Well it’s official, most of my friends and relatives think I’m either crazy or just wrong. About what you might ask. Well it seems my decision to not vote Republican or Democrat this year has gotten everyone to thinking that I’m wasting my vote. My Republican friends want to know how I can turn my back on my party and not vote for McCain. They seem to feel that by not backing McCain I’ve decided to back Obama. My Democrat friends, I don’t really have too many of those, but I have tons of Democrat family members, seem to think the same thing. Some of my Democrat family members don’t understand why I’m a Republican, or so conservative for that matter. So I’ve spent the last few days, since making my decision to vote either Libertarian or Constitution, defending my decision from all would be suitors.
Why have I chosen to vote third party? Well that’s actually a tough question to answer. Until recently I had never even heard of the Libertarian party. In fact I was pretty clueless about the plethora of political parties out there. I was floored when I looked at the various parties in my county alone, and started doing the research on them. For instance Florida has a British Reformed Sectarian Party. Now this guy is a total nut and his party is beyond racist. One of the actual requirements for joining is that you can’t be black. This is right from their website. “As stated in our Constitution and By-laws filed with the Florida Secretary of State, we do not allow Black people to join our party and you also have to be a Christian.” Now what kind of Christian doesn’t like black people? This guy will probably want to move if Obama wins. We also have the American Poor People Party (they don’t have a website), the Boston Tea Party of Florida (they also don’t have a site), and the Possibility Party (their website needs an overhaul). Needless to say I had quite a choice to make.
So on the advice of a friend I took the “Are you a Libertarian” test (I scored a 35, which makes me a moderate Libertarian). Now don’t worry I didn’t base my choice to vote Libertarian on a silly test, I based it solely on the candidate this election. It seems the Libertarian party has gotten themselves an ex-Republican to run on the ticket. After learning this I went to the Bob Barr 2008 website and started reading. Once I was done looking over Mr. Barr’s list of issues I went to several other sites that documented how he’d voted in the past. Now anyone who has read this blog before knows I’m against abortion, and while that may not be my top reason for voting for a person, it is high up there. Mr. Barr has a record of voting conservatively and in favor of life. In addition Mr. Barr voted against this recent bailout mess. In all honesty, his views seem to align nicely with my own in most cases.
Now more informed, I decided to look into another party that caught my attention, the Constitution party. I don’t know much about Dr. Chuck Baldwin, except for what’s on his website. From what I can read he is a pastor, and has a talk radio show in Florida. While I do like his stance on many of the issues on his site, his lack of experience is what bothers me. It is true that Washington does need a change, and it is possible that bringing in an outsider would be good for the country, but I honestly don’t feel that the time is right for that just yet. This country is embroiled in several major arenas at once. On the one hand we have a war and economic issues, which require experience and leadership. On the other hand we have partisan issues, which require someone with more political savvy than usual to solve. While I personally like Chuck Baldwin, and what he stands for, I am worried that someone without any Washington experience will simply get derailed, and that is not what this country needs right now.
It’s at this point that most of my friends and relatives chime in with “Why not just vote Republican or Democrat?” Well to be totally honest I don’t like either politician. I don’t really feel that either one will bring the kind of change this country needs to get back on track. In fact I feel that the recent bailout bill showed that Washington proper is out of touch with the people. In my opinion Washington regulars are living in their own little world secure and separated from the ills that plague this country. This latest vote proved it. Just as Congress was all set to vote yes, the people spoke and flooded their representatives with enough complaints to keep some of them from going along with the corporate welfare program, which would have only stalled the problem.
Do I believe Barr is any different? Yes I do. I’d like to think he left the Republican Party in disgust over the out of control spending, and meddling in other nations, which has begun the breakdown of our way of life. One of the things I most agree with the Libertarian party on is spending. Americans are always being told to keep their debt in check, don’t spend more than you have… Why should the government be any different? Are government standards different because government prints the money? Doesn’t making more money just cheapen the value of the dollar?
In effect I have chosen to expand my horizons. I have chosen to look outside the normal box. Does my vote not count? In my opinion my vote is only wasted if I don’t make use of it. As more and more Americans wake up to the realization that their elected officials either don’t care, or are too busy caring about making money, they too will begin to look elsewhere. My vote will not go to further the pockets of greedy banks, and wall street tycoons. My vote will not go to expand the role of government in our lives, or expand our role oversees. My vote will go to a party I can at least see eye to eye with, in the hopes that maybe they will remember that this is supposed to be government by the people for the people and not government for government.
"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost." -- John Quincy Adams
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Thursday, September 25, 2008
And the Loser Is?
Wow Really $700 Billion with a B dollars to bail out the banks? Are we serious? Have we learned nothing from past mistakes? Are we really that dumb that we’re willing to drop into the same pattern that created this whole mess? The answer to that question is yes we are. And the answer to the title question is the American people.
Yes this country has a money problem, and yes this country is in a huge mess right now. And granted we cannot get out of this without the banks being healthy enough to get out of it, but what ever happened to CAPITALISM? What ever happened to the FREE MARKET we so love to sing praises about? How can we fix this mess without spending $700 Billion of taxpayer dollars? Simple FLEXABILITY! The one thing that banks have lost as a result of their fear is the flexibility to do business.
My proposal is simple:
First – Extend government backed loans to include current homeowners who want to refinance.
Second – Extend the life of the loans either in default or on their way to default status from 30 years to 50 years.
Third – Drop the interest rate for homes to 5% fixed for the life of the loan.
What does this little stunt do? It actually accomplishes quite a bit. Number one it allows people who are currently in a home to keep their home because their payments are now back down to reasonable levels. It also frees up money for these same people to spend and reinvest in our economy. Another way it stimulates the economy is by allowing the money being paid back to banks to be circulated through the economy. Finally this plan also allows people who may not own a home, or previously lost their home to reenter the market by getting a federally backed loan that they can actually pay back.
Within months the market will rebound and will allow banks to go back to doing business. Does this fix the problem right now? No it will take more than 48 hours, but it fixes the problem, it doesn’t provide a band aid that will only push the problem out another few years.
We’re borrowing from Peter to pay Paul the way Bush wants to do it. We’re increasing our debt, and burdening the taxpayers, some of which don’t even own a home. The American taxpayer is now paying for the mistakes of greedy corporations who are standing in line just waiting for their corporate welfare check to help them out.
