It's burning again as it does every year. Some of the fires are set by stupid people, others are the result of accidents and then there are those which would happen no matter what - Mother Nature on the rampage. Why people insist on building homes in burn areas is beyond me. Then they don't have insurance against that because it is too expensive and they expect the government to bail them out.
Not only do they build in the burn areas but they build overpriced ticky-tacky houses made mostly of wood, sometimes even with "shake roofs" which are also made of wood, with shrubs and trees right next to the house. Then on top of that they build on slopes. Here in SoCal the shake roofs have pretty much been replaced but nobody makes them take them off if they still have them. The whole thing as an invitation to disaster: first the fires will burn all the vegetation (if not the houses) and when the rains come a few months later the hillsides will come sliding down because there are no bushes and trees holding them up. After that is all cleaned up the same owners will build the same ticky-tacky houses again in the same spot - how stupid can you be.
Quite a few years ago there was a really big fire on the slopes of Laguna Beach. One place was sort of a horseshoe shaped area and the whole hillside burned. All the houses were destroyed but one.
That belonged to an architect who had it built to his specifications. He was Vietnamese and he had studied architecture in Germany and had married a German woman before he came to the US. His house was built to German standards: brick and cement walls and floors, deep pylons into the ground, a tile roof, no vegetation right next to the house. The pictures in the paper showed this burnt hillside with hardly anything left standing but this big white house with a red roof in the middle of all this destruction.
Did the neighbors take heed? No, they actually hounded this man and his wife with their envy until they both left, I assume they sold their house, and then these stupid people proceeded to build their ticky-tacky houses again just like before. These houses are huge and very expensive, with an ocean view to die for, but some people just don't have any sense. The fire next time will destroy these houses again and the German house will still be there unless some fool tears it down and builds another ticky-tacky house on that spot.
Fires have been an annual occurence in SoCal since before White people ever set eyes on its coast. The Native People even had a name for the Los Angeles area that referred to it as being a smoky place. So this is nothing new and not neccessarily the fault of the people who live here now.
But I feel that if somebody wants to live in wooded areas that were subject to fires in the past then they should also take all the risks with it. That means don't expect the fire department to come and put out the fire which is a natural occurence, and don't expect the government to repair the washed-out road that comes after the rains start. You knew the risk, now live with it.
I also do not understand why the government would allow developers to come in and build in these areas in the first place. If some rustic person builds a little house on their own piece of property, that is one thing. But when there is a whole town, like Lancaster, built in the burn areas, that's a different thing and then the government is equally culpable. I just don't want my tax money going to save these houses that never should have been built there to begin with.
Right now California is in a hole with revenues not coming in, so paying out tax money for this kind of insanity is beyond me. Some would-be governors propose cuts everywhere instead of raising taxes after years of tax cuts. Sure, there is always the cry that businesses will leave if they don't get tax cuts. And just how many businesses have indeed left? Those that did have not relocated to another state, they went overseas instead which they would have done no matter which state they had been in. So the high taxes of California were not the cause.
I keep hearing the same mantra over and over: we've got to cut services, we've got to cut state employees benefits (pay & pensions), we've got to cut taxes, but also: there are so many poor people in the emergency rooms, the lines at the state offices are so long, the service is poor and slow, there are potholes everywhere, where is a cop when you need one, yada yada yada. Everybody wants something for nothing, nobody wants to pay taxes but they are always ready for a handout, and I don't mean the poor people.
It's peculiar, but if you ask a low income person if they could feed one more poor relative, there is always room at their table. Ask the same thing of a middle class or higher income person and they will try everything under the sun not to have that person under their roof, they should go to a shelter as a last resort. It used to be that "home" was where they have to take you in. That still works with the lower income classes. Once a certain income level is reached that truism oes out the window. What a sad state of affairs.
If you cut taxes you won't have the money to expand services that are needed or to hire well-qualified people to do the state's business and to administer these services. Then to cry that lines are long, that services are poor and that pot holes are not repaired is begging the question. You can't have both.
Oh sure, give all the government services to private industry to do, they can do it cheaper. Have you ever heard of private industry working for "no profit"? Do the big-wigs in private industry work for peanuts? The reason private industry can do the job cheaper is because the job goes to the one who low-balls them. Along with that goes shoddy workmanship so that the job has to be done over and it now costs twice as much. That's cheaper?
Remember the "Orange Crush"? Private industry did that and after just a few years rebar started to rust and the job did have to be done over, this time Caltrans did it and they did it right the first time, a little more expensive than the first time but no big-wig lined his/her pockets on taxpayers' money. The job should have been done by state employees to begin with, not the second time around and thus costing twice as much. You get what you pay for, low-balling is not the way to go.
