Saving up for a house …

How would you feel if an adult with a regular full-time job moved into your home with their girlfriend or boyfriend, and maybe even their kids and pets, took over part of your house, expected you to clean and cook for them, do their laundry and pay all the bills?   

If they’re your kids or grandkids, that’s what’s happening today. And many parents and grandparents seem to be fine with this.   

I’ll admit I’m stunned. Maybe because I was raised by wolves, I never once even considered moving back in with my parents. They never expected me to do that, either. In fact, when I left for college they almost immediately moved into a condo.  I was welcome to visit – temporarily – but would never again have a room of my own there.    

Contrast that with today.  I now know people who’ve had grandkids and their respective boyfriends or girlfriends, plus kids, move back in with them.  I know others with daughters and sons near their 40s with decent paying full-time jobs who have moved back home.

Look, I understand people falling on hard times and moving back home temporarily.  Or kids just out of college looking for a job. 

This isn’t the case here. 

These are grown-up adults, with regular jobs and a good salary, living rent and expense free in their parents’ or grandparents’ home. In some cases, Mom and Dad, or Gramma and Grandpop, are still paying their car insurance, their health insurance, paying for all the food as well as all the normal house expenses like taxes and utilities.  Their “guests” are paying for practically nothing.

When I ask them why they are allowing this, they almost always say the same thing:

Their kids or grandkids are saving up for a house. 

Seriously. Does anyone really believe this?  Is everyone that delusional?  Do these parents and grandparents expect that one day middle-aged Jimmy or Suzy is going to say: “Folks, we’ve saved enough for the lovely Cape Cod we’ve wanted and are moving next week.”

Get real. Never going to happen.  As long as they can get free room and board and hotel service at no cost to them they’re going to stay. Forever.      

Because they aren’t “saving up for a house”; they already have a house – yours. They aren’t “saving”; they’re waiting for you to just give up and hand your house to them. Free. 

Make no mistake – that’s the plan. They will play the “saving for a house” card or the “saving up to pay off my student loans” card as long as possible. Meanwhile, they have no problem making car payments, taking vacations, or partying on the money they’re saving at your expense.

They realize they can depend on old Mom and Dad, or the grandparents, to fall for this nonsense. After all, isn’t buying a house or paying down your debts something to be supported?

Why of course. If that’s what they’re really doing. But it’s not. And after a fashion even the most clueless parent or grandparent senses what’s going on. 

Their precious little snowflakes – now in their 30s and 40s – are still taking them for a ride. Just as they always have. And just as they always will, given the opportunity. Parents and grandparents are ATMs they can tap anytime they want and they never have to pay them back. 

This is not news. What do you expect from people coddled as children and brought up to expect that the world owes them everything for free.

Including a free home.         

I’ve actually heard parents and grandparents in this situation talk about just moving out of their own house, leaving the kids or grandkids there, and finding another house for themselves. They think this will solve things because once they’re no longer there cooking, cleaning, and paying all the bills, the moochers will move on to a place of their own. 

Fat chance of that. I can’t see the future, but I can hazard a pretty good guess.

I’ll bet if they do move out and leave the kids and grandkids behind in their old house, they still won’t be off the hook. Those same kids and grandkids will continue to expect them to maintain the property, do repairs, and pay the taxes and utilities on the house they no longer live in.

The only real answer is to kick them out. If you love them, you’ll do this. Even if you don’t love them all that much anymore – and if that’s the case I understand – do it ASAP   

Just stand up from the dinner table one night and say: “it’s time for you to go. You have a month to get ready. At the end of that month either a moving van will pull up to take you and your possessions to your new place.  Or a Goodwill truck will pull up to take all your stuff as a donation. Your choice.”    

Worried about the consequences? The hurt feelings? Don't. It's still your house.  

Years ago I had a woman in her late 20s who worked for me still living with Mom and Dad. She was making a good salary here, had a nice car, nice clothes, and was always out at night partying with her friends.     

One day I asked her if she ever thought about moving out and getting her own place. She told me she couldn’t do that because it would break her parents’ hearts.   

Honest to God, that’s what she said.

At least she didn’t tell me she was “saving up to buy a house.” I’ll give her that.

Years later she moved out to San Francisco with a new job. I suspect her parents survived. 

So will they.   

Trump, trump, trump the mob is marching …

I understand why Americans are pissed off. They have every right to be. 

After 7+ years of Democrats and Obama running roughshod over the Constitution, the impotence of Republicans in Congress to stop them, our disastrous foreign policy, the dramatic drop in household income, and our skyrocketing national debt, no one should be surprised.

Meanwhile we’re exporting U.S. jobs to places like Mexico and Central America as they continue to export illegal immigrants to us.

