Musings of Old Man Joe

There and back again!

Personal comment

Truth is important

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Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

The Trump years were a low point for the United states; I could see the damage he was doing to the Republican Party, which had been more radical since Obama was elected, and also the extreme damage to the country. I found myself, every day, asking the question, how this could be happening?

I like many loved President Obama, his intellect and way of dealing with things and the respect he showed even to people who decided he was the enemy. I like many thought that, with him , the United States had moved on toward a more open & less racist society. I was wrong and it was just an image painted over the country during his tenure in office.

It was only when Trump got in and made changes to so many Obama policies, just because he hated Obama and nothing to do with making the country better, you could see the birther racism show through. My surprise is how many people went along for the ride, and how quickly the Republican Party went from small government to a white power party. They were anti immigration anti muslim pretty much anti anything that threatens the white guy in charge.

The last four years have been an education on how much racism there truly is in America, and how fragile the system is, how open to attack from within. The safe guards against the rule of law can be manipulated by those in power very quickly. America can and did lose the moral high ground in world politics, and as many times as Joe Biden will say America is back, the damage is done and will not be forgotten so easily, even though he is trying to clean up after the Trump policies debacle. The world breathed a sigh of relief when Joe Biden was elected; I believe he won four times in Georgia!

The politics in the United States is so full of lies, it’s hard for some to know what the truth is. I personally say to anyone check your news sources, and move away from just American news sources as they can be biased, even local news can be manipulated like the Sinclair media story. It’s time for the American people to start believing the institutions that have been established to provide information to the government since the inception of the United States, namely the intelligence community, who even during the Trump years stated the truth to power. While Trump was saying Russia was great & Putin was a great guy this was happening.

There needs to be open hearings to get the truth out to the people again, all these politicians who are spreading the lie need to speak under oath and see the consequences. Those who manipulated the crowds who stormed the capital due to a lie need to be held accountable for the country to move on, otherwise the elections in the future are rife with peril. If you cannot trust the election what can you trust.

The United States is a super power and with the other ones being china, wannabe Russia, the world needs a super power doing the right thing. Europe needs to grow some balls and get it’s act together, because racism and special interests cannot be allowed to determine our direction.

One Year in Lockdown

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Looking outside window at rain on car.
Rainy Day today

I have found it quite difficult the last few months to focus on anything other than the lockdown. I have friends who have had the virus and some who have been very sick & are lucky to be alive, also coworkers who didn’t make it through. During these times it doesn’t seem right to say how beautiful it is here in Ireland with all this going on. I was so lucky to be able to move here with my wife that any expression of gratitude seems a bit lame compared to what my friends have had to go through and are still going through!

I think like many people I am tired of restrictions, it would have been better to close borders and restrict people entering the country to stop lockdowns going on for so long. Best example New Zealand, worst example continues to be the United States. How much a human life is worth seems to vary from one country to another.

In a few days March 15th it will be a year since the lockdown entered my world. I was living in Los Angeles with a job and a home/apartment I had lived in for 15 years. My wife was starting to feel unwell with what we now know was frozen Shoulder. I was trying desperately to get time off work to care for her, even though I worked in a hospital & had a doctors note a hospital is just another corporation that happens to look after sick people. So I ended up having to deal with corporate ego’s trying to flex their unimportant lives to prove to themselves how important they are. When your partner is sick that means nothing, you will do what you have to do.

Then the apartment we lived in was sold to a developer who wanted to remove the old tenants, do the place up and sell it for profit. During a pandemic when the City was supposed to be protecting tenants, NOT!

One year on myself and my wife are living in Ireland and under a lockdown as Ireland does care for people more than just profit. There is frustration waiting for the vaccines to arrive as every country is scrambling for the jab. I am grateful that in this day and age the science is there that could make it possible for a vaccine in such a short period of time. I say to myself there was a pandemic in 1918 and until now the world got over that one without the science we have today. This will pass and the world will begin again to look like it did before Covid-19.

Leaving Los Angeles

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Photo by Dillon Shook on Unsplash

I decided with my wife it was time to go back to Ireland where I am from. I have been in Los Angeles for nearly thirty years and the city isn’t the same place it once was.
The Pandemic changed allot of things, I am lucky and I count my blessing that I can get out and head back to a small town for a break from the big city and the problems that are going on here.

Things weren’t that great before the pandemic hit us. I wrote about a pole that was drooping and could hurt people if they were blind and walked into it. After a month or so I took it down, The City never came to fix it and actually just complained about the way I asked them to help with said pole. So obviously there was something not that great even before Pandemic.

