Street corner philosopher

One reason to support the bailout (this according to the fast-talking guy at the bus stop): The Commons are already too crowded. We don't need to add more white-haired guys sitting on the park benches playing checkers huddling over the board when the wind blows. He demonstrated this, laughing, and explained, you know, to keep the pieces from blowing away.

I say fast-talking because in just under ten minutes we—I use the term loosely, my part consisted of smiling and nodding knowingly—went from the financial crisis to sex education (These kids don't know anything about the birds and the bees. They think they can just love each other.) to the value of a good woman. (Every man needs a "first lady," which, as it turned out, was someone who paid the rent and did the laundry.) From there we tackled local government spending. (The city is dark, except for the bus stop, which is so brightly lit you can see it from all the way down the street.) That led fairly seamlessly to a fear of city hall officials. (They are scarier than anyone you'd run into on the street.) And, once we were on the subject of the everyday guy on the street, what is up with having prisoners cleaning the streets? (They should just have them clean the streets around the prisons and give the jobs cleaning the rest of the city streets to people who didn't get in trouble and are just trying to get by. And, BTW, people would take these types of jobs if there wasn't so much paperwork involved in the whole job process.) And, finally, to get back to the whole financial thing, did you ever notice that there's an open enrollment for healthcare but not the stockmarket? (Healthcare is more important, but even if you have a crappy plan, you can only change it once a year. But if you want to invest in the stockmarket, they'll take your money any time of the year and let you chase that dream, even though your dollar is like the silver ball in a pinball machine, ricocheting and bouncing around. Maybe you'll get an extra game, maybe you’ll lose it all, maybe you'll tilt.)

"No Banker Left Behind": Bailout protest on Wall Street

Yesterday I was in New York and went downtown with my friends in the UAW to take part in the rally to protest the government bailout of Wall Street:

Story from Reuters

Some photos:
WCBS NEWSRADIO 880 - Photo Gallery: Bailout Protested on Wall Street

You can tell a lot about an area by its ancillary businesses. There it was sushi restaurants and health clubs. In parts of Florida it's gun shops and pawn stores. In the Tremont St./Mass Ave. area it's check cashing stores and nail salons. (I don't think there's been an actual study done, but I think that the poorer a neighborhood, the more nail salons it has.) So, of course, I'm thinking the next time I'm in the market for fake nails, I'll head down to Wall Street.