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No. 60: Understanding Debt

January 20th 2011 23:00


Free enterprise works best when all in the boat are lifted with the tide. It can be very cruel when we go through financial downturns. Since people began congregating, people have owed money. It might be just five ears of corn for a nice arrowhead, but it was still a debt. At first, mankind needed a bigger friend or spear, but coercion generally got the debt resolved. Now, just try owing the mob. You will be thankful if you only get some bruises and broken bones when you are late on a promise. On a less harsh note, if you owe a financial institution, you will still elevate your stress levels.


The U.S. Federal government tells us that we have at least 9.4% unemployment. This is not counting those who have given up trying to find work and receive no further unemployment benefits. When we play with those percentages we see that millions of our neighbors and fellow citizens are suffering. This means that a significant portion of our friends out there are striving just to make mortgage, rent, electrical, medical, water/sewer, phone, and insurance payments. Let alone striving to place food on their tables.

Is it any wonder foreclosures and bank defaults are continuing to rise? Once this sort of downward spiral takes hold, it continues dropping until the day when businesses hire more, and thereby, remove additional people from the stress machine.

Let me state the obvious: Given the difficulties presented by our current economy, it is much more difficult for everyone financially. And for some, it is catastrophic. It does most of us some benefit to imagine what the less fortunate are experiencing.


Let me stop and clear the air here by stating that: When we sign a document or make a verbal agreement with another, it becomes an obligation. Justice dictates that if we make a commitment to someone or entity, that all reasonable efforts should be made to fulfill the obligation. Having said this, there are times when reasonable efforts fall short. Sickness, infirmities, accidents, deaths, and unemployment are a short list for these times.

Conventionally, most people go through regular financial institutions for loans. Laws prevent the physical tortures from them, but they still retain ways to collect. As long as the collectors work within the law, they are simply doing their jobs to help resolve the issue and help their benefactors get money owed them. When collectors harass or violate other regulations, they can be liable to each abused debtor collecting up to $1,000 per instance of abuse. You are encouraged to contact the Federal Trade Commission when you can confirm abuses.

Today, financial institutions use many ways to help make themselves whole with debtors. If the debt is collateralized, they can take the collateral (such as a car or boat) from the debtor and sell it. (No one wants a night raider in their driveway hauling off the beloved possession.) If a balance still exists, they will attempt collecting the difference owed from the debtor. The same methods are used for homes, land, factories, etc.

The stress really gets cranking when a firm hires an attorney, or collection agency. (No, they are not all law firms. Some may be just disguised that way.) Please remember that most of them work on commission. This gives the debtors some leverage!

We have laws regulating collection procedures, but they are not always perfect. Collecting firms can get very crafty, such as sub-contracting to individuals who call from their own homes. This way you may not recognize the calling source via caller ID. Another new tactic is for collectors to utilize computers searching for unused (vacant) telephone numbers within given area codes. When these lists are purchased, the collector can then call posing as a local neighbor or business.

If you are not one of the people experiencing such stressful times, as listed above, then perhaps it will help to read the the next paragraph.

I have long advocated a 13th year should be added to our educational system wherein such courses as Healthful Living, Marriage and the Family, Personal and Social Ethics, Money Management & Investing, and Civics II should be required of the curricula. If the latter two were required now, we would have much less strife and stress in our lives.

While these financial conditions exist, it would help us all to be kinder to those less fortune, if for no other reason than -- we each may be in similar dire circumstances before we know it.

Please keep it between the lines.
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No. 59: Washington Should STOP

December 1st 2010 21:36


Last Friday, after Thanksgiving, I decided to feed a bit of the excess Turkey meat to our little Chihuahua. No matter how much was placed in her plate, she continued begging for more. She was insatiable to a fault. After lifting her up to my lap, I quickly felt that she had grossly overeaten. It reminded me of our U.S. Government and its bloated bureaucratic appetites.

As I grow older, this sad situation becomes increasing obvious -- our government is inept at using the STOP button. It seldom can even downsize. For many years, I have shouted that we Americans are throwing too much money down the proverbial bottomless pit of our central government to misuse, abuse, and foment difficulties here and abroad.

The biggest rub is that from childhood onward we have been taught that we are free to create, think, say, and print all that we conceive. This may still be true in most cases, but our bloated bureaucracy is like the termite. It eats away at our freedoms just as the termite eats away at the wood in our homes.

