Great Birthday Gift

Lauren gave me a great gift for my birthday this year. A $50 account with KIVA. I first became aware of KIVA a couple years back when I was looking for a means of helping my friend, Abraham, in Ghana get a business started. In short KIVA facilitates micro-loans to third world citizens in need of capital to start or grow their business. Loans can be made for anything from a $100 to a roadside peddler to buy a shoestring inventory, up thousands of dollars to a farmer for a tractor. KIVA's website allows me to view and decide who gets my loan in $25 increments. My loan will be combined with other lenders until the request amount is met.

I gave my first $25 (toward a total request of $525) to a young woman in Vietnam with a farm supply business, so she could increase her inventory. This is not her first loan. She's received and repaid five previous loans expanding her business each time. I should receive the a full repayment within 13 months, and there is no interest. At that time I can either cash out or re-loan to another requester.

There's also the possibility that she will default on her loan. It's a gamble. As I see it though, this venture is somewhat like all those slot machine I've played over the years. I won't win, but at least now I can't lose, too. And this rounds going to last 13 months

Thanks, Lauren

Interested in Playing a little yourself? http://www.kiva.org/

I'll sell your car for you!

I just sold Lauren’s car for her --- an interesting experience.

It was a Toyota, Corolla I bought new in 2001 that Lauren and Megan drove 83,000 miles to mostly just visit their Huntington Beach friends. I priced it at the lower end of Blue Book -- $5500. After a few weeks and more than a few painful encounters of the strange kind, I dropped the price to $5000.

At first I used Craig’s List to advertise the sale. I got over ten phone calls in the first couple days. A couple of them showed up and told me everything that was wrong with the car that made my asking price laughable (in their country). Most of the callers said they would like to come by to see it but never showed up.

One young lady asked me to call her on Saturday if it was still available. When I called she treated my call like I was a stalker. I expected that at any moment she would tell me I was harassing her with all (this) phone call(s). She just wasn’t sure she was interested -- maybe it would be better if we were just friends was a comment that wouldn't have been anymore strange.

Most though just called and wanted to know if I would take a lot less than my offer price. At first, I just said no. But after awhile, I started playing with them. When they said they thought it was worth $4200 or $4800, or whatever. I just asked them why they thought that was the right price. Some said because it was eight years old, some because it had 83,000 miles. I said, then as long as were going to pretend the price is wrong, let’s just pretend that the miles or age is wrong, too. Let’s pretend it’s two years old with 40k miles. Hell let’s pretend the price is $6500, but I’ll let it go for $5500. Most hung up, but some laughed.

I also got a lot of email asking questions. I was honest in my reply, mostly.

Q: Has it ever been in an accident?

A: (Hell yes, with two teenage girls you can’t expect an original bumper or fender.)-- real answer: A fender bender, but no airbag deployment or frame damage.

Q: Was it driven by a smoker?

A: (with multiple cigarette burns a dead giveaway, I just tried to mitigate the anwer.) Yes, but I also have a tendency for uncontrolled diarrhea and projectile vomiting, so you really can’t smell the smoke.

One phone call came from a man and his friend who worked at a nearby 7-11 Store. They wanted me to drive the car to the store so they could see it. The funny thing is that I did it. Both were recent immigrants from Nepal and as they took turns working the store counter, the other tried to negotiate the price down. I’d already decided that I wouldn’t take a nickel less just for my inconvenience. I left getting nothing more than an offer of a free Slurpee. I don't like Slurpees.

When it finally sell, four weeks into the project, the lead came from the time honored method of a sign in the window. A young couple were out riding their bikes on a Sunday morning, saw the for sale sign in the window, and bought it later that afternoon . It sold old for just $50 off my final asking price -- so they could get it detailed.

I still had 6 weeks left on the Auto Trader ad I paid $39, so I replaced the comment section of the ad where you BS all the positives with the following statement. “Advice to buyers. If you want to buy a car for $4200, don’t call where the sales price is $5200. Call an ad where the price is $4200. Guaranteed, you’ll have better luck! PS: I happily SOLD this car and did so with no great discount.”

We're still getting calls from people who can't, won't, didn't read the ad.

