The ad spots were purchased by the Department of Homeland Security and promote their E-Verify program, a controversial employee verification system. The ads run at the end of a segment and say, “‘Support for NPR comes from NPR stations, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), offering E-Verify, confirming the legal working status of new hires. At DHS dot gov slash E-Verify.”

E-Verify allows employers to check work eligibility against a massive database, and according to the National Immigration Law Center the “SSA estimates that 17.8 million (or 4.1 percent) of its records contain discrepancies related to name, date of birth, or citizenship status, with 12.7 million of those records pertaining to U.S. citizens.”

E-Verify is the perfect study of racism thriving in American institutions. Employers often fire or fail to hire workers that they cannot confirm through E-Verify. These discrepancies overwhelmingly affect Latinos and African American citizens.

The confusion by listeners and even those within NPR over why they would choose to accept money from DHS is understandable. After all, NPR has been consistently critical of DHS and its more sinister sibling agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

On Dec. 1, EPIC, ACLU, Free Press, and the National Immigration Law Center sent a letter to NPR calling for the discontinuation of the ads, pointing to the “shortcomings of E-Verify, including its high cost, high levels of inaccuracies in the databases on which the program is based, employer misuse resulting in discrimination and unlawful termination, and the lack of privacy protections.”

Facing layoffs and programming cuts, it’s not surprising NPR would hedge on halting the ads, though in true public radio style, they’ve done it diplomatically.

On Dec. 4th, Alicia Shepard, NPR’s Ombudsman, took to the airwaves to address listeners’ concerns and defend the acceptance of funding credits. She rightly pointed out the reasons for controversy around E-Verify, but then kept the focus on the “firewall” that protects journalistic integrity from advertising dollars.

This indicates that NPR still doesn’t get why this is a problem. I don’t think listeners are as concerned about the integrity of journalists, as they are about the integrity of National Public Radio itself. I can sympathize with NPR’s economic woes, but we’re all feeling the same pinch. Bottom line, E-Verify is racist and NPR should stop promoting it.

So why are we not talking about hunger in meaningful terms? Is it that we are afraid to acknowledge various systems of oppression that help shape this issue? Perhaps we believe that this issue should be vocalized solely by those who live with hunger since, after all it is their problem? Or is it that many of us do not have a frame of reference to hunger, so it becomes an abstract issue and as such it slides on the scale of importance? While I can hypothesize why there is a lack of main stream discourse on hunger, I can relate to its impact first hand.

During the siege of Sarajevo all roads leading to and from the city were cut off, leaving the city without a food supply. In those first months of the war, we relied on food already in the house. Being true Europeans, we never really had fully stocked pantries. Flour was purchased only on occasions warranting cake making and vegetables, fruit and meat were purchased almost on a daily basis. My mom, sister and I began our war journey with a gallon of oil, half a pound of flour, quarter pound of sugar and a few cans of sardines forgotten in dark corners of the kitchen cupboard.

While we learned to be creative with what we had, finding food on a daily basis became a challenge. In the summer we learned to incorporate all kinds of weeds and grass into our diet. I spent long hours looking through a book “How to Survive in Wilderness” hoping to find alternative sources of food. Did you know that one can make flour out of the birch bark? Problem was, I realized, that we did not live in wilderness but in a concrete paved city with well groomed parks. Not a great source of edible vegetation.

After that first year of war, we began to receive a humanitarian aid consisting of American lunch packets left over from the Korean War, surplus rice, beans and lentils often infested with maggots, and a ration of oil less than a half of litter per a household of three. Salt and sugar became things that we dreamed about, and fruit, vegetables, meat and eggs were nostalgic memories of “those better days.”

Soon, we lived on rations of three thin slices of bread a day and a thin soup made of beans, lentil or rice. A half a can of Mackerels or a can of an unknown meat substance rounded up our diet. As the war worsened we were soon down to one meal a day, and in the third year of war the food was so scarce that we ran out completely. After a week we were too weak to interact with each other. The unselfish kindness of a neighbor saved us. Even though she and her mother struggled themselves, she came to our aid with enough flour and a can of sardines to get us through couple of days. This act of true compassion made “giving up” impossible.

The lack of food seemed to spark our obsession with all kinds of edible things. My sister and I spent hours reminiscing about food. I obsessively flipped through cookbooks lavishing over pictures of food. We focused a great deal of our cognitive resources on food, making it difficult to think of more abstract concepts such as freedom and life. We found it difficult to extend beyond the walls of our physical condition. Instead of living we were surviving and in that process we became silent. And this silence is the real tragedy of hunger.

