Mortgage Tax Credit
To immediately jump-start the world economy and provide support to the U.S. housing market, Congress needs to offer a tax credit for home mortgage interest paid rather than a tax deduction.
This dollar for dollar taxpayer incentive will fully motivate individuals to pay their mortgages, restoring confidence to lenders that make good loans. Lending and home values will increase and jobs will be created.
This tax credit should be retroactive to 2008 and extended at minimum through 2010. It would be much less costly to the government than any other suggestions.
Everyone will immediately benefit except those who pay no taxes.
Other housing programs contemplated by the Obama administration will be needed to help these individuals in the short term until the tax credit has fully expanded world economies.
Greg Henkel
Dana Point
Downturn Dignity
These days not a minute goes by that someone somewhere doesn’t discuss the downturn in the economy. Our ever so competent government offers a new quick fix on a daily basis with the newly elected president as its politically correct spokesman.
Yes, President Obama’s words have become a guaranteed winner for those who short the stock market. The press is overjoyed to report all the ills in humanity and proceeds to analyze it to death in order to fill air time.
You have to love the nauseating, grandstanding politicians pontificating during worthless congressional hearings as they try to sound coherent asking questions about complicated financial issues they know nothing about.
Don’t get me started on the lawyers lining up to sue whoever they can find for whatever reason, or the actor’s union threatening to strike. Go ahead, make my day and strike.
It is beyond sad watching CEOs of large corporations lining up with their hands out in order to save the value of their stock options when we all know their options were worthless during the good times.
Yes, I’m talking about the Detroit three automakers. Didn’t anybody take basic accounting in college? Do Harvard’s or Yale’s business schools teach reality in their classrooms or are they all about manipulating numbers through derivatives?
On top of this happiness cake sits the Republican governator of California selling his soul (if he had one to begin with) to keep from upsetting the Democrats in the state by raising taxes and cutting, well, nothing in expenses. How is it that Arnold gets away with calling himself an environmentalist while flying his private jet back and forth to Sacramento? I guess he’s an environmentalist like he’s a Republican.
Who would’ve guessed I would miss Gray Davis.
With all of these clowns parading in the news, one has to wonder if there is any dignity left in America. Did human decency get run over by the “It’s all about me” crowd?
Not so fast. A few weeks ago I heard a friend had lost her job. Now in her 50s, she had been in marketing for top real estate developers all her life. Even during the past downturns she had managed to keep working. She was the main breadwinner in her family with two sons in college.
I used to wonder how she managed to do it all. Working full time, being at all the games, making great pancakes and volunteering for anything that needed to be done. So far it sounds like any other unemployment story.
Not so fast. In the middle of all this economic chaos, her husband’s small construction company was shortchanged by a large developer that filed for bankruptcy. Now, a lesser person also would file corporate bankruptcy in order to save anything they had personally. But not these two.
It took no time at all to decide to take all their retirement savings and short sell their almost paid off home in order to pay back the employees and even smaller contractors. How many people do you know who would put others ahead of themselves?
A few of their friends offered to help financially until they could get back on their feet. They refused. She’s too proud to take handouts, but not too proud to earn a living by rolling up her sleeves and taking any work she could get. From applying for a clerk position at the grocery store to dog walking. Above all she does all this with humor and dignity.
I remember being absolutely disgusted with a couple of developers in the 1990s who declared bankruptcy thereby screwing the little people who worked for them while buying helicopters for their yachts. Just thinking about it makes my stomach turn.
I am proud and at the same time saddened for my friend. When did democracy turn into a business of taking from the hard working and giving to the hardly working?
Barbara Hiller Johnson
Anaheim Hills