How much would be different?

The hot topic of the week is how stupid Obama is for wanting Gitmo closed. And how wrong he's been for discussing the issue of torture. Then I wondered how different everything would be if McCain had been elected, because I remembered him criticizing the Bush administration when the 1st reports of waterboard were made public a couple years ago.

Here's what was reported By Philip Sherwell in Cedar Falls, IowaLast Updated: 2:25AM GMT 19 Mar 2007 http://wizbangpolitics.com/2007/03/19/mccain-close-gitmo-fight-climate-change.php


... a lot that's not relevant and then...

But Sen McCain has also consistently criticised the handling of the war by the Bush administration, and has led efforts in the Senate to end torture and extrajudicial treatment of terror suspects.

In a sign that he wants to distance himself from the president - to whom he lost in an ugly campaign in 2000 - Sen McCain outlined a series of measures to roll back Bush policies and counter the "ugly American" image.

"I would immediately close Guantanamo Bay, move all the prisoners to Fort Leavenworth (an army base in Kansas) and truly expedite the judicial proceedings in their cases," he said. "I would reaffirm my commitment to address the issue of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. I know how important this is in Europe in particular."

John Weaver, Sen McCain's chief strategist, confirmed his plans for a markedly more conciliatory foreign policy. "The next president will have to work extra hard to unite our friends and divide our foes. Sadly the opposite has occurred in recent years," he said, as Sen McCain addressed a crowded hall in the farming community of Cedar Falls.

Doesn't seem like a whole lot of difference in how both parties candidates indicated they would handle Gitmo including the fact they both pretty much agreed that Bush has screwed-up in his foreign policies.

Don't be Afraid or Scary

I know people who lean way to the Right, and the way they’re thinking now just scares me. I try to understand them by listening to Rush and watching Fox News. But when they aren’t declaring how Obama has ruined America forever in these 1st few months, both of those leaders of the Right just rant and rave about how “they” are the targets of the mean spirited, liberal Left, and their mainstream media.

I guess I am a liberal, and I guess I also watch the mainstream media. But unless I tune into the rhetoric of Keith Oberman, I do not hear the Right being attacked. Especially, not since GW left office. The only attacks I see are coming from the traditional political attack programming --- humor. I’m talking about SNL and the Daily Show. Hell, I can even go back to the 70s when conservative views were the butt of the humor – remember Archie Bunker?

Sure nobody wants to be laughed at, but if you view the world as unchanging, contained in the values (a favorite word of the Right) of tradition then your ideas might be outdated if not laughable. Just in the last few centuries, tradition dictated that whites were superior to blacks, browns …, and that men were superior to women, and that Arians were better than Jews. Values change!

Even the Right are not totally immune to an evolutionary change in values. How else can GW’s administration’s adoption of torture as a legitimate method of information gathering be explained. During my military indoctrination in the traditional 60s, torture was really frowned upon. Yes, we were warned that the bad guys might use it. Those bad guys were the --- the godless heathens, the VC, the gooks like the Japs (who attacked us with the shock and awe of Pearl Harbor)—people who didn’t share our values.

Therefore it seems that change is not just an option of the Left. And values aren’t always fixed in political or ideological cement.

But if the Right would have had their way, we Left would have listened to them and “Stayed the Course” of a conservative Presidential administration. However in light of the truly ineffective if not disastrous administration they/we/us voted in 2000 and 2004, how could they expect anyone to follow their lead in 2008. Any such expectation is laughable.

So why isn’t the Right laughing? Why are they so paranoid in their feeling of persecution? I can only advise them to calm down. Give change a chance. See if it isn’t nice. And for that I’ll promise if Obama screws up as bad a GW, I’ll accept a change back. I’ll just have to hope they won’t let him/her be stupid, or controlled by the super natural, or the like.

And if the worst happens for them and their candidate in 2012 is only a three time Purple Heart recipient versus our draft dodging, “Please, Daddy get me into the national guard!”, candidate (Oops never-mind, I’m getting mixed up again), then they’ll just have to tolerate another four years of someone they don’t particularly like.

In the meantime, let’s everybody just try not to be so scared or scary.