This is a really shady way to circumvent FEC filing laws.

It turns out that Hess executives aren’t the only ones who gave such huge sums to elect McCain — generosity towards McCain apparently extends down into lower levels of Hess staff. A lower level employee gave the same, too, and so did her husband, even though he works for Amtrak.

The FEC filings show that Alice Rocchio, who’s identified as a Hess office manager, and her husband, Pasquale Rocchio, who’s described as an Amtrak “track foreman,” each separately donated $28,500 to the RNC-McCain fund, which is called McCain Victory 2008. They gave the money on June 24th, the same day that eight other Hess execs and family members each shelled out the same amount.

They never gave money before 2008 it would seem.

I was surprised to hear the Republican candidate for the presidency say this about Wall Street.

“I think that Wall Street is the villain in the things that happened in the subprime lending crisis and other areas where investigations and possible prosecution is going on,” McCain said. “But I also think the Congress is at fault. We didn’t restrain spending. Spending got completely out of control.”

Wall Street and the banks brought this upon themselves. The banks lent to people they should not have been giving subprime mortgages to in the first place. Then Wall Street speculated on these mortgages putting them into securities. Now they want to be bailed out by the government, but the government can’t save them all. They saved Freddie and Fannie and I don’t think there’s much else they’ll be willing to do. Would the government bail out Citibank or Wachovia? Most likely you’ll see more Bear Stearns type deals happening instead. Of course I realize the banks are basically the mortgage lenders and Wall Street thanks to the deregulation that took place in the 90′s.

– from Daylife.com

Since I’ve been working and living in the DC metro area I’ve noticed scenes like this way too often. I’ve come across beggars in the street and in the corridors of metro stations almost daily. Sometimes I stop to give them some of the change in my pocket. Most of the time I don’t really have any money on me (you know the whole debit card thing). Every morning on my way to work in Dupont Circle I walk past the same homeless person. Every time I see him I’m reminded of the homeless situation occurring in the nation’s capitol. Part of me often wants to ask him “why don’t you take a job”? Any job that would allow you to not have to live and beg on the streets. For that matter why not go to a homeless shelter? Or is the shelter system too full? Do they only allow people to stay there at night? I also remember speaking to a homeless person back in Westchester County, NY who told me that shelters can be unsafe, so maybe that’s it.

Then part of me also realizes that a lot of the time things aren’t that simple. Even those who are working are barely above or are still below the poverty level. While they may have a roof over their head, their living conditions are usually still deplorable and there’s still a lack of access to opportunity for upward mobility. We call them the working poor and actually up until last year, before I moved, my income put me in that classification. The job I have now–which I’m thankful for since I’m doing something I want to do in the advocacy field–actually put me squarely in the middle class for the first time.

Of course homelessness is nothing new to America. After all I’m from New York and this is something I grew up around in the Bronx. Even when I moved to Westchester homelessness wasn’t hard to find in the county. The question that always comes to mind for me is, why does the local government allow homeless people to loiter and sleep on the streets in the first place? If anything this can be seen as a problem akin to public indecency. Regarding the visual component of homelessness; I was once told that there was an effort in NYC to remove the spectacle because people complained, but nothing was done to solve the problem. The homeless weren’t seen anymore but they were still homeless.

When it comes to the homeless in the District of Columbia, I was also told a story that when the Clinton administration was in power there was less visible poverty in DC. If this story is true then that would mean things have reverted back for the worse. This leads me to my question for the new President. My question is: can we do something to get the homeless out of the streets of the nation’s capitol? I realize that the President will be the leader of the entire nation, but his residence will be here in DC. Shouldn’t he have a vested interested in ensuring that the capitol is a shining city on a hill? Of course by asking this to the new president I’m not absolving the local DC government of anything. My question to them is: why is poverty as visible as it is now? What has the city government done and how high is this a priority for them? While there are some innovative initiatives out there like Street Sense, it’s going to take a lot more to solve this problem.

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