Julie Grogan-Brown, Pahrump Field Organizer for Obama's Campaign for Change

I’m sure that all of you that live in Pahrump will be happy to hear about Julie Grogan-Brown, who worked her fanny off for Barack Obama as the Field Organizer for the Campaign for Change in Pahrump, Nevada will be happy to hear she is now a big-wig with the United States Department of Agriculture. Read the USDA News Release which announce:

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced the names of additional people who will hold staff positions at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Washington, D.C. These people will work in various agencies within the department.

…

NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICE

Julie Grogan-Brown – Confidential Assistant. Grogan-Brown most recently worked as a Field Organizer for the Campaign for Change in Pahrump, Nev. She also previously taught civics to high school students at Northern High School in Durham, N.C., and conservation practices at Eagle’s Nest Camp in Pisgah Forest, N.C., over several summers. Originally from Takoma Park, Md., she is a graduate of Manhattan College, Bronx, N.Y., and Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, N.C.

Hooray and congratulations to Julie. Lillie and I had the pleasure of Julie staying in our guest house while she was here in Pahrump. She had left her employment as a teacher in North Carolina to join the Obama Campaign and was assigned to Pahrump.

She had more guts that I have–leaving a job and heading off half-way across the United States to work in a political campaign. It shows just how much she believed in Barack Obama. It takes a special person to undertake all that work based upon simple belief in another individual.

Democrats willing to talk but do nothing are a dime a dozen, or as Putin put it about George W. Bush, “All hat, no cattle.” Julie didn’t just sit around a talk about it, she got up and did something about it. Obama did win Nevada.

I say we all send Julie an e-mail conveying our proud congraulations for her success in Washington, D.C.

I don’t want to put her e-mail address online for the world to start spamming her inbox. Any of you who do not have her e-mail address can email me and I’ll provide it to you.

Spent some time today working on placing links to other blogs and websites that I often visit and read. You can really keep up with what is going on around the state of Nevada and the nation by reading a wide range of blogs. You will find them listed in the right column.

A lot of newspapers don’t have news items about things covered in the blogs. Of course a lot of different opinions are express by the various blog writers.

If you are a political news junkie, like me, you’ll want to find out what is going on all around the state and nation. So far as I know I’m the only Nye County blogger except for Coyote Angry. She and I live in Pahrump. We’ve never met each other.

There is room for more bloggers in Nye County. I find blogging is much more satisfactory than writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper. Those of you so inclined to write your comments and opinions about the news of the day should consider blogging. You can. For free. You can literally tell the entire world what you think about this or that.

Nevada's District 2 Representative, Republican Dean Heller

Lisa Mascaro wrote in today’s Las Vegas Sun:

Congress is hoping to do for credit card borrowers this week what it could not accomplish for homeowners: Sock it to the banks that have become targets of so much populist anger about the nation’s sorry state of financial affairs. [Las Vegas Sun]

Legislation is meandering its way through Congress to end credit card companies from random interest rate hikes, exorbitant fees and other practices — such as mailing the statement two weeks before the due date.

The bill is popular. The legislation passed the House and is on its way to passage in the Senate. Almost two-thirds of the House Republicans joined an unusual bipartisan vote. Democratic Representatives Shelley Berkley and Dina Titus voted for the bill. Republican Representative Dean Heller was among 69 Republicans voting no.

President Barack Obama wants the bill on his desk by Memorial Day.

Credit card reform has all the makings of a political winner. One woman wrote to Nevada Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid to complain about the bank raising her credit card interest rate from 9.5 percent to 17.5 percent. “ ‘I feel like I am being robbed by a company that my tax dollars are trying to bail out,’ ” Reid quoted from her letter.

Passage of the credit card bill is increasingly a sideshow as the real victory this week will come if Republicans gain traction on any of the many obstacles they have thrown in the path of the Obama administration’s run of legislative successes.

Last week, it was guns.

One of the many Senate amendments to the credit card bill would allow licensed firearms to be taken into national parks — a policy put in place in the waning days of the Bush administration that Obama may reverse. It passed, with Reid and Republican Sen. John Ensign voting yes.

Ensign, for example, just back from a day trip to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, escalated criticism of Obama’s plan to close the camp, tapping into the popular unease over terror suspects being relocated to U.S. soil.

The credit card bill is scheduled for a vote Tuesday. Banks continue fighting the bill, warning that it will raise the costs of borrowing and tighten credit.

Banks made the same argument as they helped defeat housing legislation last month that would have allowed bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgages, a provision that failed in part because there was never much popular support.

Kathleen Keest, a senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, is watching the finish line.

“This makes a boatload of difference to people’s wallets,” Keest said. Interest rates were raised by 17 percent on average in 2008, costing the average borrower with $10,000 in debt $1,800. “That’s a lot of money, more than is justified,” she said.

“This makes a boatload of difference to people’s wallets,” Keest said. Interest rates were raised by 17 percent on average in 2008, costing the average borrower with $10,000 in debt $1,800. “That’s a lot of money, more than is justified,” she said.

One person wrote:

Anyone notice the flood of “credit card agreement modification” notices that have come out in the last few months? I say that they have completely countered whatever obama wants in this bill.

Whatever Obama does is dwarfed by what individuals can do on their own. Credit card companies, banks, cell phone companies, and insurance companies are very untrustworthy in general in my opinion, and I just don’t trust any of them. I use them as minimally as I possibly can. If other people did the same, they would CHANGE on their own.

Look at all the pain and suffering the credit cards have wreaked in our economy. How about we just really CUT BACK ON THEIR USE VOLUNTARILY. The card companies are just encouraging us to take the ‘free’ money and then stick it to us once we are in debt.

I recently paid off a Chase card after they charged me $39 late fee for being $3 too low on a minimum payment. They refused to listen to reason and remove the ridiculous charge. I told the gentleman it would NEVER happen again (as I was cutting up the card in small pieces).

Interesting that in about a month I get this letter asking me they noticed I paid off the card and was their something WRONG? Too late, CHASE, you lost a customer forever. My point is that the way to exercise consumer power is to STOP using their product.

That the Republicans remain hostile to credit card reform boggles my mind. It is legislation like the credit card reform that highlights the dichotomy between the Democratic and Republican Parties. Democrats look out for people. Republicans look out for business, especially BIG business. And just look at the vote of Dean Heller. Anti people. Pro business.

Cindy Trigg, Democratic Candidate for Nevada's Congressional District #2

Just received word that Cindy Trigg is scheduled to attend the Nye County Democratic Central Committee in June. She informs me she has it scheduled in her campaign for June 22, 2009. Unless the Central Committee has changed the monthly meeting schedule the Central Committee would normally meet on June 29 not the 22nd.

In any event, the visit to Pahrump will be, to my knowledge, her first appearance since announcing her candidacy for election to the the United States House of Representatives for Nevada’s Congressional District #2.

Cindy will be competing to be the Democratic Party’s nominee in the general election with Paul Reeves, a Pahrump resident.

So, if you are a Democrat and would like to meet Mrs. Trigg, you should mark your calendars to attend the Central Committee meeting in June after verifying the correct meeting date.