Cleveland Real Estate News

I tried not to write this post but it’s not possible. Collectively, we’ve all been at the edge of our seats for at least four days, wondering what our political leaders were going to do to try to correct our economic situation.  I can’t remember the last time I was this tuned in, second by second, to a House vote.

Good things happened over the last few days. My conservative and liberal (for lack of a better monniker, since we seem to need them) friends and I talked about the Bail Out…constantly. No matter what political party, everyone said 1)there was enough blame, on all sides, to go around. 2)we are all fed up with rhetoric. 3)we expect our leaders to do the right thing, whatever that is. 

It became clear to me that no one trusted anybody.

I was streaming the House discussion before the vote (CNN provided a stream on their website).  Many people talked, and then John Boehner spoke. I don’t share many of his political views, but I was impressed. Here was a conservative Republican, talking to his colleagues, imploring them to put partisanship aside, suck it in, and do the right thing for the Country by supporting the Bill. Then Nancy Pelosi got up to speak. 

I was appalled. I cringed. I started emailing friends, asking how someone like that can be Speaker of the House. They emailed back in agreement. This ‘agreement’ came from friends who are more liberal and friends who are conservative.

Let’s get this straight: The Speaker of The House of Representatives is supposed to be a leader who is adept at forging alliances.  Someone who leads, not someone who snipes. Yet there was Nancy Pelosi, not more than five minutes before a vote was expected, chastising the last 8 years of The Bush Admn. and conservative right wing politics run amok.  I wanted to be Elivs and shoot the screen!

I admit that the Republican Reps who said they didn’t support the Bill because of her sound lame. They can be pissed if they want, but don’t vote based on that or all you are doing is showing your lack of leadership as well.

Okay now for some good news. Thousands of people called their Representatives over the last week. Grassroots was at it’s best.  Supposedly, the voting was affected by the voter outcry. One more reason to believe that the more we all get involved, the better off we will be.

But how sad is it, that we cannot trust our political leaders? As Joel Auchenbach and Ashley Surdin said in the Post today, “A political establishment held in higher regard might have been able to hold together some kind of coalition of the willing. But distrust of the nation’s leaders, from the leaders of Congress to the president of the United States, foreclosed that possibility.”

The rest of the Washington Post article is here.  An even better example of the citizen outcry and involvement over the last week showed up in today’s WS Journal. This article is only one of many about the Bailout and in my opinion, the WSJ covered it best with an article entitled How Voter Fury Stopped the Bailout.  

Some sites and blogs weigh in, from the WSJ article:

The proposal’s defeat was also cheered on by a number of blogs that in recent days have posted links to lawmakers’ telephone and fax numbers and urged citizens to oppose the plan. They included stopthehousingbailout.com, a Web site organized by a 37-year-old Los Angeles attorney named Morgan Ward Duran, and    globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com, run by Mike Shedlock, an investment adviser at SitkaPacific Capital Management. Mr. Shedlock said in an interview Monday that his site had received 1.7 million page hits this month, which he said was half a million more than normal.

I plan on calling Dennis Kucinich and giving him a piece of my mind about Nancy Pelosi. (I am sure Dennis can’t wait to hear from me)   I think the best place to start is by getting a new Speaker. Someone who actually understands what the job of Speaker of the House was designed to do, not what it has evolved into at this point in time.  Bah humbug!  3C

BTW: This is the only guy, the only Representative who did not vote today. Jerry Weller from Illinois. You want to read about him? Send him an email and ask why, unless he was on his deathbed, he chose to add to his poor attendance record on the day when one of the most important votes needed to be cast?  Here is a link to Jerry Weller.

Crain’s Cleveland weighs in with some info from Sutton, Kucinich and LaTourette on why they did not support the Bill.

10.03.08 update:  by now everyone knows, the bail out has passed on it’s second go-round in the House (after tweaking by the Senate earlier this week).  Here is a PD run down of the votes.  Betty Sutton switched her vote, Kucinich and LaTourette still voted nay.

Segnala presso: