As I sit at home with my wife navigating through the loan (code word for free money) emergency federal program to give small business relief in this crisis, I’ve got some broad-based ideas that might save the day yet. Leave the details to the smart bean-counters, lawyers, and technocrats to figure out.

We should stiff the Chinese on all the debt they hold of ours and create an offset, and probably another bill for criminal and civil negligence for tanking our economy.  We won’t generally default on our national debt just on the Chinese communist bastards who spread this mess. And not to be a tinfoil hat of guy.  It wouldn’t surprise me if they did it on purpose, covered it up and sat back and watched the world feed on itself while wildly underestimating the toughness of the American spirit once we get done whining about it.

Even though I’m jumping on the free money bandwagon, because no matter how principled I am on being self-reliant, they are going to give to somebody anyway, and I think I can spend more ethically than most.  We can’t print money as a way out of this. Currency has always been an alternative to the barter system as a less cumbersome way to conduct commerce, but the way we’re going, we may have to return to that.  Currency represents the value created by producing goods and services. When we start printing it and bs the American people that we are “borrowing” it, hello Weimar Republic, within a short time like the Germany of the late 1930s, we’ll need a wheelbarrow to haul our currency (or plastic) to the store for a loaf of bread. The answer, we solve it with the American people, and businesses take a haircut and make an equitable sacrifice with real money that was created by real commerce backed by created value.

The following is what I think is what we can do:

1. All insurance companies cut their premiums by half and rewrite in two years as the exposure can be realistically determined after all the fat is burned off the top. They can handle it without destroying the industry, and the government will be subsidizing them through tax refunds after moderate losses, and they will just manage better. The hell with the shareholders no dividends but grow the stock value over time until we get out of this. An example of why we should be paying pre-virus premiums when the exposure is low on auto and general liability because we’re not driving, and commerce is in the toilet. Health insurance needs to go down because of number 2 below.  Let the poor and virus-related loss of job types etc. get a special Medicaid subsidy or better yet pay cash for the doctor and hospital bills negotiated by the patient with a bonus rebate from uncle sam for reducing the costs. The cost reimbursed at warp speed, possibly using a government-backed credit card used explicitly for medical only.  The credit card companies will love that, except the interest rate will cap at 6%.
   
   
2. Stop all contingency litigation initiate a no-fault policy just like state no-fault auto insurance. Everybody carries their own health insurance. The lawyers go pound sand instead of trying to win the lottery for themselves and little slice for their clients, and suck it out of the insurance company, which in turn passes that cost on to the premium payor (that would be all of us); who work for a living.   Let’s stop enriching big law firms who spend a big chunk of that cash on TV adds convincing some poor average Joe or Josephine that they would be set for life from something as small as a fender bender. No more pain and suffering awards, just reasonable attorneys who really are “for the people,” and they get max 20% after an auditable total of their real out of pocket costs.  No more “hired gun” doctors or experts to play games with litigation.  Cap malpractice suits give doctors three strikes, and you’re out deal. If they are habitual screwups, take their license just like you take a driver’s license.  If the hospital screws up, cap the award for damage incurred to the patient and allow for liens to be placed on the hospital building and chattel.  The fat cats that own the real estate aren’t going have tenants screwing up their title, so they can’t build more hospitals and clinics.
   
   
3. Banks immediately forbear all loan payments for three months with no additional interest and forebear ½ the remaining payments until the loan matures. If they make their payments on time, the bank forgives the rest.  The banks will get money back through a tax refund on losses, and the feds can provide guilt edge liquidity backed by hard assets, not some packaged up derivatives or some such Ponzi nonsense.  The banks still operate and make money.
   
   
4. Rents are forgiven for three months, and the paper holders on the building follow suite on mortgage payments.  After that ½ for a year until we’re back on our feet.
   
5. Credit card companies immediately forgive all interest on the debt.  Reduce principal payments by half. Cut credit limits to half of what they were before the virus—no interest above 12%, no late fees ever.  If you can’t make your payments and can’t show hardship, no more credit, pay cash the old-fashioned way.  We all, myself included, have been seduced for too long with credit cards paying for things we want, not what we need, and can repay.
   
6. Allow businesses to give each employee a hardship stipend for two years of at least $500 per week with NO TAXES taken out, and the business can write off as hardship expense as a regular expense. No one-time pittance $1200 checks.
   
7. Restaurants report no tips and business deductions for food only with a max check per individual of $30 per visit but no limit on the overall amount. For example, if employees eat out, let the company pick up the tab and deduct it.  This will make the restaurants hum, and the bars will just have to figure it out the lure of good entertainment and ambiance will get the job done.
   
