Category: Culture
Connecting the Dots Between Money & Votes
We live in a news and information age. The difficult part of this extraordinary time is filtering the shouting and propaganda to get to actual information that is fact checked, not trying to sell or market a product, and concerned for the common good. It appears that Maplight.org is such a site. This site tracks campaign contributions for our members of Congress. So, before you take the word of your favorite talk radio personality or TV anger salesman I encourage persons to take the time to do the cross discipline reading necessary to be informed about issues that matter to the world as well as our nation. If we are to emerge from this time in our nation’s history and bring intellectual honesty back to the conversations about how to solve problems it will take persons of goodwill putting the extremists out of business with facts and simply turning off the radio, TV, and not stopping by their websites.
Inside the Collapse
60 Minutes continues to do what government regulators cannot do or are not willing to do. Last night 60 Minutes aired a piece, Inside the Collapse, that did more to help me understand how the financial collapse happened and why those that created it have not been held accountable. Here is my paraphrase of what I saw: Investment houses (that because of deregulation are now also banks) created securities with high risk, bought ratings from the ratings agencies to make them AAA rated, sold them to investors who had money to loose and those trying to create wealth, and adopted the business plan of a software company where even though there are bugs in a system you have to keep buying the upgrade. The government, on behalf of taxpayers and the economy, purchased the upgrade. It is worth 25 minutes of an hour.
They also aired a piece on a person, a musical savant named Derek. It too, is a great story of a guy they have followed for six years. It was a good 60 minutes last night.