Small Business -- Help at Last!!!!!

If you have been reading from my early blogs, they dealt with the problems I am suffering from this bad economy and trying to run a Tree Surgery business: Affordable / Professional Tree Surgeons.

AT LAST---I am getting help!
Did you know that some 2 years ago the IRS put in a new tax break for large corporations? They did!!!!

What is it?

A large corporation which establishes a Foundation whose funds are available to struggling small businesses gets a break!

Small businesses, like mine, which are suffering a 30-70% reduction in earnings over the last 3 years can apply for help. I applied for $50,000-$1,000,000 in relief. Last week, I got a grant for $50,000+!!!! It will be coming to me in 30-45 business days.

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How did I get it?

I was contacted by phone as a cold call some 3 months ago. The outfit is named Turnaround Business Group, Inc. They are located in Henderson, NV, about 50 miles from Las Vegas. They said they served as the liason between small businesses and Foundations waiting to fund them.

For a fee of about 1.8% of $50,000, they serve to get together your request / represent you to the corporation / get the funds you need. Their original financial cost for services provided is $2,999.00. Send the money and they start their work with a promise that nothing further is needed until they secure, at least, half of the funds requested. At that point an additional $4,790 is needed to pay for the Sears-Roebuck size catalogue of paperwork / legal details / web site with the promise of money delivery within 30-45 days. You can repay your initial costs out of those funds.

Now you are saying, "This sounds like a scam since money is required up front!" NO!!!!!!!!

First, they provided me with contact information for the Attorney General's Office in the state of Nevada, should I wish to check them out. I was also encouraged to contact the local Chamber of Commerce and Better Business Bureau. I did! They are real and have no complaints against them.

When I could not come up with the entire $2,999.00, they were willing to accept the $2,500 I could borrow to start the process. Needless to say, when you have been operating at 30% of earnings for 3 solid years / lost your home to foreclosure / had your water and electricity turned off several times during this Depression--er, Recession--as long as you listen to government pontificaters!

It was a real struggle to find that initial money, but a kind Baptist friend who owns a finance company was willing to take the risk--as long as I secured the loan with my truck and an expensive Chipping Machine. My family had been "loaned out" trying to help me keep my house 3 years ago. This is the reality for far too many of us small business owners since our economy took a "slight" nosedive under the Bush Administration's fine regulatory practices. I say this in jest, of course!!!

I was convinced of their legitimacy the second they offered to take less than the stated fee. In addition, in the course of conversation via phone, I discovered these people have religious convictions--and it is real rather than another "come on" using religion to fake you out!

Within the stated 90-180 days they produced!!!!

Now I am finishing questionares to formulate a small part of the Sears catalogue of documents.

Here is how this Grant works:

(1) I am required to set up a non-interest-bearing checking account into which the funds go.
(2) I must make a 6-month report to the Foundation which includes copies front and back of all checks issued to fulfill my request.
(3) The Grant comes with an IRS tracking number, lest I run afoul of the taxman. It is non-taxable as long as it is spent to secure my business.

The rationale for helping small businesses to compete again:

(1) I hire and secure employees whose families get income so they can, again, support the general economy and pay their taxes.
(2) I buy equipment so the providers of such have an income. For example, Bobcat of Wilson is struggling with reduced sales and repairs. I still owe them $1,000 for repair of my A-300 machine last year. My income is such that I can't pay it. Now I can---and I am ordering a new machine with trailer to carry it! They are getting much more happy with this struggling customer! I am tired of transporting my maching with overdrive kicked out for 2 hours to service my customers in my local Beaufort County home/office.
(3) I repay accumulated debt which amounts to some $120,000. They are happy!
(4) I am able to build/lease property to house my business. Construction and Real Estate people are happy!
(5) I am able to have several billboards to fill the many which are vacant these days. The billboard/advertising people are happy!
(6) I can now bring quality tree care to people who don't yet know me. They will be happy they met me and get quality work at affordable prices!
(7) I can buy a tractor-trailer rig to get to Hufficane/Storm relief needs. They will be happy to not have a gouging contractor in place to help them recover!

