What do you think the value of the White House is, just as piece of property? According to the blog on Zillow.com:

$292,470,000, a drop of almost $24,000,000 or 7% from last January.

After the health care fiasco, the value of the actual Presidency might have dropped a similar amount…

More economic song parodies by Marcy Shaffer of the web site Versus:

You’ve got the Fed (sung to the tune of “You’ve got a friend”)

—————————————————————————————————————-

Crash Dance (sung to the tune of “Flash Dance”)

—————————————————————————————————————-
Depressing (sung to the tune of “The 59th Street Bridge Song”)

—————————————————————————————————————-
And a reprise from December of…

The Cinders of Ayn Rand (sung to the tune of “Walking in a Winter Wonderland”)

Found on Craigslist: Human soul for sale

We’ve visited the blog They Pay to Kiss Your Feet before. Here’s another heartfelt post about being long-term unemployed.

10 months.

it has been 10 months since i lost my job. 10. that’s almost a year for those of you who are counting. (i am.)

since then, i’ve had two temporary gigs. one at Sprint. and one at an actual ad agency. doing what i love to do. i’ve also landed a couple of independent freelance clients. one is a national not-for-profit. it gives me a few steady hours of work per week. and it’s rewarding. but it’s not 40 hours. there are no benefits. and anyway, it’s been TEN months.

ten.

for now, i’m still at the ad agency. three days a week. for maybe a week or two more. and then, they want to continue to use me when they can. because they like me. they think i’m good. and, let me just tell you that after 10 months (if you’re counting) being told you are GOOD at what you love to do feels like winning the lottery.

really.

and so i’m hanging my hat on that for now. some people. some creative directors. some colleagues… have told me i’m good.

so to them i say thank you.

and to the 1-year mark looming just around the corner i say – i hate you. because, see, i never saw this period in my life lasting that long. heck, i never saw this period in my life coming.

but it did. and i’m here. still. surviving. happy for the opportunities that have appeared since last march. and hopeful for the ones that are just around that next corner.

We’ve posted before about hard-hit Detroit, which by some counts is sporting a 45% unemployment rate. The following excerpts are from The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit, a play by Mercilee Jenkins, which received a staged reading at Detroit’s Matrix Theatre Company last year. The play is intended to be performed by two actors, a black man and a white woman, who play all the characters. To read the entire play in Word, click here.

ACT I: COMING HOME

PRELUDE

(MAN and WOMAN enter downstage center, each addresses the audience in formal manner as narrators. Projections of historic landmarks, factories and buildings in Detroit are shown blowing up around them)

WOMAN
In the 1950’s Detroit was the 5th largest city in the United States with just under 2 million people, equally divided between African American and white.

MAN
Today Detroit has a population of around 900,000 poor, mostly African American people, many of whom live in conditions we associate with war-torn countries.

WOMAN & MAN
What happened?

(Projections of the J. L. Hudson Department store blowing up)

WOMAN
When they blew up J.L. Hudson’s,
the grand department store,
they hadn’t counted on how
the dust and debris would erupt
and roll across the downtown
collecting in the vacant spaces
where other buildings used to be

MAN
and where people had carelessly
left the windows open
filling up cars with the ashes of the city,
the fabulous ruins of Detroit.

MAN & WOMAN
(Separating to stage left and right while pointing to the slide)
Step right up
and see for yourself.

Continue Reading

…check out The Recession Bride, which is about a “blogger trying to survive the recession, layoffs, pay cuts, and plan a wedding.”

Duellling blogs covering state politics in Massachussetts, Red Mass Group and Blue Mass Group, tell the story of yesterday’s election:

First, from Red Mass Group, a site “founded to revitalize the right-wing community in Massachusetts.”

The People’s Victory

A month ago they mocked you. Three weeks ago you were a mild inconvenience. Two weeks ago you were a irritating rash. One week ago you became a migraine of epic proportions. Yesterday you reminded them it is you, not they, who are the master. You are the people and this victory is yours.

Freezin’ for a reason

This weekend I traveled from D.C. to Massachusetts on a bus filled with 55 young people who gave up their holiday weekends to volunteer for Scott Brown. We left after work on Friday, drove through the night, and arrived Saturday morning. After about an hour’s rest, we hit the phones and streets to started Getting Out The Vote. Motivated by slogans such as “Freezin’ for a Reason,” “Gettin’ down for Scott Brown,” and “Salvation for the Nation,” our group of dedicated volunteers tirelessly worked for 3 days campaigning for the man who could be the 41st vote against Obamacare and a host of other items on the Democratic agenda.

Though Massachusetts is not accustomed to closely contested elections, the GOTV machine on the ground was well-run. Driven by raw enthusiasm and contagious energy, volunteers and staff pounded out phone calls, held signs in the bitter cold, and walked neighborhoods in the snow. The response from the Massachusetts voters was incredible. They were so excited to express their support for Scott, honked their horns when they saw our Brown signs and sweatshirts, and thanked us for volunteering our time. In all my years of grassroots campaign involvement, I have never felt such palpable excitement from the voters – and I never would have expected it in Massachusetts, where I spent four years in college. To see
how it has changed is surreal.

