The Birmingham News reported today that Governor Riley supports the bailout. He also says that Congress exists for the sole purpose of helping people.
Robert, you oughtta know better after 12 years in office. Get it together and pass this critical legislation!!!
The link to the story is below:
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2008/10/shelby_sessions_to_oppose_new.html
Blessings,
Nicholas B. Sparks
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
Hey Robert! Its OK to be bi-partisan
Although Robert Aderholt is my opponent in the upcoming election he is, at least for the moment, my congressman.
Today was yet another blunder by Robert Aderholt. His vote in favor of the CAFTA agreement is his most noteworthy blunder to date because of its aggrandized effect on the DeKalb County, Alabama economy but today represents a new low.
I have yet to see any press release or any specials to news organizations on his behalf explaining why he didn’t vote in favor of the Economic Stabilization/Bailout Bill (HR 3997). In any event, I completely agree with the rest of the Alabama delegation’s vote in favor of the plan.
The present crisis presents a huge risk to the American way of life. The fallout of not passing such legislation has the capability of being immense. Unlike typical Republican economic policy, this has an uncomfortable likelihood of ACTUALLY trickling down and affecting small business and average American workers.
Institutional investors and lenders buy and sell various financial instruments for profit. Mortgage backed securities are some of the most popular instruments traded among these giant institutions.
Wherever these mortgages find their origin, they are typically securitized and sold by smaller lenders to larger institutions for the sake of liquidity. The larger organizations usually have the financial staying power and the patience to wait to collect 30 years worth of mortgage payments.
However, because of the steady decline of housing prices, thousands of mortgages have a projected rate of return that is less than the value of the underlying property that gave the original mortgage.
In any event, predatory lending schemes that approved mortgage loans for those individuals that were not credit worthy to begin with did so with little or no government regulation. Such regulation would have shielded the American taxpayer from a crisis such as this and at least mitigate the damages of such crisis.
Robert Aderholt didn’t see the need in regulating such predatory schemes back in November 2007. He voted against the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Subprime Lending Act (HR 3915). The purpose of that legislation was to make requirements for mortgage loans originators uniform and would have required a full disclosure of the maximum costs of mortgage loan contracts. This would have even included adjustable rate mortgages and would have protected homeowners as well as tax payers.
Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) voted in favor of that no-brainer piece of legislation. So did every Democratic member of the Alabama delegation.
The question is, what do they know that Robert does not? Apparently they know a lot that he doesn’t.
Listen Robert; some things come ahead of partisan politics like the best interest of America. Even if Speaker Pelosi did say something that hurt your feelings, you should have voted in favor of the legislation today.
Every other member of the Alabama delegation did. Of course it leaves taxpayers on the hook. So does your support of financing the Iraq war with billions of dollars worth of debt. The only difference is you don’t see the pensions and retirement funds at stake if the market fails and you wouldn’t have the fortitude to commit to any sort of safety net for citizens if it does.
Small businesses need to have access to money that is not being lent at loan shark rates and banks need to get back to lending money.
At least the bailout legislation does provide for stock warrants that could enable us to recoup our investment.
Robert, start making decisions for our good this week in congress. We need you to. You are my congressman just as much as George W. Bush is your President. We are stuck with both of you!
Now, do what is prudent. Reach across the aisle and save the country!
Its OK to be bi-partisan. This is a lot bigger that Democrat or Republican. This is a joint resolution of economic policy to fix what you had a hand in messing up.
For the record, I hate the thought of this bailout but I do think it is necessary.
Blessings,
Nicholas B. Sparks
Today was yet another blunder by Robert Aderholt. His vote in favor of the CAFTA agreement is his most noteworthy blunder to date because of its aggrandized effect on the DeKalb County, Alabama economy but today represents a new low.
I have yet to see any press release or any specials to news organizations on his behalf explaining why he didn’t vote in favor of the Economic Stabilization/Bailout Bill (HR 3997). In any event, I completely agree with the rest of the Alabama delegation’s vote in favor of the plan.
The present crisis presents a huge risk to the American way of life. The fallout of not passing such legislation has the capability of being immense. Unlike typical Republican economic policy, this has an uncomfortable likelihood of ACTUALLY trickling down and affecting small business and average American workers.
Institutional investors and lenders buy and sell various financial instruments for profit. Mortgage backed securities are some of the most popular instruments traded among these giant institutions.
Wherever these mortgages find their origin, they are typically securitized and sold by smaller lenders to larger institutions for the sake of liquidity. The larger organizations usually have the financial staying power and the patience to wait to collect 30 years worth of mortgage payments.