Have we learned nothing from previous mistakes? Haven’t we learned that money given, and not earned simply takes away from the American dream? Bush got two things right last night. The American people do want to pay for their homes, especially when the alternative is a tent in some field. The second point he got right was that the government does have to do something, but NOT THIS!
The question I ask myself is why now? Why not last year, when everyone in America who had two brain cells could see we were headed for a recession? Why didn’t our leaders see this coming and act instead of sitting around blowing smoke up our rears and saying that things were great? The answer is simple; it hadn’t affected the very rich yet. You see back then it was just us poor folk getting the shaft. Now the rich are seeing their investments crumble, they’re watching and crying as their almighty dollar is worth less than it was. They trembling at the thought of watching their investment portfolios take a dump. That’s why Bush waited so long.
Is this going to actually fix the problem? Not in my eyes. This will simply free up money to allow the banks to get into more trouble, and require yet another massive bailout down the road. This is a band aid people, nothing more nothing less. This is yet another backroom, good ole boys club deal that will end up biting us in the rear. Will my solution fix the problem? Yes it will, I’m not an economist, but I know it will because it actually allows the people to pay back their loans. Sure the banks will have to tighten their belts for a few months until things stabilize, but sometimes hard lessons make the best teachers.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Am I my brother’s keeper?
My dad actually gave me this title as I was fishing around for topics to blog about. The argument I’m going to make is actually the result of an argument I had with my cousin. I kind of wanted to keep this blog about politics, and in the spirit of truth, I could care less about this years batch of politicians, so I’m going to stick to ranting about the issues. Today’s topic is Social Change. Are we really our brother’s keepers? My short answer is yes and no, so is that definitely maybe, or sometimes yes sometimes no? I’ll elaborate what I mean, but in my opinion we all need to care for our fellow human beings, just not in the way we’re currently doing it.
Homelessness
This is one social issue that really bothers me. Here we are one of the richest countries in the world, and always ready to drop ship food to some underdeveloped nation, but we can’t even keep our own citizens off the streets and fed. Growing up in NY I’d see them every day on the subway or in the street. We called them bums, most of them smelled like urine or worse, some begged, but some just slept and ignored you. The real nuts would wait until there were enough people and then they’d put on the show. They’d start with the story of how they got this way. They’d end by standing in front of you asking you for whatever change you could spare. Most of the time, I’d give them something just to have them go away. Of course the big argument is going to be that “Well some of those people don’t want help” And that is a valid statement, SOME DON’T, but that some is such a slim some that just happens to stand out, but they’re not the majority.
I was able to get to know a few homeless at my old church, and I learned something. Some of them just made wrong choices or had bad luck, and just ended up there. Once there they lost hope and couldn’t find their way back. The church I attended helps out at a local mission, and every Sunday they’d bus in several homeless men and women. Some would stay and with enough help reintegrate back into society. Some would just move on, never to be heard from again. All of them made an impact on someone’s life, some more than others, but to be honest, most of them didn’t want that lifestyle. It kind of just happened.
In today’s economy we seem to be spawning homeless at an alarming rate. In my area alone the local parks, which allow camping, seem to have a much bigger population. News reports in the area state that the problem has hit, not the nutty homeless guy, but whole families. Now everyone shares some blame in the housing loan debacle of the last few years, but there are real families, losing real homes, and living on the streets as a result. To me that’s unacceptable.
The question I wrestle with is; Should the government step in and solve the problem? If so how? Personally I’m for any approach that still requires repayment, and does not cost the government much out of pocket. For instance allowing people who are not first time buyers to refinance into a government secured loan and stretching out the loan period for 40 – 50 years. I would also suggest allowing the homeowner to skip the first 2-3 payments after they refinance, and spread those payments out throughout the first year. This will allow them to catch up on any bills that they may be late on, and truly give them a fighting chance. This would not solve homelessness, but would at the very least keep more people from ending up on the streets, and possibly give some of those families who did end up on the streets a second chance.
In truth we as Americans should do all we can do make sure all Americans have a safe place to live. We as Americans should do all we can to eradicate homelessness until all of those who do want to have a home or apartment have one. This can be done without becoming a tax burden. People can be assisted in finding work; people can be given low interest, long term loans. People can be put back on the path to achieving the American dream.
Healthcare
This was the debate that actually spawned this blog entry. My cousin is a democrat, yeah I know we can’t all be perfect. Anyway he and I were discussing the whole healthcare issue, and debating the finer points of Obama’s idea to provide free healthcare to all. Now whenever a politician starts throwing the word FREE around I get nervous. You see even in my short 37yrs on this planet I happen to know that NOTHING IS FREE. Everything comes at a price. Freedom is usually paid for in blood, families are paid through hard work and time, and homes are paid for in sweat. Either way someone somewhere is paying the price. All my life in church the pastor would say, “Christ’s gift of salvation is free” Yes it was free to me, but again Christ had to pay a price for it, so again nothing is free, and someone did have to pay.
Now I would love to have totally free healthcare, but I live in the real world where things are purchased with real money, by people who really work. In the long run FREE healthcare for all would accomplish one thing in this country, it would bankrupt us. As it stands this country is in serious debt. We don’t make much, but we owe quite a bit. Our Medicare and Medicaid systems should have shown us that whenever the government starts to throw money around, an unscrupulous company will arise to take advantage of it.
Some time ago my grandmother went into the hospital with a broken hip. She was treated for the amount of time that her Medicare would allow, and she was released into a nursing home to be rehabilitated. In the nursing home, she spent most of her day in bed and essentially got worse. She ended up with an infection, and the treatment, which was supposed to make her better, made her worse. The nursing home tried everything they could to stretch out her stay there. Any guess as to why? FREE MONEY!!! Good old Uncle Sam was paying for grandma’s expenses, and they were all too willing to cash the checks.
To me that’s a total crock. Whatever happened to doing no harm? Whatever happened to helping the sick get better? Healthcare has turned into a business, and like all business its bottom line is the almighty dollar. That is the problem with healthcare in this country. That is what’s raising the price for all of us. Our greed is making it difficult to make sure that the truly sick get the care they require to get better. My wife was recently admitted for some surgery, and the cost of pills in the hospital was actually humorous. Why do insurance companies allow a $5 Tylenol, when I could buy an entire bottle at the local Walgreen for that much?