“First, let’s get one thing out on the open, documented or not Hispanic immigrants came to America in search of a better future for them and their families that for whatever reasons their native country could not offer. For the most part, they bet all their chips on the United States believing it is The Land of Opportunity. So, the U.S. is going through a rough patch right now… Seriously, this is NOT a big deal if you have lived in Latin America for a good part of your life. Most Latinos will have a “been there, done that” attitude towards it, tighten up their belts, and face the crisis diving head first into it in comparison to the average American who’s been living in abundance (relatively, at least) for their entire life and now are facing vast uncertainty.”

He’s right, many Latino immigrants have “been there, done that”. Can they help the rest of us cope? Juan helpfully lays out the reasons Latino Immigrants are going to have a less stressful response to the recession. He says immigrants and Latinos in general do four things that will help them weather the storm: use less credit, don’t keep their money in the bank, rent instead of own, and if they lose their jobs they cross pay scales and industries to find new ones.

These are obviously not best practices in a fair economy. But, ironically, with banks closing and unemployment rising, practices born out of disadvantage are becoming sound coping mechanisms.

Tornoe at the end of his post wisely says:

“Concluding, I am in NO way trying to imply that Hispanic Immigrants are immune to an economic recession. They are feeling and will certainly feel the squeeze in the months to come, just the same as they’ve felt it in the past while living in their home countries. It won’t be a novelty in their lives. They’ve survived through various crises and have successfully emerged from them. To a certain extent they know what to expect, know how to react, and know that they won’t last forever.”

Once again he makes a valid point, nobody is immune, especially not a group facing a myriad of other obstacles around discrimination and anti-immigrant sentiment. But we are all in this together, whether we like it or not. We should look to Latino/a immigrants for guidance and also respect that they know more about hard-work and sacrifice. They can show us the light at the end of the tunnel.

Despite the economic downturn this year, people were still lining up at 4am to take advantage of the deals. Lining up, pushing, shoving, and stampeding. Yep, stampeding. At one New York Wal-mart people were so desperate for discounted plasma TVs they trampled an employee.

Most didn’t even stop shopping to see if he was okay. And he wasn’t, he was dead.

Normally I like to blame corporations when bad things happen in stores like Wal-mart. It’s easy and usually accurate. But when I read about Jdimytai Damour’s death I thought to myself, “those greedy shoppers should go to jail right along with Wal-mart executives.” I don’t care how little security the store had or what was on sale, there is no excuse for stepping on someone until they die. Nobody in this country needs a TV that bad.

When we started this blog five months ago, I struggled with my own American-ness. If I was going to write honestly about forging a new American identity I had to renew my faith in the American people. I had to clear out the cobwebs of cynicism, and even if I didn’t live to see the year 2050, I had to invest myself in the belief that it would be a fair and just nation. Most days I feel pretty optimistic about this country. On the days when I read about people being killed in shopping malls, I feel like moving away.

It’s hard to believe in a nation whose government hunts down law-abiding people who step over the border for a job, but won’t prosecute those who trample the man who opens the door for them. It’s hard to comprehend that a company would only put things on sale from 5am to 11am knowing full well that shoppers will huddle like cattle at the door and then crush each other to get inside.

I’m positive that they can sell the same amount of TVs and Tickle-Me-Elmos the next day at the same price. But stores like Wal-mart need the frenzy of a “doorbuster“. They need to trick us into believing we can’t get it any other time for a lower price. The convenient path is to crucify Wal-mart.  There is no easier target and they certainly carry a share of the blame.

Louis Nizer once said, “When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that four of his fingers are pointing at himself.”  The American consumer is just as guilty and should take Damour’s death as a sign that our consumer needs have infringed on our humanity. That doesn’t mean we have to stop shopping, but we do need to send Wal-mart a message and not shop on Black Friday. We can pay a few extra dollars or buy a little less and go shopping on a different day. They’ll get the message and we’ll still find good enough deals. No one should have to die for a bargain.

You know the type of morning I’m talking about. The kind of morning when you wake up early and you have the whole day ahead of you. The sun is slowly rising in the east and your calendar is clear. You don’t have to work, your bills are paid (or at least up to date), there’s food in the fridge and no one gets to dictate what the day will hold for you. You can sit and quietly read the paper, take in the guilty pleasure of early morning TV, or surf the net without a care in the world.

