http://www.axtora.com/homesites/us/minnesota/alliance/ Alliance, MN News http://www.axtora.com/homesites/us/minnesota/alliance/content/6f82dcb95a62d2c974e7d6e455def2ed.html Remember Bailey ParkNot So Wonderful Now Looking for someone to blame in the worsening crisis Let's go back to Bedford FallsIf the global economy survives the autumn and our cableTV companies are still in business come Christmas Americans surfing the channels for classic Yuletide movies may finally figure out exactly whom they have to blame for the housing bubble and everything that has followed Forget the predatory lenders Wall Street sharks and their government enablers: It all started with George Bailey Yes that George Bailey the hero of Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Lifethe most popular man in Bedford Falls the man so indispensable that he earned a private visitation from a guardian angel just to show him how dreadful a world without him would have been It's easy to forget so potent is the supernaturally charged final act of Capra's classic that before he was visiting lookingglass worlds where he'd never been born or scampering through the snow and shouting Merry Christmastill his lungs burst Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey was actually a pretty savvy businessman And it's even easier to forget the precise nature of his business: putting the downscale families of Bedford Falls into homes they couldn't quite afford to buy This is the substance of the great war between Bailey and Lionel Barrymore's Mr Potter the richest meanest man in Bedford Falls Potter is against easy credit and the suburban dream against the rabble moving out of his tenements and buying homes while the Bailey Building and Loan exists to make suburbia possible The Bailey vision is economic and moral all at once In a midmovie peroration the hero lectures Potter and a gaggle of local entrepreneurs on the virtues of democratizing homeownership: You're all businessmen herehe presses them sounding for all the world like a politician defending Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac against their critics in 2004 or so Doesn't it make them better citizens Doesn't it make them better customers What'd you say a minute ago They had to wait and save their money before they even ought to think of a decent home Wait Do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollarsIn the movie George Bailey has God on his side but a reallife Bailey would have had Uncle Sam It's a Wonderful Lifedebuted in 1946 more than a decade after Franklin D Roosevelt's National Housing Act kicked off a halfcentury of federal policymaking aimed at making it dramatically easier for workingclass Americans to buy and keep their homes As a political text Capra's movie enjoys obvious bipartisan appeal liberals can thrill to its attacks on Potter's corporate fatcattery while conservatives can retort that the film asks us to root for a rival businessman and the tightknit community that supports him not for a government regulator or welfare office Likewise the movie's vision of workingclass Americans fanning out from the slums to the suburban promised land of Bailey Park has animated government policy in Republican and Democratic eras alike from Roosevelt's New Deal down to George W Bush's ownership societyFor three generations suburban homesteading has been underwritten by our infrastructure spending our zoning policies our banking regulations and our tax code Easy credit inexpensive mortgages cheap gasoline wideopen highways the heavy hand of federal regulators on any bank that declined to lend in lowincome or minority neighborhoods if it made homeownership cheap and suburbia accessible Americans were for it never mind what the critics said Potterstyle skepticism about these trends endured but it was safely marginalized The Potters of the right griped that banks and government agencies were being forced to take on too much risk in the name of expanding minority homeownership and that besides renting was often more economically sensible and investing your money in the stock market instead of your home delivered higher longterm returns But their arguments fell upon deaf ears The Potters of the left increasingly vocal since the 1960s argued that the whole business was unsustainable: If overpopulation or oil shocks or anomie didn't bring suburbia crashing down then global warming would and the only thing to do was to desprawl and retrench But as suburbs gave way to exurbs Levittowns to sprinkler citiesAmericans were too busy watching HGTV and fantasizing about great roomsand threecar garages to listen Until 2008 that is which may be remembered as the year when the American Dream's excesses from gasguzzling SUVs to subprime mortgages suddenly threatened to strangle the dream itself This summer and fall George Bailey's vision has endured a stunning onetwo punch First months of skyrocketing gas prices along with dire