The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

My neighbors are up in arms. A year ago a cluster of alders blew down in a storm, crashing into the bulkhead below and opening a wide gash exposing the bank to the sea. Our trail down to the beach was threatened — and more importantly a few houses close to the bluff’s edge were threatened. The obvious solution, of course — no, not put those houses up for sale — was to repair the breach in that bulkhead.

So permits were applied for and meanwhile the homeowner’s association decided the old bulkhead, rotting pretty fast, might as well be replaced too. More permits, more delays, more time to gather estimates, hire experts, obtain bids, attend meetings and divide up sides. Take a million plus dollar estimate and divide by 25 or so properties, you’ve got a microcosmic snapshot of America, the Haves vs. the Have Nots, the folks on fixed incomes vs. the Boeing and Microsoft retirees. Annie, get yer gun, we’re going to war.!!

I’m not exactly an uninterested bystander in this shoot-out. We have beach rights and since the trail is a necessary component of those rights which the bulkhead protects, the argument has been made that we are equally responsible to pay for the repairs. This, you can infer, is why attorneys were invented. For the time being I’m biding my time.

The irony of this imbroglio, this War Between the Houses, is that we live across the highway where bluff erosion really won’t impact us and our buildings for a millennia or so, unlike the folks perched precariously a few scant feet from potential disaster. And … the path to the beach is steep which means only a few of us geezers ever venture down that trail, mostly me.

Meanwhile the permits languish, attorneys are hired, acrimony builds, guns are loaded, secession seems possible … but wait! The State has revised its rules on bulkheads in the meantime. Possibly, probably! the government won’t allow a replacement. Peace in the hood might be restored. Neighbors might once again speak to one another. Guns will return to their closets. Happy Days?

Not likely. Now they got the new lawsuits concerning a building application that would block the views of the Sound and the Olympics of two other neighbors. Don’t put those firearms away just yet! They just might still be needed.

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Kind of makes your head spin, this 30 plus trillion dollar debt we have. I can remember back in the day when we had a debt. Took eleven years to pay off 24 grand for our shack’s mortgage but when we did, we vowed never to incur another one, not for a car, for credit cards, for a plasma TV, not for anything, just stop paying interest on money we didn’t have. Trust me, there were times the money ran out, like halfway through building our house, when a loan looked like the only recourse, but we just stopped buying lumber for awhile until we managed to get enough to continue. And yeah, I know, a lot of folks have to feed their kids, pay for college, all that stuff … so we count ourselves lucky more than smart.

This past month we’ve been enduring the continuous chatter about hitting the national debt ceiling, that point where the federal government cannot borrow another dime and sets off all kinds of mayhem. The GOP is suddenly alarmed by the 31 trillion we owe and want to cut back on spending for increasing the budget of the IRS or welfare programs. The Dems want to spend more on those but pay for it with rolling back the tax breaks the Republicans under Trump gave the rich and the corporations which of course added plenty to the national debt. Wasn’t troubling then but it is now with the Democrat Biden in office.

I’m all for a balanced budget, probably even for a reduction in the national debt. Most folks are. The issue really isn’t balancing or reducing, it’s how we get there. Neither party thinks we can cut anything from the military or Social Security. Medicare is pretty much off the table. So that leaves … not a whole lot of places they can cut. Welfare programs, school lunches, Medicaid, stuff that helps the poor, what we call a safety net. Of course we could raise taxes. I know, verboten! Especially raising taxes on the rich. You know, the folks we gave tax breaks to under the last regime. But we probably won’t and if you need proof, consider that part of the deal this week was to cut money from the IRS. Sure don’t want auditors probing the tax filings of the rich or the corporations. Sure don’t want to collect money from those folks even if it might help bring down the national debt.

Maybe the poor ought to call up their banks and their credit card companies, tell them No Way are they gonna pay one more red cent on their loans until the government does something about cutting down that national debt. And further, maybe they should demand that those same banks, those same credit card companies and all the corporations who are bilking the IRS because nobody’s checking the henhouse, only then will they pay one thin dime. I know, kind of a fantasy….

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