The original phrase "Rich dad, poor dad" was the title of a best-selling book. It showed why some families were rich and why others weren't. The difference was that rich dads taught very different money-management skills to their children than the poor dads, assuming that poor children have a father who lives with them. Many poor children have a mother but no father in the house at all, which adds to their poverty.
This situation has changed dramatically under President Obama. An article dated November 22, 2012, that was posted on a blog called "Zero Hedge" makes the point that a family of four whose parents work at two minimum-wage jobs, but who, due to their low income, receive a lot of financial- and other assistance from the U.S. Government, has more disposable income than a family of four that has an income of $60,000 per year.
Even if this statement is true, it is a "snapshot" analysis. It is a statement of what is happening at this moment in time, but it does not take into account two facts:
A family headed by a person who has a $60,000 income may increase the family income substantially between now and five years from now, especially if the USA doesn't have a socialist President. This can happen because:
the head of the family is working more hours,
he (or she) received a promotion in his (or her) job,
he (or she) is now working for a wealthier company, or
he (or she) received monetary bonuses from his (or her) employer for specific acts of outstanding job performance.
A family headed by a person who has two minimum-wage jobs (or a family headed by two people who each have one minimum-wage job) will only have a substantially higher income in five years if one of the two adults in the family stops asking for government aid and gets a better job. The family's choice may be strongly encouraged by the 2016 election of a non-socialist President.
In other words, five years from now, the two families could easily return to the traditional capitalist economic model, which states (this is very much oversimplified) that "the harder you work, the more money you make".
For more information on this subject, please read any or all of the following essays:
I write seven blogs. I started with one in June 2012 about conservative politics, political science, and fiscally-responsible economics. My second blog was started a month later. It has a wide variety of subjects. My third blog is about religion. My fourth blog (this one) was begun with the goal of attracting more mobile users.
My first four blogs have a special page called "Readership Statistics". That page lists the ten most popular essays during a recent one-week period, and it lists the most popular essays since that blog was created.
I added a fifth blog on December 20, 2013 to focus attention on my home state of Massachusetts. I added a sixth Spanish-language blog on July 16, 2014 and a seventh blog on January 6, 2015. The seventh blog will focus more on political science than on partisan politics.
Those "Readership Statistics" pages only list the essays on that blog. This page lists the twenty most popular essays of all of my blogs combined.
This page will not list the "Readership Statistics" pages because they're not essays. The "Readership Statistics" page on my "I have to say this" blog, for example, has been read more often than any other page on that blog.
Most of the pages that I write are essays. They will take some time to read them, and most of the pages have clickable links embedded in words or phrases.
The most recent update for this list is February 9, 2023.
My Twitter account is @BennyTheKite (I admire Benjamin Franklin.)
I'm also registered with a social media platform, similar to Twitter, called Gab. My Gab account is "David fan of Ben Franklin".
Their messages can be up to 300 characters.
Their messages can include a link and one photo or graphic.
This blog page includes a list of some well-known people and organizations that follow my Twitter account. For example, @TedCruz and @SenTedCruz have followed my account since early 2014. That page is on the list of the most popular pages on this blog.
Note: "Water Economics" was read thousands of times every day from late June 22, 2016 until early August 2016. The readership of that page is more than half the readership of that blog.
Editor's notes as of May 28, 2017
Two blog pages are on this list primarily because I have mentioned them hundreds of times on Twitter. I started promoting "Stop using PayPal immediately" (5,783 readers) as soon as it was written because I was outraged at their attempt to steal the intellectual property of their own customers.
In addition, I promoted my blog endorsement of U.S. House candidate Lori Bartley (3,279 readers), and it helped her win her March 1, 2016 primary and a May 24, 2016 runoff election. That page was renamed in 2018 to endorse a different candidate named Ava Pate, but she didn't win the race, either.
Special note about "Other Viewpoints about California Water"
I believe that the readership amount for this page is inaccurate. Sometimes, when I click on one of my own links, in order to read one of my own blog pages, Google's software will temporarily show me the most recent blog page on that blog instead of the older page that I wanted to read. Sometimes, the wrong page is quickly replaced by the right page, but sometimes, the wrong page stays on my screen until I refresh the screen (or until I highlight the internet address of the page and click it again).
