Friday, March 11, 2005
Weekly Recap
It was another wild week on the road for me this week -- DC and NY with wall-to-wall meetings. I didn't get much time to blog but there was plenty of time on planes with papers full of swell news:
Congress courageously stepped up to pass a bankruptcy bill that makes it harder to for little guys to clear away debts through bankruptcy but preserves loopholes for the wealthy should they need to do the same. Another bold step for the average working stiff courtesy of their friends in the credit card industry.
Meanwhile, the credit card issuers are getting better and better at handing out credit cards to folks who can just get by, charging them $29 if they make a late payment and then raise their interest rates on all credit vehicles just because they are late on one. It's as stacked as a stacked gets deck.
But at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue our fearless President was saying it's time to drill in ANWR and build more nuclear plants. Nothing like embracing yesterday's technology. Oh, but I forgot, those are the technologies that support yesterday's big corporations that make big contributions. Tomorrow's big energy corporations are more likely to come from China or India because the next generation of energy production has a chance of taking root there where "good enough" is better than nothing for a lot of folks. We need a forward-looking energy policy and we're short-changing our future by expecting the oil boys to deliver it.
At least the Social Security boondoggle seems to be getting bogged down long enough for us to have a real debate about it.
Congress courageously stepped up to pass a bankruptcy bill that makes it harder to for little guys to clear away debts through bankruptcy but preserves loopholes for the wealthy should they need to do the same. Another bold step for the average working stiff courtesy of their friends in the credit card industry.
Meanwhile, the credit card issuers are getting better and better at handing out credit cards to folks who can just get by, charging them $29 if they make a late payment and then raise their interest rates on all credit vehicles just because they are late on one. It's as stacked as a stacked gets deck.
But at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue our fearless President was saying it's time to drill in ANWR and build more nuclear plants. Nothing like embracing yesterday's technology. Oh, but I forgot, those are the technologies that support yesterday's big corporations that make big contributions. Tomorrow's big energy corporations are more likely to come from China or India because the next generation of energy production has a chance of taking root there where "good enough" is better than nothing for a lot of folks. We need a forward-looking energy policy and we're short-changing our future by expecting the oil boys to deliver it.
At least the Social Security boondoggle seems to be getting bogged down long enough for us to have a real debate about it.
