The Emerald Rose

Welcome to not the “The American Dream”, but “The American Nightmare”!!

Now I know a lot of you do not agree with me, BUT IF you can be honest with yourself, please ask yourself one question, “Are you better off now than you were ten years ago?” BE HONEST, this is not a quiz,…it is a reality check!!!

I’m going to share some very personal information with you in the next few paragraphs, and if this gets too long I might even make it a part I and part II blog. But before I start a new wrinkle for you.  And a news flash from this morning, September 16, 2010:

Breaking News from ABCNEWS.com:

U.S. Poverty Rate Jumps to 14.3 Percent, Highest Since 1994 [10:10 a.m. ET]

I’ve been writing this particular blog for five years plus, ( now 15 years in total!!!), and now that I am officially “over the hill” and 65, (now 73+),…well as they say in the mob, “I made my bones”. BUT the sheer marvel is that I CAN write this in America because our founding fathers insured it with the Constitution and Bill of Rights,……but are we better off today?

Let’s examine it more closely. Yes we are virtually guaranteed to live longer, healthier lives. Supposedly it will also be more “prosperous”, (whatever that REALLY means), but lets examine what these great things are costing us.

Now back to reality checking. When the “good news” is that only 424,000 filed NEW unemployment claims instead of 459,000 as they did last month,…..well pardon me if I’m stupid, but that’s 800,000+ folks filing for unemployment, in just the last two months! Why is that “good news”?

I am now “functionally” unemployed. My company has no paying clients left at the present time, I’m “trolling” for new ones, but there is no money out there, particularly in the Community Association living business. Some of those 800,000 I mentioned above, live in condo’s, and homes, that they can’t afford their own mortgages, let alone the monthly “Association dues”, which can run from $80 a month to well over $1500 a month. So, as I’ve pointed out before, one of the “toxic assets” in Association living is that those who have paid must pay more to make up the difference from those who have not paid, for whatever reason, so all the vendors, i.e electric company, gas company, water and sewer company etc. get paid. If they don’t, those services are shut off!! Talk about a quick way to create an instant ghetto!

That then results in decreased property values, inability to sell your property at anything but a big loss, no way to cover the loss, so you are stuck. And like a lot of folks are doing, is just “walking away”. Old lines like “Your credit will be ruined”, and “You’ll never be able to buy another house” are all the new, “So what?”, with the defeated shrug of the shoulders.

Something is wrong when you reach my age at 66, (actually 73 now trying to finish some old “drafts”, and it’s getting dicey again as well!) and you realize you have less of everything than you ever had before. Everything you have is holding on “by the skin of your teeth”, the new reasonable was the absurd twenty years ago. I remember buying my wife a new BMW in 1988, a mere 30 years ago, and it was over $31,000, but it was the top of the line, quality built, totally reliable, and safe car. Now a little “crackerbox” that is a hybrid is in the $40,000 area, and that little BMW in the 2010 model is over $55,000. Is that insanity?

Salaries are not keeping up with costs, people are reaching the edge of the abyss and looking over the edge, and it ain’t pretty out there anymore already! But Donald Trump the country’s greatest egotist, BUT a pragmatist who makes it happen, (sometimes by pure personal charisma and “balls” has become our President in these United States!

I’m all in with the Donald, to him this is a simple problem and deals and negotiation, his forte, are what is needed. His ONLY mistake thus far is underestimating the DEPTH and EXTENT of the internal CORRUPTION of the legislative branches of our “government”!

Can it be fixed,…..ABSOLUTELY,….BUT, only by President Trump! Because it takes a hard nosed cynical private sector, self created guy with more money than most of the legislators have been able to steal, swindle, or otherwise amass from the people of this country.

The “Trump haters” as well as the “deep state”, have decided to, as the old adage says, “Beg, Borrow, Lie, Steal, Cheat ” and otherwise otherwise operate by the policies and guidelines set up in the old children’s story,….”The Emperor has no clothes”! (Read it for us both, and alas you will recognize the “Sheeple” of America!

Well time to end this one and clear another “draft’ from my “Pending” basket!

-30-

April 21 2018