Usually, without fanfare—almost silently, in fact, we pay people to sit at their desks or in conference rooms with the implied or written order to devise ways to give us enhanced services, better protections, to make our infrastructure more modern and sound, or to control us through more taxation. Often, we infer that this is always done in our best interests. Thankfully, many times this is true, but the opposite is pervasive and stares at us from our dwindling paychecks, evening news, and the Internet.

I can think of a few root causes for the bloated-government nightmare:

1) Too many private sector jobs have been lost to overseas employment. In some cases, these jobs have been replaced by government employment at all levels. After all, it is politically easier to just spend more on government hiring than explaining to the people why their jobs are going away. We were fed a bill of goods back in the seventies by so-called economic experts touting our “positive” evolution to a “service economy.” Yet, it is difficult to find a learned freedom-understanding economist who believes this garbage any more. Simply put – instead of expanding our money supply with original dollars via invention, mining, agriculture or manufacturing, Washington sells bonds (debt instruments) to a quasi-government entity (the Federal Reserve), then that entity prints more money! (Incidentally, the “Fed” shoves this in our faces by printing “Note” on our paper currency.) This not only inflates and devalues our dollars, but it further injects us into the downward spiral of indebtedness when these same bonds are sold to other nations so we can continue purchasing their goods and services.
2) Unions – I will not take the time explaining the historical good and bad of their existences and actions, but we all recognize that far too often they are used politically by those in power and seldom work solely for the nation's interests. (i.e. John L. Lewis and the coal strikes during World War II.) The largest unions in America are now populated by civil servants. By their nature, their union leaders must work for their members' good, even if by doing so they work against the taxpayers' benefit.
3) Upward mobility – In a past Sanityroad.com post, it was mentioned that for a bureaucrat to rise in the ranks, he or she needs more subordinates. This situation often creates unnecessary “make work” jobs just for advancement purposes. Multiply this situation by tens of thousands and it is easy to see how a large bureaucracy gets FAR TOO LARGE..

Some states, like Florida, have legislated “sunshine laws,” that demand the review of all departments, agencies. laws and regulations periodically. Those no longer deemed necessary or are outmoded, are eliminated. Why has the Congress never allowed such legislation to go beyond committee?

The U.S. Federal government must hit the STOP button today! Congress or the President should place a freeze on non-military hiring. Just enacting a wage freeze is not enough. There should be an empowered, independent panel created (much like the base closing ones), that reviews all departments and agencies for efficacy. Those determined to be unnecessary should be eliminated at once!

To add insult to injury, the Federal government average employee wage is reported to be in excess of $100,000 per employee per year. This is around twice what a private sector employee can expect to receive. This is untenable and downright unjust.

Please keep it between the lines.


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No. 58: Object Lessons

October 5th 2010 21:49


What are Object Lessons? The simplest way of defining them is that they are reminders. Object Lessons are reminders that there is interconnectedness throughout the universe. There are many, many things that all of creation share in common. We can know them when we take time to observe. Let us touch on a couple of these lessons.

No matter how, or with what strength or design, we peer into the depths of the cosmos, we still find three things happening: birth, growth and death. When things are born (created); they either grow or they are dying, and will eventually make way for another birth/creation. The new creation may be of something else entirely. This is true for the star, the planet or radiation wave. Also, when we look into the mighty microscopes of today, we still see birth, growth, and death occurring. Regardless of the method(s) used--division, multiplication or expansion--when one method stops, the organism dies and makes way for the energy utilization for another birth/creation.

It takes our experiences, knowledge and observation to understand it all, but there are lessons to be learned. Nature CREATES, and in the process, it WASTES form, whether ugly or beautiful. It is the result of passing and transforming energy in our dimension. Scientists work long hours studying energy hoping to understand its conservation law better.

In our bodies, energy courses through the vascular systems feeding every cell and ultimately setting the stage for our synaptic transfers and more accumulated thought processes. At every step of the way, to and from, creation is taking place. Our thoughts, just as our actions, are creative too.

As we learn from creation, we create. Let us find that still, quiet, moment when we can sit undisturbed, looking at a particular object--studying, pondering and asking ourselves questions about it. Take a mountain, for example. It was born as the continental plates collided beneath the surfaces of our planet. Perhaps for millions of years, one could have said that the mountain was still growing as it was pushing higher and higher. Then one day, the ever increasing quest for the heavens stopped, and it began crumbling and deteriorating. With notable exceptions, the energy stored when the mountain was growing is released slowly, so slowly that it is almost unperceived. It will erode away as weather, and other forces, bring it back down to its former elevation. Now a valley or plain will exist to grow other things. A lesson from this may teach us that no matter how big we get in our own eyes, conditions can, and will, bring us down. Live long enough and see it happen. As the old saying goes: “From diaper to diaper,” but enjoy the ride from changing to changing.