forecasts about peak oil made suburbia seem unsustainable conjuring up a future in which Americans huddle together around subway stops and lightrail stations exchanging the backyard and the garage for townhouses and apartments And then this autumn came the mortgagefueled financial sector meltdown in which Potter's warnings about letting the working poor buy homes on credit seemed to find their vindication in a worldwide economic crisis The next decade then seems likely to belong to Potters from both sides of the aisle Once the bailouts end bankers and bureaucrats alike will grow increasingly tightfisted Easy credit will become a privilege of wealth and mortgages vastly more difficult to get No president in the near future and certainly no Republican president will unveil any sweeping plans to add 55 million more minority homeowners by reducing downpayment requirements the way Bush eager to woo Hispanics and exurban voters did with his minority homeownership initiative in 2002 Meanwhile America's infrastructure priorities will probably take a distinctly European turn especially under Democratic leadership with a greater focus on mass transit walkable cities and smart growthand declining support for the kind of subdivided carconnected sprawl that has flowed outward from our cities since the days of Bailey Park Gas will probably get more expensive thanks to stricter environmental regulations as well as market pressures; so will McMansions and big lawns vaulted ceilings and master suites More Americans may well eschew the suburbs entirely opting for the denser mixeduse neighborhoods that New Urbanists have been urging on us for decades kinder gentler and hipper versions of the Pottersville depicted in George Bailey's nightmare vision dotted with coffee shops and farmers'markets instead of honkytonks and gin jointsContinued at this URL:http:wwwwashingtonpostcomwpdyncontentarticle20081010AR200810 http://www.axtora.com/homesites/us/minnesota/alliance/content/988795d1bb9bd2296bf67cf465b806b0.html Forget the sideshows voter registration numbers tell the story When Secretary of State Ross Miller's office led a raid of a Las Vegas community organization last week numerous voters expressed outrage at the potential that voter fraud could tilt this year's electionThen The New York Times suggested last week that Nevada was one of seven states in which actions by government officials or weak laws have led to numerous voters being cast from the rollsWhile some states appear to be violating federal restrictions on purging voter rolls too close to a national election Nevada was cited for too often checking up on Social Security numbersBoth stories created their own little electionyear din The Times piece sparked Miller to push back hard against what he called Thursday's misleading report I want to assure Nevadans that any suggestion that eligible voters will be denied their right to participate in this election on November 4th is falseMiller said Further the article erroneously implies that every unmatched record represents one unmatched voterIf that were the case Nevada's supposed shenanigans with false SSNs would involve more than 50 percent of all registered votersNevada has a law requiring any voter whose record doesn't match up to still appear on the voter rolls Then the feds are supposed to sort out the difference If neither the state nor the Social Security Administration can verify a person the local clerk sends the voter a notice to try to verify the dataIf the person does show up to vote he will have to show ID before he casts a ballotSeems like officials are jumping through an awful lot of hoops to ensure everyone is on the rolls contrary to the Times pieceMeanwhile the mess involving the community group ACORN has led to some people believing that folks who are ineligible to vote will somehow be permitted to cast ballotsAgain not trueSo while both stories sure are noisy the real thunder this week came from Washoe County's voter registration numbers As it applies to the Nov 4 election nothing is more important in Nevada to both parties and both presidential campaignsSo let's get back to the real circus no matter how grotesque the alleged voter fraud or voter purging might appearThe voter numbers in Washoe are stunning The red northern county isn't exactly red anymoreAs of the close of mailin registration the county was at a statistical dead heat between Democrats and Republicans each party has 39 percent of the electorateThe real numbers right now give Republicans a whopping 105person edge countywide But since people can still register until 9 pm Tuesday in Washoe that could still flipWashoe could easily flip Nevada and who knows maybe even the nationMiller's raid on ACORN took place after the close of mailin voter registration Had he conducted the raid a week before activists from campaigns and community groups seeking to register voters might have encountered resistanceBut Miller's