Maybe you surprise the kids and take them to the park. Maybe you spend the time fishing, enjoying the quiet of the river. It’s not what you do that matters, but rather that the day is yours. These mornings are like a breath of fresh air that chase away the tension and stress of life. You savor the day, and at night when you close your eyes you know that it will be the memory of this day that will sustain you through the hard times.

It’s those special mornings that always remind me exactly what life is supposed to be like. Not days filled with wondering if you can pay your rent, clothe your children and pay the doctor, but rather a time where you get to build and create the world around you. We seem to be in short supply of these special mornings lately.

In fact lately it seems that there has been nothing but one bad cloud after another hanging over all our heads. The cloud actually arrived a little over twenty five years ago today and it has done a good job of making sure the specials mornings of which I speak are few and far between.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan and his henchmen engineered this cloud and rained Reaganomics across the fifty states, slowly drowning the promise of America. They did it by renouncing governmental responsibility to our local communities and to our nation. Failed public schools, a national transportation system in disarray, unsafe food, decline in real wages, little access to basic health care – this is the sum total of Reaganomics.

Many of us believed Ronald Reagan when, in 1984, he told us that “It’s morning in American again.” We thought that, because we worked hard, we were being presented with the well earned dessert of our labor, personal responsibility and sacrifice. In reality we were cynically given a pie made out of mud. It’s a pie we’re still paying for.

While the agenda of Reaganomics put more and more money into the pockets of the wealthiest amongst us – what eventually trickled down to the majority of citizens was the belief that things had to get better. In the summer of 2008, with banks closing, 1/5 of homes facing possible foreclosure, and retirement accounts shrinking, even THAT belief was ripped from our hands.

Things have been dim for so long that I’ve had a hard time remembering what morning actually looks like anymore. But yesterday I got the sense that something was different. The sun seemed a little brighter, the sky a little bluer. People were walking a little taller and with a little more confidence. All of this has now convinced me that tomorrow morning is going to be one of those special mornings that have been so rare recently.

Deep down inside I think each of us is remembering what it’s like to wake up with the promise of possibility - a morning where we control our destiny, one that is ours to build, to do with it what we choose. Yeah, it’s really morning in America again.

So now - what are you going to do with it?

Several years ago I read an interview with the company founder, Dov Charney, just as the company was embarking on their rapid expansion. He came off as quite a pervert, but there was no denying he was a radical and on to something with his socially aware policies. The company has great benefits, a decent hourly wage, tries to protect the environment and is even given a good grade by PETA for their “vegan-friendly” garments” (small miracle to get anything from PETA).

Over the years as American Apparel’s star has continued to rise (for the record I’ve read subsequent articles about Mr. Charnay that indicate he is more eccentric than perverted), it seems they’ve been able to maintain and even expand their socially responsible model.

The company has been so outspoken about human rights they’ve taken on the most controversial issue of all, immigration. Legalize L.A. is their campaign to promote citizenship for the over one million undocumented immigrants living in Los Angeles, and they’ve unabashedly posted billboards all over the country calling for humane reform. An article published yesterday discusses the fact that, despite the obvious benefits to U.S. companies, others in the business community have so far been unwilling to promote immigration reform for fear of reprisals from the anti-immigrant movement and their buddies at Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE).

What the article doesn’t elaborate on, is why some companies, especially those in food production wouldn’t want to push for reform. ICE raids have hit a few meat processing plants particularly hard, but the workers at the plants are the real targets and often the benefits of exploiting undocumented workers outweigh the risks of a raid for these companies. The sad truth is if all U.S. companies valued their workers the way American Apparel does, then they would probably be just as willing to put themselves on the line for reform. The last year has been a shocking indicator to Americans that decision-makers at top U.S. companies are less interested in long-term health and profitability for their shareholders and more concerned about filling their own pockets. What big business doesn’t want us to know is that immigration reform is good for the economy as a whole, but bad for executive’s paychecks.

I read an article in Time Out Chicago several weeks ago titled “The well-intentioned, politically progressive and completely ill-conceived localvore movement” by David Tamarkin. Locavores are people who eat food grown or produced locally or within a certain radius, such as 50-150 miles. The mantra behind the idea of eating local is:

1. To procure the freshest food possible
2. To ensure the farmer gets a fair price for his crop, while supporting a local economy
3. To decrease energy expenditure by reducing packaging, shipping, and storing time

Mr. Tamarkin didn’t seem to find the idea completely palatable. After outlining the good things about locavorism, he went on to say: “It ignores the rest of the world and focuses on what’s good in one’s backyard. This thinking, of course, ignores the fact that somebody else’s backyard might be more needy than our own. If the first goal of buying local produce is to help farmers in need, it would stand to reason that localvores should seek out the neediest farmers they can.”

