An Open Letter to President Obama...

I lost another job on Monday. Before I ever even started, the company withdrew their offer and froze all hiring. This fall, assuming I have no health insurance by then, I will be required to register for an Exchange. I have decided to refuse this. I wanted President Obama to know of my plight...and the plight of so many in this country. I intend on forwarding this to the White House via regular means, but I wanted to share it with my countrymen...

President Barack H. Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington DC

August 22, 2013

Mr. President;

     I hope your vacation is going well and the weather is providing you a period of rest and rejuvenation from all the golf and vacationing that has been wearing you down in this, your second term.

You will excuse me if I sound a bit cynical and a touch sarcastic. It’s just that, well...I am.

     You see Mr. President, three days ago I was informed that a job I had been offered only a week before, has been withdrawn. The company decided to freeze hiring for the foreseeable future. Part of their reasoning was the rising cost of healthcare, making it unaffordable for them to provide. This unaffordable-ness came as a result of your “Affordable Care Act.”

     Five years ago I might have smiled at the irony of those words. But I’m not smiling.

     Mr. President, five years ago I lost my career as a mortgage broker. I was never a rich man. I broke the lowest level of a six figure income only twice in ten years. I made good money but never was so consumed by material means as to earn the large sums that many of my associates in the industry did.  Instead, I chose to limit my office time, and focus on the time I had with my daughter.

     I am a single dad. My daughter is my treasure. She is the axis upon which my world spins. Of all the roles I play, being her dad is the one by which I define myself. My daughter and I spent our time together in the little 2500 square foot ranch house on five acres that we owned for four years. She grew from age 6 to age 10 in that house. I never remarried, choosing instead to focus on her and on being a great dad. I think I did an admirable job.

     I lost my house in 2008. Part of losing a house and having no place to live is having no place to keep your pets. We had two beautiful Springer Spaniels, named Bonnie and Cooper. We raised them both from puppies. They are gone. I had to give them away. We had a cat named Giacomo. He is gone too, as is my daughter’s Welsh pony. My garden is someone else’s garden now. The little country house I wanted all my life belongs to someone else.

     I live in Nashville, but I am a native of Philadelphia. When I lost my home and could not find another job, I had to make a decision. Do I stay in Nashville and remain active in my daughter’s life and be her dad? Or do I move home, or move to North Dakota and work in an oil field, or to Texas, or someplace where there was work and leave my daughter behind with her mom? For me, there was only one choice. I love my daughter.

I know you love your kids. People tell me that all the time, they say “Well he loves his kids, that makes him okay in my book.”  No disrespect sir, but Pol Pot loved his kids too. It doesn’t make you a good president.

So...I stayed. Staying meant sleeping in a Volvo 850. I am 6’ 4” and Volvo 850’s are not very comfortable for me to drive...imagine sleeping in one.  But I did. Sleeping in your car is actually against the law. It’s vagrancy and so it required me to hide my car in some tall brush behind a church in Nashville. I took showers at the County Rec Center. I ate every other day sometimes. I worked every odd job I could find and put out hundreds of resumes. To date I have put out almost 250 resumes to no avail.

     So I kept on trying. I kept on being my daughter’s dad. I refused to let her see me broken so I hid my tears. Do you know what it is like to have to lie to your daughter about where you live, Mr. President? No? I didn't think so. Let me tell you...no pain hurts like that. I wonder, Mr. President if you have ever cried yourself to sleep at night, with the image of your daughter in your head, and worried that your current state would be all you have left as a legacy?

     I wonder if you have ever had to explain why she can’t come stay overnight every other weekend like she used to, because you don’t have a home anymore? I wonder if you know how it hurts to watch her growing up before your eyes and almost feel the time rushing past and worry about how your homelessness will effect her.

     I have wept many many times thinking about my daughter. I worried that some day one of her classmates would find out I was homeless and tease her about it. I worried that she would be embarrassed by my situation. I worried that she would grow up in fear that this would happen to her.

     I pushed myself day and night. I worked every odd job. In 2009 I resumed my college education via an online program and in May 2012 I graduated from Liberty University.

I was still homeless as I did this. I thought that doing these things would open doors of opportunity for me and my daughter. But no doors opened. I have spent another full year since graduation, doing carpentry, and putting out resumes, and still sleeping in my car. And missing priceless moments with my daughter.

