KEY WEST A RICH SMALL TOWN

I did my good deed for the year during the night. Maybe for the next ten years.

I received a telephone call at 4 this morning. A friend was in trouble, needed help.  It was out of bed, into clothes, and into town.

As a result, I am dead tired. Probably will be all day.

Duval at 4 in  the morning is strange. Almost no one on the street. It was like everyone had disappeared. Only the buildings remained. Eerie.

Bloomberg Business did a survey to determine the 20 richest small towns in America. Key West one of them. Came in 13th.

I question the survey result. The survey was based on real estate values and median salaries. Real estate values have  been out of whack in Key West for years. Whether buying or renting.  The mean salary based on the survey was in the low $50,000 area. Not many making that much. There must be an unusual number of millionaires residing in Key West to raise the average to that level.

So much for the study.

Yesterday was the anti-gravity treadmill in the morning, lunch at Roostica and the Galleon’s Sunset Tiki Bar at cocktail time.

I thought I would run into Jean, Sheila and David at the bar. Generally their friday haunt. Found out Jean left town two days ago, and Sheila and David were no where to be found.

Someone put their arms around me from the back. It was Pati. We spent a couple of pleasant hours together.

JJ bartending. He previously worked the Chart Room. A great personality. He was thin. Obviously lost weight. Told me 20 pounds. How, I asked. He is building something outside. He is at it from 7 in the morning. The humidity a killer. A lot of sweating. The pounds just fell off.

I asked him for a job.

I was on my way home when I decided I was hungry. Stopped at Outback. Glad I did. Enjoyed great conversation with two guys sitting next to me at the bar.

Both in their thirties. One a government worker, the other out of work. Both extremely knowledgeable. We talked of our country, politicians, Trump, and life in general. The life we credit/blame on our political leaders.

Both would like to leave the U.S. and move to another country. One has property in Mexico on the Pacific coast.

We agreed as we left, it had been a good evening.

My KONK Life column Black Lives Matter / Play Tough is being correctly run in this morning’s E-Blast. You may want to read it.

Danny is fickle. First a nothing storm. Then a category 2 yesterday which turned out to be a category 3. We are told Danny will die after Puerto Rico. We shall see.

Market down 530 points friday. Monday will tell if the market was adjusting or we are at the start of another recession. China the culprit. All has to do with oil.

Trump announced 36 thousand for last night’s rally. He had to get a stadium to hold all the people. Turns out the stadium was only half full. Twenty thousand. Still a good number. In fact, an excellent one.

Will the Trump mania run its course and burn out?

Watched Jimmy Carter on TV yesterday announcing his medical problem. The man is a class act.

Enjoy your day!

 

 

15 comments on “KEY WEST A RICH SMALL TOWN

  1. I read your black lives matter column in konk blast. On the whole, balanced. I disagree that their purpose is admirable. They really do not care about lives except black lives, Even that is questionable. They are hypocrites and agitators. BLM just tears up communities in response to a thug being shot dead by police while ignoring the issue of black on black violence that led to the death of a 9-year-old girl in Ferguson. The death of the 9 year doesn’t fit their agenda. They are racists of the worst order, as they do not seek equal treatment, but preferential treatment for their kind. They are despicable.

    • I agree. Racism has never been so prevalent as it is today and for the past 5-6 years. We are going backwards with groups such as Black lives matter. They need to stop with the excuses, use the means that are offered to them, make better lives for themselves and their families.

    • No I agree and I am sort of a moderate/liberal I guess. The slogan should be “All Lives Matter” as more minorities are shot and killed by other minorities during the commission of a crime than ever by a police officer trying to do his job. Granted, with the exception of the dregs officers who should never had made the cut who shoot unarmed people and people in the back.

      When an officer is gunned down, often by a minority, nobody appears to care anymore. We glorify the thugs now. This does not bode well.

  2. Cara and cec, I agree. But, liberals will never agree. They’ll keep looking thru their rose colored glasses and follow their emotions rather than facts.

