Strange Days

Upon learning about the mass shooting of 20 children and 6 adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, I had no words.

Now I’m saying that U.S. residents must have a conversation about guns.

My conversation starter: Why is it necessary for nonmilitary people to have assault weapons? Seriously!

I read that Nancy Lanza, mother of alleged shooter 20-year-old Adam Lanza, was a gun enthusiast who taught her sons to shoot. Were her guns, which included a rifle, locked away so her son couldn’t access them? If not, why not? Was Adam Lanza treated for his psychological issues? If not, why not?

Often I hear the argument from gun advocates that guns don’t shoot people, people shoot people. Also, if guns are banned, only criminals will have guns, they assert. Well, to my knowledge, Adam Lanza wasn’t a criminal until he shot 26 people, plus his mother and, finally, himself.

Yes, I believe we need a meaningful dialogue about gun safety and gun control. Not only must we talk, but we must listen to each other – and do something.

With a shooting this week at a shopping mall outside Portland, Oregon, and a reported shooting in an Orange County, California, mall, we are in strange days.

Writing Diva

Why I Didn’t Vote for Mitt Romney

To my Republican friends and acquaintances:

I recognize that you’re less than thrilled about the 2012 presidential election results. President Barack Obama was re-elected, and your champion Gov. Mitt Romney lost.

With all the Monday-morning quarterbacking about Tuesday’s election, I thought I would put in my 2 cents.

First, some ideology background: I have been a decline-to-state voter since 1988. I consider myself a slightly left-leaning moderate. I don’t always vote a straight Democratic/liberal ticket. (For instance, I voted “No” on California Proposition 37, the Genetically Engineered Food Act, because there were too many loopholes.)

Here are the reasons why I didn’t cast my ballot for Willard “Mitt” Romney:

1. Gov. Romney appeared desperate and aggressive while on the campaign trail. During the presidential debates, he not only talked over Obama, but the moderators. He launched his campaign with ads that attacked his opponent but rarely introduced Romney and his issue positions to the electorate.
2. Instead of directly answering a question about pay parity for women during the second debate, Romney spoke of efforts to find qualified, executive-level females by searching through “binders of women.” Seriously?!
3. The Republican Party had a worthy challenger in former Utah. Gov. Jon Huntsman. He’s a moderate Republican who was Obama’s U.S. ambassador to China until 2011. While I didn’t agree with all his political views, they were clearer than Romney’s. And Huntsman appeared willing to reach out to Congressional Democrats. However, the Tea Party wasn’t having someone who wasn’t conservative enough in its view.
4. I was unsure of which Mitt Romney the nation was going to get: the one who reached across the aisle as governor of Massachusetts or the one who dismisses 47 percent of the nation.
5. Romney’s running mate was U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), who brought along his plans to turn Medicare into a voucher system for people my age and younger. While my four older siblings would have regular Medicare, I would have to hunt for a physician with my “vouchers,” which may have kept their value while health care costs spiraled upward. I was not having that.
6. I got tired of hearing from the Romney campaign about how programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security were “entitlements” on the table for chopping. I’ve been paying taxes for 30 years toward those programs, and I consider my taxes to be an investment in them.
7. Finally, Romney needed to back away from Planned Parenthood, which provides health care to women unable to afford health insurance, and PBS, which airs many worthwhile programs, including “Sesame Street.” Hands off Big Bird!

I’m a single, childless working woman with a mortgage and bills to pay, as most Americans do. I don’t want handouts. I do, however, want to see a return in my investments.

Writing Diva

“Occupy” a Voting Booth

Open letter to members of the Occupy Wall Street movement:

Over the past two years, you have occupied Wall Street, New York’s Central Park, the streets of Oakland, California, Cesar Chavez Plaza in downtown Sacramento, California, and universities across the United States. Your website states that your “people-powered movement” is fighting against “the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations.”

Here’s another way to fight back: Occupy a voting booth.

As you are well aware, Election Day is this Tuesday, November 6. This will be the last day this election season to make your collective voice heard. If you march in the streets or take over a park but don’t vote, then your movement is nothing but hot air. This momentous general election will determine whether we go forward or return to the policies that caused the Great Recession. No adult eligible to vote can afford not to cast a ballot.

I mailed my completed ballot October 11. I’ve made my choice. Now, it’s time for you to make your choice. But if you do nothing, I will regard your movement the way I would freshly made dog poop and walk away.

Just sayin’.

