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LET'S GET TOGEHTER AND SHARE STORIES

PrimeDirectives is looking to holding quarterly meetings of those with an interest to share their stories and concerns.

POVERTY, AMERICA'S NUMBER ONE INDUSTRY

PrimeDirectives is working on a project acknowledging the number one industry in America, that is the United States, is not the steel industry, not the oil industry, not the technology industry.

It is the poverty industry acknowledging poverty includes not only the poor but also the working poor at 7/11 leaving not to go home but to cross the street to work at the gas station in the hope of paying last month’s rent missing homework with their children.

This project deals with the justice system concerned ostensibly with providing an opportunity for our children to become productive citizens. In the end the goal achieved is the justice system serving the poverty industry.

PLEASE CONTACT ME WITH YOUR THOUGHTS THROUH 'TALK 'WITH ME' ABOVE

IN THE END, CHILDREN HUNGER

Liberals complain about Trump. They call for massive protests. They speak of the Republicans and their golden calf, called Trump, as enemies of the people. They call for rallies, protests, and shutdowns. But not a word concerning the exploitation of children dying in this country under liberals and conservatives. To these politicians, Democrat and Republican, Liberals and Conservatives, the poor are not seen, not important.

Hypocrites, these Democrats and Liberals are, but no less hypocritical than the Republicans and Conservatives. The intensity of the Democratic/Liberals against Trump is nowhere to be seen for the suffering children, the poor, the trampled upon.

Etha and Patricia, our young couple whose story is told in this website, do not care if their leaders are liberal or conservative. They just want their leaders to stand up for them against the Walmarts of the world which none of their leaders do. The Ethans and the Patricias of this world are treated the same as any other commodity in the store.

Much of the clergy is the same as the liberals and the conservatives for not seeing their flock as they truly are. This must stop.

Resistance, needing to be the order of the day, is a virtue requiring courage to break away from the failing ways of the past, the failing words of the clergy, the failing leadership of the Liberals and Conservatives alike, whose lives are financed by the same source, elite/rich.

No matter who wins the coming elections, the way forward will be the same. The politicians are the same. The money is the same. The politicians run from righteousness. The clergy speak of caring for their flock, but their flock is suffering and dying materially and spiritually foundering in a failing church and a failing country.

But within this failed country, within this failed clergy, remains people who believe in this failed country and failed church because they believe in the goodness in man, in each other, in their children, in their neighbors, even in their enemies, believing in a dream called The American Dream, a dream with no boundaries of any type, and found in the teachings of the ancient scriptures.

The problem we face is not in the theology or in the country. It is in the conveyors, the hypocrites, pretending to be messengers of the Word and the country.

They do not care about your work issues at the 7/11, or the Sunoco station. A woman I know works at the Royal Farms Store then goes to the gas station to make more money to care for family creating statistics showing prosperity for the nation but not for her. Then her preacher speaks of God and Jesus being on her side and in Jesus is found happiness. Irrelevancy enters her mind and being.

Happiness can be found in the principles of America and its preachers. It is the hypocrisy needing to go.

The hypocrisy of the politicians and their elite/rich lords is widespread. Their focus is on what is fashionable at the time. Never is the poor fashionable. Protecting and expanding their wealth and power is fashionable.

We do not need to tear all down to get to the chosen land. Build on the strength that is America. This is what is needed.

Anne Bradstreet, America’s first poet, a woman poet, wrote “Who say my hand a needle fit”. “If what I do prove well, it won’t advance; they all say it is stolen, or else it was by chance.” Words written in the 17th Century concerning the strength of a woman being beaten down. The strength of America has been there from the beginning and remains.

“The riches are to me no bait…But man was made for endless immortality…Let every person…be a temple of God…we travel through a malicious, calamitous and abusive world… awakening me to duty…”. Words of William Bradford.

“Pursuing this wisdom and promises without fail, without rest, giving chase to injustice in all its forms may not be pretty at times but at the end of the day surely the next rising sun will usher in promises fulfilled.” More words from the days of our beginning.

“The wickedness of the world must not be permitted to swallow up thought and imagination. We are all and each a part of the universe, no less significant than the next and other, giving us a divine existence. Firmness in equity we must be.”

“The elite/rich experience great increase in wealth, gratifying themselves in wonderful delicacies, while demanding harder work of the laborer, meaning the laborer has less and the few have more.”

“Feeling nature of prosperity is not to be their experience.”

The thoughts behind words such as these are words of people who are real and honest, knowing hypocrisy is the worship of false idols. The wisdom and promise held forth to lead the people of Bradstreet’s time are as true today as it was then.

We must refuse to give up and not condemn ourselves to barbarism. We must not submit ourselves to that future. That is not a life.

DC, A Hotbed for Sex Trafficking

The liberals protest but right under their noses exist sexual exploitation. The Washington DC area is a hotbed for sex trafficking. All talk is about Epstein but his trade they live among and say nothing.

Proximity to major cities along the Interstate 95 (connecting New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC) makes the DC region a convenient and profitable location for traffickers to move victims.

The airports, bus depots, train stations, large number of truck stops and rest stops help to advance the profit of sexual trafficking operations. Conventions, major sporting events, tourist attractions can create a demand for commercial sex attracting the suppliers of sex and buyers.

Economic disparities and vulnerable populations involving poverty, homelessness, drug dependency, limited education and employment, combined with runaway and homeless youth, including the victims of child sexual abuse and domestic violence supply the demand.

The FBI also considers Washington, DC one of the top locations in the country for child sex trafficking. The National Human Trafficking Hotline receives tips about sex trafficking, labor trafficking, and mixed trafficking cases in the District of Columbia.

Things Are Out of Whack

Harmony and ordering are fleeing. The few, that is the elite/rich, control what you make, how you are to make it, how much you are to pay for what you made, and what you are paid.

The few, the elite/rich, are a private government unto themselves in which you live and work in accordance with their rules, rules not in harmony with the laws of the universal, rather rules in harmony with their rules giving them profit, the good life, and to you, a life of struggles, the hard life.

They, the elite/rich, control every part of your life from birth to death. They tell you what to believe. They tell you what not to believe. They tell you what is right. They tell you what is wrong. They define your friends, your enemies. They divide you when this meets their needs.

They define your God, your Satan. The elite/rich control your education. They control your news. They train you through all there is to forego your God given talent to think for yourself destroying your existence.

One who fails to think lives as a potted plant thrown out at season’s end. Your thinking is their thinking, not your thinking. Your existence is not your existence. Your existence is their existence.

Our world is one of destruction but within this world is the light of goodness. This light cannot be put out. This is the spiritual side of man which cannot be defeated. We can ignore it, but it survives and grows.

This is where you and I enter the picture by declaring independence from ignorance, greed, patriotism, false religions of idolatry asserting love for all people no matter from where they are, no matter who they are.

In doing so we attach ourselves to that agent, external to you and me, causing me to think and write these words proving my existence. In the order of things, we exist with a potency waiting to be actualized creating a kingdom here on earth and because that which is has and always will be this kingdom is as the flame of a candle blown out but still there.

I see a world where man is respected in his job, his neighborhood, his being giving him his due in accordance with his respect for the Messages handed down by the universal law.

No one is more important than the other demanding each is to have his due based on what he contributes. Each is to be respected and loved.

The elite/rich take men and women making them poor because the less the poor have the more the elite/rich have.

Then they turn this poverty, your suffering, into profit for them. Witness the juvenile systems ostensibly built to help the poor but in fact these make the rich richer, makes the economy stronger for the elite/rich, not the poor. And all the time, the elite/rich build weapons of destruction.

The elite/rich have taken man, a complex thing of variations of the beautiful and stripped him down to one dimension ignoring his talents placing on the couch of the head doctor pushing medication.

THINGS, OUT OF WHACK

I exist. This must be so. How else do I explain the thinking reflected in these writing?

