We Can’t Go Back

Tags

accomplishments, President Donald J. Trump, promises made promises kept

Below is President Donald J. Trump’s latest ad reminding us this election season that “we can’t go back.”

To peruse President Trump’s accomplishment over the past 648 days (as of 10/30/2018), please visit the link below:

https://www.promiseskept.com/

Forum: If You Could Have Had A Different Career What Would It Be?

Tags

culture, economics, Life Happens, social issues

Every week, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week’s question: If You Could Have Had A Different Career What Would It Be?

Bookworm: I’ve never liked being a lawyer, although I’m reasonably good at it. It’s honed my analytical abilities and my writing skills. It makes possible the blogging I enjoy doing, although I don’t seem to be able to make money as a blogger.

What I’d really like to be is a member of the idle rich. My favorite pastimes are reading books; writing short, horribly proofread essays off the top of my head; and eating chocolate ice cream. I’m really not sure there’s a career pathway for all of that.

Rob Miller:I have to giggle a little when I think of the word ‘career’ applied to me.Everything I ever did that was reasonably successful, I just sort of fell into.

One day I accidentally strummed a cheap guitar my parents brought home from a trip to Mexico and fell in love. I never wanted to do anything else afterwards, so that became my ‘career.’ even if I wasn’t earning anything from it. I had a lot of different jobs,(I left home at 18) some of them quite interesting, but they were always just to finance and pave the way towards playing music for a living.

Eventually I managed to do that after a few false starts and made a fairly decent living out of it. It also was something of a fascinating sort of sub culture in which I was a ‘semi-celebrity.’ In other words, I wasn’t any multi- millionaire, but I was known, sort of, whatever that means. I could get into  clubs for free and into their VIP sections all across the country, get backstage at concerts to ‘say hello’ and enjoy the adult refreshments and other diversions, drink for free in certain watering holes (thank you, Esther and George Wong) meet a lot of interesting people and fulfill a fair amount of fantasies. And the money wasn’t bad at all.

The way that sort of ended was that I became a hired hack basically playing music I didn’t really like at all for other people.  And for someone who loves music the way I did, that made it just another job, a way to make some money. About that time, I met my wife and we married, and I wasn’t exactly rabid with excitement over the offers I had. So I went back to just doing sessions, mostly commercials, and working as a customer service manager for a large office supplies company.

When business went down at the office supply company and I was fired, it was time for another accident in my ‘career.’ I met an Israeli contractor (we knew some of the same people in Israel) who I got some jobs for in exchange for some baksheesh, and he told me about an Israeli friend of his who was ‘doing loans’ and that it was commission only, ‘but you talk nice to people chaver, and you could make some nice money.’

Well, OK. Todah rabah.

I had a friend who was refinancing her house and I knew she’d give me the job, so I figured I’d do this once, make some money, hate it and move on. The Israeli broker hired me and I proceeded to learn about the paperwork and other things I needed to know. Instead of hating it, once I saw that first commission check I wanted nothing more but to master this new occupation the way a Samurai wanted to master his swordsmanship and do a lot more business.I ended up being pretty good at it.

After three years working for my Israeli boss (lots of fun!), I got my broker’s license, opened up my own business and ended up being rather successful. For me, the 1990’s and early 2000’s were literally golden years. Aside from mortgages and refis, we also listed and sold houses and I also did quite well buying foreclosures once I learned how to do it properly. I’d refurbish them and either sell them or rent them out.

I sold my business right before the nasty stuff hit the fan in 2008, and I’m still not exactly sure why I did but the timing was right.  Now, I’m semi retired, mostly manage my properties, and partner up now and then with a couple of brokers I know to find refurb houses, fix them up, and sell them. It bothers me a bit because it’s mostly investors buying them to rent out rather than families who want a home of their own, but so be it.

All in all, considering where I started which was basically with nothing, I’m quite grateful to the Almighty for the life I have. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Jeffrey Avalon Freidberg: Like one of my personal idols, Bookworm, I am really really really good with ice cream.

However, I tend to specialize in Hagen Dazs chocolate covered ice cream popsicles and Julie’s Organic ice cream sandwiches, which kind of limits my style and reach.