Or try the Departments of Motor Vehicles or Unemployment Insurance: remember when lines were out the door at the DMV and it took many hours to get to the counter to talk to someone? There had been a hiring freeze and the people working there can only do so much. When people left due to illnes, retirement or transferred out, that put more pressure on the ones who were still there. The public screamed. So offices were opened on Saturdays. That meant people now had to work overtime which is expensive. There went more taxpayer money. Somebody finally got the bright idea that this was not working, that they had to hire more people to get the work load done. The hiring freeze stopped and once the new people were up to speed after training the lines subsided and Saturday work and thus expensive overtime stopped.
Now our governor has put the state employees on 4 days furlough per month which simply means that every employee works 4 days per month less and thus gets less money in his/her paycheck. So who is doing the work that these people would be doing? Nobody, so the lines are long again, the service is poor, the state employees are mad because they have smaller paychecks but same expenses as before. Everybody looses.
Unemployment Insurance is an even more ridiculous story: here the state employees also were put on 4 days furlough and thus some work could not be done. But what was worse: the unemployment rate kept climbing and thus there was even more work that did not get done in a timely fashion.
Now, Unemployment Insurance is partly funded by the Feds and they have something to say about how the department is run. The threat is always there that if people do not get their checks or are denied benefits in a timely fashion, about two weeks, then the Feds can pull their part of the funding, oops!The department does not want that to happen and so goes begging for more employees. Since this cannot be done and ALL state employees are furloughed 4 days per month, what can be done? Oh, lets have them work overtime!
The governor gave a one-department exception to allow overtime. So now state emploees who work in the Department of Employment Development can work 12 hours a day 6 days a week minus 4 days per month as they are still furloughed, actually pulling down bigger paychecks than if they were working just 40 hours per week. What kind of stupid math is that? Those who cannot work overtime are the losers, some people are dependent on babysitters and thus cannot go past their usual hours, they have smaller paychecks and the expenses are the same.
Well, state employees make too much money for the work that they do and they cannot get fired or laid off and their pensions are too big and their benefits are too good yada yada yada.
Would you like to stand at a counter and be abused by the public all day long? Would you like to be told on the phone "I know where you work", a threat if I ever heard one? Would you like to make about half or at the most 2/3 of what you could make if you were in private industry with the same amount of education and resposibility?
State employees being mostly in a service industry are there because they like to serve the public. There is something very satisfying about that to the people who do public service. They take the smaller paycheck for the security of most likely having a job for however long they want it which does not mean they cannot be laid off or even fired. They take the job for the benefits the job offers but which can also take a big chunk from their paycheck if they have a family that depends on them for medical benefits. Until just a few years ago they had very little in Disability payments for things that were not work-related. Just about any working stiff in California if he breaks his leg, has a car accident, gets cancer or whatever and can't work can get disability payments for up to 6 months of $350.00 to $650.00 per week. The state employee used to have none or not more than $27.00 per week. Try paying your rent or mortgage with that. A few years ago that finally changed.
Ah yes, these big pensions! The average pension of a state employee after working approximately 20 years and being at least 52 years old is $1700.00/month. Without receiving Social Security at the same time it is impossible to live on that here in SoCal. Since the average pay while working is only about $2800.00/month after taxes it would be very difficult to save anything on that towards retirement in a savings account or a 401k.
There are many single moms working for the state who have to not only feed, house and clothe their children, they also have quite a bit taken out of their check for medical care. And then there are childcare expenses on top of that. Not all of them collect child support either, more deadbeat dads. These women will live in rental housing forever and they will have nothing saved at the end of their careers. Do you now begrudge them a pension that will at least keep them living halfway decent in their old age?
Friday, July 30, 2010
Papers are Filed, the Deadbeat Has Been Served
Today I had a friend serve the papers on the deadbeat via mail. The certificate of Service by Mail was filed with the Court Clerk today also, he should have it by Monday or Tuesday. He's going to EXPLODE!!!
I can just hear his common mouth going on and on: "That b---, that f----ing b---, can't she leave me in peace!!!, after all these years!!!, f--- her! She's threatening me!!! G---d--- her!!! She's gonna cost me my job!!! blah-blah-blah! She's not gonna get a cent!!! So this is what this was all about!!!" etc etc etc. It will be interesting to see if he is going to show up in court. In a way I wish he would just so I can see what he looks like in person, that picture on facebook doesn't say much and he's hiding behind big sunglasses. The one person who does have a current picture won't share it because she is mad at me, oh well. I have one other picture but it is of very poor quality so that does not help much. In any case, he seems to have grown quite fat and what I can see of his face is not very attractive, definitely not what had attracted me to him so many years ago. The only thing left is a shock of thick hair which maybe is not even dyed which is an accomplishment at his age.