My answer to this insanity, well not mine really, you can thank Rudy Giuliani for this one. Remove the strangle hold insurance companies have on corporations, and allow the insured to pick where they want to spend their money. Here’s how it works. My company shops for insurance. They go into the search knowing how much they want to spend on me each year, and pick the one that will have the least amount of impact on the company and the employee. Instead of doing that, they’d simply have to tell me how much they’re willing to spend, and I start to shop around for a provider. This approach does something sorely needed in today’s market; it drives competition. Thanks to the power of the internet I can now shop several hundred insurance companies at once, and find the one that’s right for me.
Now, this does nothing for the actual price of healthcare, but let’s actually look at those prices. As it stands most insurance companies pay a price over the patients deductible. This price is usually over inflated by the hospital because they too have their expenses. One huge expense is transcription services. Nuance, the company I work for (shameless plug), provides software services to convert speech to text. This saves hospitals millions each year in transcription costs. Several companies provide paperless systems, something touted by Hillary Clinton, but also another great idea to cut costs, and help the ecosystem. Another great money saving tip, stop ordering unnecessary exams. Some exams are required to get a good diagnosis, but some are just a waste of time and money. Finally what’s with the 500% markup on everything. Why should I pay $5 for one pill when I can get that same pill for $.50 at the pharmacy? Why do hospitals charge $3 – 5 for a silly comb that is purchased in bulk and costs the hospital $.30? They do this because they can get away with it.
The current system allows for hospitals to overcharge their patients, and the insurance companies. This raises the price of insurance, which raises premiums, which then gives hospitals the excuse to raise their prices. It’s a never ending cycle and under the Obama plan it’s just going to continue. Again the answer is not to give free, but to solve the actual problem. A big issue I have with the Democrats is that their answer to all of society’s woes is to raise taxes, and open the purse strings. Well that only leads to huge taxes and a society that is dependant on the government rather than independent. When you create a dependency like that you simply expand the problem rather than solve it. Sure the short term issue of people without medical care is solved, but the long term issue won’t be seen for years to come.
Education and Self Esteem
What this country needs more than anything else is improved education. We need to restructure how we teach our children. We need to focus on actually teaching them and not simply giving them exams, and teaching them to pass the exams. We need to pinpoint a child’s interests and learning pattern early on in the child’s life, and determine how to best teach that child. Once we’ve taken care of the future we need to look to the present, and solve the problem that our current adult population has. You see it’s one thing to throw money at a problem, and another to waste it. Giving a person their lively hood does nothing for the person except enslave them. Pretty soon you start a cycle of people who live off of people because that’s just how they were taught.
Yes Sen. Obama, people do need hope, but not the kind of hope that someone will swoop in and save the day with handouts and freebees. They need self esteem, they need to know that they are part of something bigger, and that they can achieve their dreams if they work for them. To do this they need education. They need to know how to read, write, use computers, and do basic math. They need the kind of hope that only comes from knowing that I John Q. Public am in charge of my own destiny, not my government. I can decide and learn to do for myself, and not rely on someone else. That is the freedom which provides true hope.
Growing up in NY taught me a lot about the welfare system. Everywhere I looked people went through life depending on someone else. Mothers had daughters, who had daughters all on welfare, because it was there, it was safe, it was what they knew. Quite a few of the people I knew dropped out of school early, had babies and restarted their cycle, never knowing that there was something bigger and better outside of the tri-state area. Most of these people voted Democrat because the Democrats are for the little people. They help out the average Joe. Well that may be how this all started, but what we’ve ended up with is a society born and raised into dependence. Education to them is a joke because government will provide. Hard work is for suckers because government will provide.
We the people of the United States of America have taught ourselves is to depend on someone else instead of to improve our own situation. With this dependence comes inadequate education, sub standard living conditions and a ghetto mentality. Public assistance goes from giving the person a hand up to putting the person down. Those within the system come to be known as the poor, the leaches of society, and most cannot hold their head up high to say that they earn their own way.
The hope I’m speaking of will take money, but money well spent in the right place. Money spent on quality education which brings out the various talents that might otherwise remain dormant. Yes the poor have talents too. They can do for themselves, and can strive and achieve greatness if we only give them a real chance. There’s a proverb that says “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” I think it’s about time we start to follow this wise saying and start educating those who have all the potential in the world without any direction. I think it’s time we stop making excuses for them and ourselves and get everyone together to work hard as one America together. That is true hope that lasts, true hope that will carry future generations to greatness instead of leaving them wallowing in the pit of mediocrity.
Only after our society is reeducated to fend for ourselves will we be able to really and truly solve poverty, homelessness, medical costs, and all of the things that plague us without creating a burden that society can not and should not carry. So yes I am for hope. I am for change, but only if it’s change for the better and not change for the worse. And yes we should be our brother's keepers. We should mind our extended family and help them to prosper, but we should do it through education and independence, not through handouts and dependence on us.
Homelessness
This is one social issue that really bothers me. Here we are one of the richest countries in the world, and always ready to drop ship food to some underdeveloped nation, but we can’t even keep our own citizens off the streets and fed. Growing up in NY I’d see them every day on the subway or in the street. We called them bums, most of them smelled like urine or worse, some begged, but some just slept and ignored you. The real nuts would wait until there were enough people and then they’d put on the show. They’d start with the story of how they got this way. They’d end by standing in front of you asking you for whatever change you could spare. Most of the time, I’d give them something just to have them go away. Of course the big argument is going to be that “Well some of those people don’t want help” And that is a valid statement, SOME DON’T, but that some is such a slim some that just happens to stand out, but they’re not the majority.
I was able to get to know a few homeless at my old church, and I learned something. Some of them just made wrong choices or had bad luck, and just ended up there. Once there they lost hope and couldn’t find their way back. The church I attended helps out at a local mission, and every Sunday they’d bus in several homeless men and women. Some would stay and with enough help reintegrate back into society. Some would just move on, never to be heard from again. All of them made an impact on someone’s life, some more than others, but to be honest, most of them didn’t want that lifestyle. It kind of just happened.
In today’s economy we seem to be spawning homeless at an alarming rate. In my area alone the local parks, which allow camping, seem to have a much bigger population. News reports in the area state that the problem has hit, not the nutty homeless guy, but whole families. Now everyone shares some blame in the housing loan debacle of the last few years, but there are real families, losing real homes, and living on the streets as a result. To me that’s unacceptable.
The question I wrestle with is; Should the government step in and solve the problem? If so how? Personally I’m for any approach that still requires repayment, and does not cost the government much out of pocket. For instance allowing people who are not first time buyers to refinance into a government secured loan and stretching out the loan period for 40 – 50 years. I would also suggest allowing the homeowner to skip the first 2-3 payments after they refinance, and spread those payments out throughout the first year. This will allow them to catch up on any bills that they may be late on, and truly give them a fighting chance. This would not solve homelessness, but would at the very least keep more people from ending up on the streets, and possibly give some of those families who did end up on the streets a second chance.