I too think I’d be really good at being filthy rich like Diane Feinstein and practically the entire senate.

Amazing how they go to DC poor and leave rich as kings and queens, with unlimited lifetime medical, insurance, pensions, and all….

I guess they get smarter when they get off the bus?

Of course John McCain married the Beer Queen and had so many houses they were almost as many as Obama has—but not as many as John Kerry.

Anyways….

Anyways, I got into the private eye biz by accident and stuck with it for 35 years. I guess I did everything there was to do in that line. I wooda been something else, except I think I liked the private eye gig. I got to be outdoors and run a lot.

Then one day I just could not open one more file and walked away…

…what a DUMB THING TO DO!

Now I have no income, no job, and temp’ services won’t touch me because—even though I built and ran a million dollar business—I don’t appear anywhere in their “categories.” I was never—say—an accountant, lawyer, or secretary. No listing.

As bugs Bunny said, “Ehhhh…I knew I shoulda took that left toin at Albu-qoikey.”

Laura Rambeau Lee: Once I got past my childhood obsession with dinosaurs and wanting to be an archaeologist I set my sights on becoming a physician. I studied hard and was a pretty good student, often studying beyond what was available in school. Growing up outside of Philadelphia in a small college town the college professors would give me text books which I read voraciously. In junior high I was attacking texts on abnormal psychology, organic chemistry, and books on human anatomy and physiology. I began college with a premed major. That changed when my father died when I was nineteen. At that point I decided I did not want to become a doctor and deal with life and death issues on a daily basis. I quickly lost interest, got married, had a daughter and divorced within six years. At age twenty-five I was a single mom who needed to make money, and make it without a college education. As a vice-president of a local bank my mother introduced me to an owner of a title insurance company and I was hired as a processor. My wages went from $145.00 a week working in a bank to $175.00 a week. That was a big jump back then, especially when child care alone was $45.00 a week.

I learned the business and after a couple of years went to work for an attorney doing real estate closings. Then I went into business with my mother for ten years, she having a mortgage company and me running the title insurance side. After my mom retired my company was bought out by a national title company owned by a national builder. ­(I had let the mortgage company dissolve due to the savings and loan crash in the late 80s early 90s. It became nearly impossible to be a mortgage broker at the time). I worked there for thirteen years until the crash in 2008.

One thing I realized early on was the chairman of the Federal Reserve really controls our country. I would tell people that whoever controls the cost and flow of money controls it all. I was still in my 20s. As I looked into it more I realized how correct I was in my analysis.

Then around 2004 I began to see it coming apart. The mortgages they were selling were certain foreclosures. No doubt about it in my mind. But it became personal when they started selling purchase money first and second mortgages. People could get one hundred percent financing by taking out an eighty percent first mortgage along with a twenty percent second mortgage. They avoided private mortgage insurance and avoided having to put money in escrow with their payments for property taxes and homeowners insurance. We called them NoNo loans – they required no asset and no income verification to qualify for these mortgages, all under full approval of FNMA guidelines. At that point I understood that now we would have a situation where we would have millions of people in homes they couldn’t afford and they would not be able to pay their property taxes either. That would severely cripple our local municipalities and county revenues, meaning we would not have money for schools, firefighters, police, transportation and social services. Where I was naïve was in believing that these lenders would go out of business. I never would have believed our government would steal our savings and wealth to bail out the banks. Americans collectively lost over 19 Trillion Dollars in wealth between savings, stock market accounts and real estate! That was my wake up call. That was my call to action and when I started blogging. It helped that I was laid off from my position as division president of the company I worked for and gave me time to write, get involved with the Tea Party and also help care for my mother who was terminally ill with cancer at the time. I also returned to college to finish my bachelor’s degree, which I did with high honors in American Studies with a major in communication and media. It was also an eye opener to the open Marxist ideology indoctrination occurring on our college and university campuses. I was the token conservative on campus.

