Well, it has been a long time...



I don't really know why, but too many detours on this road to blogging. i managed to get to a few other blogs by some types and found many very limiting - one topic and often only one approved point of view. So I decided to reactivate this place and - at the least - have somewhere to write where both guests and myself would not be called by nasty names and topics can range from a one topic only situation to anything that crosses my mind.



So, to start, something not by me. I belong to a group called RAMM - Rec.Arts.Mystery on newsnet. Mostly we exchnage views on mystery writers and books, but we often go off into current affairs and more. One member is Francis minter, a very well spoken lawyer with a great number of interests. He penned a very short O. Henry type story recently and with his permission, here it is. I know people just like this. I've been close on a few occasions. See if you can relate....



Here it is...


"The following is not a real case, but almost. It is a
compilation of realities I have observed. I fear that many
around the country have suffered this and worse.


Linda is a single mother with a ten year old son. She earns
about $22,000 a year at Malwart and does not have any
insurance. She pays $925 a month ($11,100 per year) for
rent for a two bedroom apartment in a city suburb. She owns
an older model car. Gas, oil, tires and maintenance cost
her about $150 a month ($1,800 a year). Food costs about
$250 a month ($3,000 a year). Clothing for herself and her
growing son and laundry and dry cleaning of the clothing
cost her another $200 a month ($2,400) a year. Telephone,
basic cable and electricity run $150 a month ($1,800 a
year), and the rest goes to withholding taxes and municipal
taxes for her automobile.

One day she gets a parking ticket for $25. The problem is
that she gets paid bi-weekly, so by the time she gets her
paycheck, the ticket has doubled to $50. She really doesn't
have the extra money for that, but would have paid it,
except that he son needs vaccinations in order to be allowed
to attend school. So she spends the money on the
vaccinations instead. By the time she gets her next check,
the parking ticket has again doubled to $100. She cannot
pay it.

She struggles along for a couple of months when her son
becomes ill with a severe asthma attack and she has to take
him to the emergency room, which costs her $200. Something
has to give and the auto insurance slips that paycheck. She
gets a notice from the insurance company to pay in 15 days,
but it is either the rent or the auto insurance that check,
and she chooses the rent. The insurance company notifies
the Department of Motor Vehicles ("DMV") electronically that
she is no longer insured. DMV suspends her registration
electronically. Two weeks later she sends the money to the
insurance company. The insurance company receives it but is
not under any obligation to inform the DMV that the
insurance is in effect. That is left to the individual.

Soon after that, she is driving to work and is pulled over
by a police car. The officer was not overly occupied and,
as the police are now directed to do in such situations, he
was running the license plates of the vehicles that passed
him. Hers came up suspended. He gives her a citation for
$300, removes the plates from the car and has it towed to a
lot. The towing costs $175, and when she tries to get the
vehicle from the lot, she is informed that she cannot
legally drive it away. They tell her that she can pay the
$175 and hire a truck to tow it somewhere for another $175,
or she can leave it there until she has it registered with
storage charges accumulating at $50 per day. She cannot pay
the extra $175 so she goes to the DMV to register the car,
since she has now paid the insurance.

She takes a bus to DMV, but DMV does not allow her to
register the car. The parking ticket is outstanding. In
any case, she will need to pay $135 for the re-registration
and $40 for new plates. She does not have it. She takes
another bus downtown and goes to the municipal parking
authority and finds that they have put the overdue parking
ticket out for collection and she has to go to the
collection agency. That is at least within walking
distance. There she is informed that once it goes to
collection, there is an additional $50 penalty, so that she
now has to pay $150. She does not have the money.

She can do no more that day and goes home, having missed a
day of work. She has to go to work the next day, but
Malwart is not easily reached by public transit. She pays a
neighbor $5 to drive her to her job. A co-worker drives her
home where she now assesses what she has to pay. There is
$175 to re-register and get new plates. There is the
original $175 towing fee that has now become $225, and will
be $275 by the next morning. There is $150 for the parking
ticket. She now has to pay a total of $600 the next day if
she is to have any hope of rescuing her car. She does not
get paid for three more days. By then, she will have to pay
$425 for the towing and storage, for a total of $750.

The problem is that her biweekly paycheck is $846 gross, and
$745 net after IRS and state tax withholding, social
security withholding and FUTA and SUTA withholding. Even
with that check she will not have enough to get the car, and
then there is the more serious problem that even if she can
get the other few dollars (someone has got to help her), she
then cannot feed herself or her child, and will have no
money to get to work. But if she uses the money for food
and transportation to work, she loses her last chance to
recover the car.

Thus begins despair.

--
Francis A. Miniter"

Now, I know people who live on just this sort of edge. Some borrow from friends, others from the nefarious pay-day loan sharks. A few dig themsleves out, or go bankrupt. A few just run away. And a small number actually get out of the situtuation in some strange ways...

As the economy of 2009 got worse, signs were small here in PG. More cars with for sales signs in the window, then these cars and others were seen on private driveways, plates removed. The repo lot on Queensway was full, and replentished daily. One day almost all Hyundais - they must have had a sale. Yet teh massive casino and bingo hall on the highway has a full parking lot, massive number of people. Digging deeper - putting the rent on red and letting it roll?

Nothing new for PG. We've been here before and quite recently. When everything in BC was climbing, we stayed the same. Then a very brief surge upwards, prompted by the Vancouver Sun naming us the second boom town of the new year. A three to six month surge in prices and rents. Then back not so slowly to normal. Our house appraisal went up to $150,000, then down the next year to $115,000.

But the casino goes on...

Teh fellow who owns teh casino had a bingo hall downtown. So he got planning permission to build a new bingo hall, right downtown. Aftger all, get all tehpennies from even teh poorest, right? So he built this massive structure and somehow got the city to contribute $3 Million for underground parking (we have tons of parking downtown and needed more like a hole in our heads). Opened the place, ran it for all of three months, and then decided to close it and build a new bingo hall next to the casino on the highway. The downtown one was abandoned - after three months, maybe six. It is now being renovated to become a medical centre, so perhaps some good will come. Meanwhile, teh marginal people as above flock to the casino on the hope that they can win something and get ahead for a short time...

So sad...





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