Writing Diva

Solidarity Forever (for Some)

Today is the last day for many student assistants and retired annuitants working for the State of California. Under a furlough deal the Service Employees International Union Local 1000 made in June with Gov. Jerry Brown, all non-mission-critical student assistant and retired annuitant positions were to be eliminated August 31. According to The Sacramento Bee, the state won’t hire either during the 12-month furlough period that started July 1 for SEIU Local 1000 state employees. SEIU Local 1000 represents about 93,000 California state government employees.

I voted against the deal when it was put before the union membership in late June. I didn’t oppose being furloughed one day a month through June 2013. I vehemently opposed what I call throwing student assistants and retired annuitants under the bus.

I work for an agency office in which student assistants are invaluable, from answering phones and putting together news clips packages to designing brochures and editing promotional videos. I don’t know how SEIU Local 1000 expects our agency to hire young people with these talents as seasonal clerks or office assistants. There are perhaps a handful of graphics designer positions throughout state government. Moreover, college students sharpening their skills as scientists and engineers will find it difficult to get their foot in the door of state agencies.

As for retired annuitants, government retirees who return to state service with limited hours each year, they are a wealth of institutional knowledge. They are not taking away jobs from union members.

I think this move by SEIU Local 1000 is a way to generate more union dues by having students reapply under union-covered positions. Even if students hired for these positions don’t join the union, they would have to pay fair-share fees.

I find this whole situation ironic, considering the approach of Labor Day. SEIU Local 1000 has been mute on the issue since the vote. I believe this move to eliminate student assistants and retired annuitants will backfire on them when voters go to the polls in November to decide on California Proposition 32.

Writing Diva

Leave No Pet Behind

Regular readers of this blog know that I love animals. Two cats run the house on which I pay the mortgage. One of my best friends growing up was the family Doberman pinscher, Olga.

When I would read newspaper accounts of foreclosed families leaving their pets behind, I would regard these former homeowners with disdain. “How could they leave their furry friends behind?” I thought.

Upon learning a few days ago that family members left their 7-month-old pit pull puppy behind, I was angry. The puppy, an American bulldog named Nora, was left overnight in the backyard of their rental home, owned by my older brother H2. She appeared hungry and anxious. Upon seeing the stranded puppy, my otherwise mellow sibling became enraged.

“You don’t do that to a dog,” he told my younger sister T2.

No, pet owners shouldn’t leave their animals behind. I understand that many apartment complexes and rental homes don’t take pets because of the mess and noise associated with them. However, there are pet-friendly properties, even some landlords who accept pit bull terriers. But pet owners have to do extensive research to find such properties.

What angers me about the situation involving my family is that the family members renting my brother’s house knew they had only one year to find a new home before my brother gave up the property to the bank. H2, who will retire from his job after working 40 years with the same agency, faces living on a smaller, fixed income and can no longer afford to pay for his relatives to live in the home, which has been in our family since 1971. H2 bought the house from my older sister T1, who had purchased it from our parents. You don’t bring a dog into such a temporary situation.

When I learned that my relatives adopted Nora, I thought this would not end well for the dog. When I learned via an e-mail from T2 that Nora was left behind, I was tempted to adopt her. But reason prevailed: She would grow up and perhaps attack and kill my cats. Luckily, my other sister D intervened and talked to our family members. Friends of the former pet owners have taken in Nora and given her a forever home.

So, to my family members (and anyone with a pet): A pet is a responsibility for the animal’s lifetime. Do not adopt an animal unless you can give it a proper home, care, and love. Pets are not disposable. I realize that financial and housing circumstances can change quickly. In that case, find a new forever home for your pet. But in your case, you knew that your housing situation was temporary and should not have adopted an animal until you had a permanent place, preferable one that you own.

Leave no pet behind.

Writing Diva

Taking Back Our Lives – and the Movie Theaters

"Terrorism: the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear…." Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, U.S. Department of Defense, 2005.

The early Friday morning shooting in an Aurora, Colorado, cineplex in which 12 people were killed and at least 50 others were injured was, in my view, an act of terrorism. The alleged gunman, James Holmes, 24, hurled two canisters of an unknown gas and opened fire at audience members watching the midnight premier of the new Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises,” according to The Washington Post. Law enforcement authorities took Holmes into custody in a parking lot behind the theater after the attack. He reportedly carried at least three weapons. Among the injured was a 3-month-old infant.

Frankly, I’m at a loss of what can be done about gun violence, including mass shootings such as this one and the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in nearby Littleton, Colorado. Even if there was a crackdown on illegal guns, anyone who carries a gun legally could go nuts and do something heinous.

