Coming out of University (LSU) I was a well-read but useless English major. I was in sales for a few years, then drifted into carpentry. 40 years of banging nails put our 3 kids through Christian school, public high school, and then one Dukie and two Tarheel graduates who are serving the Lord and prospering.
Back in the ’90s, when our youngest hit middle school, my wife used her BS in Psychology to get into Nursing. Her 23 years nursing in ICU has made her a better breadwinner than I ever was.
Long about 2005, I went backto college in our local University, took 9 courses in Education. I wanted to be an English teacher. I got 4 state certifications to teach, but never achieved teacherhood. After two years of working with special students, a false accusation was raised about me which I easily disproved. At that time, 2008, our financial system was falling part. I went to work as a maintenance man at a local public assistance apartment complex. I did six years of plunging toilets, painting walls, replacing water heaters etc, as well as meeting many residents who were on various poverty programs.
Also, along that way, I wrote four novels: Glass half-Full, Glass Chimera, Smoke, King of Soul. After sending out a few manuscripts but then finding no response from Simon & Schuster nor Random House, I went rogue and published them myself with a little help from me friends, Jeff Bezos 7 Co.
During this entire time, 1980–2022, we have been believing members of a local church one Charismatic, then a second, our present one, Alliance.
All that to say: I have been working non-stop since 1965. The last job, a 2-year stint at Lowe’s Home Center, brought to me to eligibility for public assistance: Social Security, and commenting on the State of the Union, the World, and the Kingdom of God.
My conclusion about welfare, public assistance etc is: Democrats throw money into Build Back Better and the like, and Republicans throw money at Wall Street, as we did in 2008 when Hank Paulson went on TV to plead with the American people and our Congressional members. TARP and The Federal Reserve is welfare for the wall street crowd. Mortgage-backed Securites, Collateralized Debt Obligations, and other derivatives are just glorified money-from-nothing schemes. The exchanges between our Fed/Treasury/Big Banks are an officialized, governmentized shell game, the supply-side equivalent of, on the low end, our vast welfare system.
As for the Welfare system. . . For some enterprising, bootstrap workers, public assistance can function as a leg-up starting point to achieve real, dutiful, gainful employment. For others, it, admittedly, is just dole. But that abuse is just part of the way of the world, this corrupted world system. To monitor the full extent of all that public money — both high and low — is far too tedious and expensive to keep track of.
I hope you will forgive me this rant. But it is what I do. My definition of Retirement includes making use of a 65-year real-world matriculation toward having a right to say what I think as a free-thinking American who has written over a thousand blogs while weekly praising our Lord Jesus with song, speech and deed, but especially with . . . Love.
And yes, Jeff, I will follow the link that you provided above; then I’ll let you know what is my assessment of it.
Also, I’m glad you ordered Signature In the Cell. I believe it is one of the most important books published in our time here on this earth. Another good one is Hugh Ross’ The Creator and the Cosmos.
Keep the Faith and Keep speaking out on behalf of our Lord and Savior.
