is the other Qrb board still operating?
Can someone give me link if so
Why Is What Was Once Affordable to Many Now Only Affordable to the Wealthy?
Let’s start with an excerpt from a recent personal account by the insightful energy/systems analyst Ugo Bardi, who is Italian but writes his blog Cassandra’s Legacy in English: Becoming Poor in Italy. The Effects of the Twilight of the Age of Oil.
“I am not poor. As a middle class, state employee in Italy, I am probably richer than some 90% of the people living on this planet. But wealth and poverty are mainly relative perceptions and the feeling I have is that I am becoming poorer every year, just like the majority of Italians, nowadays.
I know that the various economic indexes say that we are not becoming poorer and that, worldwide, the GDP keeps growing, even in Italy it sort of restarted growing after a period of decline. But something must be wrong with those indexes because we are becoming poorer. It is unmistakable, GDP or not. To explain that, let me tell you the story of the house that my father and my mother built in the 1960s and how I am now forced to leave it because I can’t just afford it anymore.
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, Italy was going through what was called the “Economic Miracle” at the time. After the disaster of the war, the age of cheap oil had created a booming economy everywhere in the world. In Italy, people enjoyed a wealth that never ever had been seen or even imagined before. Private cars, health care for everybody, vacations at the seaside, the real possibility for most Italians to own a house, and more.
My father and my mother were both high school teachers. They could supplement their salary with their work as architects and by giving private lessons, but surely they were typical middle-class people. Nevertheless, in the 1960s, they could afford the home of their dreams. Large, a true mansion, it was more than 300 square meters, with an ample living room, terraces, a patio, and a big garden.
My parents lived in that house for some 50 years and they both got old and died in there. Then, I inherited it in 2014. As you can imagine, a house that had been inhabited for some years by old people with health problems was not in the best condition.
we started doing just that. But, after a couple of years, we looked into each other’s eyes and we said, ‘this will never work.’
We had spent enough money to make a significant dent in our finances but the effect was barely visible: the house was just too big. To that, you must add the cost of heating and air conditioning of such a large space: in the 1960s, there was no need for air conditioning in Florence, now it is vital to have it. Also, the cost of transportation is a killer. In an American style suburb, you have to rely on private cars and, in the 1960s, it seemed normal to do that. But not anymore: cars have become awfully expensive, traffic jams are everywhere, a disaster. Ah…. and I forgot about taxes: that too is rapidly becoming an impossible burden.
And so we decided to sell the house. We discovered that the value of these suburban mansions had plummeted considerably during the past years, but it was still possible to find buyers.
What’s most impressive is how things changed in 50 years. Theoretically, as a university teacher, my salary is higher than that of my parents, who were both high school teachers. My wife, too, has a pretty decent salary. But there is no way that we could even have dreamed to build or buy the kind of house that I inherited from my parents.
Something has changed and the change is deep in the very fabric of the Italian society. And the change has a name: it is the twilight of the age of oil. Wealth and energy are two faces of the same medal: with less net energy available, what Italians could afford 50 years ago, they can’t afford anymore.
https://washingtonsblog.com/2019/07/why-is-what-was-once-affordable-to-many-now-only-affordable-to-the-wealthy.html
Donald Trump Meets with Black Pastors Amid Feud with Al Sharpton
President Donald Trump met with African-American pastors and leaders of the black community on Monday, amidst a leftist uproar over his criticism of activist Al Sharpton.
Trump mentioned the meeting on Twitter but did not invite reporters into the room.
Alveda King and Pastor Bill Owens spoke to the press at the White House after the meeting.
King, a civil rights and pro-life activist and the niece of Martin Luther King Jr., has visited the president with the group of pastors on multiple occasions.
She told reporters who asked about the meeting that she had a picture of Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton with Trump.
“At one time in their lives, they highly regarded the president,” she told them. “And, so I’m thinking about a scripture: If it had been my enemy, I could have understood, I could have known what to do, but you were my friends and my brothers.”
After the meeting, King tweeted out a picture of her and Sharpton and her and Trump.
“When your friends lie, who needs enemies?” she asked.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/07/29/donald-trump-meets-with-black-pastors-amid-feud-with-al-sharpton/
Ty
Underground Bunkers & Campus Abductions in Palestine
Underground Bunkers & Campus Abductions in Palestine