And we’ve gone from being a country our enemies once feared to one our allies can’t trust.

It’s little wonder why Americans want real change. They’re clearly angry.

Many of them see Donald Trump as the answer. His rallies allow them to vent their anger at the political establishment, the “new normal,” political correctness, and everything else that’s gnawing at them. Trump feeds them the raw meat they crave – the vitriol, the snarky one liners, the low blows and personal attacks designed to turn angry individuals into an angry mob. 

He gives them an outlet for their frustration.  It’s old-time fundamentalist religion – while others are doing the devil’s work, only he can save them.  He’s the only one who can make America great again, lift the burdens from their shoulders and set things right. 

He will fix the economy. He’ll stop the flood of illegal immigrants. He’ll keep jobs here. He’ll make our military strong. He’ll take care of our veterans. He’ll make other countries pay us to protect them. He’ll only cut trade deals that favor us. He’ll cut the size of government and spending. 

How?  Well that’s a bit vague. 

He wants us to have faith. Just trust him. If we trust him all things are possible. 

That’s why I keep comparing the Trump phenomenon to a religion.  Or better still, a cult.  It’s based on belief and faith despite all evidence to the contrary. Everyone outside the cult is the enemy; everyone inside the cult is okay.  Or, as Trump would put it: “terrific.”   

Trump is not running as a Republican. In fact, much of what he preaches reverses traditional Republican orthodoxy. He’s an isolationist. He’s clearly opposed to free trade. He’s somewhat more like a moderate Democrat – if there are any left – than recent Republican candidates. 

Not that this really matters. In some cases, traditional Republican values haven’t been all that popular with the public. Republicans have at times seemed like stiff-necked moralists focused too heavily on interfering in the private lives of Americans. They’ve been too busy standing on a pulpit and preaching to the ever-diminishing number of the converted when they should have been doing their jobs of governing wisely for the benefit of all Americans.

Okay, so there’s no love lost between me and a lot of the Republican establishment. Still, as flawed as they’ve been, they are still better than the Democrats. Sort of.  

Both the hardcore Left and hardcore Right – the outer edges of the Democrats and the Republicans, respectively – are obsessed with the each other, to the detriment of rational governance. Neither wants to give into the other on anything. Everything is a game.  But it’s important to remember that together, both represent less than a majority of the voting public in America – there are more independents or unaffiliated voters than the two extremes combined. 

It is into this void that Trump has arrived.  He rejects both the hard Left and the hard Right ideologies. In essence, he doesn’t seem to have any ideology he follows, except for the self-aggrandizement of Trump. His supporters don’t care – they are weary of the Left and the Right, the traditional Democrats and Republicans, and the meaningless political games both play.

I’m somewhat surprised this hasn’t happened before. However, I’m startled that the standard-bearer for them is Trump; I would have expected someone more Libertarian.

And I’m honestly frightened by the ferocity of many of his supporters. They want a revolution and they don’t seem to care who leads it. Trump famously said he could shoot someone in Times Square and his supporters wouldn’t care – and I believe him. He also said that if he didn’t get the nomination there would be riots in the streets.  And I also believe that.   

All politicians are human, and as such flawed. Yet I can’t remember a time when so many people are so eagerly – nay, mindlessly – following someone so deeply flawed as Trump.

Emotionally, intellectually, culturally, he’s a mess.  The question is not whether he’d make a good President as much as is there a psychiatrist in the house?

God help us if he gets the nomination.  And God help us if he doesn’t.  

Cesar Chavez on the $5 bill …

Why not?

As long as we’re changing portraits on American currency to pander to Democrat constituencies, I see no reason why it has to stop with replacing Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.  There’s also a plan to keep Hamilton on the $10 bill – mainly because of the rap-hit Hamilton on Broadway – but add a group of suffragettes on the back.

So let’s see … we’re replacing Jackson – one of the country’s founders and two-time President – with a famous black abolitionist. We’ll also be replacing the engraving of the U.S. Treasury on the back of the $10 bill with black and white female suffragettes; but we'll keep Hamilton on the front because right now he's popular with playgoers in New York.

Where’s the Hispanic on our currency?  That’s why it’s time to consider Chavez. That would appease the Hispanic community, especially Mexican Americans, plus labor unions.   

Then we can start considering Caitlyn Jenner for the $1 bill. It could have a printed hologram that depending on the angle shows Olympian Jenner or Cosmo Jenner. Because the dollar bill is so widely used it can serve as a reminder to everyone to just get used to it.    

Now Ulysses Grant was a war monger and abuser of native Americans so let’s kick him off the $50 bill while we’re at it. FDR would be a great choice there if for no other reason than he represents exponential growth in government spending and expansion of entitlements. He’s also famous  for attempts to pack the Supreme Court to overturn the Constitutional balance of power between the Congress, the Executive Branch and the Judicial Branch. Democrats already revere him as a near mythic figure, and, lest we forget, he was handicapped – a two-fer. 

