So I was all set to bitch about a nearby suburban school district’s egregious policy of feeding kids who can’t pay for lunches a cold cheese sandwich when I found out my kid’s school district has a more draconian policy of not feeding kids at all. Guess it pays to do some research, eh.

But then I went and read the comments on this story. I should not read the comments. I don’t know why I continue to think that Seattle is a progressive city when it is full of bitchy fauxgressives & closet libertarians.

Here’s a selection of comments for your (barf) amusement:

What is harsh is teaching kids that there is such a thing as a free lunch and that you can game the system. “Free food”, for whatever reason isn’t free and takes away from other parts of education.

We are talking about teenagers here (not elemetary kids) who are children of Seattlites. Not exactly a poor city with lots of poverty.

Yes cause there are no poor people in Seattle. Doncha know I’m secretly wealthy and choose to live as a poor person because I have secretly taken a vow of poverty. At least there won’t be for long with the increasing rents. And perhaps this commenter’s atrocious spelling (elemeNtary) might have been helped if he’d had a nice hot meal in school. Or perhaps he’s just an asshole.

You know, if a kid turns up at the end of the line with no money to pay his tab, that doesn’t mean the parents didn’t fork it over. When I was a kid most people I knew would rather skip a meal than fork over any dough, especially dough that was already nestled safely in the 7-11 cash register. You can hardly move around in the convenience stores and fast-food joints around any Seattle-area school for the crowds of kids buying (or shoplifting) junk.

Huhm, I have a funny feeling that the quote above was from someone who thinks fat people spend their entire day shoving McDonalds in their gaping maws.

i think the point is: just because kids aren’t bringing their lunch doesn’t make it the schools’ fault, and the school should not be paying the price.

perhaps there should be a measure in place to contact child protective services if parents are negligent in providing food or funds for their children to eat lunch. but the already overburdened school system should not be required to hand out free food.

Ah yes- more criminalization of the poor. Lock up those parents cause we all know there are thousands of loving foster homes to take those kids in. Right. Right.

It might be Echidne:

The substance of the debates was not terrible, actually, because the questions were substantial. Obama’s answers were considerably better on the economic questions, though both candidates failed to realize that anyone who proposes cutting public spending when a major depression looms should probably be hung and quartered, never mind that most people don’t understand how important NOT to cut public spending is in such a situation. To give you a simple example: Suppose that we do get a major recession and that lots of people lose their jobs. Is that the time to cut back on unemployment benefits, hmh? And how would cutting back those benefits affect the ability of people to go on consuming that some other workers could keep their jobs longer?

Read the rest here, though I still think both candidates are assholes on the economy.

Except for McCain’s freudian slip about the free market being the solution for families and their deceased, erm I mean doctors, this debate was a snoozefest.

Oh there was the little moment where Obama finally opened up to something Hillaryesque with a shout out for HOLC.

But for the most part- I can see little reason why I I would vote for either of these clods.

Instead, I want suggestions for the most perfectly outrageous person I could write in. Bernard says Bush, but we don’t want to give Bush a MANDATE to stay with my one little write in vote. I suggested Al Gore and a time machine. He thinks Al Gore is too reasonable, but the time machine part may push it over the top.

How about you peeps?

(And PS to McCain- if Obama really did have the most liberal voting record in the senate, I might actually vote for him. But that line was old with gore, tired with Kerry and fucking pathetic with Obama).

And totally stealing the Presidential drinking Game Rules from Feministe

* Every time someone mentions “hope” or “change,” drink.
* Drink double every time the mention of “change” comes from McCain.
* For every mention of “my fellow Americans,” drink.
* Every time the candidate steers away from the question asked to highlight his own talking points (we call that a Palin), drink twice.
* For every mention of “earmarks,” drink.
* Every time a candidate rephrases a repeat talking point, drink.
* If McCain shames Obama for not dropping out of the first debate, drink.
* For every mention of activist judges, drink.
* For every mention of failed bipartisanship efforts that failed because the opposing party are a bunch of sniveling assbabies, drink.
* If McCain blows a racist dogwhistle, drink thrice.
* If McCain sounds like he’s trying to unseat an opposing party instead of a fellow Republican, chug.
* When McCain grumpily alludes to the more important things he has to do, chug.
* Spit out your beer and yell at the TV if McCain insinuates Obama is a) Muslim or b) the antiChrist.
* Finish your drink if someone mentions a Clinton.