I hope, by now, you see the first wisdom I have seen in this whole economic mess. At last, someone is helping small business get back on its feet! My earliest blogs were about my attempts to get federal help through my 2 NC Congressional Representative---not a single thing came my way except more of "we must help Corporate America and the Banking Industry.

Folks--Trickle Down Economics doesn't work!!! If you haven't figured that one out yet, ask a question: "If we own 61% of GM as taxpayers, why aren't all their products 61% cheaper to the taxpayers whose money was used to bail them out???"

Don't you think if the above were true, we would be buying GM products right and left so they could put their assemblyline workers back to work--plus the sub-assembly companies providing goods to that line? Check out the economy of Michigan to see if anything happened---other than Corporate Executives getting bonuses I could run my small business on for the next 5 years! IT HAS NOT HAPPENED.

The same is true of the Financial Industry: Has anyone who lost some 45% of their investment value been restored? Have any of the lying/cheating pencil pushing/creative accounting thieves gone to the Federal Pen over their clearly unlawful securities practices?

I have a Series 6 Securities Liscense and know whereof I speak. You are fingerprinted upon getting it, and the laws/guildelines are clear: "Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" to anyone trusting you with money management. It's just that simple, or "Go To Jail-do not pass GO" as the Monopoly game card reads!

So here is my truthful story and my encouragement that you do something besides moan and groan about "how bad things are!" You have to have a little faith and trust in an environment where "if it is too good to be true--it probably isn't." We are being totally put into a prison of doubt by illegal practices which don't seem to get punished or controlled.

If you have some controlled trust and check things out so any doubts are alayed, you might find some help. I am sure there are some schemers out there. I get emails every day from folks promising Federal Grants/education/etc.

I don't respond because I don't want all the red tape attached to Government Grants. This, however, is a Private Foundation trying to get money into responsible hands. It has some IRS controls, but I am sure there will be illegitimte grantees trying to scam the system assuming "Wall Street and Detroit got away with it and so will I." Worse becomes even worse if we give up on the promise of the Free Enterprise System, properly competing, to give hard-working people in small business a chance to succeed or fail---according to their wisdom and hard work.

Where would you rather invest---Corporate America, where books are cooked and accounting has become more than creative / where long-term experienced personnl get the age 55 "golden parachute", OR your own business which provides good services at a reasonable price????

The ball is in your court now!

Father's Day Tribute to My Father

Those of us who are Preacher's Kids are most blessed when daddy lives the other 6 days of the week the things he preached on Sunday.

My father, now gone to Higher Ground, stood a step above many of his contemporaries. He saw fraud and pretense and told me about it. Therefore, I am sensitive to it.

My dad grew up on a tenant farm outside Athens, GA. He got his call to preach plowing behind a mule during the Depression. Despite the church ladies at the Moon's Grove Baptist Church telling him an education would ruin him, he hitch-hiked to Mercer--arriving with .10 in his pocket.

He was told by the President that a man with no funds other than .10 could not metriculate. He broke down and cried.

The President had mercy on him and gave him the name of a family who loaned money to worthy students. In addition, he got a job peeling potatoes in the Cafeteria plus cutting hair for students. He made it!

Then he went to Andover-Newton, which had a reputation for being one of the finest Seminaries in the country. Again, he made it through hard work paying his own way.

Now, comes the wrinkle: He felt called to return South where he met all kinds of subjective criticism. He had the education and preaching skills for a First Baptist Church, but he was still single and did not have the Southern Seminary Professors pulling for him.

They would simply say, "Can you trust a man who is from Andover-Newton rather than Southern?"

He had to take a job teaching school and a part time church in Pendleton, SC. Finally he married a Carver School of Missions graduate and that opened some doors. He was "safely" married. He went to the Liberty, SC, FBC where I was born. From there he went to Tryon, NC, FBC, but got pressure to leave because he ministered to everyone--even a woman dying from a botched abortion at a "Road House" outside town.

After a short time as Associate Pastor in Spartanburg, SC, he was called to the Clarkston, GA, FBC at a time of potential growth. They had built a new sanctuary and the population was exploding. He worked hard and stimulated a doubling of the congregation---BUT he was in conflict with the Town Mayor (a lawyer) / Deacon Chairman / Church Treasurer who was playing games with the Building Fund by not paying the steel bill! He had a lawsuit against the company.