In truth we as Americans should do all we can do make sure all Americans have a safe place to live. We as Americans should do all we can to eradicate homelessness until all of those who do want to have a home or apartment have one. This can be done without becoming a tax burden. People can be assisted in finding work; people can be given low interest, long term loans. People can be put back on the path to achieving the American dream.
Healthcare
This was the debate that actually spawned this blog entry. My cousin is a democrat, yeah I know we can’t all be perfect. Anyway he and I were discussing the whole healthcare issue, and debating the finer points of Obama’s idea to provide free healthcare to all. Now whenever a politician starts throwing the word FREE around I get nervous. You see even in my short 37yrs on this planet I happen to know that NOTHING IS FREE. Everything comes at a price. Freedom is usually paid for in blood, families are paid through hard work and time, and homes are paid for in sweat. Either way someone somewhere is paying the price. All my life in church the pastor would say, “Christ’s gift of salvation is free” Yes it was free to me, but again Christ had to pay a price for it, so again nothing is free, and someone did have to pay.
Now I would love to have totally free healthcare, but I live in the real world where things are purchased with real money, by people who really work. In the long run FREE healthcare for all would accomplish one thing in this country, it would bankrupt us. As it stands this country is in serious debt. We don’t make much, but we owe quite a bit. Our Medicare and Medicaid systems should have shown us that whenever the government starts to throw money around, an unscrupulous company will arise to take advantage of it.
Some time ago my grandmother went into the hospital with a broken hip. She was treated for the amount of time that her Medicare would allow, and she was released into a nursing home to be rehabilitated. In the nursing home, she spent most of her day in bed and essentially got worse. She ended up with an infection, and the treatment, which was supposed to make her better, made her worse. The nursing home tried everything they could to stretch out her stay there. Any guess as to why? FREE MONEY!!! Good old Uncle Sam was paying for grandma’s expenses, and they were all too willing to cash the checks.
To me that’s a total crock. Whatever happened to doing no harm? Whatever happened to helping the sick get better? Healthcare has turned into a business, and like all business its bottom line is the almighty dollar. That is the problem with healthcare in this country. That is what’s raising the price for all of us. Our greed is making it difficult to make sure that the truly sick get the care they require to get better. My wife was recently admitted for some surgery, and the cost of pills in the hospital was actually humorous. Why do insurance companies allow a $5 Tylenol, when I could buy an entire bottle at the local Walgreen for that much?
My answer to this insanity, well not mine really, you can thank Rudy Giuliani for this one. Remove the strangle hold insurance companies have on corporations, and allow the insured to pick where they want to spend their money. Here’s how it works. My company shops for insurance. They go into the search knowing how much they want to spend on me each year, and pick the one that will have the least amount of impact on the company and the employee. Instead of doing that, they’d simply have to tell me how much they’re willing to spend, and I start to shop around for a provider. This approach does something sorely needed in today’s market; it drives competition. Thanks to the power of the internet I can now shop several hundred insurance companies at once, and find the one that’s right for me.
Now, this does nothing for the actual price of healthcare, but let’s actually look at those prices. As it stands most insurance companies pay a price over the patients deductible. This price is usually over inflated by the hospital because they too have their expenses. One huge expense is transcription services. Nuance, the company I work for (shameless plug), provides software services to convert speech to text. This saves hospitals millions each year in transcription costs. Several companies provide paperless systems, something touted by Hillary Clinton, but also another great idea to cut costs, and help the ecosystem. Another great money saving tip, stop ordering unnecessary exams. Some exams are required to get a good diagnosis, but some are just a waste of time and money. Finally what’s with the 500% markup on everything. Why should I pay $5 for one pill when I can get that same pill for $.50 at the pharmacy? Why do hospitals charge $3 – 5 for a silly comb that is purchased in bulk and costs the hospital $.30? They do this because they can get away with it.
The current system allows for hospitals to overcharge their patients, and the insurance companies. This raises the price of insurance, which raises premiums, which then gives hospitals the excuse to raise their prices. It’s a never ending cycle and under the Obama plan it’s just going to continue. Again the answer is not to give free, but to solve the actual problem. A big issue I have with the Democrats is that their answer to all of society’s woes is to raise taxes, and open the purse strings. Well that only leads to huge taxes and a society that is dependant on the government rather than independent. When you create a dependency like that you simply expand the problem rather than solve it. Sure the short term issue of people without medical care is solved, but the long term issue won’t be seen for years to come.
Education and Self Esteem
What this country needs more than anything else is improved education. We need to restructure how we teach our children. We need to focus on actually teaching them and not simply giving them exams, and teaching them to pass the exams. We need to pinpoint a child’s interests and learning pattern early on in the child’s life, and determine how to best teach that child. Once we’ve taken care of the future we need to look to the present, and solve the problem that our current adult population has. You see it’s one thing to throw money at a problem, and another to waste it. Giving a person their lively hood does nothing for the person except enslave them. Pretty soon you start a cycle of people who live off of people because that’s just how they were taught.
Yes Sen. Obama, people do need hope, but not the kind of hope that someone will swoop in and save the day with handouts and freebees. They need self esteem, they need to know that they are part of something bigger, and that they can achieve their dreams if they work for them. To do this they need education. They need to know how to read, write, use computers, and do basic math. They need the kind of hope that only comes from knowing that I John Q. Public am in charge of my own destiny, not my government. I can decide and learn to do for myself, and not rely on someone else. That is the freedom which provides true hope.
Growing up in NY taught me a lot about the welfare system. Everywhere I looked people went through life depending on someone else. Mothers had daughters, who had daughters all on welfare, because it was there, it was safe, it was what they knew. Quite a few of the people I knew dropped out of school early, had babies and restarted their cycle, never knowing that there was something bigger and better outside of the tri-state area. Most of these people voted Democrat because the Democrats are for the little people. They help out the average Joe. Well that may be how this all started, but what we’ve ended up with is a society born and raised into dependence. Education to them is a joke because government will provide. Hard work is for suckers because government will provide.
We the people of the United States of America have taught ourselves is to depend on someone else instead of to improve our own situation. With this dependence comes inadequate education, sub standard living conditions and a ghetto mentality. Public assistance goes from giving the person a hand up to putting the person down. Those within the system come to be known as the poor, the leaches of society, and most cannot hold their head up high to say that they earn their own way.