Every time the wrong page shows up on my screen, Google is probably counting that as a click on the page for purposes of the readership statistics that they report to me as the blog author. I consider this to be a flaw in Google's software, but I don't know how to notify Google about it.
The "Other Viewpoints" page was published on July 21, 2016. I saw the same flaw in the Google software before that page was online. My page called Living and Dying in the Jungle, part 4 was published on July 5th, and for more than two weeks, it was the most recently published page during part of the intense readership of "Water Economics" that I saw from late June 2016 until early August 2016. When "Other Viewpoints" was published, the daily readership of "Living and Dying" suddenly dropped. That tells me that the readers of both pages were attempting to read "Water Economics" but were the victims of the flaw in Google's software.
As of the October 2019 edition of this page, the same unnaturally high readership is now being seen by another "most-recently-added" page, called Water in the Desert. It was written in November 2018, and I haven't written any new pages from then to the current October 18, 2019 update of this page.
That page is about a concept that is similar to the concept in my most-read page, called Water Economics. A French writer named Jules Verne wrote many science-fiction books, including 20,000 Leagues under the Sea and Around the World in 80 Days. His last book, pictured on the right, was set in northern Egypt, and the plot involved building a canal from the Mediterranean Sea to a below-sea-level area inside the Sahara Desert.
Note: Every essay name is a clickable link to that page.
Essay Name
Blog Name
Readers
Water economics A 200-mile aqueduct
will end the drought in the southwest USA.
Barak Obama is not a Christian
He ignored the mass-murder of Middle East Christians as long as he could, and he hosted Ramadan dinners in the White House.
Conserving the Nation
4,551
Vote for Ava Pate in Texas
This page was written for Lori Bartley, who was a 2016 candidate for the U.S. House in Houston.
The brownie photos illustrate the concept of the Laffer Curve. The essay includes links to online articles about the Laffer Curve in well-known financial publications, including
This is the Laffer Curve. The maximum amount of revenue that is collected by any government from a family or a business is at the top of the curve.
If this hypothetical government chooses a tax rate that is less than (Point A) or greater than (Point B) the rate at the top of the curve, they will not collect the maximum amount of revenue from these families or businesses.
It is in the government's best interest to choose the tax rate so that it collects the maximum amount of revenue. It is an obvious fact that a tax rate that is close to 100% would not produce the maximum tax revenue because taxpayers whose incomes would be confiscated by a 100% tax rate would move out of the city or state that tried to confiscate their income.
The concept is simple enough. As tax rates increase, people’s incentives to work and make investments decrease because they make less money from them. Above some rate, taxes become so onerous that total revenue goes down because people aren’t as economically active as they would be in a world with lower taxes. The big question is what that rate — the tipping point on the Laffer curve — actually is.
"The big question is what that rate — the tipping point on the Laffer curve — actually is."
This story makes an issue out of the location of the point on the curve that represents the maximum amount of tax revenue, but the article does not question the validity of the curve itself.
Blog pages in a series
Some of my pages have sequels. Sometimes this was done intentionally. For example, I wrote a two-page set of essays on the same day about the U.S. Social Security program.
Other times, however, I added so much new material to a page, I felt iI had to create a new page to hold half of the material of that page on a new page. I wrote a page in 2012 about income mobility. That page defined the concept and showed how it could be applied to individuals and nations.
This page had some news stories about individuals who had seen their family's assets either grow or shrink, by a significant percentage, in a short time. After this page was published, I added more of these stories, and then, in October 2017, I moved the stories of individual income mobility to a new page..
These are my series of pages. They were all written in February 2020.
The first page has pages about racism, the long-term drought in California, theoretical and applied economics, my two-page series about Social Security, and illegal immigration.
Each page in the second set has YouTube videos on it. The first two-page set has videos of talent shows, some of which were filmed in other countries. Every video in this set has millions of viewers. Then, there is a three-page set of videos that also have millions of viewers, followed by a four-page set of music videos. Each video in this set also has millions of viewers. There is also a three-page set of videos of Christmas music.