8. Give bona fide churches a 50% break on all utilities, retail value deductions for grocers and restaurants to give to church food banks and double deduction for monetary sponsorships to outreach missions, school academies, youth programs, and counseling services immediately. We already have youth and mental health problems; this pandemic just made it exponentially worse.
   
   These suggestions probably won’t solve every/if any of the problems before us, but it is undoubtedly a place to start. 
   
   Most importantly, get back to God, pray and ask for His wisdom and discernment. Dump the politics and power grabs and just be accountable and love one another.   Welcome to Rick’s answer to pandemic paranoia.  LOL

I’m writing this post from my front yard under my favorite tree on my beautiful 5-acre plot of God’s creation called my home. For all of you who may be joining the ranks of the depressed. I’ve been here for about twenty months now, since my stroke, so I’ve got a head start on this journey. I have so many thoughts and so much unwanted time to think.  My mind piles up thoughts that I can scarcely keep up with to be inspired to write about or can organize them into coherent English.

 As I sit with my faithful companion, Bear dog, who rarely leaves my side, I look out and see many things my kids and I have built over the years. The greatest things were things like the now huge oaks lining our driveway that we snatched out of one of our job sites and re-planted years ago. They were destined for destruction by a front end loader and a root rake.  We plucked them out and brought them home to our place and planted them as young trees. We just dug holes and stuck them in the ground, added a little water, and out of certain death, God did his magic and made this place so beautiful surpassing anything our hands could do. Now that the virus is here and everyone’s world is upside down, I have an odd personal feeling.  Right now, there is despair and panic and fear everywhere and an eerie quiet except for the occasional suicidal maniac (Motorcycle Rider) on his crotch rocket speeding down US1.  I find that now I have company. When this gets over  I will return to being on the outside.

For those who are currently working at home, because the same technology that has reduced our minds to artificial intelligence is now our only connection to each other, while there are many hardships and worries for those, who have to work at home behind their screens, all of the rest of us who put the pipes together build and maintain the very infrastructure and homes you live in; we are left to witness the wreckage of years of spiritual neglect. We don’t know how to act when we have to be with our families. Adam Carolla said it best, ‘Instead of not being able to go to Johnny fantastic to get your hair cut remember the days when mom would pull out the stool on the back porch and cut your hair and talk about life, and it’s treasured memories.  We can do best in the time to appreciate the closeness of family.   I am so blessed to have this little piece of heaven like my sister does in Wisconsin on her little farm with a bit of space and God’s creation so close, not a zero lot line house with panicked neighbors on each side. Thank you, Lord, for the gift of your creation.

As I wonder in my brain cavern, I thought we have all these science channels large brains postulating the theory that mankind is 100s of thousands of years old a product of evolution when they need to refute just one simple fact. Why is so easy to understand how this pandemic started with just one person in China and spread throughout the world in a matter of months and yet it’s so hard to grasp the Biblical fact the entire human race started with just two people a mere few thousand years ago   The self-important know it alls of modern science can’t even answer that one. If a great scientist like Francis Collins could understand it than maybe these secular pompous self wanna be masters of the universe might start using science as a road to God not from Him.  

 On a lighter note, one of my dear friends over the years who is an admitted believer but also admits to being an irreverent Catholic sent me this clip of an even more irreverent poem to music. Living room post, I won’t recite it for you in this blog because it is funny as hell but a little too earthy for some of my Christian friends.  I sent it to one of my closest and dearest believer friends who selflessly comes most Saturdays to the house and fixes my broken stuff and we chat under the tree.  This comical little song is loaded with f-bombs. Still, it is such an accurate satire of the present character of a society gone cowardly and self-indulgent in this time of pandemic paranoia.  He replied that it was a great song as for us f-bombers it was funny and for most people, that is the only language they understand. I replied, I guess that makes you and I bilingual, my friend. We can speak this language and God’s Word as well only hopefully not at the same time. I guess that just makes us more like a very feeble attempt to be like Jesus did.  Dinning and speaking with tax collectors and not distance ourselves from the unclean, including us, as the Pharisees did. Neither Christ nor Pharisee, we, my friend, are just regular folks sometimes doing wonderful things that Jesus loves us for even if we let off a few f-bombs when that wrench slips off the bolt head and we smash our fingers on that old lawn mower we’re trying to resurrect.

