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Bookstore www.primedirectivespublishing.com
Click here for readings
And To Contact Prime Directives Click Talk With Me
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.
To The One Living in Loneliness
Those who receive empty words from the preacher, those whose conservative and traditional values of living, values to him not defined as conservative or traditional, just the right way of living, those whose words of his mom and dad are not respected, those ridiculed by the liberal elite, the NPR elite, the Washington elite, to the person who is looked down as stupid and dumb from men and women with long noses having no value, these are the people of our country.
The person subject to physical and emotional abuse, the person whose job is a dead-end job, the person struggling to pay the rent, feed the children, the person whose children are victims of a failing school system in so many forms are the core of this country.
We live no differently from the serf, the peasant of the feudal ages. With one difference, there is. We today know and have experienced the taste of freedom.
The person living in loneliness, the person fearing the future, the person asking what happens to me when I die, the person with no friends, the person whose voice is not heard, this person is the core of our country.
The person entangled in the judicial system because of failure to pay medical bills, or bills arising from the purchase of that necessary to live, to survive, the person caught in the middle of what America is said to be and what it is, this person is the core of our country.
The person who is a veteran, of the army, navy, air force, marine, having seen the facts of the world going home to a country ignorant of these facts, the person who is denied fairness due to a disability, the person living these ways being many separate and kept away from the few taking their labor’s fruits to buy a yacht, this person is the core of our country.
Life is precious. Time is fleeting. Let us get moving.
The wicked lay in wait as the lion with the sheep their prey. The lion being the few, the rich. The sheep being the many, the creators of the rich.
To me the answer is to end the church as it exists enslaving, with the few, the people with ignorance, with a theology, a patriotic theology, the thinking man making no sense. The Islamic religion as stated and practiced like the church is a far cry from the teachings of their founder, Mohammed.
Our country is not the best country, but it does contain the best of hope. I will not let this hope be trampled upon.
People we worship live under false oaths. The powerful conspire, freely engaging in crime. They hide in ambush like the lion.
We have a duty to the fatherless. To the orphan/ To the poor. Our duty is a devotion to stand in the way of those, pretending and saying otherwise, ignoring the poor, the people who live and work making our day what it is today.
DARE TO LIVE
Each of us desires to be part of something good and wholesome. Each of us desires to be respected in a democracy that is not only political but economic.
Each of us desires a job that enables us to live, feed and care for our family, to feel important and needed. None of us want a hand-out.
But as long the rich man governs, we have what is presented by the politician as a democracy when in fact our better angels are put to flight.
Strive for a country where there are no secrets governing us thus allowing us to restore ourselves.
Too many know a daily life of one struggle after another. Your face is not seen. Your voice is not heard. No one is listening.
Once we were part of the consciousness of our country, but no more are we, producing feelings of emptiness and insignificance. The political process excludes us. Work brings little satisfaction and acknowledgment.
Worrying about bills, health, children, parents, family consume the day creating a chaotic life.
The rich are organized, we are not. The rich are strong, we are not.
We work in our shops, our stores, our whare-houses, our food places, factories, hospitals, paid a wage not supporting a sustainable life.
No say in your work do we have. No different are we than the peasants of Feudal Europe.
Your honor and pride are trampled upon giving us loneliness, as politically expendable people making the holding onto hope difficult with the vitality flowing from it gone.
Each of us wants happiness, to be understood, to care for ourselves and family. We desire a life of meaning, a life that possesses value and matters.
You are needed and important and your spiritual life is good. No longer, I ask you to build a country hostile to you.
Build a country that does not crush hope but builds on it. You are an entity unto yourself running against your need for community. Unlike the rest, unlike the few, you build a world for the few leaving you a world of violence and insecurity.
Depression grows becoming internalized with ill health setting in physically, mentally and spiritually. With this loneliness comes futility, lack of belonging, lack of friendliness. Fatalism sets in. Isolation is your constant companion.
You are ignored except when needed for your work, your money and participation in a war not relevant to you.
There is no one to stand with you. No unions. No leaders. No Moses to lead you out of slavery through the desert to the Promised Land.
The welfare state exists not for you, not for the benefit of the worker, the poor, but for the wealthy. The rich inherent wealth. The poor, the worker, inherent debt.
Does not to be this way.
To the rich and the poor, the white and black, the Republican and Democrat, the Conservative and Liberal, the Christian, Hebrew and Muslin, each of you has value, each matter, each is important. Each I respect
To all possessing hope, a new way awaits you, a new religion, a new country, moving forward with the vitality implicit in hope.
Nothing is stopping us from crossing that Rubicon except ourselves. If we do not take a stand who will?
IT IS SEEDTIME
Seedtime, a time when in your life, the place where you work is a burden upon your life, your family, your dreams; when the politician comes to you for your vote without talking to you; when the politician knows little about how you live; when the politician does not talk about your problems because he is clueless as to how you live, how you think.
Worse is the politician does not care about you. To him you lack value. You do not matter. You are in his eye no more than a commodity.
Then there is the preacher spewing words of little help or consolation.
When the sun rises, when the sun sets, your struggles, your questions, are your struggles, your questions, and no one cares but you. You are alone.
But why should the politician care when he is there as an agent of a man, a woman, not known to you, who controls the money, with one interest, to seek riches.
And the preacher, he pretends to be what he is not when he stands with the man, the woman, with the money, robbing you of what you created.
He speaks of the Gospel telling you what it says, telling you what to believe, what to think, in total disregard to what makes you and me unique; that is the ability to think.