On the other hand I wish he did not show up: first because I do not want to hear any rants on his part, second because if he does not show up the judge or commissioner should award me everything simply because he did not show up, that's called "default". After that it would be a case on how to collect or attach anything. I'll worry about that after the court date. To be continued...........
Nothing should be happening between now and two months from now, although he can "show cause" why he should not pay the owed child support and the few measly bucks in spousal support the court had awarded me.
Just about everybody is rooting for me that I am finally taking steps to collect what's owed. Most people crack up when I tell them how I finally found him: "Facebook? Oh, this is good. People put too much info out there. He got caught, good for you etc etc".
I can just hear his common mouth going on and on: "That b---, that f----ing b---, can't she leave me in peace!!!, after all these years!!!, f--- her! She's threatening me!!! G---d--- her!!! She's gonna cost me my job!!! blah-blah-blah! She's not gonna get a cent!!! So this is what this was all about!!!" etc etc etc. It will be interesting to see if he is going to show up in court. In a way I wish he would just so I can see what he looks like in person, that picture on facebook doesn't say much and he's hiding behind big sunglasses. The one person who does have a current picture won't share it because she is mad at me, oh well. I have one other picture but it is of very poor quality so that does not help much. In any case, he seems to have grown quite fat and what I can see of his face is not very attractive, definitely not what had attracted me to him so many years ago. The only thing left is a shock of thick hair which maybe is not even dyed which is an accomplishment at his age.
On the other hand I wish he did not show up: first because I do not want to hear any rants on his part, second because if he does not show up the judge or commissioner should award me everything simply because he did not show up, that's called "default". After that it would be a case on how to collect or attach anything. I'll worry about that after the court date. To be continued...........
Nothing should be happening between now and two months from now, although he can "show cause" why he should not pay the owed child support and the few measly bucks in spousal support the court had awarded me.
Just about everybody is rooting for me that I am finally taking steps to collect what's owed. Most people crack up when I tell them how I finally found him: "Facebook? Oh, this is good. People put too much info out there. He got caught, good for you etc etc".
Thursday, July 29, 2010
You Will Never Be a Texan, No Matter How Long You Live There
Usually when you have lived somewhere for any length of time the people who lived there before you will accept you as one of their own, especially your own family. That's not what I saw in Texas.
When I first arrived there I was met at Love Field, the airport for the Dallas-Fort Worth area at the time, by a slew of new relatives as my rather new spouse was in the Army and could not come to meet me. So all these people were introduced to me, I don't know how they expected me to remember them all, there must have been at least 10 of them, coming in several cars. It was July and hotter than anything I had ever experienced or even imagined. The air seemed to be too thick to breathe with all that humidity, I was tired, suffering from jet lag and absolutely overwhelmed. People talked funny, I had a hard time understanding them although they did not seem to be bothered by the way I talked which was more like what they heard on TV. Culture shock, omigod! All these strange people hugging me. This was not something I was used to. Then somebody got me a cold drink, ugh, it tasted awful. It was DrPepper which I had never tasted before and to this day I don't like it. (Apologies to those who just love the stuff, just don't force it on me.) Then some ice cream. That was better, but I had never had "soft-serve" ice cream and in this heat it melted in no time and I had a hard time keeping it off my clothes. Even bone-hard ice cream would have been a soggy mess in just a few minutes. After the ice cream I was put in a different car for the rest of the journey so that some of the other relatives could gawk at this creature from another world and get reintroduced. Most of that went by in a blur, but one thing did stand out: while everybody else was introduced by name and what relation they were, like "this is Uncle Bob", this one fortyish man was introduced as "this is Whitey, he's from Massachusetts". I didn't think anything at the time but that this was perhaps somebody who was visiting from Massachusetts and had come along for the ride. But as I found out later, he was married to one of this clan and had lived there in Texas for over 20 years. So why the emphasis that he was from Massachusetts? He talked just like they did, dressed the same etc., was he not the same, was he not one of them? Obviously not, and as I found out as time passed, that is the general attitude. You will always be an outsider no matter how long you live there or who you are married to.