Thinking back on everything I am content with the path my life has taken. I am back in the title insurance business, doing real estate closings. It is interesting and challenging and I have always enjoyed the business and the work. I find it amazing that when I was still in college back in 1975 and knowing I no longer wanted to pursue a career in medicine I took a test to see where my interests and abilities might take me. The results came back that a career in politics or the law, or writing and reporting would best serve my personal interests and career goals. Interesting, huh?

Dave Schuler:If I knew then what I know now, I would have swallowed, sucked it up, and remained in the corporate world rather than going off on my own and starting my own business. I would have been less happy then but probably happier now.

Well, there it is!

Make sure to drop by every Monday for the WoW! Magazine Forum. And enjoy WoW! Magazine 24-7 with some of the best stuff written in the ‘net. Take from me, you won’t want to miss it.

Forum: What Was Your First Job?

Every Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week’s question:
What was your first job?

Doug Hagin: First job? A friends dad hired me to work at his welding shop. I swept, A LOT!, I ran errands, I went to get lunch, which the boss paid for, up to $5, and when we had jobs on the road I did whatever was needed. Never really learned to weld too well, but it was good experience. Oh, and I got paid a whopping, $3.60 an hour to boot.

Patrick O’Hannigan: My first job was spending one summer helping my high school library convert from Dewey Decimal to Library of Congress annotation. It was basic data entry for poor pay, but my friend John had the same assignment, and we made those Hawaiian mornings on old computers fun by taking turns writing an adventure story when we got bored. The only rule we had was that we could only write one paragraph apiece before handing off to the other kid. By the end of the summer, we had a short, cheerfully nonsensical story with an odd assortment of characters who had their hands full dealing with random implausible mayhem.

Laura Rambeau Lee: One evening my dad sat me down at the kitchen table with a cash drawer and taught me how to count back change. I caught on easily and at the age of 12 I went to work in the family drug store/soda fountain (which later became a luncheonette) in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I was incredibly shy and really was not excited about having to speak to people but knew I would be expected to work once I was old enough. My older sister had already been working a couple of years since she is two years older than me. I started at the soda fountain making sodas, shakes, malteds, scooping out ice cream and making sundaes, cones, and banana splits. Within a year I was also working on the drug store side, where we carried Hallmark Cards, 45 rpm records, toys and other sundries. We were also the Trailways bus stop and ticket station.

I learned a lot about owning and running a business and gained a lot of confidence in my abilities at an early age, which has served me well throughout my business career. It was very rewarding making money and being able to buy things I wanted without having to ask anyone. My starting wage was $.50 per hour. After we sold the business and moved to Florida (I was almost 15), when I turned 16 I got a job at a big chain drug store and worked there the balance of my high school and college years. One thing for certain, I decided early on I did not want to work in retail as my life’s career. I never wanted to work nights and weekends if I did not have to. I started in banking and have worked in the title insurance business ever since. Many years later I came to understand the importance of parents knowing the abilities of their children and encouraging them and setting expectations for them. Every little accomplishment increases self confidence and builds self esteem. A valuable life lesson indeed.

Well, there it is!

Make sure to drop by every Monday for the WoW! Magazine Forum. And enjoy WoW! Magazine 24-7 with some of the best stuff written in the ‘net. Take from me, you won’t want to miss it.

National Service: How to Save America’s Lost? Hire The Veterans.

Tags

cic-vics, Education, Elitism and Class, Employment, gratitude, hire our heroes, military and veterans, millennials, Veterans, Veterans' Tales, wounded warriors

Veterans’ Tales by Vassar Bushmills

We began this conversation a couple of weeks ago, when we pointed out that 90% of Americans have invested none of their own skin in this game that is called “Keeping America Alive.” Even my generation, the last to know the military draft, which was never natural to the American scheme of warfare anyway, and which accounts for about half of the “skin in the game” citizenry today, are now in our 60s and 70s, and will soon pass away.

Most college-aged kids, unless there’s an uncle or aunt in there somewhere who’re veterans, have never even met a veteran.

So do the math.

First Principle: With every passing generation, that 90% percentage is likely to get larger, only not because our military manpower needs may diminish, but rather because most Americans for the past 50 years have never been raised, and certainly not educated, to think of America (the-Idea) as anything special, as a thing worth clinging to or passing onto their children.

