THINK!

What is weatherization? Weatherization is the application of energy efficiency measures to a home. These include ceiling, wall and floor insulation; closing heat-escaping gaps by caulking, weather stripping, or broken window replacement; and heating system improvements. The measures are applied according to established technical specifications, cost-effectiveness tests, and relevant building codes. Sounds impressive? It does, otherwise why would millions of idiots like me fall for it? This all American fraud is only perpetuated on those households that have bought a house built in 1960s or earlier. The second condition is that your household income is $100,000 or less, only then your house is located in the so-called middle class neighborhood. The city governments keep track of all such houses. These houses are their biggest customers, their life-long dreams and their only source of windfall profits! This is the secret of the ‘American Welfare State’.

What weatherization means for the ‘City Government’ is to somehow get hold of this targeted home-owner; convince him/her that he/she is wasting too much money on the utilities. This is not a difficult job as any small city home-owner would acknowledge that he/she is being screwed by the local ‘Utility Monopoly’. The next step is to get the home-owner to apply for the ‘Energy Saving Assistance’ or ‘Weatherization Program’. The city government would hook you up with the chosen ‘Not For Profit Agency’ (totally dependent on the Federal-dole) where you would see 100 plus people working with disproportionate number of ‘Black Bimbos’ employed. This ‘Not For Profit Agency’ would introduce you to a certified contractor, some 40 plus ‘red-neck’ called Jim or Joe, Mark or Bob who would visit your house in a beat-up American-made truck within an hour of the first introduction. What you don’t know at that time is that the work specifications and the price for the job had already been decided between the city government, the not for profit and the contractor.

The next you hear from this nice-talking and friendly ‘red-neck’ is the evening before he plans to take care of your ‘weatherization problem’ which is within a week of your first meeting. If both the husband and wife are working, you have no choice but one of you have to call in sick from work. This Irish/Italian contractor shows up at your home the next morning at 7 am with an illegal alien from Haiti as his assistant. They come with a truckload of replacement vinyl windows all wrapped up in plastic and shrink-wrapped, bought from your local ‘Home Depot’. Jim or Joe or whatever your ‘All American Contractor’ is called, would take the lead in unloading the truck not to miss the opportunity to show-off his carefully cultivated biceps. The wife is impressed and the husband is envious. Our energetic contractor pulls out a crow-bar from his beat-up truck and starts yanking-off the window-trims in your house. The skinny Haitian keeps picking up remains of his aggression. If your house has a dozen old casement windows, the hero (your well-built contractor) would pop them out in less than two hours. All this hard work makes him really hungry notwithstanding the box-full of ‘Dunkin’-Donuts’ that he first drove-in with.

Mr Contractor returns within an hour having washed down a couple of Big-Macs with a large milkshake and carrying a large Pizza and medium soda for the skinny Haitian. The home-owners are impressed with the kindness of Jim/Joe towards the assistant. Now the second part of the operation starts, the cheap $250 windows are unwrapped by the assistant and the contractor himself starts popping them in the openings. If you are lucky he would use a level to see the new windows are installed parallel if not then trust Jim/Joe’s judgment. He seems to know his job and therefore used a boxful of foam-cans for insulation. It takes him little more than 30 minutes to pop-in each window and while he is installing the eighth or the nineth one, in comes another American made truck, a nicer one, in your driveway. The new arrival is little taller, a little stouter and a little cleaner than your talented contractor and his name is Terry or Larry or something. He is the inspector from the ‘Not For Profit Agency’ to make sure the work is being done as per the specifications. Larry/Terry praises the contractor for his overflowing talents and our dear Jim/Joe accepts the compliments with carefully cultivated casualness, while the home-owner watches in admiration!

What you don’t see is that while you all were swooning over the earth-shaking performance of the contractor, another American-made truck drove in the street outside your lot. This character parks his pride behind the bushes, walks around the parameter of your house, taking pictures from his disposable Kodak camera and then back to the wheels. But before he drives-off, he spends 10 minutes making notes and finally disappearing in the anonymity of the ‘City’s Secret Service’. His name is TONY and he does not take any ‘shit’ from anybody, after all he is the city inspector and he is not scared of even the city commissioner! It is 7 pm by the time our hard-working contractor is all done. Larry or Terry, the first inspector is long gone. The assistant cleans up all the mess and neatly stuffs you trash-cans. The contractor offers to take-away the old windows to dump them at the right place and you naturally feel obliged. What you don’t know is that the windows were sold to a restoration shop even before you nodded your head. Jim/Joe made a cool $300 on your trash, paid $100 in cash to the grateful Haitian for the day’s work and pocketed the balance $200 for the day. Suddenly your old-house looks different from outside, the new white vinyl windows shout for attention. Where is the fraud part in all this?

The home-owner and the taxpayer would never know that the all American contractor got paid $6,000 for the job whereas he bought the windows for $2,100 from Home Depot plus $100 extra for the insulation and other supplies. This works out to be little less than $400 per hour for Jim/Joe, not bad for high school graduate. Compare this to an engineer, a masters with 10 years experience, getting $50-60 an hour. Why would you go to college and waste 6 precious years? But that is not the worst part, the fact of the matter is that the federal government spent $12,000 to replace your 12 freaking windows, $6,000 being the administrative costs. Who do you think paid for the two inspectors? The ‘Not For Profit Agency’, the ‘Department of Community Development’ in the city hall, the US department of Energy (responsible for the weatherization program) and the congressional staff responsible for this pork to be part of the budget in the first place! Instead, if the home-owner had some hand-on skills, he could have popped-in these 12 windows himself for a piddly $2,400 bucks! The worst part is the home-owner finds no reduction in the utility bills and is now being advised by the same crowd to replace the 15 years old furnace. What do you think you answer should be? Mine is, “Thanks but no thanks!”

Filed under: American Tagged: | 'American Welfare State', 'Black Bimbos', 'City Government', 'Energy Saving Assistance', 'Not For Profit Agency', 'red-neck', 'Utility Monopoly', 'Weatherization Program', all American fraud, American-made truck, broken window replacement, caulking, certified contractor, closing heat-escaping gaps, energy efficiency measures, heating system, Home Depot, insulation, weather stripping, Weatherization