I get where he’s going with that statement, but at the same time I have to wonder if he really researched the topic of globalized farming and food sovereignty.

In the past three decades most countries have painfully experienced their own national food production capacity dwindle, due to the ever-increasing incentive to produce agricultural exports. This immense shift in the farming industry was made possible by free trade agreements, and aroused by huge government subsidies to agribusiness. People that were once able to feed themselves actually can’t now because they are exporting all of their crops. The world can certainly produce enough food to sustain all living creatures, it just has to be distributed correctly.

While I may have convinced myself that eating locally will make me less responsible for the global hunger problem, as Tamarkin points out, there are ecological questions to be considered as well: “While a tomato that was organically grown on an Illinois farm has a low impact on the environment, an organically grown tomato raised in an Illinois greenhouse…can be deceiving. They may be locally grown, but that term fails to reveal they were grown in a heavily heated, gas-guzzling greenhouse.”

He has a good point. Most local organic farms that I am familiar with don’t harbor those kind of facilities, but I’m sure there are plenty of them. Especially the big “organic” farms that are owned by parent companies (i.e. Cascadian Farms is owned by General Mills, Earth’s Best by Heinz). While I understand his skepticism, I would hope that someone disciplined enough to eat entirely locally would probably be able to figure out that a tomato coming from the Midwest in January would be growing in a greenhouse, and may use a lot of energy to produce. What Tamarkin may not know is that with the right insulation and a thermal mass wall, a well seasoned farmer could produce tomatoes in January using very little to no energy. If they have some extra money in the bank, they could even get a couple solar panels.

My (and most) Community Supported Agriculture programs run early spring through late fall. Some will keep delivering year-round, by using their storage crops or by putting not-so-local vegetables in the produce boxes. If you are interested in participating in a CSA and you live in Chicago, or if you just want to learn more about buying local in the Midwest Familyfarmed.org has a great map of drop off locations and different farms to choose from.

When times were economically tough and media pundits told us we simply weren’t taking enough personal responsibility we doubled both our efforts and our sacrifices. What we were not told was that our leaders supposedly looking out for our best interests were instead letting other folks play under a different rule – the rule of greed.

This week we found out the price of greed. It is approximately Seven Hundred Billion Dollars and change. At a time when each of us has been instructed by elected officials that retirement, health care, education for our children and housing are our individual personal responsibility no one should be surprised that we are angry that our hard earned money must now go to footing the bill of those financial institutions that show not one ounce of the responsibility that has been asked of each of us.

We feel betrayed and rightfully so. Now to add insult to injury these same supporters of greed are attempting to convince us to sell out our American identity by blaming the most vulnerable amongst us. Poor working families, Latinos, Jews and African Americans (sound familiar?). The hope is that by pointing towards others they can escape further scrutiny by the American public. In short, divide the American public and perhaps we’ll forget who is actually responsible.

Michelle Malkin who couldn’t wait to be a mouthpiece on behalf of the greedy jumped into the fray with her September 24th editorial attacking “illegal” immigration for the mess. Malkin launches into a tirade, embracing a level of bigotry that would impress former Klansmen David Duke, falsely claiming that all immigrants are Latino and that all Latinos are immigrants. Because personal responsibility is not an important trait to Malkin she chooses to ignore that over 60% of sub-prime borrowers should have been offered fixed rate prime loans because of their superb credit many of them Latinos who have been here for generations (Wall Street Journal).

Malkin is not alone. Pundit after pundit has taken to the airwaves attacking our historic struggle against racism by targeting the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). CRA was established to remove racial barriers and to stop the forced segregation of American neighborhoods. I guess since financial leaders have destroyed the economy they now feel embolden to destroy the American values of fairness and opportunity as well.

The white nationalists movement can’t wait to bring anti-Semitism to the mix by targeting the Jewish community and even the Republican Party has chosen to get on the growing “let’s destroy American identity” bandwagon. In Michigan, the Macomb County Republican Party is engaging in voter suppression. How? By arguing that if you live in a home that is in foreclosure that you don’t have a local residence and shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Interestingly enough (but not surprising) they are only tracking in black neighborhoods. You can sum this tactic up in six words “lose your home, lose your vote” or “just how low can you go?”

