I have more than one founder in my portfolio who has struggled with basing their businesses in America because U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is barely functional. My own family has been affected on the personal front.
I’m proud America is so desirable a destination. But we can’t be such a dysfunctional one. That makes me feel shamed. I want us to bring the best and brightest here to build.
I’ve never felt such patriotism as we begin to invest in industry and energy again. The America that makes it to its 250th birthday is at another turning point. When hasn’t she been?
My phone showed me memories of the last big birthday trip we took with my father for his 80th. He passed this year. Smiling photos of my brother and I and our spouses with my father a little bemused but happy to be in Puerto Vallarta.
It was cheap boomer luxury provided by a Costco vacation plan. Today the Costco in Puerto Vallarta is on fire. Cartel infighting they say. That detente is done
The last time I saw a Costco on fire my hometown lost a third of its housing stock in a freak prairie fire. In a sick twist of fate those homes housed scientists who did work on weather stations and forecasting work for NIST, NCAR and NOAA.
One of my friends owns an Airstream which they use to go from job to job. They park it in front of their home. A elderly neighbor called in a complaint.
Despite many destitute disorderly trailers and tents on sidewalks, now my friend is the one to get ticked and towed from his own parking spot. A simple ordinance broke and now it’s a fight with the city.
Rentals sit in an uneasy tension with elderly populations sitting housing wealth. They rent their second homes whose property taxes haven’t been reappraised for decades to those of us who might appreciate an opportunity to arbitrage one home’s desirable location for ski season for a break in the winter.
Freedom to transact with one’s own property in an era where property tilts to the elderly feels uncertain. The struggling homeless can’t be moved, but the legal tenant can’t park his van in front of his own home. In Airbnbs they don’t want you to stay more than 14 days. I guess that’s when you get squatters.
I want our institutions to function. I want a viable state capable of doing the business of its citizens. Instead it’s renter classes and public employee unions and right outside (and inside too) our borders we see corporations, crime syndicates and subsidies for the thee and not me for me. Normalcy bias until the Costco is on fire. And then we forget all over again.