The world in which we live is a thing of order requiring the existence of an orderly organic law, a law universal in nature, common to all men, beasts of the forests, and fish of the seas.

It was written that the great Gothic Cathedrals of the Middle Ages represented the order of the world in their structures. These cathedrals have endured due to respect of the laws of geometry and engineering reflecting laws external and universal to the cathedrals and their builders.

It is this universal law that makes you and me brothers and sisters. As with the Gothic Cathedrals when peasant and king, who were clearly and distinctly separate, entered the Cathedral of God all, peasant and king, stood before the universal law whom they saw as God as equals.

Outside the Cathedral, man promulgates laws too often contrary to and not in harmony with the universal law, pushing the best of mankind is pushed back with evil having its day.

There is only one law to which all are equally subject making you and me of the same Father, of the same family of the same Fatherland.

No one is more important than the other demanding each is to have his due based on what he contributes. Each is to be respected and loved.

The just society is one of harmony and ordering in accordance with the law, universal in nature. All are equal as seen in the great Gothic Cathedrals of Europe.

Today, things are out of whack. Harmony and ordering are fleeing. The few, that is the elite/rich, control what you make, how you are to make it, how much you are to pay for what you made, and what you are paid.

The few, the elite/rich, are a private government unto themselves in which you live and work in accordance with their rules, rules not in harmony with the laws of the universal, rather rules in harmony with their law giving them profit, the good life, and to you, a life of struggles, the hard life. Similar to the days of feudalism, this is.

The elite/rich control every part of your life from birth to death. They tell you what to believe. They tell you what not to believe. They tell you what is right. They tell you what is wrong. They define your friends, your enemies. They divide you when this meets their needs. They define your God, your Satan.

The elite/rich control your education. They control your news. They train you through all there is to forego your God given talent to think for yourself destroying your existence.

The one who fails to think has no existence. He lives as a potted plant thrown out at season’s end. Your thinking is their thinking, not your thinking. Your existence is not your existence. Your existence is their existence.

The elite/rich build man to buy what they want sold no matter how unhealthy the thing sold, or if needed. They build man to be of greed because the economy cannot prosper for the elite/rich without greed. They build man to accept and to fight their wars.

The elite/rich take men and women making them poor because the less the poor have the more the elite/rich have. Then they turn this poverty, this suffering, into profit for them. Witness the juvenile systems ostensibly built to help the poor but in fact these make the rich richer, make the economy stronger for the elite/rich, not the poor. And all the time, the elite/rich build weapons of destruction.

The elite/rich have taken man, a complex thing of variations of the beautiful and stripped him down to one dimension ignoring his talents placing him on the couch of the head doctor pushing medication.

Our world is one of destruction but within this world is the light of goodness. This is the spiritual side of man which cannot be defeated. We can ignore it but there it is always growing, refusing to be beaten down.

This is where you and I enter the picture by declaring independence from ignorance, greed, patriotism, false religion of idolatry asserting love for all people no matter where they are, no matter who they are.

In doing so we attach ourselves to that agent, external to you and me, causing me to think and write these words proving my existence.

In the order of things, we exist with a potency waiting to be actualized creating a kingdom here on earth and because that which is has and always will be this kingdom is as the flame of candle blown out but still there.

I see a world where man is respected in his job, in his neighborhood, in his being giving him his due in accordance with his respect for the Messages handed down by the universal law.

TIMETO PICK A SIDE, GOOD OR EVIL

We are facing daily, a break-down of everything that is good and decent as taught to us by our fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts, people close and loved. With something far worse lingering out there, resignation.

Senior citizens are told they owe money on an old car ticket. Failure to pay immediately will result in car registration/licenses being revoked.

Many are told pay an overdue tax bill immediately or the full weight of the government will descend on you.

Poor people are told they falsely neglected to pay a rent bill on time, the same being true of borrowers being told falsely they pay late.

Late fees are then imposed. Consumers in Virginia have lost $470 million to such scams.

Politicians of all types lie to the citizens.

Common is greed existing on all levels of society by people, many of whom are respected. Much money is made this way, and this method of enrichment is not lost on the rich/elite and their politicians.

The worship of the golden calf of the Old Testament and ridiculed as myth lives on destroying all that is good and decent as taught to us by our fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts, people close and loved.

A breakdown of morality is upon us. And the victim is the person who wakes up each morning to go out and work often the first of two jobs.

And Dr. Oz says these people need to go out and prove themselves. This man is an agent of the devil.

The common people these are worshiped by the politicians secretly deceiving them on behalf of the rich/elite at election time.

Churches and Temples need to hire security to protect their worshippers during time of devotion. People, young and old are struck down pursuing living as they desire. Elected leaders and their families engage in unethical conduct seeking self-enrichment.

Children go without food in our nation’s capital a capital busy spending billions for a football stadium for the rich/elite and their politicians to attend.

There are public school teachers ridiculed as having no interest beyond themselves. Such a lie.

Ethan and Patricia, our young couple spoken of in the right article of this website, are being worn down in ways harmful to the body, the mind and the spirit in ways not understood unless you have lived it. They feel trapped in a system keeping them down no matter how hard they work and fight.

Leaders having taken the sacred oath to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States ignore the law hell bent on attacking humanity. Police are ridiculed and disrespected by a modern-day Pharoah in the White House.

The Christian Church in the United States is a dying church. Many say it is because of a tired theology. I disagree. It is not the theology that is tired but the clergy that is tired.

They should take a peaceful lesson from Jesus when he committed the crime of malicious destruction in the Temple of his Father in response to the holy men of the cloth buying and selling goods, precious metals and jewels in the House of the Lord. Islam will soon be the most prominent religion in the world with its theology making sense and focus on the needs of the orphan, the widow, and the poor.

Much dissension and suffering there is, because happiness is difficult to have when all that is right about our country is being torn down and apart into thousands of pieces.

The Three Kings visiting Jesus at his birth were of the Zoroastrian religion, a religion that emphasized life, and who saw history as a struggle between good and evil. This is an eternal struggle between good and evil with no beginning nor an end.

Each of us knows intuitively there is right and wrong. We know of its existence. It is part of our lives wherever we are. But knowledge of right and wrong cannot be in the absence of freedom and freedom cannot exist without choice, another word for free will. And all of this is not possible without a thing ordering these things.

You may wonder what do these words have to do with the loss of what is right and wrong. The answer is simple.

We are in that place people have found themselves prior in times and places.

This is a story described over and over throughout the history of man wherever he is found. It is a cycle. There is a time when things are on the up and up, good and decent. Then decay sets in bringing things down and down. This is where we are today.

And in this down time the evil and corruption we see in our leaders have the upper hand laying the ground for the good to make a come-back.

Each of us is of this breakdown, this cycle. All professions are of this breakdown and have a role to play in the cycle of this breakdown.

And I am suggesting we do what our fathers and mothers did.

We are part of the conflict between good and evil. Pick a side and continue the struggle. I say we pick the side of the good. Define ourselves. Take stock of ourselves and get moving.

THE RICH, THE CREDITOR CLASS

We live in an impersonal world where we are asked to live ignoring our roots, to fear God, where our worth is measured by the modern-day measure of life, the dollar.

Ensuing unhappiness is pushed aside by politicians and their elite/rich supporters saying our enemy is the alien, the immigrant, walking among us.

Wars are sought to satisfy the dirty hunger of the rich for more dollars said Henry Ford. Those who question this reality are told to be people of un-American ideas, radicals, who need to be sent to a penal colony in Guam as once suggested by a US senator.

The citizen loses interest in politics as politics has no room for him. His vote is of no consequence. At the end of the day, it is the rich man who corruptly finds room in politics. The one not there sees his taxes raised. The rich man there finds his taxes cut while making efforts to weaken labor.

The rich become the creditor class to whom the people the debtor class owes everything they have and do not have. At the table of politics, the rich man sits. For the elite/rich their servants are in a special room for the voiceless, responsible for the well-being of the elite/rich.