It’s not that we’ve lost our sense of gratitude–well, a little—we feel more entitled today than 50 years ago—we’re just no longer taught to appreciate the wellspring of that gratitude. American kids are no longer taught to look at any everyday product, from a cell phone to a hamburger, and connect the dots that put that phone or burger in their hand, or the money in their pocket to buy it. Money equals phone. Ever kid knows that equation. Job equals money equals phone however requires an extra dot, and many can’t connect it. Way too many Americans never have had to, as I reported only last week, in describing the growth of the trust fund babies since the 60s.

Just understand that much of what they now don’t know is purposefully denied them.

Still, it is those simple things, connecting a treasure in their lives to a foundational source, is what has always bound Americans.

In that story, above, about the ’68 Chicago Democratic Party Convention riots, I noted that there were tens of thousands of students from affluent families who had never worked, nor would ever have to, unless they could land a cush job at a non-profit, of which, today, there are thousands more than there were in ’68.

So today the size of that army of ne’er-do-wells who have to do no work numbers in the millions, and there are entire university and college departments dedicated to keeping them away from any meaningful relationship with their native country and its origins.

Moreover, if you’ve ever walked where they had been recently, at an outdoor function, a march or camp-in, you’ll also learn that they don’t treat the earth too kindly, despite what they say about protecting it; 21-year olds in their own private pigpen[…]

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95% of Progressives pushing $15 Minimum Wage don’t pay their interns

Tags

Congress, hypocrites, Pay Workers a Living Wage Act Congressional Progressive Caucus, Raise the Wage Act, Senate, unpaid internships

Last month, the Congressional Progressive Caucus introduced the Pay Workers a Living Wage Act, which if passed by 2024 would increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour.

CPC

“The federal minimum wage has been a stagnant $7.25 for far too long, forcing workers to juggle multiple jobs while barely making ends meet. For years, the CPC and progressive groups like Fight for $15 and Good Jobs Nation have fought for workers’ right to a living wage and have continued to show how low wages impact the daily lives of working families.”

“The Raise the Wage Act shows the Democratic Party is unified in committing itself to workers and addressing the economic hardships families are facing every day….

Do as I say, not as I do.

Big talk coming from those who held all three executive branches of government through 2012 and did not act. In fact, the subject of raising minimum wage did not come up until 2013 after Progressives lost both Houses.

Those who threw their weight behind the Fight for $15 agenda, sponsored and co-sponsored the Pay Workers a Living Wage Act are hypocrites. Pursuant to an analysis by Employment Policies Institute (EPI), 95% of Progressives in both Congress and the Senate who support the legislation to force corporations to pay their workers $15 per hour do not pay their interns.

According to EPI, 174 out of 184 “cosponsors and primary sponsors” of the Pay Workers a Living Wage Act, hire unpaid interns.

• In the Senate, Senators Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker, Chris Murphy and 20 other cosponsors hire unpaid interns.
• Of those that do offer a stipend, Senator Bernie Sanders is the only member who pays an hourly wage….Senator Sanders’ office only pays interns $12 an hour, short of his $15 proposal.
• In the House of Representatives, Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Keith Ellison, Maxine Waters and 145 other cosponsors do not pay their interns. Only 9 members from both chambers offer some form of a stipend, representing 5 percent of cosponsors.

“It’s hypocritical to rally for a $15 minimum wage when these lawmakers don’t pay their own entry level employees a cent,” said Michael Saltsman, EPI’s managing director. “Policymakers might object to paying interns because it will reduce the number of available opportunities–but the same dynamic applies in the private sector, where businesses are forced to cut staff or close down.”

Washington Free Beacon by Ali Meyer

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.), Rep. Betty McCollum (D., Mn.) and Rep. Robert Scott (D., Va.) pay their interns with a stipend. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) said they offer some stipends or limited financial assistance.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D., Hi.), Sen. Mazie Hirono (D., Hi.) and Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.) offer stipends or some assistance but they are only under certain conditions or to cover expenses like travel or housing.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) said stipends are often available but they are not guaranteed….

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