Journal of a Living Lady #402

Nancy White Kelly

The Journal of a Living Lady started out as commentary of my journey with serious metastatic cancer. Though currently stable, it is a battle I am still fighting. My body has had all the recommended radiation and chemotherapy that exists. The only reason I am still alive is that God still has purpose for my life.

Many years ago, during the Vietnam War, I wrote a weekly column for another paper. It wasn’t at all like this column. It was a personal analysis of American problems and especially the war.

I was and am no authority on warfare, economics or injustices, but the column gained a following. One of the essays won a top journalism award from the Freedom Foundation at Valley Forge. I appeared on television to receive a very nice medallion which is stored away somewhere.

Why do I tell you this? To garner a little credibility for what I am about to write.
In the last three decades I have purposely avoided writing negatively about the state of our nation. As a diversion to the depressing headlines and national pundits, I try to use light humor to depict everyday life of an almost ordinary family

But, today, I want to take this newspaper pulpit once and point out that which is happening before our eyes. What the government says and what I see are entirely different.

No doubt you have noticed the escalating prices of groceries and gas. Our waffles, pop tarts, cereal, and pasta have lost weight? So have baby food, potato chips and candy.

My brand of coffee has risen 22% just this year. Beans, eggs, onions and milk have risen 18%. The jar of peanut butter I normally buy has shrunk 9%. Fresh fruits and vegetables have gone up 18% as well as meat.

Yet, our government denies inflation or minimalizes it at 2-3%. In reality, it is more like 9.6%. At that rate, if you had $100,000 today, lucky you, in ten years you would have $39,985 remaining.

The Consumer Price Index, which is the U.S. measure of inflation, began disguising the deceitful statistics by no longer including food and energy in its calculations. How can you dismiss gas and food in the cost of living? Stay home and eat nothing?
With a little fluctuation, gas has risen $1.19 in seven months. If this escalation remains the norm, we can expect to see $7 a gallon in the not so distant future.
In the numismatic business, gold has reached its all-time high. Why? Because nobody has confidence in the paper dollar any longer.

When I was in Israel last year, one vendor didn’t want my American dollars. The day is coming when our paper money will no longer be the premier currency of the world. That is one reason people are flocking to precious metals for investment. Gold and silver will always be accepted anywhere in the world.

Did you know that our government has long been able to print paper money anytime it wants? What a double standard. If we individual taxpayers printed money anytime we needed it, we’d be in jail. Our government can do it at will and does. We are no longer on a gold standard. There is nothing to back up our currency but faith in the U.S.

Uncle Sam needs to know that when it comes to faith, my faith is exclusively in God in heaven and not the czars with their cigars blowing smoke in Washington.
If you study the economic history of the Philippines, Turkey, Taiwan, Austria, Brazil, Russia, Japan, Hungary, Argentina, Germany and Greece and you will see that they all succumbed to the economic travesty America is parading.

I don’t like to present problems without solutions. Space does not allow me to write the sensible ideas that I believe would get us on the right track, but number one would be a religious and consequently a moral reversal from the Capitol to Main Street. That wouldn’t solve our current financial dilemma, but it sure would be start to the revival of the America I used to know.

Economically, I say take care of America first. Except for legitimate humanitarian needs, bring our resources back home. Who in debt gives away money it doesn’t have, especially to those that despise us?

Give this Granny a gun and I’ll gladly engage anyone who dares to attack our land of the free and home of the brave. I’d rather die in battle than linger on in stupidity.
There is no humor in this column. Just the facts. Just the cold, hard facts.

nancyk@windstream.net