Wake Up America July 9, 2010
Posted by raporeal in Uncategorized.4 comments
Wake up America – a silent coup has taken place within our beloved country. It is a coup carefully crafted by corporate greed and political avarice, boldly concealed by media-master corporate shills screeching profane misinformation bellowed loudly into the public ear. The Murdock-funded fear-baiting histrionics of the likes of Beck, Limbaugh, Palin, and others of their ilk, harkens back to the murky, now reprehensible time, when our nation was reduced into the communist fear frenzy of McCarthyism.
I laugh when I hear that the media is “liberal.” Are we all fools? The media is corporate owned and controlled, and gives the mere flavor and odor of ‘leaning’ liberal to blind us from the real truth. Stimulated and distracted by the misleading tags of leftwing, rightwing, Republican, Democrat and independent, straight, gay; Hispanic, Muslim et al. we are thrown these labels as blood-bait to keep us busy from seeing the real architect of this coup, corporatism at its finest.
In my heart of hearts I am not a Democrat, Republican, or Independent; I am an ordinary middle class hard-working American who is feeling rage toward his own government and his country. How can this be? I have always deeply loved America. I was as proud of this country as any American can be. I loved its diversity, its willingness to change when times changed, its national humor, but all that has gradually morphed.
America’s diversity has turned into suspicion of differences; its willingness to change has turned to bitter unswerving closed-minded thinking, and its humor into snide cynicism. One can only be lied to so many times by the Congress, the President, the Judiciary, the media, the banks, the energy companies, and Wall Street, before a dogged determination to stand strong in national pride, wears down into a jaded pessimism about what tomorrow will bring.
I am determined to no longer stand by and silently tolerate the wilful destruction of this country. Awake America. It is our duty as citizens to take stock in who we are as a nation, what we stand for, what we want our country to be, and how we can embrace the values that are good for all humankind. I am going to personally make every effort to enlighten those I come in contact with and awaken them to our plight.
We need a new commitment to holding fully accountable those that disparage our legal process and break the bounds of what is in our collective national and global interest, irrespective of their office and station. It is those among us in positions of political and corporate power that hold the greatest responsibility to the common good. The company ‘bottom line’ is simply no longer a good enough excuse for egregious behavior. Their very first responsibility is to humankind, not the stockholders.
Joined in unity; one citizen at a time, together as a nation, a people, and a purpose, we can redirect our country and place it back on the path of enlightenment, toleration, humanitarianism, and honesty. Those will be my goals, and I will take every opportunity and every possible step to voice my angst, and cry for change, for only when others see us and hear us will they recognize their own voice and strength. Unite my friends and let us return to the America that represented us all, and stood as the envy of the world.
In the words of the mad hatter of the airways, Howard Beale, in the prophetic movie “Network,” (surely Rupert Murdock’s inspiration) “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
Legal v. Ethical March 28, 2010
Posted by raporeal in Advice, real estate, Uncategorized.add a comment
Just recently I was reminded how much real estate has changed since I began in 1972.
I had received an offer on a fixer-upper property I had listed, and after a brief negotiation, the parties had agreed on a purchase price. Before the Binder papers had been signed, however, another offer came in and it was fifteen thousand dollars higher; a considerable sum in anyone’s wallet. Dutifully I contacted the seller and told him the size of the second offer and reminded him that the first purchase papers had not yet been fully executed by him.
He said, “Well, I gave my word to the first people that I would accept their offer, so take the second one as a back up.”
I felt an old warm feeling and a peculiar sense of pride in his response. It reminded me of the “old days” when it was much more common that a persons word stood head and shoulders over their greed. Things weren’t perfect, but they were “different.”
Although the second party increased their offer to twenty thousand over the first, and waived any further negotiations after inspections, the seller stood fast on his word. As it turned out, the house needed septic work, and without so much as a second’s recrimination, the seller agreed to pay an additional four thousand dollars in repairs prior to the closing.
The second buyer and their agent seemed quite astonished, “But the papers aren’t signed yet!” the agent decried. “The seller gave his word,” was my cheerful response.
A short time later, I brought in an offer on a house listed with another agent in my office. After some negotiations the agent called me late in the evening and said, “We have a deal.” I explained that my client was teaching very early the next day and would be in class until around 4PM, at which time he would be able to return a signed copy of the binder. The other agent responded, “No problem.”
You probably already guessed what’s coming. Before 5PM that night I delivered a signed copy of the Binder, only to be told that during the interim, the owner had accepted another offer that was higher.
I was furious, “What about, ‘we’ve got a deal’?” I demanded. His reply? “The seller is perfectly within his rights… it’s perfectly legal.”
And so it was, but was it ethical?
So many more things these days are being measured by the letter of the law rather that the strength of a persons word. Has our sense of ethics so deteriorated that we have lost the basic once resolute strength of a common handshake? Our word?
I once heard a joke that went; a man asked a woman at a bar if she would sleep with him for a million dollars. After a moment, she agreed. Then he asked her if she would sleep with him for five dollars, at which point she bellowed, “What do you think I am?!”
He responded, “We’ve already established that, now we are simply haggling over price.”
Beware the new legal paradigms; we’ve established what they are, we’re simply haggling over price.
