National Association of Realtors: Listen Up!

Recently while browsing the channels looking for the weather forecasts as those with breathing difficulties can only know, I came across a new ad by the National Association of Realtors promoting home ownership and its benefits and "responsible" financial reform, and as one who has been burned by a home that in the end owned me rather than having really any ownership of it, was more than intrigued by the ad, its representations and tone.

It began by representing how for every home purchased, there are 2 jobs which result, creating millions of jobs for America. But at whose ultimate cost was left out of the equation.

That's right. The homeowners.

I'd say there are a multitude more all paid for by the home purchaser or seller.

First, of course, the realtor.

Due to ever restrictive state laws and provisions, the freedom to list your home and sell your own property through newspaper ads, "for sale" by owner, and other such economical means has been taken over by "the industry."

Add to those also who earn their incomes from the home buying public are the banks, title companies, lawyers, state (all those property taxes collected) and home repair and construction companies in those repairs also now mandated by state law in many states prior to listing a home for sale.

And don't forget the newest leaches on the eventual equity in your home.

The "homeowners association," which also due to state and federal laws are mandated for all new home construction also in most states throughout the nation.

With lien and seizure rights to your property in the event your standards for upkeep and maintenance don't meet theirs, or even one of your neighbors who just might be a realtor looking instead merely for a new listing.

A British law, the "law of servitudes" is being used in order to legitimize these "nonconsensual" contracts on your home and land many times.

Especially in these economic times.

Forget also selling a property "as is" as in the past, leaving the negotiating on the eventual price and repairs then to the buyer and seller.

The market is clearly speaking regarding the "changes" in the mortgage and home buying process that has occurred within the past several decades, and is clearly affecting the realtors and construction industry big time.

As far as the rest of the ad, representations were made insofar as how much wealth Americans have in their homes (ask the recent foreclosed upon "owners" of those properties where their wealth is now, some of whom in many states were not those that bought to flip those homes, but actually to live in them).

That wealth and home that will never be passed down to their children.

Promoting financial reform in the home buying process means confronting and addressing those escalating interest rates and changing terms due to the fact that the mortgage or loan you have today may not be the same next month, or even next week due to the fact that debt is now defined as a negotiable instrument that can be sold on the open market under different terms and conditions once that loan is "assumed" by another bank or mortgage lender.

Or that your loan may not even be based on the U.S. prime and currency, as many of those in the West and Southwest were but based on the British interbank lending rates or LIBOR.

Talk about risk.

I mean in the Southwest in this boomer's experience, this last cycle was the third simply in my lifetime of the most recent boom and bust cycle.

Home sweet home is not the phrase that comes to mind anymore to the many affected during this last one.

And the lesson was not lost on most of those of their posterity and next generation, I guarantee.

Junk fees, higher and higher utility bills and costs of ownership, escalating and changing mortgage terms and conditions, and a risky investment, not home, at best is the new definition.

Senator McCain: Reagan Aside, Libya Is Not America's War

After the presidential address attempting to "sell" the American people on yet another U.S. involvement in a foreign civil war, of course, there were analyses set forth by members of both political parties, the talking heads on the major cable news networks and others.

One from the Senator from Arizona, John McCain, defending again another foreign war sacrificing U.S. troops in the guise of protecting the civilian rebels for the "greater good" in Libya.

Reagan and his Reaganomics aside, which has literally at this point due to decisions made during that administration has cost a great many Arizonans their lives, property and livelihoods due to his first blanket amnesty move, and widening the interstate highways from Nogales to Flagstaff back in the 80's to facilitate the exchange of goods and people while leaving Arizona's open desert and borders for the most part open and unsecured - what has been left out is that the president of this country has no inherent authority whatsoever to engage American troops in any defense or intervention of any other nation other than our own.

Diplomacy and trade sanctions, yes. Direct troop involvement, no. Whether through NATO or presidential fiat.

At least without the consent of America's elected representatives, who also were to be cognizant of the strict provisions for defensive wars under which this country also was founded. Yet our standing army and its ranks continue to expand due to these serial foreign engagements, while our own borders are opened and for the most part unsecured?

Although, of course, there has been no true representatives in this country by legislative district for literally decades due also to the globalist progressives and their agendas low these many years, and some rather questionable Supreme Court rulings affording voice, funding and votes to global and national corporate entities even in local elections, many for the most part based outside the U.S.

Libya is not our war. And putting another British Parliament and puppet government in Libya or Iraq, for that matter, does not serve the interests of this country but is merely sacrificing our blood and treasure on behalf of global socialism, not even "democracy."

Remember, those founders did not believe in democracy - a form of government in their writings they predicted was doomed to fail and was nothing more than "gang rule."

Thus, those first ten amendments were provided in order to protect the citizenry and their lives and wallets.

And interesting that while incarcerated and many times plea bargained civilian prisoners in America's federal prisons have been progressively denied their "voting" rights and freedom in the piling on of charges many times, some even for lower level felony offenses, and the dissenters in the United States who continue to protest this illegal and unconstitutional foreign policy are being arrested on domestic shores, our leadership once again fails to truly see the forest for the trees and what is truly going on in their own backyard.

AP News: Obama To Make Case To The Public For Libya?

It was reported in the mainstream AP news media that Barack Obama plans to address the nation and "lay out his case" for U.S. involvement in Libya.

Obviously, again the Constitution and its strictly common defense provisions for wars will not be factored in during this presidential address.

It is more than obvious that the unrest in Libya is a civil war, and civil matter.

I wonder how Lincoln and this country would have felt if the Russians or British or any other foreign country had involved itself in America's civil war?

Or just why it was that while our leadership in Washington was pressing its case for no fly zone bombing raids and alignment with the British and "allied" forces since World War II for their oil needs most of all, the White House security and police were arresting Americans here on native soil for protesting the Iraq War, now in its 10th year with no end in sight, because they were standing "too near the White House gates?"

This country has been in one illegal engagement after another at least during this boomer's entire life, so just when will it all end - especially since it is clear that these expensive foreign wars are bankrupting this country and its citizens PROGRESSIVELY by those global progressives on both "sides" of the political aisle aligned with the two mainstream political parties and their "corporate" agendas?