However, because of the steady decline of housing prices, thousands of mortgages have a projected rate of return that is less than the value of the underlying property that gave the original mortgage.
In any event, predatory lending schemes that approved mortgage loans for those individuals that were not credit worthy to begin with did so with little or no government regulation. Such regulation would have shielded the American taxpayer from a crisis such as this and at least mitigate the damages of such crisis.
Robert Aderholt didn’t see the need in regulating such predatory schemes back in November 2007. He voted against the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Subprime Lending Act (HR 3915). The purpose of that legislation was to make requirements for mortgage loans originators uniform and would have required a full disclosure of the maximum costs of mortgage loan contracts. This would have even included adjustable rate mortgages and would have protected homeowners as well as tax payers.
Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) voted in favor of that no-brainer piece of legislation. So did every Democratic member of the Alabama delegation.
The question is, what do they know that Robert does not? Apparently they know a lot that he doesn’t.
Listen Robert; some things come ahead of partisan politics like the best interest of America. Even if Speaker Pelosi did say something that hurt your feelings, you should have voted in favor of the legislation today.
Every other member of the Alabama delegation did. Of course it leaves taxpayers on the hook. So does your support of financing the Iraq war with billions of dollars worth of debt. The only difference is you don’t see the pensions and retirement funds at stake if the market fails and you wouldn’t have the fortitude to commit to any sort of safety net for citizens if it does.
Small businesses need to have access to money that is not being lent at loan shark rates and banks need to get back to lending money.
At least the bailout legislation does provide for stock warrants that could enable us to recoup our investment.
Robert, start making decisions for our good this week in congress. We need you to. You are my congressman just as much as George W. Bush is your President. We are stuck with both of you!
Now, do what is prudent. Reach across the aisle and save the country!
Its OK to be bi-partisan. This is a lot bigger that Democrat or Republican. This is a joint resolution of economic policy to fix what you had a hand in messing up.
For the record, I hate the thought of this bailout but I do think it is necessary.
Blessings,
Nicholas B. Sparks
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
True Blue: Essays on the revival of yesterday's Democratic party (Part 1)
After I finished kindergarten my grandfather, Crellie Sparks, affectionately referred to by the whole family as "Papa", began taking care of me during the summer time while my mom and dad worked. The early morning part of those weekdays mostly consisted of Papa tending to the garden where Papa would grow corn, okra, peas, squash, and various and as sundry peppers and miscellaneous greens, i.e. collard, turnip, and mustard. I remember how the okra would make my hands itch to the point that I thought they were surely on fire. At some point after we left the garden and tended to the cows we would almost always wind up going to visit his some of his brothers and sisters.
Papa was born in 1922 and his father had taken sick at some point during his early childhood. I'm not so sure as to the details of his fathers illness but I do know what he struggled against when he was nine or so, circa 1931.
He was left to grow a crop on 40 acres with a mule and some help from his mother. Of course his brothers and sisters would help as often as they could when they weren't working at a mill, coal mine, or wherever they could be gainfully employed so early on in the great depression.
At any rate, I can't imagine just how he suffered in the hot July heat while plowing that mule. My parents built the home where I grew up on the same farm where my great grandparents home place was. It gets hot out there in the summer!
As for the rest of the days Papa would keep me and my cousins, Lauren and Ben, we would always go visiting. Visiting meant me and Papa, or sometimes the four of us (including Lauren and Ben), would go see the remaining brothers and sisters Papa had living. Most of them lived close by.
Sometimes we would begin at Aunt Bess' and Aunt Ogla's (pronounced O-gler) house. Both were widows and lived together in an old house in Chickasaw which is right outside Carbon Hill, AL. I remember their screened in porch and how they would meet us at the door and hand each of us kids a fly flap. I'm not exactly sure they knew our names but they did oblige us with fly flaps to entertain ourselves with. I suppose we were always "some of Crellie's bunch" to them. We would always compete to see who had the most fly kills.
Almost every trip included a stop at Uncle Elmer's house. Elmer was always clad in Dickie's coveralls, even in his coffin. He was the welder of the family. Any farming equipment my dad or Papa had was always repaired by Elmer if needed.
Most of the visits to Elmer's house were made by just Papa and me. It wasn't very conducive to entertaining children, or at least not as conducive as Bess' and Oglas's house, as if the breeze on the porch made it any less sweltering.
When we were at Elmer's I would occupy my time playing with Bo or watch the welding behind sunglasses. Bo was Elmer's yellow dog. I don't know if Elmer got a yellow dog on purpose or not but it sure was appropriate for him.
