Today, I participated in the first of nine Palmdale Partners Academy presentations.

It's a program from the city we live in to educate the community about how the city works and the city's relationship within and among all the other government, civic, and commercial entities that affect us.

Our longer-term readers will remember that Kelly already participated in the second offering of this civics lesson. I am now a student of the third.

The first presenter of the program was a hero by the name of Larry Chimbole, the first mayor of Palmdale. He helped lead the movement to incorporate Palmdale in 1961, as the first city in the Antelope Valley.

He is 89 and still full of passion that crated this town 12 years before our rival/partner town Lancaster managed to incorporate.

I never understood the "cactus curtain" that exists between the two dominant towns in the Antelope Valley before Larry's presentation tonight.

I gather that the idea of incorporation occurred to Lancaster first, the town just to the north of Palmdale, but Palmdale decided to beat them to it and did it smarter.

They hired a consultant who told them that incorporating is hard because you have to provide water and sewer to the whole area of the incorporated city. Annexing areas into an existing city is much easier.

So, after the 50 grand men of Palmdale provided $100 each (no small sum to working class people in 1961) they incorporated only two square miles as Palmdale.

I think my father might own a good portion of two square miles of land. It's not much land when talking about a town. Palmdale is now about 100 square miles (for reference, my home town Kendall is 33 square miles).

Anyway, the point of Larry's message to us is that WE are to blame for today. He never mentioned specifics, but I think he meant the bank collapses, the assignment of a nobody as VP on the Republican ticket, the unanswered threats from Russia, China, and Iran, while we waste lives, money, and time on Iraq and Afghanistan. The possibly deliberate collapse of the US economy.

Anyway, we each are to blame. This is actually our government. And if it sucks as it does, it sucks because we suck.

And he told me that directly today. He said, "do you like today's news?" I said no. "We'll it's your fault." And he is exactly right. I've done next to nothing. Kelly and I saw this coming three years ago watching an "Interest Only" loan commercial and saying, "man, when home prices drop, a lot of people and banks are going to be $%%^ed"

Except we were wrong, the people and banks are okay thanks to our taxpayer money, the rest of us are now paying for their bad judgment. And I think it will be our ruin. We should have let them all suffer for their judgment.

All of us are broke, the government included. And I think the next shoe to drop is that China will stop lending the government money. At that point, we're done. Over. We'll be a third world country within three weeks.

But I see a few signs that things may be okay.

My company has actually gained 10% value in the last two months.

My credit union could almost buy my company if it desired. It's way sound.

Palmdale is solvent.

But, California is not, and the US government is multiple trillions in debt, and losing ground.

I will be turning more of our cash into non-perishable food and ammo this weekend if that is an indication of my confidence in the economy.