Bush Legacy Tour

MANCHESTER, NH - Our Monday morning event gave us a couple great stories from people in attendance and speaking at the event.

Sarah McNeill spoke at the event and shared with us how the economic downturn has affected her family. Sarah is the mother of two beautiful little girls Emily and Niya. Her husband works construction and until recently Sarah was able to stay home with the girls. They supplement their income by renting out apartments in their multi-family home.  Now, not only has her husband had difficulty making ends meet with construction given the housing market, but their tenants are not always able to make rent in the current economy. Sarah, like so many stay-at-home moms, recently went back to work and gave up her dream of staying home with her kids. She regrets that she will miss the time spent with her girls and also the fact that in the economy of ten years ago her family’s finances would’ve been much better off.

Chris from Manchester has had a career path profoundly affected by the Bush Administration. He is 32 years old and started working on the stock market in the late nineties before the dot.com fallout. He did quite well for himself as a young person just out of school. He remembers selling quite a bit of Enron stock at the time and having no idea of the controversy to come. After the bubble burst and many corporate leaders (some connected to the white house) went to jail for their criminal activities, Chris felt guilty for having inadvertently been a part of it. He got out of the stock market and moved onto what he thought would be more noble pursuit selling real-estate. He took pride in selling homes to young couples, seniors, veterans, and single moms. Being a part of his clients procurement of the American dream made him feel like he was doing something worthwhile. Unlike many mortgage companies, he was straight-forward and honest with his clients and sold mostly fixed-rate mortgages. As the housing market collapsed and the Bush administration did nothing to help the millions who were being foreclosed on, his firm went under. Chris once again found himself on a career path aligned with corporate malfeasance and an administration that supports it. Chris is now going back to school to teach high school math. For his sake, we hope that Bush and his corporate allies don’t find a way to make algebra corrupt.