It has been awhile. If you do stop to read these you definitely don’t get a daily dose like the New York Times. I think I take in about as much as I can take. Eventually my frustration leads me here. I often write on Facebook or post articles with criticism of the act going on. After you see the same thing continually rotate through, you decide that you have to have a sounding board to scream. That I suppose is where this has come in handy. I know there isn’t hundreds of people who stop by and read, so its not as though I have some following that needs to be appeased.
There always seems to be some sort of news that gets stuck under my nails that I just can’t get out. If you have dug in the dirt at all, you know what I am talking about. Over the past couple of weeks, it has been the homeless situation in America. The part of it that has been truly frustrating is squatters. Someone who finds an abandoned place and moves in. This thought seems harmless enough. Someone wants a roof over their head, so they find an open window or a broken down door and makes themselves at home. Except that home may actually belong to someone. When it does, it is on the homeowners to work to evict someone living in a property that they have no legal claim to. Let’s say a home comes up for auction. The previous tenant passed away. Their family does not live in the state anymore. So, as part of the process, the home is auctioned off. The new owners have purchased a place and plan to fix it up and use it as rental property. Except when they show up to the house, they find someone living there. You call the police. Technically this person is residing in a home you own. You show the paperwork and the deed to the property. Now imagine the police telling you there is nothing they can do?
Since the person can claim they have a lease or any number of other issues, you are forced to hire legal counsel to get them to vacate. The process has to be moved through the court system which is already bogged down. You are paying the mortgage on a home that you can’t get into nor can you begin whatever renovations are necessary for it to bring you extra income. Its all up to you and your wallet to find a solution where the “tenant” has to be forced to leave. Meanwhile, they may leave you with a much larger “to do” list before they do vacate. They may rip up pipes, bust walls, rip cabinets off the wall. Again, what can the owner do? Nothing. This will be months at a minimum to do. There are stories of getting someone out only to have another person to come in afterward and the process has to start all over again.
It is something that I truly worry about in our society. The massive push this country is experiencing where the onus of everything falls to the middle class working person or family. Lower income families will receive federal assistance while higher end millionaires still have an excess of ways to write off expenses to ease their tax burden. The size of the populous that does not fit those two extremes are dwindling at an alarming rate. This will be the beginning of the end so to speak.
As though to run more salt in the wound of Americans who have done all they can to ensure their credit scores are at a place where they qualify for the lowest interest rate they can achieve. That being said, mortgage rates are pretty much double what they were just a year ago. For a medium priced home, this means hundreds more in interest each and every month. Imagine what that equals on a 30 year mortgage. Along with this comes a new caveat. Now, those who have high credit scores will pay a bit more a month. Even though their credit score is higher than another buyer, they will be charged what is pretty much a “penalty” for having better credit. And why will that occur? Well to offset the amount of high possibility of those “higher risk” loans failing. Yes, you are getting penalized for doing well for yourself.
Our government has become an institution of attempting to even the playing field. That does not sound like a bad idea until you realize the things being done to make the field level. The government is now Robin Hood with the caveat of stealing is done to the middle class and not the wealthy. The wealthy work to make the laws and rules to make the middle class pay for the options that make those in poverty closer to the level of what many would consider middle class. How is this done? For the most part, its taxes.
Our America is like the Sunday service at your local church. At the end of the service, the offering plate is passed around. The difference between the church and government is this. When the plate comes to you, someone besides you reaches in your pocket and puts what they want in the plate. You don’t get a say in how much they take nor how it is distributed.
People are tired. Very tired. They are tired of watching the lazy get rewarded for sitting home and the working man getting fleeced of his money and wasting their time. What many are seeing now is their effort isn’t worth the effort. More of the working twice as hard for half as much. So when I tell you that there is a tipping point in our society and we are very close to it, I have been watching this for many years. We are much closer than any of you ever realize.
The Beaten Path 