     Ten days ago I had hope. Hope that perhaps this enduring nightmare was coming to a close. Monday, that hope was dashed yet again. Dashed as a direct result of the policies you so erroneously and yet stubbornly cling to, Mr. President. Policies that literally stole a job –and the hope for a home again with my daughter- right out from under me.

     To say my heart is broken is an understatement. For the first 48 hours I was spinning through space. I could not grasp how this could happen again. Today I am angry. I am angry that the man charged with leading this great nation, cares nothing at all for the plight of her citizens. You care more about adherence to your ideology than you do for those you are supposed to lead.

     This afternoon I made a decision. This fall, because I am unemployed, and have no health insurance, I am supposed to register for an exchange. Mr. President, I wrote this letter because I wanted you to know the plight of your citizens. My other intention is to inform you that I will NOT be registering for that exchange. I am a man. I am a dad. I am an American. I want to pay my own way. I refuse to let others pay for something I would gladly pay for myself. I will not lower myself and violate my own integrity and work ethic and heritage. A heritage of hard work and integrity that my grandparents –immigrants on both sides- passed down to me. They came here with nothing, worked hard, took nothing from anyone that they hadn’t worked for, and built a life. I want that same opportunity.

     If this results in my being prosecuted, so be it. Someone has to take a stand, sir. Someone has to look you in the eye, straighten out their backbone, and with the respect due the office you hold, tell you “No!”  "No sir! I will not violate my conscience." I will not lower myself. I will not become a statistic and a name on a list. I want a job. I want to work, and pay my own way. Your job is to create an environment whereby employers can hire men and women like me. Then we can take responsibility for ourselves, and pay our own way.

     I respectfully refuse your handout, sir. And while I doubt your precious vacation time will be interrupted with news of my refusal,  perhaps one day it will be brought to your attention. Perhaps you will read of my plight. Perhaps you will grasp the pain I live in every day. Perhaps you will look up from this letter, and see the faces of your own beautiful daughters, and for just a moment grasp what the past five years have been for me. Perhaps.

Enjoy your vacation, Mr. President. I envy you having those treasured moments with your family. I miss those times for myself. I have all but given up hope that I will enjoy them again.

God Bless America,

Respectfully,

Craig Daliessio 

My thoughts on the "99%" and "Occupy Wall Street"

I wasn't going to blog about this topic because to be honest...these people make me sick and I don't want to give them any space on a blog I've worked hard on, to develop a small following. But I have had enough of them and I have been in enough arguments with Internet friends about this "movement".
"Occupy Wall Street" is a farce. It's a joke and the perpetrators are frauds. You look at them attacking corporate greed and corporate excesses and they do so with their iPhone and iPad and wearing clothes made by the biggest corporations in the world.
Of course I could pick apart their hypocrisy for an hour but I'm not going to. The real reason I am compelled to write is the reasoning behind it all...and the lack of initiative these losers demonstrate.
First of all...Nobody earning $50,000 ever hired me for a job. They don't employ people. These protesters need to grasp basic economics. The rich are rich because they are good at making money. Typically they don't do that alone so they have employees. Most of the time they create whole industries that employ even more people. For that...for the burden and the impressive achievement of employing hundreds or thousand or tens of thousands of hard working people...these greedy selfish pigs are paid handsomely. They pay huge taxes on those huge paychecks. Those taxes employ the government employees who bitch and whine about everything, while having the best pay scale and benefits plan known to man outside of Congress.
You want to know why those people are worth all that money? Because if they don't do the job right, it's not just their own job they lose...it's all those "99% ers" out there who work for the companies that these brilliant minds manage. If they screw up, the result is exponentially bad. Now...you want to have the best and brightest running the company that pays YOUR paycheck? Or do you want some liberal minded moron who thinks he should run a Fortune 500 and be paid $250,000 for his efforts?
You let the rich do whatever it is that got them rich, (assuming it's not running moonshine during prohibition) and they will need to hire you and then you can put away your signs, take a shower, cut that dreadful thing on your head and go to work. But the truth is you don't really want that. You'd rather see yourself on the news crapping on the flag.
This is still the land of opportunity. If you want to improve yourself...you can. I know...because I have.
4 and a half years ago I was a successful mortgage banker working for the largest privately held mortgage company in the U.S.  I was a multiple award winner and an achiever. I had a home and a life. I have a (now) 13 year old daughter that stayed with me every other weekend and who was, and is, the focal point of my life.
By May of 2008 I was homeless. The company contracted from 900 offices to 125. The entire industry collapsed. I had no money and no place to live after I lost my home. I refused to leave my daughter and move away to somewhere where there might be work. So I slept in my car at night, showered at the county rec center and picked up odd jobs. I am not from Nashville so few, if any, people reached out to me. I was isolated and alone and broken. I found one job, only to have that company go out of business as the economy worsened. I lived on unemployment for 6 months until that ran out, and I ate Ramen noodles that I snuck into local restaurants in my computer backpack and mixed with hot water that I told them was for a refill for the hot tea I had never actually bought. I shivered in the dark when winter got here. In 2009 I discovered I was eligible for financial aid and I decided to finish the degree I had started 26 years prior. I enrolled at Liberty University Online (I had attended LU as a resident student before) I lived off the extra funds I didn't need for school. I slept in a friends basement when winter 2009 arrived. I studied by the interior light in my 1995 Volvo and I uploaded my homework using the free wifi at Panera Bread Company. I worked odd jobs when my unemployment ran out. I discovered I am a very good writer and I self-published four books. I did anything I could do to survive, overcome and eventually rebuild. I missed my daughter horribly, seeing her only an hour here and there during the week. I have not had a place to live where she could come stay with me for 3 years now. I miss her more than I have words to express. But in all that time she never wondered if I would still be there if she needed me. I never missed a violin recital or a school play or a talent show. She knows what I have been through and she knows I did this...I endured this humiliation...for her.
I learned who my friends are...and sadly I learned who they are not. I learned who has real compassion and who only speaks of it. I learned that some people will not accept your suffering unless you suffer exactly as they think they would if they were in your shoes. ( I also learned that these people never really considered what my shoes might have felt like.)