When I first arrived there I was met at Love Field, the airport for the Dallas-Fort Worth area at the time, by a slew of new relatives as my rather new spouse was in the Army and could not come to meet me. So all these people were introduced to me, I don't know how they expected me to remember them all, there must have been at least 10 of them, coming in several cars. It was July and hotter than anything I had ever experienced or even imagined. The air seemed to be too thick to breathe with all that humidity, I was tired, suffering from jet lag and absolutely overwhelmed. People talked funny, I had a hard time understanding them although they did not seem to be bothered by the way I talked which was more like what they heard on TV. Culture shock, omigod! All these strange people hugging me. This was not something I was used to. Then somebody got me a cold drink, ugh, it tasted awful. It was DrPepper which I had never tasted before and to this day I don't like it. (Apologies to those who just love the stuff, just don't force it on me.) Then some ice cream. That was better, but I had never had "soft-serve" ice cream and in this heat it melted in no time and I had a hard time keeping it off my clothes. Even bone-hard ice cream would have been a soggy mess in just a few minutes. After the ice cream I was put in a different car for the rest of the journey so that some of the other relatives could gawk at this creature from another world and get reintroduced. Most of that went by in a blur, but one thing did stand out: while everybody else was introduced by name and what relation they were, like "this is Uncle Bob", this one fortyish man was introduced as "this is Whitey, he's from Massachusetts". I didn't think anything at the time but that this was perhaps somebody who was visiting from Massachusetts and had come along for the ride. But as I found out later, he was married to one of this clan and had lived there in Texas for over 20 years. So why the emphasis that he was from Massachusetts? He talked just like they did, dressed the same etc., was he not the same, was he not one of them? Obviously not, and as I found out as time passed, that is the general attitude. You will always be an outsider no matter how long you live there or who you are married to.
Unpaid Child Support and Texas Liars
So this is how I start. This person who shall remain un-named does not want to be uncomfortable. This may be ok if we are talking about physically being uncomfortable such as being too hot or too cold, or clothes that scratch or are too tight, that sort of thing. But when it comes to being uncomfortable in a different way, such as not liking a particular subject that came up in a conversation, that's a different matter. There is no Right not to be offended or to hear or see in print things that make you uncomfortable. Deal with it. If everything was just hunky-dory all the time then nothing would ever change and how boring would that be.
So what set all this off? Just a little matter of unpaid child support from a long time ago. The deadbeat had finally been found and now is going to be served with papers why he did not pay the ordered child support for all these years.
You guessed it, the injured party is me and you shall see in these pages how this is coming along among other things that happen to cross my mind, some very mundane and others that hopefully will be of interest to some people. If not, that's ok too, writing this kind of thing, which used to be called a journal, is very therapeutic. Sometimes when things make you angry, you can just write them down which in turn makes you think about them a little more and you find they were not really that important and thus not worth the time to get angry about them. Others will make you feel better simply because you got them off your chest. Since this is going out for everyone to see, maybe somebody can even come up with a solution to some problem or other.
So back to the deadbeat. This is what I will call him as those who know me will know who I am talking about, and those who don't also do not need to know his name. He lives in another state and I am sure is already royally upset with me since he got the first papers in the mail. These were just to inform him that I will be my own attorney but it did not say what about. I would think that he can guess that it will not be anything good.
He promptly married again, fathered another child whom he named after himself. So now he has a "junior", big deal, I would not have burdened a child with that name. I don't know what has happened to that woman, maybe she has died, but in any case he is not married to her either and about 5 years ago he acquired wife number 3. This one was his highschool sweetheart, my, it's a small world.
How did I finally track him down? Facebook, that's a real blabbermouth and some people post so much stuff that even if you can't recognize their picture or there is none, there are enough people who are their "friends" that you can just contact them and make inquiries that will ascertain that the person whose facebook you are looking at is indeed the person you thought it was. Now if somebody sent me an inquiry like that I would either ignore it or I would ask what the inquirer needed that info for. But I got info back from both people whom I had contacted and it gave me what I needed.
Then I asked my computer how to get an address and I found a freebie website that did just that and even gave me a phone number which I then inputted in reverse and that result also told me he had a MySpace account. I promptly looked that up and found a pile of junk and lies on that.
Ho ho, he was in Vietnam? Flying Cobra aircraft? Pack of lies. He got out of the service in 1966 when Vietnam had not yet heated up, and he never flew anything but paper airplanes as he had been a clerk-typist while in the Army. I guess some people just have to puff themselves up because their self-esteem is so low.