  3. Also I have to disagree with your opinion of Soros. I know liberals see him as an icon. He is no better than other weathy people the left loves to condemn. In fact he is worse. He is a hypocrite of the first order.For years Soros has demonized fossil fuels through his think tanks and political contributions.
    Well, guess what? He just invested a lot of money in coal.

    After Soros’ anti-coal efforts drove down the price almost to zero, he moved in and bought almost a billion dollars in coal stock. One company’s stock use to trade at $90 a share, but because Soros’ puppet Obama punished the coal industry with costly regulations, these shares had fallen to around $1.That’s when Soros moved in and bought them up.He now has significant controlling stakes in the industry he’s demonized.This is the definition of the word “hypocrisy.”

    • The soros comments above are mine. I hit send before I put my name in. Anyway he is a hypocrite and has a pattern of devaluing currencies, and industries for his own gain and what EPA and soros did to the coal industry is unbelievable. I have family in West Virginia and Virginia that have lost jobs this year in the coal industry and those jobs will never be replaced in those economically depressed areas. It’s criminal to watch what’s happening.

      • I’m from Virginia and agree. The very small fraction of people at the top of the 1% of the 1% are always out for themselves as they see themselves as superior to we masses. They will buy laws to favor their business, don’t care if people live, die, get sick and probably still attend Church to sing the praises. However, I have found that Karma can be a harsh mistress given time.

  4. obama is making good on his campaign promises, he said he would bankrupt the coal industry. He is doing a good job at it. Some folks know obama is a soros foolish follower and an alinsky advocate.[ These disgusting people don’t deserve a capital letter in their names]

    Coal happens to be a necessary industry, we have a lot of it and now know how to burn it.

    It’ll be decades before ‘alternative’ energy becomes viable and the shortsightedness of the left doesn’t seem to understand we still need fossil fuels and the sooner we become completely energy independent the better.
    One good fuel also readily available is natural gas that burns cleanly and has been proven it can be extracted safely, yet the left still won’t allow it in some areas [ like NY] further ruining that states economy as well as that of our country.

  5. Lou thanks for helping your friend at 4am. I presume he/she was drunk on Duval. I know that I can count on your if I ever need a hand, but I don’t know your phone number. ha.

  6. The market volatility imho is due to China but not the way everyone is pitching it. By disconnecting the Yuan from the US Dollar, China has prepared the way to exit from buying US Treasuries to maintain the value of the Yuan versus other foreign currencies.

    I believe that the Wall Street types are realizing that days of the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency are numbered.

    AND, this move puts the FED on the horns of a dilemma.

    (a) if the FED raises rates, then the Chinese will not be buying Treasuries in the quantities that they have, the FED will have to buy — like QE3-4-5, and the market will see the flaw.

    (b) if the FED does not raise rates, they will admit they are powerless and the “man behind the curtain” will be exposed as “having no clothes” (i.e., the much touted recovery is political propaganda).

    Like most of the doomsayers, the best Joe-Sixpack strategy is to “get small in your hole”. Eliminate debt, but real assets, and maintain a widely diversified equity portfolio. Think of Cyprus and Greece as the model for going forward.

    We need the “political class” to eliminate the deficit with “real cuts” while paring back the welfare / warfare state. Especially the job killing “regulations”, the Crony Capitalism, and the vast increase in “entitlements”.

    Argh!

    Trump & Sanders have tapped into the disgust of Main Street with the professional political class.

    Argh squared!!

    • The Cato Institute released a report that we [USA] is 20th of the industrialized nations in what they refer to as personal freedoms. Its interesting and basically related to the increase of our secular progressive tendencies leading to the rise of our nanny state.

      • Agree on the disgust with entrenched Washington DC. 17 trillion in debt now, so how does one repay that? Seriously. How?

        The F35 debacle alone will cost us 1.5 triilon dollars for a fight that a 70’s F-16 can take out easily.

        US dollar is toast. But the rest of the world is pretty much over-cooked squid at best.

  7. 17 trillion ? Its more than that now, but, whats a couple extra trillion. We’ve put that burden on our future. Our kids, grandkids and great grandkids and great great grandkids will have to pay for our stupidity. Our debt has increased its greatest during the last 7 years. The wheels really are falling off.

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