Daddy told this man, "You must pay the bill by Friday or I will resign Sunday and explain in clear terms why I am doing it." It took 4 years, but they finally got him in one of the most ugly and lying scenes ever imaginable.

That was OK. He refused to hate! He started a new mission church in an unchurched area--and also became the first HMB Chaplain to the Fulton County Juvenile Court. That church started in our living room, moved to a rental house, and finally built a building after about 2 years. In addition, he was the Associate DOM for the Atlanta Baptist Association.

When he should have become the next Director of Missions, a powerful Editor of the Christian Index opposed him because he was not a "yes man" to him. To move up required a "political correctness." Still he ministered as best he could and had the undying respect of many of the Atlanta Pastors. Again, he refused to hate and did not give up when the new DOM put terrible pressure to get rid of him.

Here is what I learned:

(1) Those who have integrity sometimes are doomed to public failure.
(2) Those who maintain their integrity are provided by God with a place of service where it counts.
(3) Refusing to hate and leaving vengence to God, saves one from bitterness or ultimate defeat.
(4) Most of the early Saints, as well as Jesus, paid an ultimate price for telling the truth.
(5) Few preachers are willing to stand with integrity when their political future and retirement plans could be part of the sacrifice.
(6) Robert Frost was right when he advocated "The Road Less Taken."

I rejoice in the man of integrity who was my father. He stood in front of a hostile crowd many times at the GBC and in his church to advocate for honesty and a Christlike approach to those the majority wanted to crucify.

He is the most like Christ of any man I have ever known. Even in failure, he maintained his integrity. He refused to participate in ugly politics just to be "successful."

It's too bad men like him are few and far between, but I shall meet him one day in the Land Above for I know he walks with God!!!

Children and Grief

“Unless you change and become like children,
you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Jesus in Matt. 18

Her name was Alyssa. I met her as the new minister of Noonday Baptist Church near Woodstock, GA She had been the poster child for Atlanta in a recent MD telethon. She was precious. She loved the BeGees. She had met them through Make a Wish Foundation. It was one of the highlights of her life.

She was about 10 when I became her minister. I met them in the hospital as Alyssa suffered a chronic lung infection which is part of the last stages of the disease. She went home in a few days. That was where I saw her home and all her memorabilia of a short life filled with important moments. Many people had gone to bat for her and her working class parents. They could not afford much, but love prevailed in that home.

Fast forward 2 years as the disease had weakened her to the critical point. She was in the hospital this time for her last hours of life on this earth. When I arrived the Physician was attending himself. He had fallen in love with this little patient along with all of us who met her. Her smile was contagious and it never left for long even in the most hurting things modern medicine can do. Nothing conquered Alyssa or put her down for long.

The Doctor had his stethoscope to her heart and was listening quietly. The parents were standing at her bedside with dread all over their faces, but tempered by faith. There was nothing for me to say except to be there standing quietly. We waited on God.

Suddenly there was a strange woman pushing the door open uninvited. She burst into the room and began her “Christian Cheerleader” routine. She began to tell the parents how they must have faith--they had plenty. It showed quietly for the last 2 years to me. She then began to speak in a loud voice to Alyssa as she lay comatose. You could hear her at least 2 doors down. “Alyssa, if you hear me nod your head!” Alyssa’s almost lifeless body did a slight convulsive motion. This set the lady on fire and she began her sermonet about being saved and going to heaven. Alyssa, and none of us, needed a last minute deathbed confession. Our spiritual roofs had been thatched a long time ago.

For about 5 minutes this lady carried on as insensitive “do gooders” do--more interested in what they are doing than helping the one in trouble. Words, no matter how spiritual, mean nothing when a beloved child is dying. My first thought was, “This lady needs to get a foot in her behind to get her the devil out of here.” Somehow God gave me a crisis word. We had another lady in the hospital with hysteria-induced ranting about her minor illness. She just had asthma. However the central circle was filled with my church folks tending to her because she was one of the families called “the click.” No one was there for Alyssa but me, her physician, nurses, and her parents.

I can’t believe the words which came out, but I quietly asked her to help my other church members pray down the hall. She quickly left--thank God. I was about to do the “money changers at the Temple” approach on this wacky “do gooder.”