One has a voice heard. The other has no voice.

The world of the citizens is one of sterility and emptiness under a night sky of falling stars giving us a world of little if any meaning. Even death lacks meaning. People’s souls become furnished in the best way, hiding ideals always there.

Our world is one characterized by corruption, materialism and cultural vulgarity. There is no human spirit to feed upon giving us dull citizenship with no imagination once important to the development of this country.

In this absence of fire in the hearts of our youth, concern for the hungry children is wanting in the worse way. The world is no longer relevant.

Politics is the work of deception and lies by the greedy elite's politician. Once told we cannot vote for the man who kisses the ring of the pope. Today told we cannot vote for the man who respects the alien, the immigrant, and the one who worships and loves differently.

At the same time these elite types, the rich, cannot live without you embracing their dreams presented to you through easy credit, fed by their advertisers.

Religion is a business. Churches are buildings seeking tax exemptions with little interest in the hereafter. False prophets appear before us seeing what is important is for the people to watch football, drink beer and gamble. No dreams are here.

Admire the constitution they say but do not teach it. The leaders of the pulpit and the government are peopled not by men and women of moral conviction but heretics losing a grip on reality.

We grew up to discover God as presented by the clergy is dead, that people breathe death, not life. Secularization embraced by the clergy destroys religion. Play golf on the sabbath.

The clergy being shepherds, do not see the welfare of their sheep. Religion is business. Churches are buildings.

Little interest in the hereafter is expressed. Give the people football, beer and gambling, they are easy to control.

Men no longer dream of owning their lives, their destiny. They speak of the constitution but do not teach it, do not read it. In the end the grip on reality is lost. Too much science, no God versus too much God, no science.

People are told the remedy to their woos lays within them. To have a better life is to correct your immoral ways. In reality the rich live as cannibals eating each other living on the labor of the workers, you and me. Their ways are immoral built upon the lies of the elite/rich through their politicians telling you with the approval of the church you need to change your ways.

No, it is they who need to change. It is they who need to step down.

Rise Up. Stand Up. Have the courage of Mohammad, of Christ with the faith of Abraham. Remember the courage of the mother of Vietnam joining the mothers of Virginia Tech understanding that transcending oceans.

We became recently obsessed with the intruder of the home of two celebrities. But no obsession exists with the intruder of a child in DC, or Baltimore. More obsession with the rich we have, not the poor.

The people not heard of, with no voice, their intruders are not seen, spoken about but those speaking of the celebrities go home and worship before the clergy, their false prophets. The they walk in parades. Hypocrites these are.

Why do the politicians not speak of this? Why do the clergy not speak of this? Why do their elite/rich supporters not speak of this?

In the story in the right column is the story of Ethan and Patricia loving their Orioles, their Ravens, working hard believing in American values but now forgotten. They work. They vote. They abide by the law.

They keep the covenant of God. They obey the Commandments. Why do they now struggle with debt to survive another day? They are no different than 90% of the people in this country rising each day to go out and work.

Make a world reflecting the angel in each of us. Walk away from patriotism. Walk away from the clergy. Walk away from the way presented to you by the hypocrites of today and embrace our parents, the children of God.

Understand that transcending the back fence. All are important. All are of value.

You working a 12 hour shift at 7/11, followed by another shift across the street at Pop Eyes to make enough money to pay the bills with your employment at two sites are used by the politician to brag of high employment numbers in the richest country in the world.

Rise Up. Stand Up.

HUNGRY CHILDREN IN DC

This writer has walked among you and knows you. In you this writer saw, heard, and felt things good and decent, common to all, demanding respect and attention.

In this respect and attention peace is discovered. Belief in this thing common to you and me against odds deemed impossible conquers our fears.

This writer saw something not seen. But there. Heard something not heard. But there.

That thing not seen, not heard, but there, common to all no matter who you may be, what you may be, where you may be, is an idea from which flows a spiritual world. This spiritual world is manifested in our daily lives through the material.

From the spiritual, conflicting values abound. Hate and love. Care and greed. Hate and love are encouraged and advanced by the politicians and their pimp supporters with a singular agenda. That is for these supporters to be bigger, to be richer, to be more powerful.

And in the middle of all this is a child with no food. No one caring for him. No one being his voice.

Not the news media. Not the politician. Not those of the clothe, the clergy, pretending to be a shepherd for the children. Not the politician’s pimp for whom the politician is his whore.

The child spoken of multiply him by 32 million and we arrive at 32 million children, that is 32 million hungry children who are citizens of the United States. In the richest country in the world, 32 million children live in poverty whose hope is to survive another day.

And nobody speaks of this. Nobody cares. Not the Democrats. Not the Republicans. Not the liberals. Not the conservatives. What is the reason for this here in America, a country I was taught is exceptional? The answer is simple.

There is no money, no profit, made caring for the children. Jesus said his Father is with those who protect the children, the most innocent. But for our leaders, their supporters, a church having lost its way, are not of this clothe. They worship the idols of money and power.

I pray there is either no God or if there is a God, He is merciful because if He is not merciful, we are in trouble.

In our nation’s capital, 17,880 children struggle with hunger. Thousands of children wonder where their next meal will come from. One of the most affluent places in America, capital of the free world, one in three households are hungry.

Across our country this number of children hungry is 32 million. Children going to bed hungry, waking up hungry, going to school hungry, hunger being their lives, all affecting their chances in life.

The United States Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as, “Household level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food.” This food insecurity leads to hunger, obesity, chronic illness and stress.

Do the Democrats care? Do the Republicans care? No.

Do you care? This is the most important question. If you do, you have the power to end it.

Children under three are in a developmental period where food insecurity increases the risk of cognitive problems. School age children living with hunger are more likely to be ill, hospitalized, suffer stunted growth, live with behavioral issues, affecting the ability to sit, focus and learn. These children are affected mentally, emotionally, socially, and spiritually.

AMERICANS ANGRY

THEY SHOULD BE

My journey through life sees the father angry because of a trans male on his daughter’s basketball team, the Christian angry because his religion is mocked, the parent angry disapproving what is being taught to his child with no notification, the woman seeing abortion as the equivalent to murder of a child on the playground. Angry she is.

My journey sees the woman felt violated by being told her body is not her body, the outsider felt put down because of the color of his skin, the worker looked down upon as being intellectually inferior by the DC/NPR liberal elite, the woman in West Virginia told she is stupid because of where she lives, the American whose personal security is being invaded by people seeking to upend this security, the prisoner.

Right there are the old sacrificing much in life now barely surviving, living in loneliness, the father and mother suffering discomfort from family issues from a life of bad decisions, the convenience store worker whose boss treats his as a thing, not the producer he truly is, the citizen mad as Hell at the politicians for seeing them as a thing to be manipulated for an agenda hidden from them,

And you with me crying out for the answer to the ultimate question. Where do I go from here?

These are the people I have met. Met them all, I did. These are the people traveling through life just as I am doing.

No different are they than the people of the Canterbury Tales, or the people of the John Wayne classic, Stagecoach.

A people who are diverse to the extreme, representing all walks of life, all occupations, all religions, all races, all from the alcoholic to the preacher, to the law abiding to the non-law abiding, the honest to the dishonest, the rich to the poor to the prisoner. The United States represents 5% of the world population but has 20% of the imprisoned.

All these people are like the tree appearing with full leaves in July but baren in February. The tree is the same tree but of two essences.

These people diverse in many ways, good and bad, are still at the end of each day people. Their lives are different, at odds with each other, but sharing the belief and fear their way of life is in jeopardy because of powerlessness, economically and politically, to ensure their way of life is protected.

With this loss of power, division sets in, and a people divided are easily manipulated.

Here in Baltimore, I tell you the story of a woman named Patirica Johnson, a woman owning her home in Baltimore City fighting to keep her home from falling to the vultures of the legal profession, the lawyers, the money grabbers, the people having no allegiance to America.

