It looks like new numbers are setting all-time records, for the disUnited States.
The death toll for California wild-fires is over 50, missing is over 300,
and the property damages are by far the worst in all of American history,
and the fires are still raging, still spreading, with the same winds predicted for four more days.
However, the overall average for the number of States and undeclared States is about the same.
Obviously, Puerto Rico has lost status, declared a beyond reparation debtor, owing over 70 billion,
to the United States of America, according to President Donald Trump.
Ontario, here in Canada, is picking up the slack.
The provincial government has decided to lower the electric bills for residential and business,
by saying, hey, it's like a mortgage, borrowing money on hydro assets, including future billing.
This means interest payments of 30 billion dollars to a New York based financial institution.
The province has also sold a 51% interest in Ontario Hydro to "the public",
even if no-one knows what Ontario public people, or Americans, have paid to own it.
But what is causing the most conversation, missing the stores and products,
is the loss of Sears, one of Canada's oldest and most admired retailers.
A new American board executive sent over 600 million dollars into the states,
last year, saying he had to pay American stock-holders, instead of investing in stores.
Canadian executives are saying everything was being pulled out from underneath them,
to cause the stores to go under.
When I was 16, friends paying me to not cut their hair as much as barber shops did,
my parents got me a barber clipper kit, Kenmore, from Sears, that I'm still using.
I still have the original box, instructions and more than half of the tube of oil.
I'm using the Weller soldering gun my father got as a wedding present, in 1949.
Life is what you make it, but it's better when the items of your lives are built to last,
and the jobs to manufacture, and repair them, are local for you.