As the door closed, Alyssa’s parents whispered a quiet “thank you” through tear-filled eyes. Again, our eyes focused on Alyssa and her quietly attending Doctor. In about 5 minutes tears filled his eyes and trickled down his cheek. Quietly he said, “She’s gone.”

We all did as Jesus: we wept!! Not a word was said. No words could get past the ball of grief in our throats anyway. Finally, her parents asked if I could say a prayer. I have never choked one out with any more anxiety. All I could say was, “Thank you God for this child who has brought so much joy to all of us. Thank you for the faith she had. Give us some of it today. Thank you for her caring Doctor. Thank you for the nurses who have attended her. Give us all a peace that passes understanding in these hard hours of loss. In the strong name of Jesus we pray. Amen.”
With that we hugged one another until we each had to leave. One nurse after another quietly came by as the word passed in whispered sorrow. We all cared more than words could say. No one thereafter came with any “do gooder sermonets”. They are a wasted effort in such time. People need to be loved through grief.

God gave us 2 ears and 1 mouth for a reason: listen more than you talk.

Some years ago John Drakeford wrote the insightful book, The Awesome Power of the Listening Ear. It tells of the importance of listening in times of hurt: losing a child, spouse, friend, house to foreclosure, etc. He was so right.

Dr. Richard Young taught for many years at Bowman Gray and Southeastern Seminary in my student days. He was a brilliant chaplain and mentor in the early days of clinical training with a psychological background to help with understanding. He told a story I shall never forget.

There was a male patient in Dr. Young’s student days who was the terror of the floor. He had a terminal illness and cared not how or when he focused that anger. Every Dr., nurse, or student chaplain was deathly afraid to enter his room. Dr. Young thought about it while he waited his turn to do the inevitable round with this man. He decided to try something different.

He went in the room and pulled a chair beside the door. He sat down and said NOTHING! After the required 30 minutes, he stood to leave. The patient spoke. He said, “Thanks for saying nothing and just being here. I needed that more than you can know. I am tired of the questions and “cheer up” bull from every one except you. Thanks for being here and DO come again! When I am ready to talk, I will. Until then, button it up, if you please.”

Dealing with Grief

Most people who have written about grief have discovered a natural process unique to each individual. Time required to grieve is different for each person--also the intensity. The most important thing is to recognize when you are grieving. Some people who always feel bad are grieving and don’t even know it!

Big griefs like loosing a beloved spouse, child, relative, or friend knock us over with their appearance. No one can miss them. There are also “little griefs” like a child losing a favorite toy or having your beautiful car dented. Enough little griefs add up to equal big grief. Today, with bad economic news everywhere, it is multiplying rather than adding. Grief and suffering are everywhere from mansion to shack.

Some people with negative attitudes spend their days looking for things to generate grief. These people are usually miserable and desire to make everyone around them miserable--not the kind of person you want around when you are hurting.

Step 1: Shock and Denial
It is like bashing your thumb with a hammer: no instant hurt--soon nerves kick in.
It is like a dream--you want to wake up and find it not true.
Isolation and feeling you are the only one being hurt so badly

Step 2: Anger
You are mad this awful thing happened to you--Why ME???
You want to curse God and Die--recommendation of Job’s counselors
You want to get that Doctor / Hospital / driver / etc. for letting someone die

Step 3: Bargaining
If God will just spare (fill in the blank), you will be more faithful, give more, become a missionary, etc.
Take me, the parent, rather than my child
Just give me one more chance to do this over

Step 4: Depression
Leave me alone in this dark house--I just want to die
No one knows how I feel--leave me alone
I just want to take pills/alcohol/drugs and go to sleep

Step 5: Acceptance
God is in this after all
Now I understand what the plan was for me
It is just one of those awful things in life and I must go on

The above steps were discovered by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her famous book, On Death and Dying. Other writers like Grainger Westberg--Good Grief, Edgar N. Jackson--You and Your Grief and Telling a Child about Death all form the basis of my “books to share with hurting people.” If you are hurting and cannot seem to move through your grief, I encourage the reading of such books to enhance understanding and compassion. Anything simply promoting “positive thinking” likely will not address the more serious and deep grief situations. If grief is not moving behind naturally in 6 months, seek professional help.