Ms. Johnson bought her home in Baltimore from the proceeds of her son’s accident case. Never was she to move again. She owned her home. She had a day care business in her home to pay the bills.

With the Pandemic, her day care business shut down. Electricity needed to be maintained. Food needed to be purchased. The taxes to the City of Baltimore fell behind.

A group of investors purchased the Baltimore City tax lien on her dream, her life, and foreclosed giving her a chance to save her home by paying $16,000.00 on a bill once far smaller.

Interest needed to be paid. Lawyers charging outrageous fees and expenses needed to be paid.

If she failed to pay her house would become their house including the equity in the home. The amount over and above the amount of $16,000.00 will become the money of the investors and their lawyers.

Ms. Johnson represents America. People working their entire lives to survive losing all to forces beyond their control. America is to be a country where one is free to grow according to one’s merit. But the deal is not fair. The deal is not square. The deal is not new.

It is the same old deal originating in the Old Country brought to America.

The Politician and Your Kitchen Table

Politicians, Democrat and Republican, assert they hear and understand the American family’s concerns expressed at their kitchen tables. These politicians speak with forked tongues.

The politicians and their bosses of immense wealth sit nowhere near a kitchen table. They sit at large distant tables, pools, on yachts, in rooms of gold served by the people sitting around the kitchen table they claim to know.

In such a setting it is not possible for them to understand the conversations at that table between fathers and their children talking about sex, engaging in heated debates because of opinions at that kitchen table.

Each member at that kitchen table being different from each other struggles to live. Conversations about the deficiencies in the schools where their children attend are part of the conversation. Conversations about health issues abound. Conversations concerning insecurity in and around their homes. Conversations about no one there to hear them proliferate.

At this point the conversation has not even gotten to the rent is due, with no money to pay the rent.

People around that table are multi-dimensional but treated as financial simpletons by people who are in fact financial simpletons.

People around that kitchen table talk about their community, God, patriotism, church functions. They are good people.

Politicians in their homes of gold talk about how to make their bosses richer, making them their servants richer. They are not good people. Their bosses are not good people.

The people around that kitchen table are not in the experience, the consciousness of the rich in their houses behind gates. Their servants, the politicians, see them as people to be manipulated.

The family at that kitchen table is at the mercy of the lion lying in the forest waiting to steal their money, their way of living, the wealth they created.

One time there was a table, a kitchen table, and at that table a young lady kept a starving Oakie man alive by allowing him to feed upon her breast milk. And that is what is wrong with this table talk.

The politicians and their bosses speak of the people at the table, but their table does not have a woman feeding a starving man with her milk. Most horrible is not they do not know for even if they did know, they just do not care.

We have a president being a dictator for his friends, all rich living behind gates with private security, caring for them but not you.

But do not look to the Democrats. It is just not their turn to take care of their friends no different, and more often than not, the same.

The United States has highest the standard of living in the world but 40 to 60 million people sitting around their kitchen tables, if they have a table, are poor, hungry. Their schools are failing. Their children cannot read. Grandmother has sugar issues.

The rich through their servant politicians speak of these people around this table but they do not share their experiences, experiences not even in the consciousness of the country. They have no face.

Once the machine boss down the street in the bar spoke for the poor, the worker. The boss is now a boss in a West Palm Beach type world. But he is not your boss.

The workers, the families at that kitchen table, their discussions, their experiences, are done in isolation. They are unorganizable.

The politician, his boss, receive the contracts of wealth, the people around the kitchen table when home from work at the 7-11 receive the burden of creation of a welfare state working not to their benefit but to the bosses and their servants.

Today’s bosses speak of the people around the kitchen table but have no concept of the loneliness and isolation at that table. The people around the table age waiting to die. Mental illnesses exist at that table. No one speaks of this. Disease is at that table but no one talks about that disease.

The politicians speak of them as people who do not exist.

The table was once a way station. Now it is the beginning and the end. These people are poor and though they do not look like the poor in Africa, they live in the same world where they each are beyond history, beyond progress, left behind, live with no vision.

And where is the church. The priest, the preacher, is to care for his sheep but do they know this kitchen table? Who is the voice of these struggling families in the spiritual world?

The rich and their servant politicians have no intention to understand the families around that table. They do not care. But they want to control them, dominate them, use their blood when needed. They simply do not care.

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THINKING ABOUT DEATH?

Today we begin with a question, largely ignored, but begging to be explored and answered.

Should we not be concerned about what lies ahead? We fucus on what lies ahead, job wise, family wise, health wise among a slew of other ‘wises’ but what about when life ends.

An inordinate amount of time causing anxiety is spent planning for the golden years. But these golden years are like the golden years of youth. Each end.

We plan for everything in life. Good health, financial security, pretty-green grass, retirement. But what about when life ends?

There is the preacher talking about this question, but he speaks to about 20%, if that much, of the people in the United States suggesting his words to most lack relevancy.

We have built-in desires, to not go hungry, to not be cold, to have a roof over our heads, to have companionship, to be safe. To know what lies ahead when all this ends for many is more in the subconscious than the conscious, inadvertently causing personal unrest and happiness.

We have physical and emotional needs. This is not to be denied but equal to physical and emotional needs are spiritual needs, also not to be denied.

In this world there appear multiple types of sciences that are factually one science with multiple branches. There being one science, implicitly means there is one scientific method making sciences organically connected.

Isaac Newton, known more as a scientist than a philosopher, gave us a scientific view or concept of the world which significantly influenced philosophy and theology. His “Concept of the universe as a dynamic and progressive self-unfolding and developing system” supports the idea of the universe as one vast mechanistic system of which we are a part. All is connected and interrelated. One vast mechanical thing depending on all parts, no matter how small, working efficiently as designed.

In Chronicles II of the Old Testament, God appeared to King Solomon and said to him:

“Make a request of me, and I will grant it to you.” Solomon answered God saying.

“You have shown great favor to my father David, and you have allowed me to succeed him as king. Now, Lord God, may your promise to my father David be fulfilled, for you have made me king over a people as numerous as the dust of the earth. Give me, therefore, wisdom and knowledge to lead this people, for otherwise who could rule this great people of yours?” God replied to Solomon, saying.

“Since this has been your wish and you have not asked for riches, treasures and glory, nor for the life of those who hate you, nor even for a long life for yourself, but have asked for wisdom and knowledge in order to rule my people over whom I have made you king, wisdom and knowledge are given you…”.

If all is related and interconnected these words and the truths within are part of this inter-relationism and interconnectedness. That is this vast mechanical thing.

Politics in our country has become difficult and distorted. Good intermingles with evil, giving us indifference to the good.

Solomon prayed for wisdom, not riches, to care for his people. In response God brought upon him wisdom.

Today, political greatness is fleeing. The focus of the people is now on questions and concerns here today and gone tomorrow. In this focus, happiness with security of the mind finding peace is lost due to the ultimate question, “Where do I go from here” being ignored, being pushed back.

The story of the prayer of Solomon is telling for it suggest we seek not “Riches, treasures and glory, nor for the life of those who hate you, nor even for a long life for yourself”, but for the wisdom and knowledge to see that the question, “Where do I go from here?” demands attention. It is in this attention where the road to a life of happiness begins for then we have the wisdom and knowledge necessary for a life to be well ruled.

BREAD ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH

Why is alcohol and drug abuse, legal and illegal, prescribed and not prescribed, incredibly prevalent in the United States? About 178,000 deaths resulted from alcohol abuse in 2020-2021. A 29% increase from just a few years earlier in 2016-2017. It is higher today.

In 2023, 70.5 million Americans, age 12 and over, used illegal drugs or misused prescription drugs.

Is the drug industry, legal and illegal, in the United States a major economic driver of the economy, bigger than the steel industry, right up there with the oil industry?

Exxon/Mobile’s revenue was approximately $349.6 billion in 2024. In the same year, the U.S. pharmaceutical market alone was estimated to be around $639.22 billion.

