The Neediest Cases

This stuff drives me nuts.

The New York Times has what’s called the “Neediest Cases Fund” for which they solicit donations from the public, and from which they give to needy families that come to their attention, especially in this apparently horrible time.

Debra, who did not want her last name to be published, bought a home in the East New York section of Brooklyn for more than $600,000 in 2006. The house has plenty of room for herself, for her son and for tenants. She thought that with the help of rental income and refinancing her mortgages that she could carry the load.
[...]
“People tell you that you can refinance and get a better deal,” Debra explained — an all too common assumption during the housing boom. After a few months, her tenants started to pay their rent late — and sometimes not at all. Without that income, she was stretched too thin.

Okay, someone bought way too much house, and didn’t factor in any margins so when she wasn’t fully rented she couldn’t make her bills. Some unwise choices led to a predictable end.

Here’s the “drives me nuts” part:

At Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens, Debra found some relief. They gave her $1,650 from The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund for her mortgage and utility bills. But her payment plan is unsustainable. Catholic Charities referred her to a community group that helps modify mortgages. Debra is still waiting for a workout that she can afford, hoping to stay in her home.

A charity gave her money to make her mortage on a $600,000 house, and they are helping her modify the mortgage so she can keep it.

I could throw a rock from my driveway and hit 20 people more “needy”, and I live in an affluent suburb. For every one of those I could easily find 100 people more needy. And so on. And so on.

The media needs to stop reporting the loss of a palatial house, or no horseback riding lessons for the grandkids with the same level of gravity as they report death counts from Darfur, or starving kids in Sudan, or child soldiers in Rwanda, or slum kids in Nicaragua, or children on northern reserves, or teens on the streets in the inner city, or beaten children in the suburbs.

Does the lady with the $600,000 house need help? Most certainly. Is helping her keep her $600,000 house the best kind of help? Perhaps not. Is highlighting her in the “Neediest Cases” insulting to those who are truly needy? Definitely.

The American media needs a perspective transfusion. I was actually going to suggest that the tube went somewhere else rather than a vein, but decency prevails.

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Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it. - Ellen Goodman

From Bloomberg.com

Goldman, the largest and most profitable U.S. securities firm in the world last year, paid Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein a record $67.9 million bonus for 2007 on top of his $600,000 salary. That was justified, he told shareholders at the company’s annual meeting in April, because of Goldman’s superior financial results.

“We’re very much a performance-related firm,” he said. “If those results don’t come in, I assure you at Goldman Sachs you won’t see that compensation.”

Goldman’s profit is down 47 percent so far this year and five analysts expect the company to report its first loss as a public company in the fourth quarter that ends this month. The stock price has dropped 67 percent this year and Goldman received $10 billion from the U.S. government in the bailout last month.

Colour me completely unsurprised.

If you know me at all, then you know why I had a hard time reading this with a straight face.

Left-handed people are more inhibited

I think “inhibited” is somewhere near “purple” on the list of words that describe me, left-handed Mrpages.

I agree with the typically left statements in the article like “I worry about making mistakes” and “Criticism or scolding hurts me quite a bit”. I also love colour coding things and writing lists.

But inhibited? BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Amazon is quite a force in the world of product sales. So much so that they have actually been able to force companies to get rid of those horrendous plastic clamshell packages and the ever-present black twist ties.

Ever tried to open a kids toy while the child waits for you? There’s always one more twist tie, one more piece of tape, or one more finger to lop off while you hack away at the razor-sharp clamshell.

No longer!

One of the first products to launch with Frustration-Free Packaging is the Fisher-Price Imaginext Adventures Pirate Ship, which is now delivered in an easy-to-open, recyclable cardboard box. The new packaging eliminates 36 inches of plastic-coated wire ties, 1,576.5 square inches of printed corrugated package inserts and 36.1 square inches of printed folding carton materials. Also eliminated are 175.25 square inches of PVC blisters, 3.5 square inches of ABS molded styrene and two molded plastic fasteners.

Yay Amazon!

Oh, yeah, good for the environment too… :)

We need a new sofa. We’ve been using ones free-cycled to us from friends for several years, but somehow they just seem to dissolve before our eyes. The most recent one, a lovely green traditional sofa, is now held up with a make-shift 2×4 leg (how exactly did they snap the four screws on the old leg right in half?) and one side flops down a little farther than the other end (which is actually good, because the springs are now grinding into a sheet of plywood nailed to the bottom of the frame, rather than the floor underneath!)

I’ve been looking at the Ektorp sofas at Ikea, because they are apparently tested and come with a guarantee. While I was Googling to see if this guarantee is really worth anything, I found these videos by Ikea at You Tube.

They made me laugh and they made the LittlePages, who have no real experience with commercials, roll on the floor and squeal in delight.

I thought I might pass on a little of this laughter. This one was a favorite, as was the one titled How to Make Everything Fit into a Drawer.

If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; But if you really make them think, they’ll hate you. - Don Marquis

In the fast checkout line. Mom and child behind us, child has a Star Wars action figure.

Boy: Mom, why do they kill people in Star Wars?
Mom: They don’t.
Boy: Yes they do!
Mom: (pause) Oh, just be quiet.

Here’s a recent headline from a not-very-polite news commentary site I often peruse:

“The pope, wearing a priceless crown and carrying staff made of solid gold, claims financial crisis is proof money is pointless, says people should instead base their lives on God.”

Yes, the story they are referring to is real, as is the burn. Feel the burn, Mister Pontiff, sir.

Now, to break away from the specifics of the Pope and his gold walking stick, this is a very good example of how the world views Christians, and how critical it is to consider what our actions say about us.

Where do we put our money? Where do we put our time?

What are you doing that might make people question your priorities? What are you spending money on that might make a non-Christian write a snarky headline?

Food for thought.

A mother in Ontario has written a book to instruction her college age kids on the basics of life after one of them got scurvy while away at college.

We’re talking about “how to boil water”, “how to wipe your bum”, “how to vacuum (yes, you have to change the bag)” level stuff. 500+ pages of it.

Now, here’s the great part: She sees the fact that her children have absolutely no life-skills as a good thing.

You see, they were so busy doing important stuff that they never had time for plebian pursuits like learning how to live on your own.

It’s also about priorities. She’s more interested in letting her kids get their homework done so they can get into university than making them clean toilets.

“We’re trucking them around, trying to enrich their lives and feeding them in the McDonald’s drive thru. It takes time to teach them how to cook. It takes time to teach them how to properly clean the bedroom. None of us really have that time.”

Yeah. It’s all about priorities.

Sigh.