According to the Kirwan Institute, “home ownership is one of the primary ways American families amass wealth.” I’d like to add that another way that we add wealth is by not allowing our diverse communities to be targeted during times of crisis. Sure sub-prime lenders are stealing from the wallets and pocketbooks of the American family, but let’s make sure they don’t steal our identity, one nation and indivisible as well.

Soccer ball manufacturing generally starts at the contractor’s factory where the pieces of leather are printed and cut into small segments. Most of the time those materials are then assembled at the same factory, packaged, and sent to the retailer. However, in some cases the raw materials are packed and handed to middlemen who distribute them to local families, and this is when this situation becomes troublesome.

There are now labor laws in place to monitor city factories where the initial labor is performed (like the FoulBall campaign of 1996) but unfortunately, these regulations haven’t been able to reach the doorsteps of the citizens. Children as young as six years old have been found sewing soccer balls from their homes. Some of the children go to school as well as work, and some have been found working up to 12 hours per day, usually squatting in a hunched over position. They are paid per ball, which takes about 3-6 hours to complete, and on average make 27 cents for each one. When they become adults and if they are lucky, they can make up to 62 cents per ball. That is, if they get to work on the medium-premium quality balls.

One of the saddest things about this terrible situation is that sometimes their labor never comes to an end. Many industries (including soccer ball manufacturing) contribute to and therefore encourage the use of the most horrifying form of human slavery, known as debt bondage. It occurs when a person becomes the collateral against a small loan, usually incurred for basic necessities like food, emergency medical treatment, or funeral expenses. According to a report by Swathi Mehta of Tufts University,

“With exorbitant interest rates of up to 60%, these loans are difficult, if not impossible, to repay. Individuals thus become trapped within a system of debt bondage that forces them to repay loans by working unconditionally for their entire lives - even passing on the same debt for generations.”

Mr.  Gumbel’s segment focuses on a family enduring this process, where a young mother has two children and the youngest is in dire need of medical attention. So the weary mother makes the difficult decision to “sell” her older child(’s labor) to get a loan to save the life of her younger. I think “her” debt was something along the lines of a hundred dollars. They film the older child sewing away, and at the end of the report announced that the baby ended up dying sometime after the film crew had left.

After the show was over I changed the channel and that “low price guaranteed” commercial for Walmart showed up on the T.V. screen. I couldn’t help but cringe.

These cruel practices must be halted. The world’s poorest people should not be enslaved so that the sporting goods industry can meet the demand of the global market. The Campaign for Labor Rights provides a list of companies that mass produce soccer balls. Write letters to them to express your concern about child labor and demand external monitoring.

ADIDAS Steve Wynne, CEO. 541 NE 20th St. Suite 207, Portland, OR 97232; Tel: 800-289-2724, Fax: (503)797-4935.

UMBRO-USA Ian McLaren, President. 1500 Ponsett Hwy., Greenville, SC 29609 or PO Box 3725, Greenville, SC 29609; Tel: (803) 233-0000 or (800) SOC-CERO; Fax: (803) 271-1689.

BRINE, INC. William H. Brine, Jr. Chairman. 47 Sumner St., Milford, MA 01757; Tel: (508) 478-3250 or (800) 227-2722; Fax: (508) 478-2430.

MITRE SPORTS INTERNATIONAL Joe Field, President. Pentland Sports Group, 2214 Metro Center Blvd,. Suite 200, Nashville, TN 37228; Tel: (6150 313-3500; or (800) 826- 7650; Fax: (615)367-7320.

LOTTO USA, INC Gary Wakley, Co. Manager. 1900 Surveyor Blvd., Carrollton, TX 75006; Tel: (214)416-4003 or (800) 527-5126; Fax: (214-416-4233.

As misfortunes pile into one another like the driving rains Hurricane Ike pushed across the country, I can’t help thinking about drought. Not just any drought but that man-made disaster called the Dust Bowl. There’s a sadly ironic parallel between Steinbeck’s depiction of cracked Oklahoma cornfields and the Midwest crops bloated by rain this summer.

75 years ago the Dust Bowl was a combination of drought, an agricultural market that forced farmers to overuse the land, and the Great Depression. Today it’s hurricanes, a housing market forcing people out of their homes, and an economic downward spiral that is seemingly out of control. Then the people fled for California in search of better opportunities, today they are fleeing the country’s southern coasts in search of higher ground.