Is the United States the number one market in the world for alcohol and drug usage, again legal and illegal?

The United States stands out with the highest overdose death rates in the world, largely driven by the opioid crisis, and significantly higher than other countries globally. This is measured not by the number of deaths but as a proportion of the population.

Why is it that there drug cartels for purchasing and distribution of illegal drugs not only in Mexico but in the United States?

Why is the United States the leader of the world in loneliness and unhappiness?

Why is the United States first in the world when it comes to psychiatry, and mental therapy?

Our country feels empty as if a land of dying stars giving us a world where the human spirit has little, if anything, to feed upon. There is hostility towards the arts. Meaning in life there is little appearing to be sacred.

The fire of youth is missing. The clergy is a fraud and needs to be watched. We are growing up with the Gods of our youth dying before our eyes. People are victimized by circumstances beyond their control.

Living for the moment with little interest in salvation and the hereafter has become a way of life.

Why is it that the church as an organized institution in the United States is declining with churches being sold to developers of real estate and conveyors of alcohol?

Is there a connection between these questions and the number one issue facing Americans? That is the issue of ignoring that man is a creature that cannot live by bread alone.

Man has multiple components all of which must flourish to produce man at his best, and the achievement of the glory unique to man.

These components are physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. And none of these are flourishing.

Where do we begin? Begin with the church banishing the teaching of falsities contrary to a rationally driven faith. Then organize to advance our interests in the job place, in the polity and to address not just our physical needs but our spiritual needs. Happiness cannot achieved without both these needs being met.

We are contingent beings. I did not make myself. And neither did you. There is only one law operative in our lives making us all brothers and sisters.

But we live by laws enacted by man, laws contrary to the laws, universal to all, taking the brothers and sisters of this world and putting them into division driven by ignorance leading to a world of hate and discontent.

Need a strong faith driven world. That is a faith believing that all may not be equal in ability but are equal before the law, that is the universal law. Recognizing the longing to secure shelter, food and security is right there with the longing to find answers to the question, where do I go from here?

And it is because these longings are universal and eternal that the fight to achieve these ends can never be subdued.

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WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE?

The Goal of Prime Directives

Prime Directives has as its goal to attract those struggling or having questions, spiritually and materially, at times feeling betrayed, lost and fearful, to come together sharing concerns seeking a life of security, materially, emotionally and spiritually. A life where all have value and appreciated.

Once together the path forward is the pursuit of a life where each of us no matter who we are, what we are, and from where we come, is free to determine the way we live. Our strength is living as one.

Through a life acknowledging the pillars of man, within you and me, the foundation for a life of meaning and happiness is discovered. These pillars are material, mental, emotional and spiritual. One cannot be without the other pillars.

Required, contrary to the ways of the modern world, there is required the recognition of the spiritual pillar as necessary as the material pillar for happiness. It can be no other way.

Equally required is an economic order, the material pillar, that honors the true producers of the goods and services, that is the workers, with a democratic order reflective of this economic order.

Organization into a force not ignored by the politicians and their lords, the elite/rich, the hypocrites, the traitors of all good and decent is necessary.

All the while, answering the questions, where are we in history, why are we where we are, and what can we do to move forward as intended with the ultimate question of life, “Where do I go from here”, being answered.

STATEMENT of PRIME DIRECTIVES

We live in an eternity. Who we are today, we owe to those who came before us continuing to make history with our problems being no different than the problems faced by our ancestors. Concerns of shelter, food, health care, employment, security and happiness remain the same.

All have and continue to care for their children, their futures, their dreams. All have and continue to face doubts and questions concerning issues of God and immortality. All have and continue to dare to have a genuine say in their government, in their community, in their lives.

History is the struggle to address these concerns, to answer the questions, where are we in history, why are we where we are, and what can we do to move forward as intended and “Where do I go from here”.

Where are we in history? We are in a transition period of an endless cycle moving forward with periods of growth, followed by stagnation leading to revival. In revival is found the door to transition to growth. All we need to do is to open this door. This is the period in which we are, the revival period.

Why are we where we are? For years we, that is you and me, have stagnated and the issues before us compel us to survive to open the door. In this we have no choice. Within this is the seed of discontent giving us revival.

What can we do to move forward as intended? We can do what our ancestors did and that is to reach out as leaders of the many, the believers, the true producers, grasping the truth as now revealed showing the way.

"Where do I go from here", the ultimate question driving life is of this transition.

Into this transition is where I and you are going.

In answering these questions, man moves forward understanding the laws of nature are basic and true for all people.

And these are the prime directives of life hence the name of this website and group.

Agenda of Prime Directives

Rare to you and me, unique to our times, is a door waiting to be opened through which we can enter not as Americans, not as Christians, not as Jews, not as Muslins, but as a people seeing each matter, each has value, each is respected, and seeing forgiveness serves us well.

Break away from the ways controlling our lives, the tired and failing ways, (ways that clearly fail us) and come together to share our stories, our thoughts, our plans, our views, like the travelers of The Canterbury Tales, proceeding into a world where each is heard and respected, placing into action the means to give the potency of our lives its actuality, where our dreams become reality.

History has and continues to be the making of a world recognizing it is the worker getting up each day to work creating the world in which we live. The workers are the Producers building this world struggling for justice.

The conditions of our country, our world, run contrary to this recognition. This is not acceptable. This leads to a waste of who we are and what we can be.

Each day of my life I work with God's creatures, good and evil, (that is correct God's creatures includes the evil) seeing with an eye not constrained by the bitterness of the hearts so dominate in our lives understanding each of us in our own way is as lovely as the spring morning, the freshly fallen snow. In this understanding, the world in which we live, where blood seemingly rains down more than the water of the rain, does not need to be our future.

We have a choice. We have free will. Violence and despair do not need to be our lives, do not need to be the world of our children, do not need to be the world of our grandchildren. Does not to be your life.

Each of us possesses a duty defined by the circumstances of each, to not rebuild what we may have lost but to go on building upon what our fathers and mothers did, no matter how imperfect, giving due tribute to their struggles, successes and failures with a focus on being righteous as we best understand the righteousness of Providence.

Prime Directives seeks to establish a way forward embraced by Americans, and the mothers and fathers rising as we do in lands far away deemed our enemy.

All share the same life experiences, awakening each day, with the same feelings and hopes. Prime Directives seeks the way embraced by all. All are brothers and sisters.

A Call to Me

Contact me through the above Talk to Me Link to share your thoughts.

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ETHAN AND PATRICIA

AMERICA'S BEST ASSET

Our young couple, Ethan and Patricia, struggle in a way known only to those struggling with little to advance dreams, slipping away. They wake up each morning and move forward with one commitment, a commitment focusing on their daughter, a commitment made difficult because of the callous and indifferent treatment by the work system in which they work.

This commitment takes them to the church in which they were each baptized seeking their daughter’s participation in the Sacrament of Baptism. Ethan and Patricia being parents and children of God, of the Roman Catholic Church, happy they were to present their child to God through their parish Priest in the presence of grandparents, parents, family and friends.

Wearing her mother’s Baptismal dress, Father holding the daughter of Ethan and Patricia in his arms baptized her placing Holy Water on her head saying the words, “I baptize thee in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”.

In his Homily, Father spoke of the importance of living the wisdom of God speaking of the story of the prayer of Solomon to God asking not for world riches, glory, victory over those who hate him, but wisdom and knowledge so that he could be a good and just ruler to his people. And the Lord, God, gave Solomon this wisdom with the promise of one to come later to provide the way to salvation.

This was Jesus preaching that the sun shines upon all, the rain falls upon all, for all are brothers and sisters, children of God, all to be loved as such.

Ethan and Patricia, believing in these teachings taught to them as children, will teach the same to their daughter with the same hope from ancient times to build a better nation.

They will also draw on the courage of their people struggling first as slaves, then as people called free living no differently from slavery, followed by becoming second-class citizens never surrendering to the dark side. A struggle still going by being subject to a government private in nature, not the public government under the Constitution, crushing black and white.