Franklin can stay on the $100 bill. He was newspaper publisher, so he was in the media. Also, he was a well-known philanderer who had affairs with single and married women of all ages. Perfect.

There we are.  We’ve now appealed to all Democrat core constituencies. 

There’s only one thing left. We have to get rid of that annoying “In God We Trust” stuff. It’s offensive to atheists and way too moralistic.

Maybe we can change that to “In Politics We Trust.”

Or perhaps a simple ”Whatever.”     

Firing up the propaganda machine …

I’m not a conspiracy nut – I don’t believe in the Illuminati, the New World Order, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or other theories about shadowy groups bent on world domination. 

However, I recognize obvious propaganda. Right now we’re awash in it.

Mostly that’s because it’s an election year. So there’s more than the usual amount of news coverage about the pay gap between women and men, the pay gap between blacks and whites, the education and graduation gap between blacks and whites, the rising cost of a college education, the burden of student loans, white privilege, black incarceration rates, people struggling to get by on minimum wage jobs, the rights of transgender people to use restrooms and locker rooms based on how they self-identify rather than physiology, and families torn apart by immigration laws. 

Coincidence?  I don’t think so. 

These are all Liberal Democrat/Socialist issues. The enhanced coverage is intended to remind their base what this election is all about: discrimination, class warfare, and racism.

You won’t hear or see much about the state of the economy and our growing national debt or the dramatic drop in household income during the Obama years. There’s also scant coverage about making Social Security and Medicare solvent, the soaring unemployment rate among blacks, the probable loss of entry-level jobs from raising the minimum wage, our porous borders, how illegal immigrants are displacing American workers, crimes committed by illegal immigrants, the abuse and waste in our government, and fraud in our entitlements programs. 

Perhaps it’s because these are all Conservative Republican issues.

Granted, these aren’t as sexy as pointing out how unfair the system is to everyone except rich white heterosexual males – and make no mistake, this group is the bête noir for Liberals.

For good drama you need a hero and a villain and Liberal Democrats always do drama well. They are the heroes fighting for everyone who feels somebody else – the villain – is better off than them. Their base believes this is unfair and Liberal Democrats will fix it. 

Of course Liberal Democrats can’t.  And of course they wouldn’t anyway even if they could. Without their base of perpetual victims they’d never get elected. The Republican Party and conservatives are the villain, and an easy target. If the Republican Party ceased to exist, which is becoming a possibility, Liberal Democrats would have to create its successor just to have someone to blame and to run against. 

So sure, Republicans are their near-perfect bad guys for now. But so are gun owners, anybody religious (except followers of Islam – “the religion of peace”), business owners, cops, and conservatives in general. Everything is black and white; good or evil.   

The worst of the villains to Liberal Democrats are the gender and race traitors. Woe unto anyone who is a woman, gay, or black who espouses conservative views or has the audacity to openly proclaim themselves Republicans; they are anathema, heretics, and must be destroyed.    

Their friends in the media are more than happy to help.

The same media friends make sure their audiences are constantly reminded of what’s wrong in America. Just watch the nightly news on any of the big-three networks, or visit CNN.com or NBCNews.com. You’ll see a never-ending telenovela about social injustice, gun violence, bad cops, discrimination, gender bias and everything else the media feel the audience should care most about.

When the media make decisions on what’s most important for their audience to care about, as opposed to simply know about, that’s propaganda, not reporting news. 

Is it a coincidence that one of the networks has scheduled an interview with Anita Hill – of the Clarence Thomas hearings 25 years ago – right now? At a time when Hillary’s running on a campaign of attracting women in general and blacks in particular?  

And at a time when Obama is pushing to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court that could shift the balance of power to liberals for decades.

Ask yourself: Is Anita Hill really newsworthy?  Now?

I don't think so.  Just more propaganda.  

Burning down the fishing shack …

A couple I knew found the perfect spot to build a house in Maine – great views of the water, ideal location, everything they wanted.  

Except for one thing.

A nasty old fishing shack was already there, with no working plumbing, used by generations of fisherman apparently reluctant to go outside to relieve themselves. Taking the shack down piece by piece would be expensive and time consuming, not to mention disgusting. Plus, it was infested with mice and insects who’d made the shack their home for years.    

So the couple made a condition of sale that the local fire department would burn down the shack. The fire department burned down the shack and the couple built a new house there. 

The moral of this story is that sometimes you have to burn things down to start over. It may seem drastic, but it’s a better, simpler solution in the end.   