This page also includes links to other pages that have YouTube videos. For example, there is a page that has videos about animals, videos of international television commercials, videos that have a political theme, and a page that has videos of news stories of the bad behavior of teachers and administrators in America's public schools.
The readership numbers for each video in the series is updated from time to time. I always wait a year after the last update before performing another update.
The third page has a six-page series about the bad behavior of teachers and administrators in America's public schools, a nine-part endorsement of the reelection of Senator Ted Cruz, plus two extra pages about his response to a 2017 hurricane that came ashore near Houston. There is also a three-page set about factions within the Republican Party and a seven-page set about Democrat factions. An unfinished page in this series will show that at least three of America's minor political parties, including the Communist Party and the Socialist Party, also have factions.
Popular essays on my other five blogs
Besides "Conserving the Nation", "I have to say this", and this blog, I also author four other blogs. Here are their names and the five most well-read essays for each blog.
These readership numbers were updated on October 19, 2019.
Conserving the Nation
I write two blogs with the same name, but they have slightly different internet addresses. My first blog has some political science essays, including "Why Dictatorships are Always Bad", which is read 300-700 times every month, but this blog is devoted purely to political science.
The most popular essay on this blog is called Obama's economic plan. It has been read 1,848 times. Many of his agencies assessed very large fines on companies. When this page was first published, I documented tens of billions of dollars in Justice Department fines since Obama took office in 2009, plus other smaller amounts that other agencies, such as the EPA and NOAA, have levied against companies. Since the page was published, I have also added large fines from other agencies. The total amount of the Justice Department fines is now over $115 billion.
In many cases, these fines were out of proportion to the seriousness of the violation. That makes this revenue process very different than the normal tax revenue income stream. It is easier to corrupt people with large amounts of money. Tens of billions of dollars are a definite temptation to a dictator like Obama than the normal tax revenue income stream because there is no Congressional oversight.
The second most-read page is part of my series on the factions within America's political parties. Pages 1a and 1b are about factions within the Republican Party. Pages 2a through 2g are about factions within the Democrat Party. The two parties are very different because the Republican Party has principles that most of its' members abide by, but the Democrat Party is little more than a loose collection of special-interest groups, including the ones whose logos or symbols are shown below.
Fans of Karl Marx
An unfinished page on that blog will show that three of America's minor political parties also have factions. For example, a man who called himself a Communist ran a conventional political campaign to be elected as the President of the United States. He ran this campaign three times in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Karl Marx, pictured above, was an advocate of a violent revolution, not an ordinary political campaign. The Communist who ran for President three times and the fans of Marx as a philosopher were in two different factions within the Communist Party.
That same unfinished page will show that the Socialist Party also has factions that can be identified by the highest tax rate that they want to impose on wealthy individuals and large, successful businesses.
The third most popular page in this blog is The President and the Governor.
It has been read 653 times. It looks at the North Carolina "bathroom bill", using a political science perspective. This legislation of this type was passed by the North Carolina legislature and signed into law by the North Carolina Governor.
The U.S. Justice Department threatened a lawsuit, but the Governor asked a court to rule that his state law was the result of a legitimate process performed by a state legislature, in full
compliance with its' state constitution and the U.S. Constitution. I added a new set of quoted and linked paragraphs to it on July 13, 2016.
Part 1 has been updated to show that the Governor of North Carolina lost his 2016 reelection campaign and that there is a new United States President.
There is a sequel, titled The President and the Governor, part 2, which was published May 18, 2016. The sequel has a lot of detail about a law that Congress passed in 1946 called the Administrative Procedures Act. The law is not well-known among the public, but because it is a valid law, it does affect how courts rule on various issues, including legislation passed by state legislatures and signed by governors. The sequel has been read 182 times.
The fourth-most popular page on this blog is called Democrats love Donald Trump.
During the first half of 2016, when American voters were choosing candidates for the presidency, many Democrats voted for him when there were strong Republican candidates, including current Governors and Senators. This has always bothered me. In my opinion, Democrat voters were deliberately voting for a weak Republican who they hoped would lose to Hillary Clinton in November. This essay has been read 624 times.