Their lives are controlled by the government in which they live, not the government of the United States, but the government called Walmart to whom the government of the United States answers.

They will find a way forward consistent with their teachings. To do otherwise is to walk away from their daughter, which they will not do, the same alternative rejected by their parents and ancestors because they too had no choice but to go on never surrendering.

Ethan and Patricia will continue thinking, therefore existing, knowing the government to which they serve, public and private, answers by necessity to the same Laws to which Ethan and Patricia answer.

The words of their Scriptures, words of truth as understood by them, are their guide, their illumination.

"THEY ARE GREEDY LOVERS

OF MONEY'

(Said Henry Ford)

Our young couple, Ethan and Patr.cia, started as many of us did. Full of life, vitality, hope, dreams, love for all times, knowing only one way to live, that is belief in God, family, country, and all the virtues that make America what it is as portrayed in the movies.

Working hard, Ethan and Patricia never give up. But alone they live among many. Their employer returns their devotion and commitment with acts and deeds of ingratitude destructive of humanity with their employer advancing acts and deeds of inhumanity in the name of profit.

Henry Ford speaking of the capitalist said, “They are greedy lovers of money”.

These bosses show themselves to be hypocrites. Walmart boost with pride their heritage as a family run business. Family values, nothing higher there is, touting family while punishing workers who need to be there for their families. To the Walmarts, it is their family that matters, not the families of their workers.

Walmart punishes workers unlawfully for medical absences, punishing people for absences due to illness.

EEOC complaints abound. Walmart has the resources to defend. The workers do not. Ethan and Patricia do not.

Disability discrimination suits run often with suits for hostile work environments, wrongful terminations. Half of their workers are part-time employees with fewer benefits.

Lawyers once a badge of inspiration in this country are nothing more than the agents of the devil and I say this as a lawyer. Judges make decisions ostensibly advancing justice while couching their decisions in words, assuring failing appeals, assuring their place in an esteemed place worthy of lies.

This is where we are in America. Justice is trampled upon by men and women of the courts, the lawyers pretending to be what they are not, worse men of high religion, no different than the worshippers of the golden calf at the foot of Mount Zion

Our young couple, Ethan and Patricia, struggle in the way only known to people who struggle with little to advance their dreams now failing. They wake up each morning and move forward with one commitment, their child, with this commitment being mocked by their bosses.

But how is their way forward when the government, not the public government, but the private government in which they work and live each day, that is the private government called Walmart, dictates every aspect of their lives.

Ethan and Patricia do not have a chance given this culture imposed on them by their employer.

Their workforce appears right and peaceful when I journey there to buy a pot, a can of car wax, or a box of eggs. The truth lays beyond appearances. Underneath this appears lays exploitation.

Their team of lawyers, lobbyists, politicians are no match for their employees who have no one except at best a weak, ineffective and cowardly politician.

This must stop.

OUR COUPLE LOSES EXISTENCE

Ethan and Patricia earn working 70 hours per week before taxes, the amount of $51,480.00 each year representing a gap of $8,040.00 between income and expenses. Short term relief ensued in credit cards followed by new and additional burdens. The president and CEO of the company for which Ethan and Patricia work earned before taxes last year $27.4 million. This is 532 times the combined incomes of Ethan and Patricia.

Loneliness sets in for this young couple although strangely they are not alone. In 2024, 21% of adults in the United States reported feeling lonely, disconnected from family, friends and the world. Anxiety, depression and feelings of no meaning or purpose ensue.

Roughly 40 million Americans use medication for conditions related to depression, anxiety, and other mental health concerns.

Relationships suffer because of being too busy, always working, being exhausted, and daily struggles with mental challenges. This is becoming the world of Ethan and Patricia.

They are being worn down in ways harmful to the body, the mind and the spirit in ways not understood unless you have lived it. They feel trapped in a system keeping them down no matter how hard they work and fight.

The endless and constant pressure to make ends meet takes them down stealing mental health, creating loneliness and its ill effects. The worst part is the stealing of money, peace of mind is fleeting because hope is crushed and with it the vitality necessary to put one foot in front of the other.

Then there is the “poor tax” where individuals with lower incomes pay more for goods and services than those in higher income neighborhoods. Basic necessities are hard to meet. Loans with higher interest rates engulf them.

Living in poverty involves a collection of higher costs. Poor credit scores result along with payday loans and credit cards. Check cashing services, money orders weigh heavily. Not having a car means expensive and difficult public transportation.

In the world Ethan and Patricia live, basic security is threatened, morality breaks down, balance and harmony flee creating a culture of not belonging.

This accelerates the breakdown of morality, brings on more stress, anxiety, emotional and mental issues finding expression in violence, domestic discord, crime, alcohol abuse and drug addiction far too often ending lives and shattering families.

Soon the daughter of Ethan and Patricia will enter the local public school, bringing additional strain because of decay in the schools. Then the rent increases.

Spiritual health is pushed aside and forgotten but still present by necessity further complicating life for the worse.

“Poverty is essentially about power-or the lack of it. It feels like you can work as hard as possible, and you’ll be on the verge of losing everything. It’s about knowing that in a society that is based on wealth, you don’t exist. And that is perhaps the most challenging thing of all.”

A YOUNG COUPLE DREAMS

Little attention by the media, our politicians, our clergy is directed towards people like our young couple Ethan and Patricia in the story below. Their lives of struggling do not match a home invasion of a rich American.

There is no glory placing our eyes on children in our nation’s capital going to bed as I write these words with no food. The owners of the media, the politicians, do not want our attention in this direction because this is an admission that our economic system is a failure. There is no profit here.

Ethan and Patricia work for an employer with more employees than any other business entity in the world. This largest employer in the United States having taken the place of US Steel with 1.4 million employees. A Fortune 500 company this is.

Its owners have more wealth than 49 million Americans combined. They employ Ethan and Patricia who do not make enough money to take their child to see Snow White without using a credit card.

This employer receives tax breaks and tax subsidies estimated at more than $7.8 billion per year or enough money to hire 105,000 new teachers each year.

And then there are the dividends measuring in the billions of dollars avoiding billions of dollars in taxes through creative means designed by lawyers walking away from ethics.

This employer with locations throughout the country is a burden upon local and state government because they call on the local and state governments to help their employees survive one day to the next.

Undistributed earnings in the billions of dollars lay overseas not subject to US taxation. Subsidies from state and local governments amount annually to millions of dollars.

In Maryland this company employed 18,573 employees. The subsidies and tax breaks from Maryland is enough to hire 1,209 teachers in Maryland.

Meanwhile Ethan and Patricia are paying 28% interest to take their daughter to see Snow White brought to them by Disney and Disneys’s Chinese friends making more than the employers of Ethan and Patricia.

Ethan and Patricia’s income does not meet expenses. Their employer in 2025 reported annual income taxes at $20.157 Billion dollars, an increase of 23.89%. The year 2024 saw an increase of 44.8% and 19% in 2023.

The low wage practices are said to cost taxpayers $6.2 billion annually through public assistance programs like food stamps, Medicaid, and subsidized housing.

Its CEO made a total of $26.9 million in 2023 representing salary, stock awards, and other compensations. This number in 2024 was $27.4 million.

THEY FIND HELP IN A CREDIT CARD

Ethan and Patricia obtained a credit card promising low interest rates with easy payments. Their income from their jobs remained behind their expenses. The credit card promised relief leading to more debt and another credit card. Interest approached 28%. Debt grew and with it, monthly expenses for the debt needed to be financed. More hours for work were sought not to pay daily expenses but to pay the interest on their growing credit card debt.

Like many before them, Eathan and Patricia did their best they could to carry on life as close to normal as possible as they knew normalcy. Like many before them, they found ways to cut corners, to make do, while keeping up appearances all is well. But hidden in appearances were dreams postponed soon to be abandoned. College already postponed became a fading and elusive dream, a dream transferred to their child.