One of the great problems in our country is that once something is created by politicians – a law, an entitlement, a social program, or whatever – it’s allowed to remain long past its need, or long after it’s proven to be a failure. Instead of tearing down what’s unnecessary or doesn’t work, politicians just build more additions to it.  

Once something is in place – be that ObamaCare, green-energy subsidies, or corporate welfare, to name but a few – politicians never put any of those to the proverbial torch, no matter how flawed or unnecessary something becomes.  

Our politicians would rather “fix” things than replace them with something better. Consequently, they have all of us tied to a virtual money pit that can never be filled. 

Nothing ever gets done properly; it’s always a series of ill-conceived and expensive fixes that never really address the underlying problem. The patches never hold.  So what do our politicians do?  Add more patches on top of the other patches. There, fixed, right? 

The perfect example is our public assistance programs.

Nobody in elected office wants to admit it, but a fair percentage of able-bodied Americans simply do not want to work for a living; not all, certainly, but a sizable number. Instead of addressing this, politicians keep coming up with new ways to provide “opportunities” for this group.

There’s dirt-cheap broadband to apply online for jobs they don’t want. There are free mobile phones to aid in the job searches they’re not conducting.  There’s subsidized housing and food so they can live comfortably while they’re aggressively not looking for work. There are also education programs to train them for jobs they have zero intention of ever doing.

None of these things make a damn bit of difference. If someone doesn’t want to work, they won’t. They know we won’t let them starve. Dangling “opportunities” to work is useless. You could raise the minimum wage to $30 an hour and they still wouldn’t work. 

They are part of an ever-growing “right to loaf” movement in America. 

Unless politicians start facing the reality that this group will never work, no matter what, they’ll just keep wasting our time and money on pushing a rope.

The simpler answer is to just stop all these useless programs, give these slackers a bare-bones minimum income to buy what they need, and let them be. There’s no fix to change their attitude about work, so why bother?  And why have countless unnecessary middlemen monitoring, administering and implementing a host of programs that don’t work?

Just getting rid of all those government employees and grant-vultures will save us billions. I have to believe it’s far cheaper to pay these people each a minimum annual salary – say $30,000, free from state and Federal taxes – than providing them with the equivalent of $47,000 in annual benefits.  When you add the potential savings in government salaries and wasted money on grants it’s a no brainer. 

Once we’ve decided to have a guaranteed minimum income, all kinds of things fall into place. Because the minimum annual salary is per adult, not per household, there’s a greater incentive for couples to stay together and share expenses. And since there would no longer be a per child subsidy, there’s more reason to limit family size. Best of all, they can learn to live on a fixed budget like the rest of us, which would be a valuable life lesson, for free.   

Now, what’s to prevent someone from spending all their income on drugs and neglecting their kids?  Absolutely nothing.   But that’s already happening anyway. No social program we’ve ever constructed can keep bad parents from neglecting their kids.  If anything, school lunch programs, SNAP and TANF have made it socially acceptable for parents to avoid responsibility for their kids even more. 

There are perfectly fine and enforceable laws on the books to prevent parents from neglecting their kids. Another social program won’t do anything to help those kids.

You do expect a catch to my generosity, and there is one. Well, more than one. 

You only get the annual minimum salary if you are at least 18, a verified U.S. citizen, have a valid high-school diploma, and aren’t currently in prison. Oh, and as long as you receive the minimum annual salary you can’t vote in state and Federal elections. 

What about people who can’t meet those qualifications? Too bad. It gives them something to shoot for. Also, by replacing all the arcane back-alley ways to get free stuff from the government with a simple salary, you minimize the potential for fraud and double dipping. 

Here’s your check. Best of luck. 

What about taking away their right to vote?  I admit that seems harsh, but there’s logic to it. Remember, they don’t have to pay any state or Federal income tax on the guaranteed annual salary they’ll get. Why should anyone not paying any part of their income toward running the government have a say in how the government should function? 

Won’t people who work for a living resent giving an annual income – tax free – to able-bodied people who simply don’t want to work? Sure, but aren’t we paying people not to work already? Haven’t we – maybe with the best, if not misguided intentions – created a system where it’s often more beneficial to not work than to work?

If you’re working, don’t you resent that? You know there are people who will never, ever work for a living.  So why not just deal with that reality and stop the madness?

Politicians have tried all the patches and nothing’s worked.  It’s time for drastic action.  Dump all the programs – and all the expensive administrative machinery running them – and try something much simpler. In doing so, shift responsibility back where it belongs.

Give those who refuse to work – but could – a minimum annual salary and let them figure out what to do with it. Politicians and bureaucrats sure as Hell haven’t been able to come up with a better solution so far. The current system’s not worth saving.

It’s time to burn it down and start over.