Of course then we had Pandemic, and the world changed. I had to take time from my job to look after my wife who wasn’t well. Then after a while we decided I should take an early retirement and we should head back to Ireland. Of course the original plan was to head back sometime next year. But fate would deal a few blows that changed our minds.

The building we live in was sold and the new owner/manager wants to do the LA thing and kick out the existing tenants, paint the place and charge a fortune. It doesn’t matter the people in my building are here on average 15-20 years. The longest has lived here about 45 years. Kicking people out of their homes is not a noble enterprise. Then new guy (I won’t use real names to be politically correct), let us just call him ASSHOLE!

So asshole started the three month retrofit during and pandemic to cut us out or our parking and make it just that bit more uncomfortable living here.
I feel like I am looking at the end of Los Angeles as I knew it, nobody I know can spend $3000 a month in rent. So it’s been harder to get things ready to leave, moving is already a stressful thing.

I left my job but needed health insurance for the last few months here. There is Cobra, which sounds great if you can afford it. But it’s even worse than you think. After you leave your job you are usually insured until the end of the month. The job has a few weeks to send the papers to the cobra people letting them know you have officially left. Then the cobra people have a few weeks to send you the papers to sign up for cobra. Then you sign up and they have another ten business days to let the health insurance company know you are paid up and they can cover you. This means it takes about a month the get the coverage with cobra, during that month you have no coverage, they back date it, but you can’t schedule appointments or get medication because you aren’t covered. So you pay a month for health insurance that doesn’t exist! Fucked up!!

I bought a car last January because at that time I was still going to be here for a few years. The Title for the car had the wrong address on it so of course I didn’t get it. I found this out about eight weeks ago when you could still actually call the DMV after only a two hour wait. Today I would forget it as I have been on hold with them the last week for about six hours and no joy. Happily I am also a AAA person and boy did it save my life this time. I was able to get my business done with a real person, Go figure!!

On reflection I am glad I gave myself the time to get ready, because if I was in a rush I wouldn’t have had enough time and I wouldn’t be ready when I am supposed to leave. I am looking forward to writing about where I am from and getting to know it again. I hope you will enjoy my getting to know Ireland again posts from November on.

Blog Update

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Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

For all those entrepreneurs who mail asking asking me if I want to market my blog in so many ways. I say to you thanks but no thanks!
My humble blog is not for money or for marketing anything. I am not a writer and for this space I use to just share my experiences good and bad.

I thank you all for the offers but should you mail me please understand I shall not be replying to you. I hope you have a great day and I wish you all there best with your endeavors.

Peace! ??

How Long does a Retrofit Take?

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empty parking lot
Fenced off parking lot

In this world of Los Angeles where persons buy up properties then do them up and rent them at crazy prices. I now have personal knowledge of the way this can go.

Over a month ago we the tenants were informed our building had been sold, the new persons had looked at the place during the pandemic and were going ahead with their evil plans. At the time we the tenants were unaware of what the evil plan was. During the lockdown it wasn’t easy to evict tenants so we figured there was some time before we would have to be evicted. And it’s not allowed to mess directly with the tenants (cutting off electrics and water).

So the plan goes like this, you say you’re going to do a retrofit for earthquakes to bring the building up to standards. Then you hire a company to do the retrofit. Seems normal and even though it is annoying there isn’t much the tenants can do when the permits have been approved.

Then what you do is the crafty bit, you fence off the parking so you have to find street parking when everybody and their cousin is home during a Pandemic and then NOTHING! It’s been over a month and the parking is the same since the day they fenced it in.

The company who is aiding the persons who bought the building in behaving like ass holes is https://www.optimumseismic.com.
I have called them, first time I called they said the work would take six weeks and not twelve, even though on their website they say it takes about three, this is not a big building! The second time I called and asked when they would be starting the work again they just put me off with some BS and never got back to me. I was surprised a company would be so complicit in helping to kick tenant out of their homes. Some have been in this building for more than thirty years. I have heard people say it’s just business, I disagree and the people being forced from their home would agree with me.

Greed has been kicking out the tenants in Los Angeles for years, the people who lived and work in Los Angeles when people think of it in its heyday have all but left. I am leaving soon as I am done with the BS and dirty streets, lack of empathy from the people who run the city. I am lucky that I can and I have somewhere to go. But many are not as lucky and having to do this during a Pandemic makes it just a bit more stressful.

I don’t know what Los Angeles will look like in years to come. I see lots of fancy apartments with lots of apartments vacant as regular people cannot afford the money they are asking. Maybe it will end up like a Chinese Ghost City.