That essay includes quotes from news articles that mention his popularity (which has sharply declined, now that the primary elections are over). On the day that this essay was written, Hillary was leading Donald in many polls. The page includes a link to a website that shows the average of many polls. My essay makes the point explicitly that the Democrats who voted for Donald in the primaries will re-register and vote, as Democrats, for Hillary in November.
That essay includes this tweet that Donald made on the night of the 2012 presidential election. He included Obama's Twitter account in his tweet, to increase the chance that Obama would read it.
The essay also discusses Donald's lack of maturity in his tweets and in his public behavior. The page also includes a YouTube video that shows his
juvenile, insulting behavior during the 2016 presidential campaign. There is a long tradition in the Republican Party of presidential candidates treating each other with dignity and respect. I expected candidate Donald Trump to follow this tradition, but I expected too much of a candidate who often thinks like a child, plotting revenge against people who have hurt him.
The fifth-most-popular essay is Diversity in American Politics, part 2d. This page is about Democrats who don't like capitalism. Part 2e in that series names some individual Democrats who fit that description.
The sixth-most-popular essay is Diversity in American Politics, part 2a. This is the first page of a set that discusses the Democrat special-interest groups that, together, make up the Democrat Party. Their party has lost the unifying principles that they had when patriotic men like Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy (shown below), and Jimmy Carter were the President of the United States and proud to support the mission of our armed forces. This page has been read 544 times.
Deity Dialog, a blog about religion
Note: Some of the essays on this blog are Bible Studies. These pages include the names of Bible chapters and verses that are the subject of the page. I recommend having a Bible nearby when you read those pages, so that you can read those verses for yourself as you read my commentary. Some of my Bible Studies quote the verses, but other pages simply identify the verse numbers.
The most popular essay on this blog is the second essay I wrote for that blog. It's called Another look at the Good Samaritan story. It has been read 969 times. This essay examines the question of whether the Samaritan was a Christian. It also discusses possible reasons why Jesus might have recommended his actions instead of choosing to recommend the inaction of a Priest and a Levite, who also saw the same man lying on a road after being beaten, robbed, stripped, and then abandoned. The Bible passage that includes this story is named.
The second most well-read page is There is something better than faith. The basis for this statement is one chapter in the Old Testament. It shows the benefits of three human qualities, and when it compares them, in the last verse in the chapter, it says that one of those three qualities is the best, but faith is not the winner in this competition. This essay has been read 959 times.
The third most popular essay on this blog is Diversity is a two-way street. A high school principal encouraged every female student to dress like a Muslim for a day, by wearing a hijab. In the interest of true diversity, my blog page includes a photo of President Obama wearing a
yarmulke, another photo of President George W. Bush wearing one, and a photo of England's Prince Charles wearing one. If female high school students can legally be encouraged to wear a hijab for a day, then male students can legally be encouraged to wear a yarmulke for a day (or a cross on a chain around their necks). In addition, every Jewish student should be allowed to wear a yarmulke if he wants to wear one on any school day, and every Christian student, male or female, should be allowed to wear a cross on a chain. This page has been read 927 times.
The fourth most well-read page is The Greatest Commandment. It has been read 847 times. One of the gospels states that a man asked Jesus to name the greatest commandment. Jesus answered his question, but in a way that I believe was a surprise to the man, because Jesus
named two commandments that he said were the basis of all of the other laws.
The fifth most popular page on this blog is The Shoulder Test. It has been read 702 times. This page is partly personal. It is about the first year after my wife died. She had often comforted me during my sad moments by putting my head on her shoulder and holding it there, gently, until I finished crying. That intensely personal form of love wasn't copied by any member of a fundamentalist Christian church whose weekly services I started attending two months after she died.
As an alternative, which I needed because my loving wife had died, I carried a plain white cotton handkerchief in my pants pocket because the church services didn't offer me any comfort or any answers to the question, "Why did she die?" My "shoulder test" was a test of the ability of any church to offer comfort to someone who was sad for any reason. This church failed my test. If I was sad when I walked into one of their weekly services, I was still sad when I walked out an hour and a half later. The handkerchief was a poor substitute for a dry shoulder to cry on, but a shoulder to cry on is the true test of the compassion of any church.