I won’t, however, let this incident scare me away from the movie theater and other “soft targets” where people gather. That’s what terrorists want, for us to be so afraid that we can’t or won’t leave our homes. I love the movies, especially independent films. If, heaven forbid, some shooter comes in while I’m viewing “Moonrise Kingdom” at the Tower Theater in Sacramento, I’ll go out swinging.

Writing Diva

Nothing Left to Lose

“The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.” – James A. Baldwin.

Two days ago, I went to the Citibank branch in Vacaville about two Home Affordable Refinance Program 2.0 packages that its affiliate Citimortgage sent me recently. I spoke to a bank representative I’ll call “Mike.” I showed Mike my two refinance packages – one dated April 11 with an interest rate of 4.25 percent and a monthly payment of $1,493. The one dated June 12 had an interest rate of 4.125 percent but a monthly payment of $1,628, a mere $100 less than my current monthly payment. He tried calling “Dave Grayson” at the bank’s headquarters, sending an e-mail with copies of the good faith estimates of both packages, and calling Grayson’s superior. After about 20 minutes of this, the time it took for me to finish my cup of coffee and scone from a nearby coffee shop, I told Mike that I had to leave.  He tried to get me to sign a paper from the current refinance package, but I refused, saying, “I’m not going to sign anything that commits me to this deal. Both this refinance monthly payment and my current payment are financially unsustainable.”

Mike looked up from his desk and blinked. “Oh.”

I stared back. “Yeah, ‘Oh,’” I thought.

Mike said he would try to connect with Mr. Grayson at headquarters. Later that day, Mike called me and said that the $1,628 monthly payment was all I could qualify for but didn’t explain why. So, I’m frustrated.

I’m not the only one who’s frustrated. On a website I read more than 640 complaints about Citimortgage, its lending practices, and customer service, or lack thereof. I didn’t finish reading all the complaints because I became discouraged and felt a migraine coming on.

If I can’t get at least $400 knocked off my monthly mortgage payment, then I want to attempt a short sale. If that doesn’t work, I’m walking. I didn’t come to this decision lightly. I like my home, although it’s a bit small and I would like an attached garage. I don’t want to move because I want to put down roots. I’ve moved numerous times since college and want to settle down with my two cats.

I am trying to take advantage of the Home Affordable Refinance Program 2.0 for mortgages owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I have a 40-year-fixed Fannie Mae mortgage in which the first 10 years is interest only. The monthly payment, however, remains the same throughout the mortgage term.

I hadn’t planned to buy a home so soon in my life. However, a botched carjacking and fatal shooting in 2005 next door to my Fairfield rental home changed my plans. I had to find someplace safe to live. A mortgage broker convinced me that I could buy a home with no money down, and I qualified for $300,000. I take responsibility in that I neglected the adage, “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.”

Actually, I had little trouble with my household budget in the beginning of my mortgage in early 2007. In September 2008, the stock market crashed and the housing bubble finally popped. Banks and brokerage houses either went out of business or teetered on the brink of destruction. Then, in 2009, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger placed most state workers on three-day-a-month furloughs, cutting our pay by about 14 percent. Then I had little, if any, dispensable income for entertainment, clothes, or dental work. Buy a used car? Fuhgeddaboutit! (Currently an additional 3 percent of my pay goes toward my pension. I face another 5 percent pay cut as part of Governor Jerry Brown’s 2012/2013 budget proposal. With the ever-changing pay cuts and my having to use credit cards to buy groceries, my situation is a hardship.)

I had hoped that the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Acting Director Edward DeMarco would relent and allow principal reductions for loans owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He still won’t budge, saying they would hurt taxpayers and pose a “moral hazard” in which homeowners might intentionally stop making mortgage payments to benefit from principal reductions.

Mr. DeMarco, have you considered that some homeowners are putting the brakes on their mortgages because they can’t get a principal reduction? That, because of illness or job loss or other reasons, they can no longer pay what I call a financially unsustainable mortgage? Get your head out of your … office and get a clue!

Look, I don’t want to hurt other taxpayers. And I love living in my two-bedroom town home in Vacaville. I just want to save for a decent retirement when I turn 67 (never mind when that happens). But when financial institutions like Citi make it difficult for people to renegotiate their mortgages through its employees’ mistakes and its misguided focus on the bottom line, I can understand why some homeowners are walking away. It’s called having nothing left to lose.

Writing Diva