The Oregon Women's Report - Women's News from Oregon

Submitted by Kay Helbling

Remember when you were a kid and your folks taught you to never point your finger of blame at someone because “there are three fingers pointing back at you”? Well, back in Washington there is a lot of talk about greed these days, mostly as it relates to Wall Street, but, believe me, their is enough greed to go around.

What exactly is greed? According to Webster it is “the strong desire to acquire or possess”. So let’s list a few “fingers” of greed.

It starts with the very folks who desired a home that they had not yet acquired the financial means to support. They would even provide false IRS income statements to justify to purchase.

Activist groups like ACORN, lying claim to serve the community in their desire for government funding. Yet, rather than serving their communities by counseling the folks as to the consequences of these high risk loans or the financial responsibilities of home ownership, they simply fueled the notion that home ownership is some kind of innate right.

The politicians chose not to heed the many warning calls and signals. Their desire for constituency votes of folks who should never have been granted the loans took precedence.

It didn’t help to have an Administration whose desire to appear compassionate and nonpartisan failed to expose the actions of the former three.

The situation was ripe for the picking by the financial institutions, aka Wall Street. Their desire for wealth took precedence over responsible business practices that what would have required they substantiate the value of the paper they were buying.

But when all is said and done, none of this greed really would have resulted in a “national crisis”…..

By Erika Weisensee,

Who are American farm women? In film, television and books, the farmer is almost always a man. Women are portrayed gathering eggs or milking cows, ringing dinner bells and scrubbing laundry.  Oregon Historical Society’s current exhibit, “Voices of American Farm Women,” running now through October 5th, gives a very different perspective of women on the farm.

The exhibit showcases the work of photographer Cynthia Vagnetti, whose striking black and white photos and corresponding oral histories share the stories of 30 contemporary female farmers and their relationship to the land.