Every dialogue Papa and Elmer had digressed into a dissertation about their distaste of the "federal guvern meant" being controlled by Ronald Reagan and the Republican party. To be totally honest, most every time the word Republican was uttered by them it was immediately preceded by an expletive or a less-offensive derivative thereof. They had a displaced yet unbridled hatred for the Republican party. In retrospect their dislike of Reagan was less about Reagan and more about their sufferings during the depression.
They were passionate about government. They had little education but somehow deduced the debacle of the economy was due in large part to passive and ineffective regulation of the economy and the utter lack of compassion for the poor during the Coolidge administration.
The world had been turned upside down on Wall Street but no one cared about them. Not until the crippled man made it to the white house at least.
Papa and Elmer would light up like Christmas trees talking about the alphabet programs that put people to work and that somehow, magically, food was not such a scarcity outside whatever they could produce on their own farms.
The lesson they made darn sure to teach me was that the Republicans cared little, if any, about me and that they were not trustworthy to handle the government.
I do not believe that to be completely true. Reagan was effective and not such a bad president and neither are all Republicans evil. Reagan may have spent us into oblivion but we won the Cold War.
However, I do believe it to be true about the current administration. George Bush and his cronies have been driving for eight years and have somehow managed to keep it in reverse for the duration. We have digressed and are beginning to suffer the consequences of the malfeasance of the past eight years of the Bush Republican regime which manipulated the masses with lie after lie. It has cost us too. Three trillion dollars is the cost of the Iraq war, and ...it has all been put on the government credit card which leaves us stuck with the bill.
Bush cronyism continues to say that we can not afford to insure the uninsured children of our nation, that global agendas that send jobs overseas somehow benefit the American worker, that we can't afford to effectively arm our own troops engaged in urban combat in Iraq, that we need to give corporations who held junk assets in their portfolio's a bailout (which WE have to pay for), that we can't afford to give veterans the benefits they deserve, that enforcing laws prohibiting unequal pay for women is just too burdensome on business,....etc. That run on sentence could run on until election day.
I believe Papa and Elmer believed what they believed. I believe they told me for a reason. The lessons they taught me, applied subjectively to the current administration and to my opponent, Republican Robert Aderholt, tend to show that they don't care about everyday people. These politicians wake up, get their silk stockings out of their closet, get dressed, and conspire to violate the everyday American under the guise of conservatism.
They are blind to most everyone I know. One lady said that "He (Aderholt) doesn't see me". I agree.
I'm glad Papa taught me to look for the best in things but to also be leery of those who would hurt me.
I'm not sure why this rambling came out of me on the computer this evening but I'm glad it has. I love to think about Papa.
"True Blue" is my exercise to take the values and principles of the greatest generation and apply them in today's world in hopes of reviving democrats in my district and arming them with enumerated principles.
"I am a Democrat but, I sure as heck ain't no liberal!!!"
I believe in what I was taught. Faith, hard work, dignity, kindness, and respecting others pave the path to success. When those principles are combined with opportunity we have greatness. The same recipe that overcame the great depression and won the second world war can help us overcome the pending financial crisis, bring the Iraq war to a respectable end, and restore our prominence on the world scene.
Stay tuned for more. I promise the next posting will not be as drawn out and all about restoring traditional political ideology to my party.
Blessings,
NBS
Papa was born in 1922 and his father had taken sick at some point during his early childhood. I'm not so sure as to the details of his fathers illness but I do know what he struggled against when he was nine or so, circa 1931.
He was left to grow a crop on 40 acres with a mule and some help from his mother. Of course his brothers and sisters would help as often as they could when they weren't working at a mill, coal mine, or wherever they could be gainfully employed so early on in the great depression.
At any rate, I can't imagine just how he suffered in the hot July heat while plowing that mule. My parents built the home where I grew up on the same farm where my great grandparents home place was. It gets hot out there in the summer!
As for the rest of the days Papa would keep me and my cousins, Lauren and Ben, we would always go visiting. Visiting meant me and Papa, or sometimes the four of us (including Lauren and Ben), would go see the remaining brothers and sisters Papa had living. Most of them lived close by.
Sometimes we would begin at Aunt Bess' and Aunt Ogla's (pronounced O-gler) house. Both were widows and lived together in an old house in Chickasaw which is right outside Carbon Hill, AL. I remember their screened in porch and how they would meet us at the door and hand each of us kids a fly flap. I'm not exactly sure they knew our names but they did oblige us with fly flaps to entertain ourselves with. I suppose we were always "some of Crellie's bunch" to them. We would always compete to see who had the most fly kills.