Massachusetts Matters
This blog was begun on December 20, 2013. It is about my home state of Massachusetts. As of October 18, 2019, I have written 33 essays for that blog.
The most popular essay is about the Boston Celtics basketball team and their 1986 drug scandal. The essay is called The Celtic's image problem. It has been read 1,032 times, partly because I have sent a link to this page to a lot of Boston sportswriters. I have also sent a link twice to the Twitter account of the Celtic's General Manager, Daniel Ainge, who was once a player on the team. I have also sent a link to various team-related twitter accounts.
In 1986, the Boston Celtics, which at the time had a long history of winning world championships, drafted a player who died of a cocaine overdose before he ever played one game with the team. Every year since this drug scandal, there have been two things that you could always say about the Boston Celtics. They never performed the absolutely vital public relations efforts that would have brought fans back into the arena, and with only one exception, the team hasn't won a world championship since 1986, when Len Bias snorted cocaine and died.
In second place is an essay about my experience at an event that was timed to coincide with the 1973 Supreme Court decision called Roe vs. Wade. A rally was held in Boston, and I was part of a small but peaceful Pro-Life group that was in the same place at the same time. The essay, titled A Different Look at the Women's March, has been read 693 times. It includes five videos that I recorded that day, four of them recorded at the rally and one more that was recorded an hour later, when my small group was separated from some potentially violent Antifa thugs by a group of uniformed police officers. The essay also includes my harsh criticism of Obama's first Attorney General, Eric Holder, because of his unprofessionalism.
In third place is an essay I wrote in May 2015. It is called Proposed science and technology standards for students. The proposed standards for Massachusetts public schools would do serious damage to an important concept called the scientific method. This is what separates true scientists from people who simply have good knowledge of scientific principles, who I call technologists.
As stated in the essay, an astronomer named Nicholaus Copernicus was a scientist because he performed valid scientific experiments in the 16th century that proved that the earth revolved around the sun. At that time, the established scientific "fact", taught in schools at that time, was that the sun and the other known planets revolved around the earth. His experiments proved, scientifically, that this "fact" was actually false. This essay has been read 672 times.
The rally page tried to organize a protest rally at the site of a racist "black graduation ceremony" held on May 23, 2017 at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The university wouldn't allow a "white graduation ceremony" on their campus, so why would they think of allowing a "black graduation ceremony"?
The racist event was held that year, and I wore the custom-made t-shirt, shown in the first photo, at the event to protest it. I wore the same shirt again a year later, as shown in the second photo. If Harvard University holds another racist event in 2019, I'll be there again, wearing the same shirt.
Harvard Protest 2017
Harvard Protest 2018
In fifrth place is The Massachusetts Bathroom Bill, read 633 times. This page, published in early June 2016, is about legislation, later signed by my RINO governor, that allows any person to choose whatever bathroom he or she wants to go into. Many young children have been traumatized when they saw adults of the other sex enter a school locker room, a semi-public facility like a YMCA or YWCA, or a public swimming pool, where they were partly or fully undressed because they were in the process of changing their clothes.
As documented by the video on the left, the events depicted by the cartoon on the right actually happened to a woman who was the State Director of the Georgia branch of the group called American Civil Liberties Union (A.C.L.U.).
uploaded by Fox News on June 2, 2016
She was in a female bathroom with her two young daughters when someone with a deep male voice entered the room. As she retells the story, both of her daughters were "visibly frightened". She later quit as the State Director of the A.C.L.U.
In sixth place is Vote for Hannah Kane for State Representative, read 553 times. This page was published in May 2015 as an endorsement of a Republican candidate for a vacant seat in the Massachusetts legislature.
This was a special election because the previous State Representative for that district had accepted a job working in a state agency. Hannah was a first-time candidate.
I helped Hannah win the special election and become a State Representative.
The most well-read page on this blog is this page. It has been read 2,620 times. It is so popular, it was added to the top-20 list above on July 13, 2016.