Remember the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept?” Remember the beautiful description: “He was a Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief?” These few words tell us God knows of our sorrow. His own Son experienced the depths of sorrow, yet moved on to face life again. Anyone who experiences grief is now uniquely prepared by life and God’s help to undergird those just being hit by the hard bricks thrown at us by life.

Is Professional help necessary along with heavy medication like Valium/Lithium? The answer might be “yes” in very serious cases lingering for years. A quick “pill pop” will not help anyone work through real grief. Instead, it will prolong or cover up steps necessary to go on with life resuming the smiling and singing a song. I am just as suspicious of the “quick fix” as I am the “counselor dependent” approach to grief. Both cost great sums of money and neither gets at the core of grief. It is a journey enabled by Faith in God.

Maybe we need more good old Country Stores! As a child I went with Granddaddy Williams to Cousin Leonard Williams’ store just outside Greenville, SC. I listened as they talked and joked, cursed weather, government, price for crops, and considered which tractor was best. Finally, after about 30-45 minutes, they decided without saying it: “We are all in the same boat so we might as well get to the field and start plowing. This is just talk which won’t solve anything. Weeds need hoes and plows rather than lazy people praying for God to do it for them.”

What if we started helping one another rather than depending on “professionals” and “miracles” to do it for us?

What if our SS classes dealt with sharing our hurts in light of the Scripture lesson rather than parsing Greek verbs?

What if we all realized with 1 mouth and 2 ears God might be telling us to listen twice as much as we talk?

Let’s help one another. Sometimes it is better to go as a group from 1 field to another rather than separate, each to his own field. “By this shall they know you are my disciples: If you love one another,” said Jesus.

Talk is cheap---we need action in these tough, grief-filled days.

Grief and the National Economy

“I walked a mile with pleasure
She chattered all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with sorrow
And Ne’er a word said she,
But, oh, the things I learned from her
When sorrow walked with me.”
Robert B. Hamilton
　
It takes a griever to help a griever. The above was penned by someone who had been there. I can write this article on grief because I have been there. I highlight a few of my griefs:
Two forced terminations--God led me to bivocational ministry
Career change to insurance--Company bought out / lost the intimacy of small company teamwork.
Hurricane Floyd destroyed my territory of Eastern NC--no insurance money
Turned hobby of tree cutting into highly successful A / P Tree Surgeons
Failed national and local economy made my phone stop ringing.
Our beautiful $250,000 dream house got foreclosed. We moved to our “retirement” cottage classified as a “fisherman’s cottage,” which means no insulation, cold water, no A-C, plenty of windows. No insulation meant 50 degree mornings inside the house. Diesel fuel was almost $5 a gallon! They pulled the electric meter three times because I had no work. My wife drives 1.5 hours twice a day to keep her old job. A deer totals the car we should pay off in April ‘09. Nothing is trickling down to us but sorrow and grief. Being Job on the dung heap is no fun.
I suspect many of you can relate similar stories. Every one is suffering from high grocery / fuel / utility prices.

The difference between a Depression and a Recession is simple:
A Recession is when your neighbor lost his job--
A Depression is when you lost yours!

If you are not experiencing the Depression, it is coming your way as companies downsize, states and counties trim budgets, and church income falls. Some people must choose food and electricity over church giving.

In the last year I have not talked with any small businessman who is happy.
God created us to cope with grief, but it is a process. It is not done by a snap of the finger or with a “perfect” sermon. Job is the classic example. It was almost deleted from the Torah because it is so honest about the hurting, blaming, struggling process of grief.
Worse, in the eyes of Jewish religious leaders, it violates the simple formula of “Serving God = Success.” Just like today, the simple minded want to focus on the reverse: “Failure = God has left you.”

They believed, like my simple minded Baptist mother, that all you have to do is go to church and give your tithe. God is obligated to bless and save you. She has told me many times my troubles are because I stopped being a full-time Baptist minister. God is getting me.
She thinks I am a bad boy because my wife and I spend Sundays right now insulating the house and renovating it into something where we can walk five steps without stumbling over boxes.
My wife deserves a decent home.