The hope I’m speaking of will take money, but money well spent in the right place. Money spent on quality education which brings out the various talents that might otherwise remain dormant. Yes the poor have talents too. They can do for themselves, and can strive and achieve greatness if we only give them a real chance. There’s a proverb that says “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” I think it’s about time we start to follow this wise saying and start educating those who have all the potential in the world without any direction. I think it’s time we stop making excuses for them and ourselves and get everyone together to work hard as one America together. That is true hope that lasts, true hope that will carry future generations to greatness instead of leaving them wallowing in the pit of mediocrity.
Only after our society is reeducated to fend for ourselves will we be able to really and truly solve poverty, homelessness, medical costs, and all of the things that plague us without creating a burden that society can not and should not carry. So yes I am for hope. I am for change, but only if it’s change for the better and not change for the worse. And yes we should be our brother's keepers. We should mind our extended family and help them to prosper, but we should do it through education and independence, not through handouts and dependence on us.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Truth, Consequence and Choice
Growing up I was taught that there were only two acceptable reasons to take a human life. The first was in defense of myself or someone else, and the second was in defense of my country. This has pretty much stuck with me all of my life which is why I don’t get the whole abortion thing. First let me say that I don’t think ANY politician in our lifetime will ever do anything about abortion. They can’t, it’s too hot an issue. Let’s face it since Roe v Wade we’ve had over 20 years of Republicans rallying against abortion, and yet here we are killing over 40 million babies per year.
Yes I said babies, and yes I said killing. The American people have been sold a falsehood by saying that this is an issue of rights. Liberals will say that abortion is about the right of a woman to do as she pleases with her body, the choice of a woman to be a mother, or not be a mother. It’s not; Abortion is an issue of consequences nothing more nothing less. As Americans began experimenting with “free love” they found out that this experimentation came with one minor setback. Free love isn’t so free when you have to raise a baby as a result. What to do, what to do, “oh we’ll end the pregnancy”, “but we can’t it’s against the law”, “then let’s change the law”. You see this is less about the right about a woman to do with her body as she pleases, and more with the removal of consequence for having sex.
Newton’s third law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This means that everything that happens has a consequence. Now when applied to sex, this is not always true, but there is that possibility. There is, almost always, the possibility that the consequence of sex is pregnancy. We Americans love to have the government pass laws and absolve us from our consequences. “Yes I killed him your honor, but I was insane at the time”, “Yes Mr. President we loaned millions of dollars to people we knew could never pay it back, and now we’re broke, but we’re in a jam now and need government money.” The U.S. government is used to stepping in and helping its citizens, why should this be any different? The difference is that this is a HUMAN life being taken, and it should not be treated as casual when you commit premeditated murder.
But abortions go on and the excuses for allowing them have gotten better each year. Let’s look at them and do some quick math.
There are approximately 42,000,000 abortions performed each year worldwide.
First Argument: “What about the mother who will die if she doesn’t get an abortion?”
Total done per year 6% of all yearly abortions or 2,520,000
In my opinion this is probably the only valid reason to have an abortion. Personally I don’t feel loosing both mother and child is worth the risk, especially when the mother has other children who will be left behind if she dies.
Second Argument: “What about the cases of rape or incest?”
Total done per year 1% of all yearly abortions or 420,000
Personally I don’t feel that taking the life of an innocent child makes the rape go away, or somehow helps the victim anymore, but I’d even be willing to concede this if only to stop the other 93% of the abortions done per year.
So what does this mean? Even if we were to only allow abortions for those two reasons alone we would wipe out 39,060,000 abortions per year. These abortions are done for no other reason than the child is unwanted. Every year millions more babies are killed and women everywhere hold on to this right to kill, simply because they’d rather not deal with the consequences of their actions. Why are they allowed to do this? Simple, it’s their right to their bodies. But is that really a true statement? Am I allowed to take my own life? No, in fact if I try and fail I’ll end up in some psychiatric ward until I can convince the doctors that I won’t try again. A teenage girl cannot get a tattoo or get medical attention for a broken leg without some sort of parental consent, but she can get an abortion. Abortion is not and has never been about a woman’s right to her body. Abortion is, was, and ever shall be about ducking consequences.
If you ask the average American if slavery was bad, you’d get a flat out yes. If you ask them why they think it was bad you’d get the standard answer of “No one has the right to own another person?” I can’t help but wonder if in 200 years people will say the same about abortion. You see if we could go back to pre-civil war days and ask those slave owners why they feel they have the right to own slaves, they’d come up with a slew of answers. “Blacks aren’t really human”, “The Bible doesn’t say anything against slavery”, but underneath it all, deep down inside that slave owner would feel that it’s his right to own that slave. It’s his right because no one has ever shown him how wrong it truly is. Just because the government allows us to do something does not make it right, it just makes it allowed. Early on in human history slavery was allowed, and encourage; it was free labor, but worldwide it is now look down upon. How long until abortion falls into that same category? How long until abortion is seen for what it really is, plain old premeditated murder.
Every year we the hypocrites of these United States spend tons of money on the greatest irony of all. Every year billions are spent searching for life (NASA), while we on earth extinguish our own future lives. You see the next common argument for abortion is that abortion does not take a life, since the embryo is not actually “alive”. Let’s examine that asinine statement for a second. We spend billions of dollars every year searching for signs of even single celled organisms throughout our universe. Scientist get excited when they find traces of some simple organism on a rock light-years away. Those findings make headlines all around the world. “Traces of life found in space!” “The possibility that life existed on Mars”
How are we supposed to accept that these things, these simple organisms, which are not, and will never, ever have the potential to be anything more than they are or where, are more valuable to us than our own offspring? Those organisms will never become an FDR, JFK, MLK, Gandhi, Einstein, Mozart, or a Michelangelo, yet they make headlines. What about all of those millions who have died since 1973? Where are their headlines? Why are we so intent to find life on other planets when we can’t even keep alive the life we have here? God help those alien life forms when we do find them. If for some reason they don’t measure up to our “standard” of alive we’ll extinguish them just as we have our children.