job is not to thwart voter registration but to encourage itSo the timing of the raid didn't cast a pall over the lastditch efforts by those registering voters And statewide Democrats really made stridesIn the recent past the GOP had mastered registration cycle after cycle thanks in part to aggressive courting of new residents and a strong marketing push The story this year has been all DemocraticDemocrats had 93727 more voters at the end of September It's likely that number will surpass 100000 after Tuesday's official close of registrationThe past two elections in Nevada were each decided by 21000 votesAssuming the political landscape is similar to what it was four years ago this election might also hinge on what today would equate to less than a 2 percentagepoint difference between the candidatesAs of last week most polls gave Barack Obama a 4 to 7point edge in the state With the margin of error that lead is right on the past two election results only with the Democratic candidate narrowly beating the RepublicanMaybe it's true that many of these new Democratic voters won't show up at the polls And maybe the edge is greater than it appearsAnd maybe there is a 6point differential between those who say they will vote for Obama and those who actually do in the privacy of the voter boothOne thing is loud and clear though: Democrats have won the registration gameThere are at least 30000 more Democrats than Republicans in the 3rd Congressional District There are more Democrats in both of the contested Clark County state Senate districts currently held by RepublicansNumbers don't mean everything but they sure account for a lotThe start of early voting on Saturday will move the circus into a different ring the Get Out The Vote varietyAnd with Democrats holding such a large lead in the registration numbers the Republicans have no margin for errorSo go ahead and see the sideshows We're getting close to Halloween after all But the registration numbers are the real numbers driving this year's circus and those who take their eyes off of that risk losing the electionhttp:wwwlvrjcomopinion30860529html http://www.axtora.com/homesites/us/minnesota/alliance/content/b24c63077b792f1f17e574932bb951c6.html The Savage City Council will meet for a work session Monday Oct 13 at 4:30 pm at the McColl Pond Environmental Learning Center and in council chambers at city hall 6000 McColl DriveThe tentative agenda is as follows:A Tour ELC Building present concepts related to ELC building usage policyread more http://www.axtora.com/homesites/us/minnesota/alliance/content/0cb86cb6006056faed8399bfc23ca719.html Lifting our Hearts to Share an afternoon with tenor and flute is a recital to benefit the Southern Valley Alliance for Battered Women and takes place at 3 pm Sunday Oct 19 at St Victoria Catholic Church 8228 Victoria Drive Victoriaread more http://www.axtora.com/homesites/us/minnesota/alliance/content/fca16a49ef9521f198b7e60ad7d6ac3e.html What you don't know and how will you learn itObama's and our icebergThe global economy is a wreck and no one knows yet what to do about itRosa BrooksOctober 9 2008 'What don't you know and how will you learn itWhen Peggy from Amherstsubmitted that question to Tom Brokaw moderator of Tuesday night's presidential debate she probably already knew she wasn't going to get a genuine answer from the candidates And she didn'tBarack Obama made a quick joke My wife Michelle is there and she could give you a long list observed that it's the unexpected challenges that often consume most of a president's time then swiftly changed the subject to the American dream John McCain explained that what I don't know is what all of us don't know and that's what's going to happen what I don't know is what the unexpected will beThen he too changed the subjectSo I'll answer Peggy's questionWhat McCain doesn't seem to know yet is that he's a dead man walking He'll learn it definitively on Nov 4 when he's going to lose the election and the polls increasingly suggest that he'll lose big The GOP as a whole will also lose big We're in the middle of an epochal shift in US politics A global economic crisis two wars and an ongoing nuclear and terrorist threat have left most Americans disgusted by the recklessness of free marketeers and by unilateralist militarist approaches to foreign policyThe era of GOP dominance of US politics is over McCain the son and grandson of Navy admirals wanted to be the Republican Party's steady hand at the tillerNow he's going down with the shipLet's get to Obama who's almost certain to be our presidentWhat Obama doesn't know is how to keep the global economic crisis from sending all the rest of us to the bottom of the sea right along with McCain and the GOPObama won't say that of course no sane politician would On the contrary Obama like McCain bent over backward during Tuesday's debate to reassure voters that all of our problems can be fixed Neither he nor McCain