I just filled out my Spring 2012 class schedule...the last one I will have to do. Because I will graduate in May. Against great odds and screaming resistance and isolating loneliness, I have finished this task. I could have gotten much better grades...I know I am capable of better. I could have finished sooner by a semester or two. But considering how I had to do this I am satisfied. Some efforts are more than the grade on the paper.
It was hell. It was hard work (it's not over yet, but it's all but final now) and it was mentally tough and it was demeaning to live this way. I wore out that Volvo after 250,000 miles.
I'm not making enough money to get my own place yet, but I am keeping gas in my truck and some food money and I can do something with Morgan on weekends. I am resisted by her mother on every turn because she somehow thinks this was all a result of some failure of mine...like I singlehandedly sank the economy. I have had friends abandon me because sometimes on my darkest days I vented and spit bile when they think I should have "had more faith". They said this, of course from the comfort of their homes, or in the comfort of their office, or while their kids played nearby, and after consulting with their loving spouse. Had they lost everything, as I have, they would have probably sang a slightly different song.
But I made it. I have begun looking at myself in the mirror, and seeing a real man looking back. I have soldiered on and remained there for my daughter when I was never afforded that blessing myself.
I will tell you it was the grace of God. I am a strong, stubborn man, but I would have broken long ago. God came through a million times in the wolf hour, when I was questioning the value of my life and not believing there was ever going to be anything good coming from this. There were times I thought I would die like this...in this state. Always God came through with some small wink or kind word from a true friend. And if that wasn't available...he merely flashed my daughters face on the monitor of my memory and that's all it took. I would die for her...and sometimes that required that I live...for her.
Some "corporate fat cat's" taxes paid on his greedy, overblown income was a portion of the financial aid I get that has enabled me to finish my dream. And it's not just the diploma...it's the hope. It's the knowledge that I am really going to see something good happen after 4 years of sorrow. it's feeling like a man again. Liberty University Online has not just been a means of completing my degree...it's been life support.
Those "occupiers" who whine about Wall Street and who embarrass themselves with their disgusting antics...try trading with me. Try fighting all the way back from devastation. Maybe "the whole world is watching" as you say...but that's nothing compared to knowing that my 13 year old daughter is watching.
Come May, you can have my spot in the humiliating pantheon of the wanderers. Because while you have been carping about what you think you were owed, I went out and got what was available. Just thinking about walking across that platform and getting that degree makes me weep. It's been a long hard road and the only reason there is anything at the other end...is because of those "1%" who make careers for people and who pay the bulk of the tax burden so that mid-forties dads who are hit with devastation can find the resources for a second chance for themselves and their child. I, for one, am thankful for them.