Right now our worship is renovating our lives and residence so we can live like humans. The ox is in the ditch. We do not work on Sunday morning. I listen to the worship of New Bern First on TV. Sadly, a worshipful traditional service with robed clergy pales in showy comparison to a Charles Stanley / Joel Osteen / Rick Warren show. I prefer quality over glitter. Attend a local church filled with real people who are trying to help you in your daily struggle. Or, like me, trust God and get the ox out of the ditch.

We all know the story: Job was a booming success, God allowed Satan to test him through losing it all. Mind you: God “allowed” -- God didn’t do it to Job. As Job sits on a dung heap scraping sores and boils with a pot shard, the wife and friends come by to comfort and advise him. Like most of us “quick fix” artists they utter pious and empty phrases which never answer the deep questions of Job,

Put simply, it is “Why, God, WHY? I have served you faithfully. I have paid my tithe, I have been blessed by you with success which proves further you approve of me. Why the heck are you treating me like this? I don’t deserve it.”

Now, let me ask the practical question: How many adult SS classes considered how the national economy and foreclosures are a source of grief---and allowed their class members to discuss their hurts and griefs together? Shakespeare once said, “A sorrow shared is a sorrow halved.” Perhaps we should spend more time sharing together than discussing historical details of the Scripture passage. Despite my story appearing in the local paper, only one person from my “caring” church has called to express sympathy and understanding.

Are we scared to address the realities of GRIEF today???

Words to my Legislators

This week I have communicated with my 2 senators: Kay Hagan (D) and Richard Burr (R).

I cncourage you to write in a similar manner. The new Federal Government is trying to figure it out and only the "Howdy Doodie Show" gave me more entertainment as a child: Clarabelle the Clown, an Indian Princess, and other characters talked with Buffalo Bob, the host. They could come up with a solution in an hour!! We have about a month. Let's help the boys & girls in Washington with some good down home advice. The same basic stuff is in both letters.

Dear Senator Burr:

I spoke with your Administrative Assistant Friday, and want to follow up in writing what I tried to convey. You have convinced me you are a fair-minded person willing to work across the great divide in the Senate. You are my advocate as a small business owner. The failed economy has almost taken me under. Since this last summer, I have done virtually nothing. My beautiful Castalia home was foreclosed. We have moved to Bath and are trying to renovate a summer cottage into a year round home. Without insulation it is often 50 degrees on cold mornings. Talking with others like myself, I have yet to find anyone happy with the current situation. How do we get out??

My father told me a real story of the Depression through which he lived. He was a Georgia tenant farmer’s son who was then Pastor of the Pendleton Baptist Church (SC). The great debate was the same as it is today: Republicans wanted to stimulate by using tax money from the top down, the hopeful Democrats and FDR proposed working from the bottom up. They won and now had to come up with some realistic programs to carry it out. I am sure many wise Republicans participated in a balanced program far from the “give aways” we had in Title XX LBJ days. I was part of the Santee-Wateree region in SC representing Lee County.

The first step involved a major small business of the day: the family farm. Their solution was to recognize there were surpluses such that crop prices were exceptionally low. My maternal grandfather--SC Democratic farmer, no holds bared-- had no market for bales of cotton. My mother remembered the front porch cluttered with bales as their place of play.

The solution: send a check based on an average estimated profit to each farmer who would place his land in the Soil Bank for a year . Thereafter, institute a Crop Stabilization Board which monitored the market and encouraged specified amounts of certain crops which would contribute to a stable farm market in the future. That worked well to the present!

The result: as soon as farmers received their government checks they went to merchants and paid off their account. The merchants, in turn, paid their suppliers the overdue bills. Those merchants could now order inventory to stock their empty shelves. Everywhere goods began to flow within a month! It was so simple and so effective. Why have we forgotten and used the old failed program of bailing out the banks and investment firms along with auto giants? These people all have CPA’s, tax lawyers, and insurance professionals whose sole purpose is to keep everything possible from being taxed. Never before had capitalism focused on the common man except to offer him an entrepreneurial opportunity to get out of poverty. Sadly, few made it.