 As a sidebar, I have been spending evenings sitting outside under the stars setting the perfect ambiance for a heart to heart with God. Most of the time, I leave those moments still somewhat frustrated as to why I’ve heard more crickets than the voice of God. But last Saturday, He spoke to me in his way in his time to deliver me a message.  I was trying to get my stubborn riding lawn mower to start, and after many tries and my wife patiently waiting in the truck to charge the battery and enduring my f-bomb barrage at the infernal machine. I sat down and just said, “please, God guide me if I wait another 15 minutes, will you help me get this POS to start so that I could manicure your wonderful creation?” At 5 minutes into the wait, I wanted to crank it, and a hushed voice from somewhere inside my thick head said “wait upon the Lord” I said alright God, but in 16 minutes I’m going to give this one more try and if that doesn’t work I’m going in the house and give up. On the 16th minute, I skeptically gave it one more  try, and it fired right up. Even though I probably flooded it, ran the battery down, and overheated the starter from repeatedly cranking it, the message was clear. Wait upon the Lord. So as I ponder the failure of our business and all the craziness around me and sit here in paradise threatened by the financial  collapse and being land rich and McDonald’s dollar menu cash poor, we will wait upon the Lord.

So find God, pull up a chair and join me in thanking God for every little thing and pray for those who do not have much.

I find it somewhat perplexing as to what to post while most of us are trying to navigate our way through crazy town with the Covid-19 virus crisis.   So as my custom, I’ll just shovel out my thoughts raw off the pile, so to speak.

My wife read me a Facebook post that hit home. It referred to an 80 something war veteran that rang home to me as I synthesize it here.  These men and women fought and died in far higher numbers than this pandemic will ever produce.  They rose and took FDR’s famous “we have nothing to Fear but Fear Itself” call to unite sincerely and did their duty.  The home front sacrificed by the rationing of everything. They were growing their food in community Victory gardens. Every farmer planted every square inch they could grow, and young men and women went off to war, leaving their family’s to inventively hold down the home front, not knowing when they would see, or if they would see,  their loved ones again.

We whine if our internet goes down because we can’t obsess over the latest panic rumor. In one case during WW2, a mother was notified that her son had been killed, and his last letters arrived in the mail days later.  We have become in many ways a nation of crybabies, and now we’re being tested like previous generations. Let us not fall short and disgrace the sacrifices of those generations.  They made it their duty to preserve this nation to carry on the home of the brave, not cowering panicked cowards.  Sure, this is tough, and yes, scary. 

Going through depression is no walk in the park either, no matter what form it takes, or how it comes about. Part of me (since I’ve lived this for going on two years now) cynically says, “all you folks who around me going on your busy, routine, go anywhere-anytime freedom filled world, welcome to my world.”  We are living in a world where everything is sort of routine with some panic and silly stupidity, slight inconveniences for food and entertainment. While there is a real concern for the average person and small businesses, about paying the bills and feeding their families, or even the slight chance of serious complications, even contracting the virus (virtually rarer than winning the lottery). We need to be prudent not paralyzed with panic, trust God because all the government printing of fiat currency or doublespeak or even the valiant efforts of our medical teams and scientists pale when we put God at the front.  We might ask, “if God is in control, why isn’t he answering our prayers and take this away from us. He must not care or is irrelevant or both.”  Well, we aren’t doing so hot with all our amazing technology and knowledge.  Hell, we can’t even cure anxiety and depression. What makes us, frightened little children, think we are any match for this.

A straightforward antidote – trust God, He is truly in control, and He never panics. He knows what He’s doing, and we don’t.  We won’t until we let Him do his work.  For all of us who fight depression, this battle isn’t a one-off thing like this epidemic; it can last for a long time.  My depression is a combination of medical due to the stroke, and a general involuntary disconnect with life as I knew it and not in a new utopia either just state of limbo.

As a background of some of my influences, at the ripe old age of 13, my mom, for some unknown reason to me, probably because she saw something in me that could absorb complex thinking at such a young age, gave me a copy of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.”  I read it, cover to cover, in a week between school and working at the sand washing plant that our Florida family operated.  Ayn was a Russian refugee from the communist state and saw firsthand how oppressive to the creative human spirit it was.  Although she was a self-proclaimed atheist and a bit of a humanist, she laid out principles of the God-given human spirit that any Christian would nod their head in agreement. If I could say this, even though she was spot on about the dangers we faced as a nation in the late 40s and 50s when she was writing this, the march of socialism was in full force after the disaster of WW2. Sound familiar to the present day? We are only one crisis away from people who have lost the courage that generations of Americans fought, toiled, and died for, to rise to the challenge.

