Craigslist / Ebay scam

There is someone who uses Craigslist, purportedly a woman, but probably not, who advertizes bobcats skid loaders for an extremely cheap price as though it is local and easy to pick up. They respond to inquiry by saying that it is on ebay. Then then "open a ebay case" for you, soliciting information. They have a fake ebay site with a false IP address, but genuine "name" information on the email/website. It looks just like the ebay protection program.

They then offer to deliver it to your door. JUST SEND MONEY. (of course). I notified both craigslist and ebay about the scam, but that won't help since nothing actually goes through them except the initial suck-in ad on craigslist. I did not get taken but I wonder how many people have sent their money to a Russian or Nigerian bankaccount and received nothing.

Alarming incidence of mental illness among Oregon Police

It seems that the Oregon police have an alarming incidence of mental illness. Everytime they report a bigfoot/sasquatch sighting on an official report form, they are sent to a shrink.

It also seems that an amazing number of ordinary Oregon citizens are having their driving licenses suspended for the same reason.

Financial Prudence

Once important reason for the widespread nature of the present financial crisis is that insurance companies (e.g. AIG), banks, and investment banks were allowed to merge by act of Congress signed by President Clinton. This has mean that millions of people with insurance policies from AIG are left without insurance, or, in the case of personal disaster, without the ability to obtain it from a different company. All the banks were in on the toxic mortgage mess. When I discussed a loan with Suntrust Bank the loan officer was all too quick to suggest that I just include Lona's income with mine in applying for a personal loan. I refused to do so because that would be fraud. It is too bad that the heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not so careful about misrepresentations of the trillion dollar magnitude.

Congress is also to blame for the present mortgage mess. They, mostly Democrats, put pressure on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to make sure the poor (often with poor credit) could get in on the housing boom. They got in on it all right. This is the origin of the toxic mortgages. Now we have two presidential candidates urging the country to take on the bad debts of many entities all merged and no longer properly financially isolated.

If we really want to make a mess of things just vote for a president of the same party as the Congressional majority.