made reference to the Dow's plunge of 508 points Tuesday nor to the fact that the index has lost a full third of its value in a year And when asked by Brokaw if the economy will get much worse before it gets betterObama's response was quick: No I'm confident about the American economyReally I'm notI don't usually hope that politicians are being disingenuous But if Obama truly thinks things won't get worse then what he doesn't know is scaryThe US economy is now in roughly the situation the Titanic was in when its lookouts spotted that fatal iceberg looming ahead and most Americans have started to figure this out And though fingerpointing is always fun most of us are turning to more urgent questions such as whether there will be enough lifeboats to go around and whether there's any real prospect of rescue and recoveryObama must know this But presumably his debate prep team told him that with election day so close it would be stupid to acknowledge a vast spreading problem if he can't offer voters an equally comprehensive and compelling solution And I'm pretty sure Obama doesn't yet know how to do thatDon't blame him for not yet knowing how to do that though Right now no one really knows how to do that Not Obama not McCain not Ben Bernanke or Paul Krugman or Larry Summers or Hank Paulson No one We're all out of our depthThat's what makes our situation so frightening A problem that began in the US housing market rippled around the globe Ripples became waves waves became tsunamis and now global shores are strewn with wrecked financial institutions Entire national economies are starting to sink And in today's globalized economy we all sink or swim togetherDuring World War II even as the fighting raged in devastated Europe the Allied powers met at Bretton Woods to establish international institutions designed to stabilize the international financial system On Wednesday the International Monetary Fund a cornerstone of the Bretton Woods system warned that the world economy faces the most dangerous financial shock in mature markets since the 1930sBut even as the IMF called for strong and coordinated actionsmuch of the postWorld War II financial system appeared to be unravelingCan we save it Or is it time for some radically new approaches both domestically and internationallyObama doesn't know yet But whatever Obama says publicly I hope he's got his most creative economists working to figure this out He and the rest of us better hope we can learn fasthttp:wwwlatimescomnewsopinioncommentarylaoebrooks92008oct090 http://www.axtora.com/homesites/us/minnesota/alliance/content/a1557a14406725a1e15c4bd836aeaaa1.html Bush Orders TransitionBy Sam YoungmanPosted: 100908 11:57 AM ET President Bush on Thursday signed an executive order directing his staff to start preparing either John McCain or Barack Obama and their future staffs for the highest office in the land Bush's executive order creates a Presidential Transition Coordinating Council consisting of several highranking members of the president's staff and headed by White House Chief of Staff Joshua BoltenWhite House press secretary Dana Perino told reporters Wednesday morning that the council will help to coordinate efforts already under way to ensure a seamless presidential transitionThis is especially important as our nation is fighting a war dealing with a financial crisis and working to protect ourselves from future terrorist attacksPerino said in an email The smooth and collegial transfer from one presidential administration to the next is a hallmark of American democracy It is always an enormous undertaking and requires hard work and a lot of coordination The president has directed us to be forwardleaning in all of our efforts to ensure as smooth and effective a transition as possibleThe president's order comes 26 days before Election Dayhttp:thehillcomcampaign2008bushstartspreparingfortransition20 http://www.axtora.com/homesites/us/minnesota/alliance/content/a672494c4623d49a004a1a68b8999db7.html Candidates for Minnesota House of Representatives from the Woodbury area will be discussing important transportation issues including the impact of the newly enacted transportation funding legislation at a forum sponsored by the Minnesota Transportation Alliance Advertisement: Wireless World10 OFF InStock AccessoriesText this Marketplace Deal to your phone come to Wireless World with your phone and we will give you an ADDITIONAL 5 OFF for a Total Savings of 15 Excludes already discounted Bluetooth accessories Expires 123108 http://www.axtora.com/homesites/us/minnesota/alliance/content/6ead0528b5ba0f21d191948102fdb069.html Lakevilles mayoral City Council School Board and legislative candidates invitedby Derrick WilliamsThisweek NewspapersLakeville residents will have many chances to get to know the candidates running for local offices before the electionEach candidate running for mayor City Council and School Board havebeen invited toRead more