This race shows that the frustration and buyer’s remorse Americans are feeling around the country is permeating even the bluest states. The rise of Scott Brown shows Republicans how to capitalize on this feeling of discontent with Democrats and their agenda – by running a positive campaign based on solid policy ideas, by utilizing new technologies and old-fashioned grassroots voter outreach, and by staying focused on the fiscal issues that unite us and appeal to voters of all stripes.

Continue Reading

Among Democrats, the weeping, gnashing of teeth, and finger-pointing is in full bloom today. For Republicans, it’s all gloating, triumphalism, and “Told you so’s.”

Comments from readers of the New York Times Room for Debate blog, Ezra Klein’s blog on Washington Post, and the political polliing and analysis blog FiveThirtyEight:

If Democrats cannot pass health care reform under the conditions available over the past year (60 senators, 255+ House seats, an AMA endorsement, and a new president) it cannot be done. No voter should ever listen to a Democrat promising health care reform again. They had their chance, and they couldn’t deliver.

The only viable option is to pass the Senate bill and then tweak it later using reconciliation. If they can’t do it, they don’t deserve to hold power.
————————————————————————————————————————
Democrats should realize that folks are concerned about spending, about the size of the government, the size of the debt and that the guy they elected in Nov ’09 promised fiscal discipline and change. We’ve seen scant little of that.

My guess is that what ultimately sunk health care was the LA Purchase, the Cornhusker kickback and the sweet deal the unions received on their Cadillac plans…all deals done behind closed doors. I would go so far that the union deal last week stuck the fork in Coakley and propelled Brown to victory.
————————————————————————————————————————
The defeat in Massachusetts was an indicator that voters there already realized that the Democratic Party wasn’t holding up its end of the bargain. Democratics in Congress and the White House broke their bargain to seek health care reform last January when they decided to start by making deals with industry and their colleagues rather than doing spade work in their constituencies.

Obama’s web site never solicited any input from voters other than to ask for sob stories — they just instructed them to support whatever the inside deals had been struck. Democratic Senators told their constituencies that they had to wait until Baucus was done before they would talk to them about health care.
————————————————————————————————————————
The whole exercise has been a sellout of basic Democratic principles. Democrats in Congress will no doubt find some way to pass “something” but that something won’t be reform or the overhaul that most people wanted to see. By focusing on politics rather than principle, the Democrats have squandered the mandate they were given last fall. Unfortunately, it is Democratic voters who will bear the consequences of their actions.

Continue Reading

Yesterday on the blog FiveThirtyEight, Tom Schaller wondered if the Democratic candidate in the Massachussetts election would be more aptly named “Martha Choakley.”

As you probably know by now, she lost 53% – 46% in a heavily Democratic state.

A New York Time article called More Men Marrying Wealthier Women has attracted some fascinating comments on the paper’s web site. First, from the article:

An analysis of census data to be released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center found that she and countless women like her are victims of a role reversal that is profoundly affecting the pool of potential marriage partners.

“Men now are increasingly likely to marry wives with more education and income than they have, and the reverse is true for women,” said Paul Fucito, spokesman for the Pew Center. “In recent decades, with the rise of well-paid working wives, the economic gains of marriage have been a greater benefit for men.”

The analysis examines Americans 30 to 44 years old, the first generation in which more women than men have college degrees. Women’s earnings have been increasing faster than men’s since the 1970s.

“We’ve known for some time that men need marriage more than women from the standpoint of physical and mental well-being,” said Stephanie Coontz, a professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and research director for the Council on Contemporary Families, a research and advocacy group. “Now it is becoming increasingly important to their economic well-being as well.”

The education and income gap has grown even more in the latest recession, when men held about three in four of the jobs that were lost. The Census Bureau said Friday that among married couples with children, only the wife worked in 7 percent of the households last year, compared with 5 percent in 2007. The percentage rose to 12 percent from 9 percent for blacks, among whom the education and income gap by gender has typically been even greater.

Comments:

Florida male:

I blame our educational institutions for failing our boys and young men, but mostly I blame American parents for failing to impress upon boys the importance of education and for failing to assist in the educative process by helping with homework and keeping open lines of communication with their children’s teachers. What sort of scenario did we expect when we allowed college attendance and graduation rates by young men to fall below 40% of the total. When young women come to make up two-thirds of the educated work force, of course they will come to dominate entire professions and income strata.
—————————————————————————————————————-
Seattle female

I thank my husband’s single mother for raising a son who thinks a strong and capable woman is the norm. We’ve been together for 15 years. I earn more, but that has not defined our relationship. We have one budget, so how much is coming from whom has not been an issue. We love talking to each other, so it is our intellectual compatibility that has been very important to both of us.
—————————————————————————————————————-
D.C. female

Count me among the women whose husbands make less. I put my husband through grad school recently, and the result has been that he’s had trouble finding full employment post-financial crisis. I still have the much better paying job, which has led to us delaying plans for children. I love my husband tremendously, and I can tell it’s a strain on his confidence to make less than me. Interestingly, this puts more stress on us, since I’m so busy and stressed but paradoxically have to spend more time focusing on his emotional needs.

Continue Reading