Sunday, September 7, 2008

Palin's Banned Books

Here is a list of books that Sarah Palin tried to have banned from the Wasilla library. This is not a rumor. It has been verified by Time magazine. I'm sure that many of you have read quite a few of these books, as I have. Shakespeare? Twain? Steinbeck? Huxley?

There was a very long list of books here which I have now removed. I did not do so when I first discovered that the list was not directly attributed to Mrs. Palin. In fairness, now that I have had time to research this a bit, I have indeed removed the book titles. Please don't think of this as censorship. All I have done is censored my own poorly researched material. I did not want to delete the entire blog because I felt that some people may have read the previous version and thought it was accurate, only to come back and find it was gone and wondered why.


Fannie and Freddie

Today we learn that by next weekend the Fed will announce a takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two home mortgage giants. Both are bleeding money, having lost about 80% of their value. They hold over one trillion dollars in direct debt.

So the Treasury Department plans to bail the two companies out, costing perhaps $20 BILLION.

So, the two CEOs of course have done a terrible job. I don't think there is any doubt when losses mount to totals we are looking at for both companies.

Now you might want to know how much salary each was paid for the terrible job they did.

Daniel Mudd, CEO of Fannie Mae, made $11.8 million in 2007. Richard Syron, CEO of Freddie Mac made $18.3 million plus perks like paid travel for his wife.

I ask this: Why should or would these huge companies worry about bleeding money when the Fed is bound to come along to bail them out. It happens over and over again and who pays for it? You and I. Hey, how about giving that money back to the tax payers to help them get out of debt? No, we'll give it to the crooks who created this mess to begin with. The banks and other lenders were greedy and lent money irresponsibly. Now many Americans cannot afford their mortgage payments. Does the Fed help them out? Nope, they bail out the crooks. Nice!

Message to the next president: How about REAL change. How about making the irresponsible RESPONSIBLE!