While the Feds are busy bailing out giant lenders and their multi-millionaire CEOs, average Americans are moving out of their foreclosed homes and into tents on the outskirts of society. Social service agencies and shelters are unprepared for the onslaught of homeless Americans who have nowhere to go now that they’ve lost their homes. The freshly displaced have been turned out of homes and shelters; that should give the rest of us an idea of how dire the economic situation is in this country.

Now more than ever, it infuriates me when I hear someone criticize government spending on social services. We never hear anyone suggest scaling back on firefighters or policeman, these are protections that most feel are worth their tax dollars. So why can’t we see the benefit of preventing a family from having to live in a tent? Or protecting a home buyer from a predatory lender?

The truth is our population is destabilizing. A person living in a tent without adequate shelter from the elements, clean water and food is a person who may never climb out of poverty without help. If we want out nation to recover we’ve got to start from the bottom up, not the other way around.

Image gratefully borrowed from The Voice of Eye (is editing en masse)’s photostream

The people who support the popular catch phrase, “Big Government,” believe that the free market can fix itself. Free market die-hards, like libertarians – Ron Paul’s Revolutionaries - believe that human beings are rational enough to fix the mortgage crisis and inflation (the rise of food and gas). Libertarians believe that a person’s financial interests will always supercede a person’s emotional desires, like greed.

But if that’s the case, why did white business owners before the 1950’s only take money from white customers? Or better yet, how can libertarians categorize a person’s financial interest as rational thinking? Because to me, it seems when folks are more concerned with following their own pocket books, they can get a little greedy and act completely irrational.

Take a look at today’s economy. The American financial system is in shambles. Not one economist will predict an end to America’s financial crisis, and the federal government is running out of strategies to bail out Wall Street. And now taxpayers have to pay for their mistakes.

Now, I’m not against taxes. I’m glad I won’t have to pay for my kids to go to school K-12. But I am against die-hard free-market thinkers, and I blame them for today’s 6.1% unemployment rate and the mortgage crises.

Why? Let’s not forget that more Americans could afford to buy homes because mortgage bankers decided to lend money to Americans who weren’t financially secure. It wasn’t because the wages of Americans increased. They let people buy houses with little or no down payment and they gave money to people who couldn’t afford to have three months rent sitting in the bank.

This all sounds a little risky, and it was. Americans have been roughly making the same amount of money since the 1970’s (when you consider how much the cost of living has increased). So when inflation started to rise again about two years ago, Americans couldn’t afford to pay for their new homes; an outcome Wall Street desperately tried to ignore.

At the same time, it’s also nice to give moms and dads the opportunity to buy a home. The problem is that mortgage investment banks didn’t think the cost of food and gas would rise. Moreover, business owners have been unwilling to raise real wages for American workers for years. Maybe if CEOs would’ve shared a tiny bit of their million dollar bonuses, the American economy would not be so bad.

Maybe the libertarians are right. Maybe a person’s hunger for money drives all human behavior. While “Big Government,” gave Wall Street the reins, the big bosses followed their personal pocket books so they could personally benefit while Middle America fell apart.

It’s too bad this libertarian theory doesn’t benefit all Americans, or maybe it’s not intended to.

But the next time you hear someone say they’re against “Big Government,” ask them if they want to pay for their kids to go to school K-12. And then ask them if they think human beings are greedy. If the person seems a little baffled by your questions, ask her/him to explain the accounting scandal a few years ago with ENRON and Arthur Andersen, and why American wages have continued to stay the same.

I’m not saying I want a huge bureaucratic government involved in my personal life, and I’m not against Wall Street. But I also don’t want someone that’s more powerful than me to make a bunch of risky irrational greedy decisions with my hard earned money. Because even though I don’t own any stocks, that doesn’t mean my personal paycheck isn’t directly tied to the American economy, and therefore, Wall Street.

So let’s be clear, the people who shout “No More Big Government,” believe Wall Street watches out for American’s financial interests, and that human beings only act out of compassion and not greed?

(Interesting. I’d like to ask the family who just lost their house.)

While John McCain and Barack Obama hone in on their battle for the American presidency, both candidates’ economic plan becomes more similar or bipolar – depending who they’re speaking to and if they’re in Ohio or California. The sad part is that the majority of American voters don’t believe either candidate has what it takes to heal the American economy, according to a new national poll posted today in the Washington Post.

So what’s the problem? Have American voters lost read more