Right now, the business that my son and I built from scratch 20+ years ago. Is now dangerously close to collapsing. The national climate of panic, weak collective faith, falsely vested in the mere government, and self-serving business leaders is rattling my cage pretty good. “Be Strong, and Courageous,” said the Lord to Joshua. Well, America, let’s show a little courage starting with loving and helping the least of these even at our peril and let the greedheads fall under their weight. Love conquers all said Paul in 1^st Corinthians.

I have the answer! Yeah right! However, I may be depressed, but I’m not a total dunderhead if we’re all in this together, as the government mouthpieces and pundits say. Then we all take the hit together, and one way or the other, the hit is coming/came.  On the mortgage front, the Greedheads who bought, sold, packaged, and exploited the little guys, need to stop and take a haircut.  Understand we need banks, investors, and the funding system to make our economy work. But this is indeed a war, and they need to, as in business-speak, take a haircut. Forgo profits to a bearable but sustainable loss and suspend, forgive or refinance at new terms and short-term forgiveness or reduced monthly payments to do their fair share. At the same time, the business and operators sweat out the payrolls and keeping the doors open.

Suspend all pain and injury litigation, and by swift arbitration, insurance companies pay only medical costs to fix the person and pay for minimum wage loss if disabled. No pain and suffering, we all got plenty of that right now.  Insurance companies should cut premiums across the board by at least half for a year. Reassess new rates at that time to take into consideration for lower litigation costs and medical costs, post-disaster, at real cost levels not inflated $100 aspirin stuff—no more basic contingency lawsuits. Limit the mark up for judgment awards to attorneys to 20-25%, not the sometimes 50-100% that happens now.

Stop all lobbyists period—no corporate or PAC donations to political campaigns allowed except individual self-funded contributions of $1,000 or less. If the politician has a message worth hearing, take it to the people directly with the social media and a hungry media for headlines. The folks don’t need to be funding high priced cocktail parties and $1,000 per plate dinners.  The little guy can’t afford that because he’s breaking his ass to feed his family and send his kids to a good college (if you can find one  that teaches actual useful knowledge and ethics and isn’t bloated with top-heavy tenured blowhards.)

No deduction for charitable contributions. If you’re going to give something, give it. Don’t worry about tax effects.  Instead, be allowed to designate 10% of your tax bill to a bonafide church, or if you’re a non-believer and you think the government can do a better job, give it back to them.

Make giving personal. Get to know who you’re giving to and what their real needs are.  Even if it’s only on-line, pay it forward. Build bonding relationships.  In our farming community in Wisconsin, when a farmers barn burned down because he had too much green hay inside, catching fire. The people didn’t judge him because he was a drunk or didn’t go to church or whatever; they pitched in, stored his hay in another place,  fed his cattle, and rebuilt his barn.  Like everything else, nowadays, it’s not personal or family anymore, its big corporate farming that exploits the land, and lobbies government for subsidies and buries their costs in the low prices that industrial-scale farming brings to Walmart consumer America. Not a slam against Walmart even though the Walmart of today resembles little of what Sam Walton had in mind.

Well, this is enough to chew on, for now, my friends.   I’m going to have a peanut butter sandwich and watch Fox news showing congress voting us more fiat cash to the masses in a pitiful attempt to seduce us into taking a few bucks for our courage, self-reliance, dignity, and faith in God. 

Below is a creed that used to be adhered to by hundreds of thousands of young men and later women.  It is the essence of who we are as Americans—composed by an early leader (C. William Brownfield) of an organization called the Junior Chamber of Commerce or the JAYCEES as they were commonly known.  They used to train leaders and build community projects all over America and then the world. They started in the early nineteen hundreds (ironically just before the swine flu pandemic that killed millions) as a men’s dance club and grew to a zenith of nearly half-million members by 1990. That year (1990), I was president of the Florida Jaycees. We were at 20,000 members and 200+ chapters throughout the state.  We were always strongly encouraged to recruit new members because if you’re not growing, you’re dying, and guest speakers at membership drives would say that it would be a sad day if no more Jaycees were building all these parks and projects.  Well, that was prophetic because now the organization is virtually extinct.  I submit that our downfall is that we forgot the first line of that beautiful creed.   Here it is, the Jaycee Creed

We believe that faith in God gives meaning and purpose to human life.
That the brotherhood of man transcends the sovereignty of nations;
That economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise.
That government should be of laws rather than of men.
That earth’s great treasure lies in human personality; and
That service to humanity is the best work of life.

Are we as One Nation Under God, in danger of going the route of the Jaycees? As a nation, we might be well to remember that first line and start practicing it before it’s too late—more on growing up on a farm life later.