Post Alpaca Lips Posts

When you are down and out, wealthy Americans are there to kick, and knock you about. Photo by   Solal Ohayon   on  Unsplash . Originally published on Medium . . In mid 1974, seven months after my father lost his job, we were all a few weeks away from living in the street, Dick and Dot, myself and my four sisters. Thankfully, dad did get six months of severance pay, at 60% of his salary. Yes, that was better than nothing, but getting your pay cut 40% overnight will dramatically change your current, and near future perspective. Few Americans are able to continually save enough of their take home pay to cover such a deficit for very long. Luckily, dad was able to get a loan from his aunt. Shortly afterward he also found a job, or just into the eighth month of joblessness. Sadly, he was never able to regain the same financial footing; he died in debt 33 years later. . My birth family’s full story was not a terrible one. It came very close to an all too frequent tragedy, and n...

Few of us still believe that assertion since many of the elected will stand by, or lie, as Americans die. Photo by   History in HD   on  Unsplash . . Essay originally published on Medium . . The January 6th insurrection, and the COVID pandemic were both infected by a devaluing of Americans not in their group, whether black, blue, brown, or white lives. However you qualify the deaths of Americans over the last 21 months, I think somewhere around   three quarters of a million   were due to a government that could be, and was switched off in critical ways when we needed it most. There are two basic outcomes from this devolution of our government. Either a   slow climb   back towards political   solvency , achieving a   bipartisan, reaching-across-the-aisle   politics, closer to what we had 40 to 60 years ago,   or   a   quicker slide   into full devolution and dissolution. . I am not saying what was accomplished 50 years...