Oh, did I mention he's from Texas? They have a saying there that everything grows big in Texas. For some things that's even true: I never saw jack rabbits as big as they have them there and longhorn cattle do have horns that are really unbelievable. The first ones I saw were mounted on the wall of some bar and I thought they were made out of plastic. The next one was mounted on the hood of one of those giant cars from the 60s and the horns were wider than the car. Again I did not believe that they were real horns. That is until I saw a real live longhorn bull, and those horns were so big you'd think the animal could not possibly carry them around all the time and they were the same size or even bigger than the ones mounted on the wall and on the car.
But back to what I was saying about everything allegedly being so big in Texas. Well, that includes liars. Those people do tell the tallest tales. The problem is that they do that routinely in everyday life also. Seems they can't tell anything without exaggerating it (hey, did I spell that correctly?). I would hope that there are some Texans that don't do that, but I ran into so much of this that it seemed to be an overwhelming Texas trait.
So this Texas fool had all this info on his facebook that allowed me to not only locate him but also gave his address so that now I could serve him papers. I just got the second set of papers from the court clerk today, so now he will get those served on him too and I'd love to be a fly on the wall when he gets them. I hope he doesn't get a heart attack when he gets them as I really want to collect my money.
So what set all this off? Just a little matter of unpaid child support from a long time ago. The deadbeat had finally been found and now is going to be served with papers why he did not pay the ordered child support for all these years.
You guessed it, the injured party is me and you shall see in these pages how this is coming along among other things that happen to cross my mind, some very mundane and others that hopefully will be of interest to some people. If not, that's ok too, writing this kind of thing, which used to be called a journal, is very therapeutic. Sometimes when things make you angry, you can just write them down which in turn makes you think about them a little more and you find they were not really that important and thus not worth the time to get angry about them. Others will make you feel better simply because you got them off your chest. Since this is going out for everyone to see, maybe somebody can even come up with a solution to some problem or other.
So back to the deadbeat. This is what I will call him as those who know me will know who I am talking about, and those who don't also do not need to know his name. He lives in another state and I am sure is already royally upset with me since he got the first papers in the mail. These were just to inform him that I will be my own attorney but it did not say what about. I would think that he can guess that it will not be anything good.
He promptly married again, fathered another child whom he named after himself. So now he has a "junior", big deal, I would not have burdened a child with that name. I don't know what has happened to that woman, maybe she has died, but in any case he is not married to her either and about 5 years ago he acquired wife number 3. This one was his highschool sweetheart, my, it's a small world.
How did I finally track him down? Facebook, that's a real blabbermouth and some people post so much stuff that even if you can't recognize their picture or there is none, there are enough people who are their "friends" that you can just contact them and make inquiries that will ascertain that the person whose facebook you are looking at is indeed the person you thought it was. Now if somebody sent me an inquiry like that I would either ignore it or I would ask what the inquirer needed that info for. But I got info back from both people whom I had contacted and it gave me what I needed.
Then I asked my computer how to get an address and I found a freebie website that did just that and even gave me a phone number which I then inputted in reverse and that result also told me he had a MySpace account. I promptly looked that up and found a pile of junk and lies on that.
Ho ho, he was in Vietnam? Flying Cobra aircraft? Pack of lies. He got out of the service in 1966 when Vietnam had not yet heated up, and he never flew anything but paper airplanes as he had been a clerk-typist while in the Army. I guess some people just have to puff themselves up because their self-esteem is so low.
Oh, did I mention he's from Texas? They have a saying there that everything grows big in Texas. For some things that's even true: I never saw jack rabbits as big as they have them there and longhorn cattle do have horns that are really unbelievable. The first ones I saw were mounted on the wall of some bar and I thought they were made out of plastic. The next one was mounted on the hood of one of those giant cars from the 60s and the horns were wider than the car. Again I did not believe that they were real horns. That is until I saw a real live longhorn bull, and those horns were so big you'd think the animal could not possibly carry them around all the time and they were the same size or even bigger than the ones mounted on the wall and on the car.
But back to what I was saying about everything allegedly being so big in Texas. Well, that includes liars. Those people do tell the tallest tales. The problem is that they do that routinely in everyday life also. Seems they can't tell anything without exaggerating it (hey, did I spell that correctly?). I would hope that there are some Texans that don't do that, but I ran into so much of this that it seemed to be an overwhelming Texas trait.
So this Texas fool had all this info on his facebook that allowed me to not only locate him but also gave his address so that now I could serve him papers. I just got the second set of papers from the court clerk today, so now he will get those served on him too and I'd love to be a fly on the wall when he gets them. I hope he doesn't get a heart attack when he gets them as I really want to collect my money.
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