Cheap transportation is sought but not possible. Inferior clothing appears cheap and inviting at Walmart but not really because it will last a brief time forcing the Good Will Stores to come into neighborhoods never seeing such stores but now the Easter Dress, the Easter Bonnett, for themselves and their child comes from the Good Will Store, a tax deduction for the rich. It always goes back to the rich.

The quality of food on the table lessens for better food requires more money.

Ownership of a car, ownership of a home, ownership of life, are slipping away, beginning with savings not possible in this world and a credit score flagging bad credit because payment on the last credit card bill was late, a week late.

Leisure time. What is that? When is that? Where is that? This Ethan and Patricia recall from their days with mom and dad. A dream they relish to this day.

Once there were pubs for the poor but no more as the pubs have been replaced by bars for the rich watching sports teams.

Baseball teams once accessible by the worker now are not affordable to the worker, who nonetheless awakens hoping the day will be a good one. This is the world of Ethan and Patricia.

Once the worker, the poor, went to the movies affordable but not now as Disney is important to the profit seeker so the credit card for the baby to see Snow White purchased a few minutes of movie time paying 28 % interest to see a movie.

With some income though not enough Ethan and Patricia carry on the best they can. Their lives, how they lived, their dreams are now modified.

Vacation. What was that? From the vocabulary, the word luxury no longer existed. But Ethan and Patricia refused to abandon the values by which they defined themselves reflecting the values of their parents.

Discussions, that mom needs to work more hours, discussions that dad needs to work more hours in addition to his full-time work if not with the same employer than with the employer across the street paying minimum wage, are now the discussions of Ethan and Patricia.

In these discussions once promising expectations decline worse still hope flees.

Worse still, Ethan and Patricia are alone. They live among many but live alone. The newspapers, television, internet bring news but no mention is there of their situation in life. All the news is about Trump and the ways and concerns of the rich.

Ethan and Patricia are of the Americans numbering in the millions but forgotten, not seen, not heard, not cared for.

With ballgames and football games not within reach, with movies not within reach, where are the heroes once prominent in our lives.

Today children have no heroes, only a father always at work, a mother always at work. Attending school many judge the child asking what is wrong with your mom and dad for not being there on parent’s night. This is the future of the baby of Eathan and Patricia.

Will these pressures affect Eathan and Patricia? Yes. Sex will suffer. Everything suffers maybe straining the marriage ending in divorce and child support payments in custody battles.

Is this the future of Ethan and Patricia? For millions this is the future, this is the present and who profits from this but the lawyers flying around like vultures. Family break ups are profitable. The problems of the poor are profitable. Poverty is profitable.

Will the child of Ethan and Patricia attend high school in bliss meeting a girl, take her to the prom in a suit and a flower planning a future? This future once was, is now crushed.

The American dream, where is it? What was it? Optimism goes out the window and coming in pessimism.

People exist, Ethan and Patricia exist, not living. Being of existence means pride is no more. Women’s fashion is no more. Men’s fashion is no more. Hope and affluence are words no longer in the spoken words day to day. The difference between men and women is no more. Romance flounders.

The ones who came before have memories of good times, memories of Christmas and Easter, days at the beach. For people like Ethan and Patricia such memories for their child will not be because these no longer exist.

Then the children of the Ethans and Patricias of the world grow up and what do we have at this point but more and more people with no wealth, no money, no hope, nothing giving us a ready market for alcohol and customers for the drug cartels existing in this country seated next to the leaders of this country, politically and spiritually.

Americans always adjust. Again, they will. Ethan and Patricia will adjust but sometimes the adjustment is not for the good.

In 1935 there were over 3.5 million jigsaw puzzles in the hands of Americans helping with the days of the Depression. Today puzzles hardly exist but in the homes of the rich. This says something and what it says is not good.

In the old days we had our Hoovervilles. Today’s Hoovervilles exists but as substandard housing right in the middle of prosperity well hidden.

As for the upper crust of today, they spend more money on water than Ethan and Patricia spend on baby food.

THEIR INCOME AND LIFE

Our young family of Ethan and his wife, Patricia, with their several months old daughter have a monthly gross income of $4,290.00 giving them a shortage of $670.00 per month or an annual shortage of $8,040.00. Ethan works full time, and his wife works part time. Between the two of them they work 70 hours each week.

Their income simply is not enough to cover their expenses. They are not panicking but they are deeply concerned hiding a growing fear of what the future holds for them. Community College is elusive.

One day hope arrived in a letter from a bank saying because of your work history and good credit you have been pre-approved for a VISA credit card with a credit limit of $750.00. This will help and the amount to be paid back each month is an affordable payment. This, the letter said. This will help them meet ends. So, they put food purchases on the card and the payment will only be around $25.00 to $30.00 increasing modestly their monthly shortage.

But the deficit is still there only now larger. With further tightening of their financial belt not possible with no increase in their hourly wage, there is now something new in Ethan’s and Patricia’s life. Debt.

They now have debt. And to pay the bills and service the debt, the credit card is used again and again.

However, because they pay on time, the bank raises the credit limit. Soon the credit limit went from 750.00 to 1,500.00.

That low introductory interest rate promised to them is now 21% causing Ethan and Patricia to become caught up in a national trend of paying bills through credit pushing upward personal debt and national private debt. Work does not pay enough to pay the bills. Help from the government is not enough.

In 2022 46% of households held credit card debt. With the high interest rates this is an expensive way to survive. In 2021 the average credit card balance was around $6,000.00 subject to an interest rate of 15%. By 2023, this rate was 21%. Today it is higher.

Emergencies even in the best of times arrive. Ethan and Patricia with help of their parents, the grandparents, struggle and do without for there to be birthday and gifts from Santa Claus. Savings do not exist even as a dream.

That credit card debt averaging $6,000.00 per card holder is part of the national $1.115 trillion credit card debt with 44% of cardholders carrying debt over from month to month.

It has been projected if families can dedicate on average 5% of gross monthly income to credit card debt, the debt will be paid off in two years. But this assumes they stick to the payment plan free of any emergencies no matter how small with no additional borrowing.

Ethan and Patricia are borrowing more every year. Everything is more expensive. Debt is more expensive. Rent and food are more expensive. They joined the 1 in 5 cardholders who have maxed out their credit card. More and more Americans are falling behind on their credit card debt. Delinquencies are growing with rising interest rates.

And the states most burdened are states that voted for Trump. 8 0f 10 most burdened states voted for Trump. Least burdened voting democratic. 9 of 10 least burdened voted for Biden.

This is now the life of Ethan and Patricia.

MEET TTHAN AND PATRICIA

Let me introduce you to Ethan and Patricia, a young couple in their early to mid-20s living in the Cockeysville area of Baltimore County, Maryland. They met in an elite public high school in Baltimore City. And within a few years of graduation and after having attended community college for a few years, they married.

The wedding was a simple church wedding, followed by a gathering of in the church hall of this Catholic church. Their moms and dads, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, some older, some younger, were in attendance. Joy hung in the air as they began their lives together eagerly planning a future of security, children, and making their parents loving and proud parents and grandparents.

Ethan and Patricia represent American youth at their best living among millions no different than they. They are the future and because they work hard, root for their Orioles and Ravens, suffering depression when the Ravens lose to the Steelers, taking pride in themselves, their family, their community, they present a good and positive American future. They are the future.

Ethan and Patricia being good Catholics believe in God and in the sanctity of the unborn. They are a serious couple.

Ethan works at a large retail establishment in Cockeysville, Maryland selling foodstuff, lawn mowers, aspirin, and whatever you can imagine full time being paid $16.50 per hour while Patricia works at the same establishment as a part time employee. She also is paid $16.50 per hour.

They are proud Americans celebrating the independence of their country on the 4th of July with family in the back yard of a grandparent eating hot dogs, potato salad followed by fireworks. Dogs beg for food with great rewards. Memorial Day and Labor Day are remembered well though many of these holidays are workdays for Ethan and Patricia while for many others these are days to purchase a mattress.