The second-most popular page was written in October 2017. The page, originally called Boycott the National Football League on Veteran's Day, advocated a boycott of the National Football League because they allow players to disrespect their country by kneeling when the National Anthem is played. This page has been read 2,006 times.
The television broadcasts of their games now include the National Anthem, and the players all stand respectfully, so some of the fans who were boycotting the game have been watching it again, but other fans are still boycotting the game because the NFL Commissioner failed to stop the disrespectful players from kneeling.
Because of loud protests from the fans, and because of written complaints like my blog page, the NFL owners agreed to a new policy on May 23, 2018 which gives the players the choice to remain in the locker room when the National Anthem is played. If any player is on the field during the anthem, he must stand.
This essay has two sequels, one of which is shown later on this page.
My Twitter info is the third-most-popular page on this blog. It has been read 1,391 times. It mentions the name of my Twitter account,
it states my policy on retweeting messages, it tells the story of the person who used his tweets to threaten a jury, and it names some of my V.I.P. followers. As of October 19, 2019, my Twitter account is followed by these Twitter accounts:
two U.S. Senators, including Senator Ted Cruz, who was also a 2016 presidential candidate
two U.S. Representatives and one former U.S. Representative
a State Treasurer who began following me when he was a State Senator. He will be appointed as his state's Attorney General when the new Governor takes office in January 2019.
a State Auditor who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2018. He is now a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives.
three current State Senators
six current State Representatives and one former State Representative
Former Governor Kasich of Ohio, who was a 2016 presidential candidate
the Daily Caller's politics Twitter account
the conservative activist organization Americans for Prosperity (and about 8 of the Twitter accounts that represent their statewide branches
Some people who are current political candidates follow me also. There is a separate category on the page for these people. If they win their races, they are moved to the "current officeholder" category as soon as they are sworn-in. Any person who follows me and who is a Member of Congress will be added to my Twitter profile. There are currently four people who qualify, two U.S. Senators and two U.S. Representatives. These are their names and faces.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas
@tedcruz
U.S. Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri
@RoyBluntMO
U.S. Representative Ann Wagner of Missouri
@RepAnnWagner
U.S. Representative Brian Mast of Florida
@BrianMastFL
My essay Voter identification prevents voter fraud is the has been read 1,098 times. It is the fourth most-read page on this blog. This essay includes this link to a 2012 article on the Huffington Post website that claims to be a list of "voter suppression moments" during the 2012 presidential campaign. My essay counters this claim by mentioning other countries, including India and Mexico, that have provided their citizens with an identification card used for voting. By the way, India's population is more than a billion people.
Summary of the Sample Articles of Impeachment, the fifth most-read page, has been read 641 times. It summarizes my essay "Sample Articles of Impeachment", which is on my "Conserving the Nation" blog and which is one of the 20 most popular essays listed above. The summary, like the original detailed and documented list, does not include the negligent homicide of the U.S. Ambassador in Benghazi, Libya.
The sixth most popular essay is Now You Know Why College is so Expensive. It has been read 614 times. It is based on a meme that I saw on my Twitter account in April 2015, and it makes a clear and convincing argument. The salaries of college professors contribute to the costs of a college education. One current U.S. Senator was once a highly-paid professor herself, and she was paid $400,000 to teach only one class, so all the students who attended that college at that time had to help pay her salary with their tuition and other fees.
La Voz de El Dorado
This is my Spanish-languag blog. I have only written five essays for it as of January 3, 2015, but a fifth essay is almost finished. I will list all five essays here.
Every essay that is on this blog is written in Spanish. I am not fluent in this language, but Google has a translation service that translated all of the essays after I had written them in English. I will use it for any other essay that I write for this blog.
The most popular essay on this blog is a translation of an economics essay that is very popular on my Conserving the Nation blog. The English-language essay is called "Taxes and national income", and it is listed above. It includes photos of brownies to illustrate income. In this essay, one brownie represents $10,000 in annual income for one person or a family. The Spanish version of this essay is called Los impuertas y el ingresso nacional. It uses photos of burritos for the same purpose. One burrito represents $10,000 in annual income for one person or a family. This essay has been read 223 times.