We feel it our right to extinguish life simply because we cannot stomach the thought of paying the consequences for our actions. Slave owners felt it was their right to own people because they couldn’t stomach the thought of paying for labor, or better yet getting off their butts and working. How long before we stop looking to murder as a viable alternative to real birth control? Why should babies pay the price for our inability to wear a condom, consistently lake the pill, buy and IUD, or any of the other number of birth control methods available? They shouldn’t and we as Americans should stand up like we did prior to the civil war. Back then Americans took a stand for the rights of the slave. Americans said enough to the owning of another person and made a change for the better. We Americans have to stand up and tell the government, both Republicans and Democrats alike, that we’re tired of them using this as a polarizing issue. We need to let them know that it’s not anyone’s right to take a life, and that “We the People” want Roe v Wade overturned.
This will not happen as long as Americans feel it their right to take a human life. This will not happen as long as Americans continue to see the embryo as just a thing, instead of what it really is. For those Americans sold on the falsehood that life begins at birth, lets look at some facts.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryo
Week 1-3 5-7 days after fertilization, the blastula attaches to the wall of the uterus endometrium. When it comes into contact with the endometrium it performs implantation. Implantation connections between the mother and the embryo will begin to form, including the umbilical cord. The embryo's growth centers around an axis, which will become the spine and spinal cord. The brain, spinal cord, heart, and gastrointestinal tract begin to form.
Week 4-5 Chemicals produced by the embryo stop the woman's menstrual cycle . Neurogenesis is underway, showing brain activity at about the 6th week. The heart will begin to beat around the same time. Limb buds appear where the arms and legs will grow later. Organogenesis begins. The head represents about one half of the embryo's axial length, and more than half of the embryo's mass. The brain develops into five areas. Tissue formation occurs that develops into the vertebra and some other bones. The heart starts to beat and blood starts to flow.
Week 6-8 Myogenesis and neurogenesis have progressed to where the embryo is capable of motion, and the eyes begin to form. Organogenesis and growth continue. Hair has started to form along with all essential organs. Facial features are beginning to develop. At the end of the 8th week, the embryonic stage is over, and the fetalstage begins.
Every year doctors all over the country find ways to keep premature babies alive. As time passes and technology improves, science finds a way to save lives earlier in a woman’s pregnancy, while politicians push harder to kill those same lives at later stages in a woman’s pregnancy. Am I the only one who finds this both hypocritical and ironic? Science fights for the women who want the consequence of sex, while politicians fight to relieve women of the consequences of sex.
People need to understand that abortion is NOT birth control, sex has consequences, and men and women everywhere need to step up and take responsibility for their actions. Just as it takes two to make a baby, it also takes two to prevent a baby from being conceived. Men and women must step up and stop being ignorant and lazy when it comes to protecting against unwanted pregnancy. Humanity has come a long way from the days of people owning people, but we still have quite a way to go in assigning a value to human life. It is not our right to kill a life to keep our comfort level, just as it is not our right to own a life to keep our comfort level. I wonder if in 200 years, when science has progressed further, will future generations look down on us with as much disdain and disgust as we have for slave owners of our past. Will they think us the ignorant fools that we are for allowing the murder of our most precious resource?
Yes I said babies, and yes I said killing. The American people have been sold a falsehood by saying that this is an issue of rights. Liberals will say that abortion is about the right of a woman to do as she pleases with her body, the choice of a woman to be a mother, or not be a mother. It’s not; Abortion is an issue of consequences nothing more nothing less. As Americans began experimenting with “free love” they found out that this experimentation came with one minor setback. Free love isn’t so free when you have to raise a baby as a result. What to do, what to do, “oh we’ll end the pregnancy”, “but we can’t it’s against the law”, “then let’s change the law”. You see this is less about the right about a woman to do with her body as she pleases, and more with the removal of consequence for having sex.
Newton’s third law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This means that everything that happens has a consequence. Now when applied to sex, this is not always true, but there is that possibility. There is, almost always, the possibility that the consequence of sex is pregnancy. We Americans love to have the government pass laws and absolve us from our consequences. “Yes I killed him your honor, but I was insane at the time”, “Yes Mr. President we loaned millions of dollars to people we knew could never pay it back, and now we’re broke, but we’re in a jam now and need government money.” The U.S. government is used to stepping in and helping its citizens, why should this be any different? The difference is that this is a HUMAN life being taken, and it should not be treated as casual when you commit premeditated murder.
But abortions go on and the excuses for allowing them have gotten better each year. Let’s look at them and do some quick math.
There are approximately 42,000,000 abortions performed each year worldwide.
First Argument: “What about the mother who will die if she doesn’t get an abortion?”
Total done per year 6% of all yearly abortions or 2,520,000
In my opinion this is probably the only valid reason to have an abortion. Personally I don’t feel loosing both mother and child is worth the risk, especially when the mother has other children who will be left behind if she dies.
Second Argument: “What about the cases of rape or incest?”
Total done per year 1% of all yearly abortions or 420,000
Personally I don’t feel that taking the life of an innocent child makes the rape go away, or somehow helps the victim anymore, but I’d even be willing to concede this if only to stop the other 93% of the abortions done per year.
So what does this mean? Even if we were to only allow abortions for those two reasons alone we would wipe out 39,060,000 abortions per year. These abortions are done for no other reason than the child is unwanted. Every year millions more babies are killed and women everywhere hold on to this right to kill, simply because they’d rather not deal with the consequences of their actions. Why are they allowed to do this? Simple, it’s their right to their bodies. But is that really a true statement? Am I allowed to take my own life? No, in fact if I try and fail I’ll end up in some psychiatric ward until I can convince the doctors that I won’t try again. A teenage girl cannot get a tattoo or get medical attention for a broken leg without some sort of parental consent, but she can get an abortion. Abortion is not and has never been about a woman’s right to her body. Abortion is, was, and ever shall be about ducking consequences.
If you ask the average American if slavery was bad, you’d get a flat out yes. If you ask them why they think it was bad you’d get the standard answer of “No one has the right to own another person?” I can’t help but wonder if in 200 years people will say the same about abortion. You see if we could go back to pre-civil war days and ask those slave owners why they feel they have the right to own slaves, they’d come up with a slew of answers. “Blacks aren’t really human”, “The Bible doesn’t say anything against slavery”, but underneath it all, deep down inside that slave owner would feel that it’s his right to own that slave. It’s his right because no one has ever shown him how wrong it truly is. Just because the government allows us to do something does not make it right, it just makes it allowed. Early on in human history slavery was allowed, and encourage; it was free labor, but worldwide it is now look down upon. How long until abortion falls into that same category? How long until abortion is seen for what it really is, plain old premeditated murder.