One of my father’s favorite observations was on the question: What is the difference between a Democrat and a Republican? The answer: A Republican is just a Democrat who has become wealthy and wants to keep it all! So true. As wealth has shifted to the South, every southern state has become a majority of Republicans. I can’t blame them because the Title XX approach made poverty something to be wanted, and the current state of Welfare proves it! In my opinions “workfare” is far superior to “welfare.” Anyone who has been such a poor parent that children won’t pitch in first may deserve the cold house and bare cupboard Title XX was designed to eliminate. It has failed just as dramatically as the $7 billion wasted thus far.

If the money to banks, investment firms, and GM was working, why am I paying 12%+ on a used car recently purchased. Sadly, we were within 6 months of paying off our Chrysler Sebring when a deer jumped into it. Nationwide had a 75% loss and was required by NC law to total it. It could be easily repaired, but the NADA book showed a ridiculous low value. Further, if I could have repaired and kept it I could do so only under a salvage title which made its book value 40% of normal. This whole approach to auto repair is ridiculous in light of the current economy.

Give me the cost of one Iraq war bomb! As a small businessman, my tree company would instantly thrive. I could repay some $27,000 I owe. This is why I quit selling insurance in the same year I was recognized as Underwriter of the Year by the most outstanding chapter of Life Underwriters in NC. It took no time for Congress to vote for the President’s fiasco in Iraq. Please act just as quickly to bomb out this Depression. Check out the website: CostOfWar.com. to see the amount spent thus far!!

I turned my hobby into a profession with good Republican principles: because of economic disaster from the hurricane, no one was buying insurance--they were all paying for tree removal and stump grinding. In this instance, there was an alternative for making money. Right now I know of none outside your wise Federal help.

Your constituent in Bethel who is a small new Chevrolet dealer had his inventory taken and doors closed about two weeks ago. His success was short. His hopes are crushed. His flashing expensive electronic sign by Highway 33 to Greenville has two panels. The enclosed pictures express his thoughts, although he is a dedicated Republican. It could read: Richard Burr and Congress came to my rescue---come in and buy a new car at small town prices! Some re-using of the old programs with new creative thinking could benefit all of us . Call me if I can offer some suggestions as a small business owner. You might consider an Advisory Committee composed of some constituents with good heads and a direct connections hurting from top down economics of your fellow Republicans and Democrats. How long does it take to admit the last bailout failed miserably to help any regular citizens struggling every day to get by.

Question: What is the difference between a Depression and Recession?

Answer: A Recession is when my neighbor lost his job. A Depression is when I lost mine.

No one is paying for tree work these days, hence this is a Depression for me. You receive a regular check which is generous, and Congress even gave itself a far richer retirement than Social Security. Would it be a wise thing right now to rejoin Social Security as an example? Share in the fact there is no Social Security Trust Fund thanks to Johnson spending wildly of the War on Poverty and the Vietnam War at the same time. Where did you get the money for Iraq??? We are worse after spending far beyond the Tax income which funded it. The Federal government is the only legal counterfeiter in the US because you can print more money which is not backed by the gold reserve. The economic result will be the same ungodly inflation we had in the 70’s.

You will blame Obama, but the real ones to blame are those who created a deficit which defies my ability to count. Let’s get real. Let’s get together as American citizens represented fairly by all our representatives in Congress. Bring some good level-headed conservative thinking to balance the funding of programs which help us now on a temporary basis. If it works, vote it. If it has failed, drop it: Drop Iraq, drop any federal program which does not produce results, do not spend money you do not have except to get out of this crisis.

My first question at the Title XX meeting was: For every dollar collected in taxes in Lee County, how much comes back? Washington red tape lets those inside the beltway live royally while the taxpayer gets, I suspect, about 40 cents back in federal help. Any private business would fail quickly with such amounts going to the owner.

We have recreated in 200 years exactly what our rebellious forefathers left behind in England and Europe. They were tired of paying for the King and his Advisors to live in the castle while they lived in poverty--cold shacks, little food, disease, and walking while they rode fine horses and carriages. After all, they were supposed to help the peasants. Every time they had to bow while the King, Knights, and Tax Collectors rode by. If they didn’t the IRS of the day would throw them in prison. As they bowed they cursed and spit on the ground without giving any respect for the fat cats!!

Sincerely,
Gene Scarborough