An essay written on October 25, 2015 is the second most popular. It is called Tlaloc y Chac su ayuda ahora. A hurricane that month left a lot of seawater covering Mexican farmland. This presents an opportunity for farmers to plant and harvest good crops because of the nutrients in the seawater. The essay is named for one figure in each of the Aztec and Mayan mythologies that might have an interest in Mexican farming. The essay includes links to lists of actual parcels of Mexican farmland that are available for sale. It has been read 146 times.
Another translation of one of my English-language pages is in third place. It has been read 131 times as of October 19, 2019. It is a translation of a political science essay that is very popular on my Conserving the Nation blog. The English-language essay is called "Why dictatorships are always bad", and it is one of the 20 most popular essays listed above. The Spanish-language essay is called Es por esto que las dictaduras son siempre malas.
There are some photos in this essay that do not appear in the English-language essay. The photos show living conditions in Berlin when Russia divided the city in the 1940s.
The fourth place essay is called Vuestro oro está muy cerca. In this essay, I encouraged people to move to North Dakota to get high-paying jobs. Anyone who works at department stores or fast-food restaurants will receive pay that is approximately double the federal minimum wage, because there are many other jobs that offer even higher pay. Those other jobs are in the energy industry, which is booming in North Dakota. This page has been read 103 times.
The fifth most popular page is called Santa Maria te ama. It includes 10 YouTube videos of Spanish-language Catholic masses, filmed at different locations around the world. Catholics who live in Mexico and the countries of Central America know who the essay is named after because she has a close relationship with them. It has been read 97 times. One video that was on the original page was replaced on May 23, 2018 with another video. The new video was filmed in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Oh, by the way, Vice-President Joe Biden recently made a trip to Paris. His expenses for one-night in a Paris hotel were more than half a million dollars.
This is in addition to a trip that he made to London last month. One hundred and thirty-six hotel rooms at The Hyatt Regency in London were used for a total of 893 "room-nights".
The total hotel bill was $459,388 (and sixty-five cents). Link to a story, also dated today, and also in The Weekly Standard.
Together, those two trips cost taxpayers more than a million dollars.
**********
This is the only taxpayer benefit that I can see for Mr. Biden's trips. Unlike Michelle Obama, the Vice-President can claim that he's serving the country.
Michelle (also known as Marie Antoinette) only serves herself and her family.
This advice is similar to what many religions teach their members, and even if you're not a member of any organized religion, this advice fits well into the ethical principles that many atheists practice.
I am mentioning it on this blog, now, because of a very unusual event that I experienced.
I recently met someone who won a million dollars in a lottery.
There are many reasons for a person to experience a sudden increase in their income, and just as many reasons for them to experience a sudden decrease in their income. Both of these events can be called income mobility, which I have written about in another essay. On a later date, I also wrote about a related topic, the redistribution of wealth.
Whether sudden increases or decreases in wealth happen to you or not, they do happen to many of the people around you. It is part of an overall plan that was implemented (I believe) by God a very long time ago. Whether you share my belief or not isn't important right now. What is important is that you treat everyone you meet with kindness and respect.
Whether you do this because of your personal ethical principles, because of the principles of your religion, or because you selfishly want to increase your own income, regardless of how it happens, you should be kind to everyone.
You never know when someone you were kind to in the past now has the ability to thank you for your past kindness.
For all those who are cruel to others, whether they know it or not, you never know when someone you were unkind to in the past now has the ability to walk our of your life and never see you again. Think about treating people differently tomorrow morning. Ask God for help in this task. You may need his help, but if you ask nicely, you're likely to get his help, and that can make a very big difference in your life.
If you humbly ask for God's help, no matter what kind of a lifestyle you have now, you may even find yourself wondering why you're now experiencing an increased income and more personal happiness. You can stop wondering about that, because God loves you. Take some time to thank him for what he's done for you.
... and be kind to everyone you meet. Some of them will need as much kindness as they can get, and someday, some of them will find a way to thank you tomorrow for being kind to them today.