Every year we the hypocrites of these United States spend tons of money on the greatest irony of all. Every year billions are spent searching for life (NASA), while we on earth extinguish our own future lives. You see the next common argument for abortion is that abortion does not take a life, since the embryo is not actually “alive”. Let’s examine that asinine statement for a second. We spend billions of dollars every year searching for signs of even single celled organisms throughout our universe. Scientist get excited when they find traces of some simple organism on a rock light-years away. Those findings make headlines all around the world. “Traces of life found in space!” “The possibility that life existed on Mars”
How are we supposed to accept that these things, these simple organisms, which are not, and will never, ever have the potential to be anything more than they are or where, are more valuable to us than our own offspring? Those organisms will never become an FDR, JFK, MLK, Gandhi, Einstein, Mozart, or a Michelangelo, yet they make headlines. What about all of those millions who have died since 1973? Where are their headlines? Why are we so intent to find life on other planets when we can’t even keep alive the life we have here? God help those alien life forms when we do find them. If for some reason they don’t measure up to our “standard” of alive we’ll extinguish them just as we have our children.
We feel it our right to extinguish life simply because we cannot stomach the thought of paying the consequences for our actions. Slave owners felt it was their right to own people because they couldn’t stomach the thought of paying for labor, or better yet getting off their butts and working. How long before we stop looking to murder as a viable alternative to real birth control? Why should babies pay the price for our inability to wear a condom, consistently lake the pill, buy and IUD, or any of the other number of birth control methods available? They shouldn’t and we as Americans should stand up like we did prior to the civil war. Back then Americans took a stand for the rights of the slave. Americans said enough to the owning of another person and made a change for the better. We Americans have to stand up and tell the government, both Republicans and Democrats alike, that we’re tired of them using this as a polarizing issue. We need to let them know that it’s not anyone’s right to take a life, and that “We the People” want Roe v Wade overturned.
This will not happen as long as Americans feel it their right to take a human life. This will not happen as long as Americans continue to see the embryo as just a thing, instead of what it really is. For those Americans sold on the falsehood that life begins at birth, lets look at some facts.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryo
Week 1-3 5-7 days after fertilization, the blastula attaches to the wall of the uterus endometrium. When it comes into contact with the endometrium it performs implantation. Implantation connections between the mother and the embryo will begin to form, including the umbilical cord. The embryo's growth centers around an axis, which will become the spine and spinal cord. The brain, spinal cord, heart, and gastrointestinal tract begin to form.
Week 4-5 Chemicals produced by the embryo stop the woman's menstrual cycle . Neurogenesis is underway, showing brain activity at about the 6th week. The heart will begin to beat around the same time. Limb buds appear where the arms and legs will grow later. Organogenesis begins. The head represents about one half of the embryo's axial length, and more than half of the embryo's mass. The brain develops into five areas. Tissue formation occurs that develops into the vertebra and some other bones. The heart starts to beat and blood starts to flow.
Week 6-8 Myogenesis and neurogenesis have progressed to where the embryo is capable of motion, and the eyes begin to form. Organogenesis and growth continue. Hair has started to form along with all essential organs. Facial features are beginning to develop. At the end of the 8th week, the embryonic stage is over, and the fetalstage begins.
Every year doctors all over the country find ways to keep premature babies alive. As time passes and technology improves, science finds a way to save lives earlier in a woman’s pregnancy, while politicians push harder to kill those same lives at later stages in a woman’s pregnancy. Am I the only one who finds this both hypocritical and ironic? Science fights for the women who want the consequence of sex, while politicians fight to relieve women of the consequences of sex.
People need to understand that abortion is NOT birth control, sex has consequences, and men and women everywhere need to step up and take responsibility for their actions. Just as it takes two to make a baby, it also takes two to prevent a baby from being conceived. Men and women must step up and stop being ignorant and lazy when it comes to protecting against unwanted pregnancy. Humanity has come a long way from the days of people owning people, but we still have quite a way to go in assigning a value to human life. It is not our right to kill a life to keep our comfort level, just as it is not our right to own a life to keep our comfort level. I wonder if in 200 years, when science has progressed further, will future generations look down on us with as much disdain and disgust as we have for slave owners of our past. Will they think us the ignorant fools that we are for allowing the murder of our most precious resource?
Doing Nothing in America
I was raised to believe that a person worked hard all through school, and then worked even harder after school. Eventually all of that hard work would pay off. Both of my parents received their degrees while I was in my teens. Both parents worked full time jobs, and both parents worked hard and sometimes long hours. You see in my household that was normal, so I picked up on it. From the time I entered the workforce at 13; I was consistently praised for my hard work, and my work ethics. I received the typical attaboy from supervisors, and was even promoted several times. I’m actually happy to say that I was only let go from two jobs. The first was due to a disagreement with the store owner, and the second was due to a reduction in spending by the branch I happened to be working at. Neither job has really adversely affected me, and I’ve learned something different from each experience. Needless to say I have no problem working. Even now I work weird and sometimes long hours. I enjoy what I do and that helps, but I would still work just as hard even if I hated my job. That’s just who I am.
It’s for this reason that I just don’t get today’s society. Ok first off let me just say I’m not some old guy pining away about yesteryear. I’m only 37, but even I remember a time when Americans worked for a living, heck we wrote songs about it. Today’s worker doesn’t seem to want to do a heck of a whole lot. Some are happy sitting around complaining that Mexicans are taking their jobs, but are unwilling to accept and do the work that Mexicans do. Some are all too ready to point the finger at Washington for letting their jobs go away, but don’t want to acknowledge what drove those jobs away in the first place. Truth be told America has lost its edge in the workforce. This used to be a country where workers took pride in their craft, and loved putting out a quality product.
Just look at the American automobile. There are cars still running from when I was an infant, cars still running from before my time. Heck I see more 60 – 70’s Camaros and Mustangs than I have of their 80’s counterparts. Try buying an American car now and keep it for 10 plus years, within 3 years it starts to make noises it never made, and run sluggish, I know I own one. Compare that to the Japanese cars like Honda and Toyota, which run forever with very little maintenance. Where did the pride in our work go? What happened to all of that American ingenuity? Personally I feel it was taken from us. Gone along with the jobs that fostered it.