Almost every trip included a stop at Uncle Elmer's house. Elmer was always clad in Dickie's coveralls, even in his coffin. He was the welder of the family. Any farming equipment my dad or Papa had was always repaired by Elmer if needed.
Most of the visits to Elmer's house were made by just Papa and me. It wasn't very conducive to entertaining children, or at least not as conducive as Bess' and Oglas's house, as if the breeze on the porch made it any less sweltering.
When we were at Elmer's I would occupy my time playing with Bo or watch the welding behind sunglasses. Bo was Elmer's yellow dog. I don't know if Elmer got a yellow dog on purpose or not but it sure was appropriate for him.
Every dialogue Papa and Elmer had digressed into a dissertation about their distaste of the "federal guvern meant" being controlled by Ronald Reagan and the Republican party. To be totally honest, most every time the word Republican was uttered by them it was immediately preceded by an expletive or a less-offensive derivative thereof. They had a displaced yet unbridled hatred for the Republican party. In retrospect their dislike of Reagan was less about Reagan and more about their sufferings during the depression.
They were passionate about government. They had little education but somehow deduced the debacle of the economy was due in large part to passive and ineffective regulation of the economy and the utter lack of compassion for the poor during the Coolidge administration.
The world had been turned upside down on Wall Street but no one cared about them. Not until the crippled man made it to the white house at least.
Papa and Elmer would light up like Christmas trees talking about the alphabet programs that put people to work and that somehow, magically, food was not such a scarcity outside whatever they could produce on their own farms.
The lesson they made darn sure to teach me was that the Republicans cared little, if any, about me and that they were not trustworthy to handle the government.
I do not believe that to be completely true. Reagan was effective and not such a bad president and neither are all Republicans evil. Reagan may have spent us into oblivion but we won the Cold War.
However, I do believe it to be true about the current administration. George Bush and his cronies have been driving for eight years and have somehow managed to keep it in reverse for the duration. We have digressed and are beginning to suffer the consequences of the malfeasance of the past eight years of the Bush Republican regime which manipulated the masses with lie after lie. It has cost us too. Three trillion dollars is the cost of the Iraq war, and ...it has all been put on the government credit card which leaves us stuck with the bill.
Bush cronyism continues to say that we can not afford to insure the uninsured children of our nation, that global agendas that send jobs overseas somehow benefit the American worker, that we can't afford to effectively arm our own troops engaged in urban combat in Iraq, that we need to give corporations who held junk assets in their portfolio's a bailout (which WE have to pay for), that we can't afford to give veterans the benefits they deserve, that enforcing laws prohibiting unequal pay for women is just too burdensome on business,....etc. That run on sentence could run on until election day.
I believe Papa and Elmer believed what they believed. I believe they told me for a reason. The lessons they taught me, applied subjectively to the current administration and to my opponent, Republican Robert Aderholt, tend to show that they don't care about everyday people. These politicians wake up, get their silk stockings out of their closet, get dressed, and conspire to violate the everyday American under the guise of conservatism.
They are blind to most everyone I know. One lady said that "He (Aderholt) doesn't see me". I agree.
I'm glad Papa taught me to look for the best in things but to also be leery of those who would hurt me.
I'm not sure why this rambling came out of me on the computer this evening but I'm glad it has. I love to think about Papa.
"True Blue" is my exercise to take the values and principles of the greatest generation and apply them in today's world in hopes of reviving democrats in my district and arming them with enumerated principles.
"I am a Democrat but, I sure as heck ain't no liberal!!!"
I believe in what I was taught. Faith, hard work, dignity, kindness, and respecting others pave the path to success. When those principles are combined with opportunity we have greatness. The same recipe that overcame the great depression and won the second world war can help us overcome the pending financial crisis, bring the Iraq war to a respectable end, and restore our prominence on the world scene.
Stay tuned for more. I promise the next posting will not be as drawn out and all about restoring traditional political ideology to my party.
Blessings,
NBS
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Thanks for the Support
I am humbled to be the Democratic nominee for the Fourth Congressional District and am so grateful for everyone's support and prayers. My opponent, Greg Warren, ran a good race and I want to congratulate him for his efforts. It is now time for Democrats to unite as we head into the fall. I look forward to running a vigorous campaign and talking with voters throughout the district about the important issues that we face.
Thanks,
Nick
Thanks,
Nick
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
