Guerrilla Gardeners & Loan Sharks

I was watching Charlie Gibson just a little bit ago but wasn't very engaged in the stories.  I know that we need to know about the Swine Flu, but I'm already sick of the perpetual news coverage.  I guess today we did get a little variety hearing about Chrysler.  So, I was doing other things in the house with his show on as white noise.  I happened to hear something about criminals with shovels and hoes; that caught my interest some.  By the time the commercial was over though, I had already forgotten that I was slightly interested.  Thankfully, I happened to walk back into the living room as the story started.  It was about these citizens who go into the community to beautify particular locations by cleaning, weeding, and planting low maintenance plants.  These people call themselves Guerrilla Gardeners.  They don't go through the red tape of asking the city government for permission.  They simply choose a location, plan a meeting, and go to work.  What a fabulous idea!!

Oh, and the other item that was worthy of note in the news was that Congress FINALLY passed some laws regarding credit card companies.  It is disgusting to me that these companies have been allowed to change interest rates retroactively!  I don't know if and when Congress will get around to limiting the rates that these cards can charge.  There used to be laws regarding this, where anything over a certain rate was considered usury because the people would never be able to pay all of the interest.  This is no longer the case though; I've heard that President Obama wants to put something like this back on the books.  I think that for a lot of people who have had these rate changes because they're charging more on their credit cards due to hard circumstances these credit card companies are essentially legal loan sharks.  I could stay on my soap box for a long time, but I hope that Congress will continue to draft more and better legislation regarding these companies and their practices.  Then I can put this soap box in the closet.