introduced this queen of American culinary excellence to the center stage of what they think is smart eating.

Well, I have news. We newbies saw this classic for what it was years ago. My generation pretty much grew up on this stuff. Along with peanut butter and fried egg sandwitches. And guess what? We survived!!

Yes, it's true. The king of American fast food has realized (in my view, far too late)how important mac and cheese is to our well . . . national carbohydrate identitidy.

So here's to macaroni. Health food for us all.

Oughtta, Shouldda, Couldda

This is almost where it all started. Almost. Actually, it was the Ford V-10 (yes, read ten cylinders) pickup that we had traded in for this one. We had bought the ten to haul a camp trailer that we also dumped a few months before. But that's another story.

This Durango was sweet. 4WD, leather, and comfortably heavy. We never worried coming back from Medford in snow. But the engine would miss every now and then. Nothing serious, we never got stuck anywhere. Just a teeny bit worrisome.

Then, one day when we were approaching the offramp to Cypress it starts to vibrate something awful and as I slowed down to pull over I look in the mirror and there are PARTS dropping onto the freeway behind me. Large parts. Metal parts. As in transmission pieces.

We had come to a stop on the offramp, just a mile or two from the dealership where we had bought the car. To make a long story short it was the transfer case. It had siezed up and blown apart. We were under warranty thankfully, and they even loaned us a car while they replaced it.

But the missing engine never got any better. Turned out to be the computer was going south to the tune of $1,000+. The tires were also worn and we had almost 125,000 miles on the vehicle so we did what all good Americans do and traded up to a new Durango. Heavier. Roomier. Worse mileage.

Then we bought a new Dodge truck, too. A chicken in every pot, two cars in every garage, right?

We did this maybe six months before gas prices began spiking and before the recession and housing slump (we're in real estate so we were right up there in the front ranks). So we gritted our teeth and held on until winter came on and she needed tires and brakes. $1,000 later she handled better and we felt oh-so much safer. Of course gas had peaked around $4.75 by this time and those two car payments were looking more ugly every month.

So here we go again. This time with both cars to trade in on ONE car that gets super mileage. It's a Hyundai Santa Fe which I couldn't even spell the first time out . . . I kept forgetting the "y". Front wheel drive with automatic AWD when a wheel spins loose, 19 airbags (there may be one in the ashtray, too), and dual exhaust. That's right.

Of course we got beat up on the Durango. "We can't even sell them now with gas where it is" they told us. We reminded them that we had thoughtfully just put new brakes and tires on her but in the end we still lost a chunk. At least we got what we owed on the truck, though.

Let's see, if I had this to do all over again . . .