I fully expect to spend the rest of the weekend hungover.

Maybe I’ll write in Wanda Sykes for president. She seems to know more shit than either candidate

I had been a WAMU customer for some time, but this summer my bank account got overdrawn when WAMU suddenly when crazy with the overdraft fees (nearly 7 fucking years without a bounced anything and then suddenly I’m racking up $200+ bucks a month in fees).

Anyways, it broke me. There was no (or very little) money coming in and there was no way for me to pay the $235 I was overdrawn. So they closed my account a few weeks ago.

And then last night the Feds took over WAMU.

I am feeling a wee bit zen about that at the moment.

Soopermouse and I were talking about the difference between here (the US) and there (the UK). She was totally perplexed at how her country, which has a higher standard of living and higher wages has lower property costs. We were sending links back and forth of townhouses and the price difference was shocking. A two or three bedroom townhouse goes for about 175k in her neck of the woods and almost 400k here.

But that wasn’t the only difference. Everything here has been updated. Shiny new kitchens, extra bathrooms, new floors, etc. There they are what we might call cosmetic fixers, fine structurally but needing updating.

Everyone wants to live in a nice home. But I think our pathological obsession with remodeling tells more about the state of the economy than anything else. And it’s not that Americans are greedy assholes who can’t imagine sharing a bathroom with another family member. It’s about investment.

One of the best indicators of a person’s future wealth is the wealth of their parents.

One of the things the Kid and I do in times of mass suckitude is “Lottery shopping”. Mostly we imagine what our super cool house would be like. But we also plan trips, etc.

So I was thinking about what we would do if we did give every grown up in the country $297,000 instead of bailing out the rich. It’s not enough to buy a house here. It’s almost enough to buy a 2 bedroom flat. It is enough to pay off all my debt (about 10k) and make my credit pretty. And it’s enough to pay for me to finish college with living expenses. Plus, if I got the money for back child support from Kid’s dad, I could put 40K into a college fund for him.

So if you got $297K, what would you do?

Ruth and I were talking this morning about how all that’s on the news is the bailout, but no one is explaining anything that makes sense.

Ruth has a giant math brain, easily able to understand complex problems and solutions. I have a superhero talent for deciphering bureaucracy speak. And neither of us can figure out what the fuck is really going on. And that is what really scares me. You don’t know how many half written blog posts are sitting in the que because I just can’t figure out what the fuck they are trying to do (other than fuck over the entire American populace, but that ones obvious)

Then along comes James Galbraith with the only fucking plan that makes actual sense to me.

Is this bailout still necessary?

The point of the bailout is to buy assets that are illiquid but not worthless. But regular banks hold assets like that all the time. They’re called “loans.”

With banks, runs occur only when depositors panic, because they fear the loan book is bad. Deposit insurance takes care of that. So why not eliminate the pointless $100,000 cap on federal deposit insurance and go take inventory? If a bank is solvent, money market funds would flow in, eliminating the need to insure those separately. If it isn’t, the FDIC has the bridge bank facility to take care of that.

Next, put half a trillion dollars into the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. fund — a cosmetic gesture — and as much money into that agency and the FBI as is needed for examiners, auditors and investigators. Keep $200 billion or more in reserve, so the Treasury can recapitalize banks by buying preferred shares if necessary — as Warren Buffett did this week with Goldman Sachs. Review the situation in three months, when Congress comes back. Hedge funds should be left on their own. You can’t save everyone, and those investors aren’t poor.
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With this solution, the systemic financial threat should go away. Does that mean the economy would quickly recover? No. Sadly, it does not. Two vast economic problems will confront the next president immediately. First, the underlying housing crisis: There are too many houses out there, too many vacant or unsold, too many homeowners underwater. Credit will not start to flow, as some suggest, simply because the crisis is contained. There have to be borrowers, and there has to be collateral. There won’t be enough.

I trust Galbraith. I trust his ideas and his family history of pulling this country through devastating economic downturns. His father, John Kenneth, was FDR’s architect for the New Deal and James has continued on with progressive ideas for how to help the economy (and the majority of us regular people that make up the economy).

Go read the rest of his article. And then have a stiff drink as you realize that neither political party has plans to do anything like this to fix our upside down system.

Or you can go for wishful thinking with Blue Lyon. I could certainly use the We Deserve It Dividend. Kid and I could have a home with that.

H/T to Anglachel