Patricia’s part-time hours amount to 20 hours per week. Between the two of them, their monthly household income is $4,290.00 depending on Patricia’s hours worked. Sometimes more. Sometimes less. This is pretax income.

Nationally for this store, the percentage of part-time associates is 50%, well above the national average at 29%. It was 20% in 2005. Part time employees can expect to work 18 to 24 hours a week making Patricia fortunate in having more hours of work.

Their employer is reported to be the largest private employer in the United States with 1.5 million employees. Its part-time activity is reported to be very active in the Baltimore area.

To some their income sounds like a lot of money, to others like a little. Which is it?

The answer is how much does a young married couple hoping to have children living in Cockeysville, Maryland need to make their dreams a reality.

INCOME AND EXPENSES

They have a total income before taxes and deductions of $4,290.00 per month.

They have a monthly budget:

Rent $1,400.00

Utilities 300.00

Groceries 600.00

Transportation 400.00

Clothing 100.00

Cell phone 200.00

Cable 150.00

Health Care 50.00

Rental Insurance 25.00

Miscellaneous 200.00

FICA Taxes 355.00

Federal Tax 230.00

State and Loca Taxes 385.00

Total Income $4290.00

Less Expenses 4,395.00

Monthly Deficit $105.00

Their income is absorbed 100 % plus more by the expenses to meet minimum way of life. No room for savings.

Their dream to have a child remains. This is their life.

Work. Pay the rent. Work. Pay the utilities. Work. Then, go back to work again and again.

Years go by with no change except increases in rent, utilities, food, transportation and so on. Increases in income? None or not enough to meet inflation.

No changes describe their lives except more bills to pay with less money with one more change. Patty is now pregnant.

THE FAMILY GROWS

The family, now being three not two, does not increase the number of hours worked except to the extent extra hours may be worked creating overtime for Ethan but not Patricia. She works part time so she can work more hours at the same rate.

There will be additional expenses on a regular basis such as child-care, food, formula, diapers, clothing, medical care.

Before the third member of the family, income failed to meet expenses. There will now be more expenses. From where will additional revenue originate?

Child Care for three days a week $210.00

Health and Hygiene Products 20.00

Formula 40.00

Food 160.00

Diapers 75.00

Clothing 60.00

Monthly total $565.00

Other than her employer offering benefits up to ten weeks of paid time off to eligible birth mothers, Ethan and Patricia are on their own.

Some of these expenses can be lessened with help from family like their parents, their grandparents, an aunt, uncle or friend. Government aid can help. Absence these resources this couple has only their employment to help them.

Is it enough? No.

With no increase in hours worked by either parent, meaning income at $4,209.00, Ethan and Patricia are facing a shortage of $670.00 per month or $8,040.00 per year.

Part Four

How is this deficit of $8,040.00 each year provided no further setbacks occur to be paid? Ethan and Patricia reached out to their employer hoping for help but none came.

Then they turned to their government, local, state and federal being told their government will stand with them. Help with the purchase of food, payment of rent and with child care is available.

There would be assistance with food with the amount of assistance available to them depending on their net income and state. These are called SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits based on net monthly income. The maximum benefit for a household size is reduced by the household’s expected contribution of 30% of its net income.

Most families in Maryland with gross income up to 200% of the federal poverty level, about $4303.00 a month for a family of three, qualify for food stamps. There is no asset limit in Maryland.

Ethan and Patricia have a gross income exceeding $4303.00. There will be no food assistance.

The Maryland Department of Housing and Community Decvelopment (DHCD) is available to help. The tenant must meet all of the following criteria.

1. Be identified as the Leaseholder.

2. Not receiving other forms of rental assistance.

3. Must be delinquent on rental payments.

4. And be delinquent due to illness, employment or wage loss.

Ethan and Patricia meet conditions One and Two, and not conditions Three and Four. There will be no rental assistance.

A married couple with one child in Maryland may be eligible for childcare assistance through the Child Care Scholarship Program or the Child and Dependent Care Credit.

This family and their size may be eligible if their annual income is less than $76,117.00 making them eligible for childcare assistance. They can reasonably look for help in the amount of $325.00 per month.

For Ethan and Patricia, they look somehow to make ends meet.

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Why Is It Seedtime?

Politicians turned legislators and executives possess a refusal to enact laws thereby denying the citizens of this country the benefit of a wholesome country.

Decisions affecting our lives are made in rooms hidden from citizens by people whose loyalties are not to the citizens but to the few responsible for their election, what they think and do, then presented to the citizens as good for them.

Politicians are deaf to the voices of those responsible for the wealth of this country, those who made this country, what it is. That is the worker.

Politicians ignore the will of the many, placing the many, the worker, outside the protection of the government while protecting the rich.

A capricious and arbitrary government results, giving us unfairly levied taxes on the workers, the poor, while permitting the rich to escape taxes.

Through their control of the media, the rich paint a picture of them carrying the burdens for the benefit of the worker. Nothing is farther from the truth.

The rich divide us among ourselves fighting our neighbor who is no different from ourselves operating as a diversion from the exploitation of the worker by the rich. And when the rich among themselves disagree here and abroad it is the children of the worker, the many, the poor whose blood is expended.

Causing many outside the protection of the government, unfairly taxed and oppressed, to petition their government but these petitions are not heard.

The path to fair representational government is denied to the citizens, the people, the workers, through the buying and selling of politicians by the rich giving us government foreign to the interest of the people, the worker, the poor.

Many have lives of desperation, little hope, beaten down by burdens not of their making. Burdens such as paying inflated bills with insufficient income wondering will they be able to provide a good life for their children.

Many victims of this capricious and arbitrary government seek redress through ways, not legal, bringing them into the criminal system, a system designed by the few to protect the perpetrators of the wrongs. This court system, dependent not on law but the will of the bought politicians, obstructs the administration of justice.

Resulting is a court system protecting the rich, making a mockery of the court system. A government that is a giant, impersonal, and bureaucratic machine with politicians crooked and insensitive to the life of the people, the workers, the poor grows stronger with the worker becoming weaker.

The rich, through corporations, govern the many, the workers, the poor free of the constraints of the Constitution giving them absolute control over the lives of the people, the workers, the poor.

When the government fails to be trusted, the people, the workers, the poor are alone in a harsh world not of their doing.

The glory that once was America struggles to survive. Many have never seen or experienced this struggling glory. “It was meant for another not looking like me,” say many.

“Life lacks magic, hope, completeness,” many say while longing for something greater than all together.

Many seek answers, freedom from doubts, and consolation from the preacher, rabbi, or priest. In the quiet and private moments of their lives, they inadequately confront mortality, fearing death and what it means.

The institutions of religion fail the people. Intellectual and spiritual questions are ignored, bringing on the lack of emotional stability and satisfaction.

The time has arrived to be part of something making this glory real again, only this time, not for the other, but for you, for all. It is basic to America for the people to Rise Up, Stand Up, to a government destructive to these ends, and to change or abolish it.

Rise Up, Stand Up for a religion, a philosophy, a country that answers your questions, bringing completion to your life. That allows you to return to the days of your youth with its dreams and glory.

For the many never having a youth of dreams and glory Rise Up, Stand Up.

The right to throw off the restraints giving what we have is to be exercised through action, not words. Duty demands abolishment of the abuses and usurpations designed to deprive the people, the worker, of their rightful place.

This duty is to be honored.

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Prime DirectivesBaltimore American Statesmen

African american cemetery in baltimore, receiving no respect. 18august2025

StATE BUILDING BRIGHTER FUTURE FOR A WEALTHY COUNTY SCHOOL SEEN IN SECOND PICTURE, PICTURES OF POORER SCHOOL IN THIRD AND FOURTH PICTURES LEFT ALONE

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Prime Directives
Baltimore American Statesmen