Now, ponder a marvelous mighty tree, perhaps an oak. It has grown slowly. It can move large amounts of water up and down through it. It grows its trunk ever thicker, as branches, limbs and leaves cycle on and off it. It spawns the growth of other trees by dropping its seeds to the ground. It provides shade to surroundings. It is beneficial to much of life,--the birds, squirrels and maybe us. It may have been living long before we were born and it may live long after we leave, but its day will come too. As it crashes down, energy is released in the sound and destruction below. What grows from this calamity, starts the process anew. Respect the tree for it is teaching us a lesson. We too can grow tall in stature or fame and fortune. It may last a long time, but all will comes to an end eventually.

I sit on the “Dock of the Bay,” as Otis Redding put it, watching approaching ships and boats ride upon the waves. In my haste to take them for granted, I feel confident that soon they will be safely within harbor. As long as the waves are low, I think, all is well. But, in front of me, I now see splashing waves in front of them! I realize the winds have suddenly grown stronger! Behind me are the dark clouds that only minutes before did not exist in my sight. Now, I am aware that danger may be for some crafts. The smaller, lighter, more vulnerable boats could be in trouble! The mighty ships will ride the breakers as though they do not exist, but the smaller craft? You know… There is a lesson here also. Friends, we must never take things for granted. Anything can happen to our course unpredictably. The winds of sickness, accidents, unemployment, lack of will, and other situations, can create higher waves than we expect. To the best of our ability, we must PREPARE. We have to make sure our ships of life are strong enough to weather the storms that inevitably come.

We all are well advised to take such quiet moments--“stop and smell the roses,” as is said. Once In a while we need to take breaks and look at various items in nature. Ponder their beauty, their uniqueness, their purposes and connections in the scheme of things. As we do, we will learn from nature and help guide our own lives. There are things, not in books or on the Internet, that will help us lead better, more productive, and satisfying lives too, if we will just look.

Please keep it between the lines.
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No. 57: The College Classroom Experience

September 2nd 2010 23:27
Off to College


It is back to school time and many colleges are starting. Maybe this will help some beginning freshmen


[ Click here to read more ]
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No. 56: Pressure and Stress

August 3rd 2010 21:58


Many people seem to think that if it is a law of physics, then it is only a law of matter – solids, liquids or gases. This is natural, but when one looks deeper, it become readily apparent that many laws of physics overlap into other areas of our lives


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No. 55: Equality, Do We Want It?

June 25th 2010 20:05
All On The Road


Thankfully, ALL MEN ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL. I will explain more as you read further


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Crying and Praying


Although we justifiably enjoy the parties, Memorial Day is much more than the traditional hot dogs, beverages, beans and potato salad. It is deeper than just a gathering of family and friends at the grill centerpiece. It is, of course, a time to reflect on those who have given so much of their bodies and lives so that we survive to this day


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No. 53: Some Personal Musings

May 17th 2010 21:00


While watching the movie, “Above The Law” (arguably Steven Seagal’s initial signature movie), on AMC cable network, I decided to hit the Information button on my remote—checking out the date it was released. The synopsis writer typed as though the movie was all about Pam Grier’s character. Pam Grier played a minor role in the movie. She is a fine actress, but why did the writer of this tale of CIA intrigue, involving drug trafficking and assassination attempts, distort the whole movie, when clearly Seagal was the protagonist throughout? Was it written by a feminist who could not accept that a macho man was creatively portrayed? You decide what her agenda could be? The first thing that came to my mind is that when it comes to reporting these days, ANYTHING GOES


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No. 52: Organizing Thoughts

May 10th 2010 17:11


Recently in one of our local newspapers, under the heading: “Letters to the Editor,” appeared a writer suggesting it was UNNECESSARY for children to be taught algebra, trigonometry, and other mathematics before graduation!. This writer meant well, but was ignorant of the fact that learning mathematics teaches our minds to organize thoughts. It prepares us for going from a mental point A to point K in the most efficient and quickest manner. Without this learned ability, all of us would be making even more bad or banal decisions


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No. 51: Taking for Granted

March 14th 2010 00:46
I did not know what was there!


Most of us have driven home -- through the driving rain or snow -- fighting the traffic all the way, only to arrive at our destination without remembering a single moment of the drive. When this happens, in order to recall the trip, we force ourselves to recap the drive


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