So, my dad keeps forwarding me the craziest stuff about Obama and Hillary, [yeah, CRAZY stuff that snopes.com refutes everyday] so I retooled the great post "You Think McCain Is Here To Help" from DNC.org with some added facts and related it to something we both shared, Family Values, and am urging him to forward it to his friends. I thought some people on here might do the same but minus the ID CD-2 stuff. Enjoy!
McCain Urged Homeowners Facing Foreclosure To Work A Second Job And Skip A Vacation. In his first major address on the national mortgage crisis, John McCain blamed the crisis on people who "bought homes they couldn't afford." McCain urged homeowners to do "what is necessary" to make their bank payments by "working a second job, skipping a vacation, and managing their budgets." ["John McCain Addresses the Housing Crisis," johnmccain.com, 3/25/08]
No one knows this isn't the answer better then the ID-CD2 Democratic primary contender Debbie Holmes. She has been a real-estate agent for years. She has seen many foreclosures and it is one of the reasons she decided to run. She has this to say
"The stories I hear on the job make me angry. There are many people who are financially devastated by medical problems. A large proportion of us do not have health insurance. First we lose our health, then our jobs, then our insurance (if we have it in the first place), then our homes. Under our current system, we penalize the sick."
Yes, she sees lots of people who own homes they can't afford, but that is not what the banks and creditors have told them. They picked their home at the advice of people who they trusted to know more then they did about what they could afford. They have been preyed on by banks who made bad decisions and have very little protection from these same banks. As they scramble to cover their asses for doing bad business, real people lose their homes in foreclosures.
McCain would ask that people work more to make ends meet, but Americans already work more then other industrial countries. Americans on average work 1,850 hours a year [Jon Messenger, senior research officer, International Labour Organization, Aug. 2004] even more then the work-a-holic Japanese. But we have a work/life balance that only causes more stress. Stress relief would reduce the pressures on our health-care system, actually lowering costs for all. Studies show that job performance improves with breaks and vacations. And a healthier workplace would actually improve businesses which lose $300 Billion a year in stress-related costs [John DeGraaf, Take Back Your Time, Published 2003].
McCain would ask you to not only give up your time and energy because of sneaky sales people, but punish all businesses because of the bad business of banks. And he wouldn't protect you when you do get a second or third job either.
McCain Voted Against Protections For Workers" Overtime Rights. McCain voted against protecting workers" overtime pay from Bush administration rules that threatened the overtime rights of millions of workers. The Senate voted 52-47 to ensure the Labor Department would not deny overtime to any category of worker qualified to receive it. The New York Times called it a "significant defeat" to the Bush administration. [S1637, Vote #79, 5/4/04; New York Times, Link, 5/5/04]
And this doesn't take into account that those people working second or third jobs to balance their budget will also have to sacrifice their families. Studies suggest that over the past generation, parents spend 40% less time then they used to with their kids and the U.S. Department of Labor says full-time employees work on average one full month more (160 hours) then they did in 1969. Do we have to pick between, time, money, our families, and now our homes?
Where did the real family values go? If John McCain respects the American values of home and family it is not supported by his actions.
Okay, and here is another fact I wanted to include but didn't sneak in.
If Americans had the same number of national holidays, sick days, family days, and vacation as Western Europeans, from Oct 24th until Jan. 1st, we wouldn't work at all. We work 350 hours more.
From Take back your time day