People want security, the means to be independent in a secure way. They want a life where the mental, physical and spiritual struggles are met. I say,
Give rise to a way of thinking, an old way, a conservative way, demanding the politician be your agent with a preacher who speaks of your inherent ability to think for yourself.
We live in a world where never have so many suffered for the few to live so well. This is wrong.
This suffering involves challenges to livable housing, good health, mentally and physically, self-esteem and a hope dying at the door of religion.
The resulting feeling of being left out, left behind, losing interest in community, and country, leads to alcohol, drug addiction and worse.
The political order controlled by the few perpetuates this failing economic order with its social order, while controlling the many, you and me, through control of the educational process and news media. But,
When one is left alone, faced with extinction, the instinct to survive takes over, looking for a way of living searching for answers not found in the economic, political order and certainly not found in religion with its agents of hypocrisy failing to address this search.
The way forward is to develop the idea, an old idea, a conservative idea, each matter, each possesses value, and these values are enhanced when this idea is the foundation of an economy breeding by necessity a political order caring for community and country.
You and I possess no economic independence, no economic energy. So how can we have a say in our lives, in the government directing our future, directing where our blood will be spent, when we lack the power to direct our lives?
What we are told to believe, the ethics we are told to endorse, simply do not fit the world in which we live. Rather our ethics are dominated by the ethics of the few, men and women of greed, who own the politician, owning you, owning the preacher. This ethics fits the world of the few.
Those who are purportedly our leaders do not deserve imitation.
Therefore, I say this.
Want to predict the future, then create the future as President Lincoln said. Or as Jesus said, exert your will. See that,
The liberal is no more honest than the conservative for each wants the same, power, power for themselves, for the men and women who put them where they are.
But they cannot have this power if you have this power. So, take it away. You can do it. We can it.
The politician robs you of your power. Your boss robs you of your money. The preacher robs you of your mind. Dignity is lost and once dignity is gone it is not possible to take it back.
There is a dream called America. A good dream this is. A universal dream it is. Own your land, own your country. Direct your life by the vote with the right to revolt when all fails to honor your dignity.
Our instinct for meaning, for spiritual fulfillment, for happiness, appears no longer met but the dream, the American dream, remains as always throughout time and space.
You are the soil. You are the water from the heavens. You are the Sun. You are the wind. It only takes that which is reserved to man. Free will. Demand your Will be respected and honored.
It is seedtime.
Bookstore www.primedirectivespublishing.com
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Talk With Me
Blog
Today’s Thoughts
Agenda of Prime Directives
Left Article – Hungry Children In DC
What Is & Agenda of Prime Directives
Who Am I
More Articles
Left Article - Appeal to the People
What is Prime Directives
Right Article - A Couple's Dreams
Bookstore
Video of Messages (Coming)
Prime Directive Meetings (Coming)
WHAT IS PRIME DIRECTIVES
Prime Directives has as its goal to attract those beaten down by life, spiritually, materially, betrayed, lost and fearful, to come together sharing their concerns seeking a life where they are secure, materially, emotionally and spiritually. A life where all are valued 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.
Through a life acknowledging the pillars of man, within each, gives you and me, the foundation for a life of meaning and happiness.
Required, contrary to the thinking of the modern world, is the recognition of the spiritual pillar necessary for happiness. Equally required is an economic order that honors the true producers of its goods and services, that is the workers, and the democratic order is to reflect the economic order.
Prime Directives hopes to bring us together organizing into a force not ignored by the politicians. In the process, answering the questions, where are we in history, why are we where we are, and what can we do to move forward as intended and desired.
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 largely 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, 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 desired. In answering these questions man moves forward.
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, and come together to share our stories, our thoughts, our plans, our views proceeding into a world where each is heard and respected, placing into action the means to give the potency of our lives an actuality.
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 truly are and what we can be.
Each day of my life I work with all of God's creatures 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. 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.
Each of us in our own way 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 giving due tribute to their struggles, successes and failures with a focus on being righteous as we best understand righteousness.
Prime Directives seeks to establish a way forward based on you and me 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.
Please contact me through the above Talk To Me Link to share your thoughts.
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through Talk With Me link above.
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A YOUNG COUPLE DREAMS
Chapter Five
(The following Chapter Five picks up on the story of Ethan and Patricia describing their days from meeting in high school, marrying, both working and having a child. They face a world where their combined incomes cannot keep pace with the expenses of their modest lifestyle. Chapters One through Four follow Chapter Five. Chapter Five describes their lives.)
Chapter Five
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, Ethan 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 healthy 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 on multiple televisions.
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 inadequate income though not enough Ethan and Patricia carry on the best they can. Their lives, how they lived, their dreams are now modified for the worse.
Vacation. What was that? From the vocabulary, the word luxury no longer existed.
But Ethan and Patricia refuse 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 Ethan 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 future love, attend the prom well dressed 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 is 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 their 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 can be.
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.
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. They use the credit card to pay the credit card.
However, because they pay on time, the bank raises the credit limit. 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 to have food.
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.
That which follows is the story of Ethan and Patricia from their beginning, the above being Part Five.
Chapter One
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 to24 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.
ChapterTwo
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 200.00
Cable 150.00
Health Care 200.00
FICA Taxes 355.00
Federal Tax 230.00
State and Local
Taxes 385.00
Total Income $4290.00
Less Expenses
4,395.00 Deficit $105.00.00
They are short $105.00 per month. No room for savings exists.
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.
Chapter Three
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 $210.00
Health and Hygiene
Products 20.00
Formula 40.00
Food 160.00
Diapers 75.00
Clothing 60.00
Monthly total month $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.
Chapter 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 childcare 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 Development (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 can look to reduce their monthly deficit to $240.00 or $2,880.00 per year.
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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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