The American Dream

My friend Brett is spending a lot of time stressing this week over a research paper he's obligated to write for his English 300 class. His topic, "The American Dream". Brett says he wants to write a positive paper on the American dream but, unfortunately, right now it's hard to find articles expressing a positive point of view. Hard to believe. When I google "The American Dream" I get about 104,000,000 results in a quarter second. I don't understand the stress. In a research paper you could spend at least three pages on just the definition of the dream, three more on whom is defining it, and countless pages on according to which definition, whether the dream is alive or dead. Of course "The American Dream" is alive. Ask any Naturalized American why they came to America and, realized or not, there was a dream involved. How esassy does it get? (Like that spelling) As for research, it ain't like the 70's, that's for sure. Mom used to have to walk five miles to get to school. Through the snow. My generation, living in the Sacramento Valley, had to go to the library and actually look up material in books, copy the material, copy the relevant "research facts", and write papers from our work. Nowadays research is as easy as Google, Wikipedia, cut, paste, download and print. Throw a few letters from Bradland in between the facts and you have a research paper. Back to the dream; I see that cities are beginning to levy fines on bank owned property that is not maintained. Stories like that make me wonder why the banks don't re-sell the property, cheap and quick and write the loan themselves to whomever can come up with a down payment and move in. Isn't something better than nothing? Banks don't seem to want to re-loan on their own property. Rather than let houses deteriorate, become liability traps, or be torn down, the banks should write new mortgages on them, and sell them. The houses will be sold short and cheaply anyway, Why don't the banks want to write new mortgages on their own foreclosed properties (including the shadow inventory) to generate cash, reduce liability, and start the housing recovery? I have asked Realtors to go back to the "Bank", the owners of property, and ask them if they would be willing to write the mortgage on a piece of their own property if I bought it. No. That's just not the way it works. But it seems the simplest way. Do they have to "sell'" it outright to a new bank or mortgage company? That's my question for the day. But if I owned a million empty houses that were for sale, and I was in the business of loaning money, I'd start selling houses and making loans, kill two birds with one stone. (so simple it rhymes) ( Like Sesame street) OK, and the dream ain't dead, just ask any one of four generations of Vietnamese, living in a two bedroom duplex, all working under the table and drawing immigrant Social Security. They're getting RICH. I know because I used to deliver the damn checks. They're not worried about pride, or doing the right thing either. It's a dog eat dog world out there, they understand, and the American born average Joe better start...... Being American is no longer a guarantee for a better life. Future generations will have to be smarter, work harder, be hungrier and understand, " you can no longer be lazy". Unions, the weekend, guranteed wages, air conditioned work places, why should American workers have those things if the rest of the world doesn't? I used to feel really lucky to be American. I always felt that born anywhere else in my socio-economic class, I really would have had it tough. Maybe I had it too easy and that's why I'm lazy, like so many other Americans. It is no longer easy, but the same key factors are at play, Hard work, Luck, and Determination. I 'm having trouble remembering lately, so let me say it again, "Life is wonderful, every miserable moment, remember that and life is wonderful".

Erratic, Ranting, naaahhhhhhhh. Bradman