You see Americans used to take pride in their work, and work hard, but over the years certain organizations stepped in to try and “help” the American worker. These organizations told the American worker that they were better than the work they were doing, and deserved more money for doing it. This gave the worker an over inflated sense of value, and pretty soon that job, that put food on the table, was beneath them. Eventually these organizations “helped” the workers get more breaks, and much higher pay for the same job, all the while making the bureaucracy between the worker and management expand. Unfortunately these new prices were higher than the employer was willing to pay, so the work went elsewhere leaving the American worker angry and disenfranchised. Along came Washington, and promised more jobs, so they gave tax breaks to companies who hired American workers, but even that didn’t bring back the jobs, so they continued to promise. Promise a new day is dawning, promise the jobs are coming, promise to fix the problem created when the American workers created a union.
Let me give you an example of how much inefficiency is involved in union labor. Some years ago I was doing installations for call recording systems. A typical install would take about 5 days of steady 17 hour days. It was hard work, long hours and way too much travel, but I was good at it. On one occasion I was sent up to NY to install one of these recording systems. Now mind you we had this down to a science, Days 1-3 were for actual server and phone line setup Day 4 was for serious testing and debugging, and Day 5 was for wrap up and acceptance.
This trip turned out to be completely different. This trip actually went down as my worst and best trip ever. Our first day in NY my partner and I met up with the local field office and took the train over to the worksite. Upon arrival we found a typical server room with none of our equipment in it. Now usually we’d have the equipment drop shipped a week in advance and it would be waiting for us when we got to the site. No such luck this time. Getting the equipment upstairs took about an hour because the work had to be performed by someone in the union whose job it was to unload and move the equipment.
While this was happening my partner and I decided to start punching down some of the 200 plus phone lines that were needed for this task. It was then that we were informed that someone from the union had to do that and we weren’t even allowed to touch the phone block. When the equipment finally arrived, I began to unload it only to be told that I had to stop because I was taking a union workers job by putting the server into the rack. This trip went exactly like this, for 4 days. Every time I was ready to work, I’d be stopped because I was not union. To make matters worse the union people who could do the jobs I couldn’t, were always on breaks and were required to leave the building at 4:45 pm. I found out that they needed the 15 minutes to get back to their office and clock out on time. You see if for some reason they clocked out late they would automatically get time ½ for the first hour regardless of how much of that hour they worked. There was a really intricate pricing scheme for how much they could make, but it’s been some time so I don’t really remember it all.
Now with no one in the building after 5 my partner and I were free to roam NY and take in the sites. Having grown up there, I knew the city well enough and still had friends and family in the city. That’s what I meant that this trip was my worst and my best. It truly was the worst place to work because of all of the union regulations, but those regulations allowed me to enjoy myself more than on any other trip. Having worked for a union, when I lived in NY, I was familiar with how they functioned. But that was just one local for one store; I had never seen how multiple groups functioned when forced to coexist.
That being said it’s no wonder that jobs have slowly and steadily moved oversees. Personally I’d be hard pressed to allow that kind of bureaucratic nonsense at my company. You see companies make money when companies are efficient. Having multiple layers of red tape reduces a company’s efficiency and costs it money. I’m not saying that the guys I worked with were lazy. In fact they seemed every bit as annoyed by these rules as I was, well some of them anyway, but for the most part I can see how this could breed the current society. Imagine a society of people who feel they should be paid much more than they deserve to do a job. Imagine a society of people who don’t show up or bring business to a halt when they don’t get their way. That is America.
For all of the good that unions have brought to this country, they have also done this country some serious harm. You see its one thing to demand safe working conditions. It’s one thing to want overtime for working longer hours. Those things are fine, they’re expected, but we as a country have gone overboard and the unions have essentially priced their workers out of a job. Like every other bureaucracy the unions have become what they were never intended to be. They have become a hindrance to the American worker, and the worst part is that they have been coddled by the American politicians into believing that they deserve to exist. Let’s be honest, Washington goes out of it’s way to speak to these union workers and get them on board with it’s vision.
Am I against the workers? No I’m against the unions which have hurt the workers. If the average, blue collar, American worker wants to know why they closed down the plant that put food on his family’s table, they need look no further than their union rep. Unions have bled American companies dry and forced them to go elsewhere. American companies have moved manufacturing jobs to places like China, Mexico and Korea because American workers cost too much. Heck I’m as patriotic as the next guy, but can you really blame them? Why pay high taxes on employees, deal with inefficiency, and union regulations that have gone way too far, when you can get people somewhere else for a ¼ of the price?
My question to American politicians is this; Why not tell Americans that? What’s so difficult about saying to the American worker “Listen I want to bring jobs back here, but companies are tired of dealing with American taxes and unions” Yesterday I argued that if we as a country went to a fair tax system, we could lower the cost of doing business, for American businesses. This is just an extension of that argument. If we can somehow break the hold that unions have on us then we can lower business expenses even more, and bring more jobs back to this country. With lower taxes, fair wages, and less bureaucracy; I feel that the average American company would rather bring work here to America than ship work out. Every time a company ships a job out it takes a risk. For manufacturing jobs that risk is copyright or patent infringement. Some countries, like China, have a history of looking the other way when it comes to knock offs. This costs companies money, but is accepted because it’s considered a tradeoff of doing business.
There are many benefits to keeping work within the United States. For one it keeps American money in America, where American workers can spend it on American goods. There’s also the issue of training and education. Depending on the field, Americans have a much better education than most of their third world counterparts where these jobs end up going. Then there’s the language barrier. Being a software developer, I’ve had to work with people all over the world, who contract out to my employer. Some of these people are easily understood, and easy to work with. Some have difficulty getting their meaning across and cost me time spent on translating their intentions.
What is the solution to this problem? First we Americans have to realize that we will not be paid executive salaries for entry level positions. We need to understand that certain jobs are going to fetch a higher salary, and that the only way to those jobs is through hard work and schooling. Second we need to be willing to take a job that we see as “beneath us” because the truth is we need it. America needs to produce again. America needs to get back into the business of designing and building things again. That is what made America great, that is what will make America great again. Just think right now we buy and spend more than we make, how long can America live this consumer life, without becoming a supplier of anything? Finally the unions need to dial it back some. Give up some of the "rights" they've won, because Americans need a place of work more than they need 3 coffee breaks, and tripple time after 6pm.
We Americans have to learn to accept our particular place in the grand scheme of things, and remember that nothing is permanent if we’re willing to work for something better. Right now you might be a worker drone slaving away in a factory, but after some hard work, and night classes you too can be the suit that gives the orders and gets to leave early. That’s the beauty of this country; the only limit is the one we impose on ourself.
It’s for this reason that I just don’t get today’s society. Ok first off let me just say I’m not some old guy pining away about yesteryear. I’m only 37, but even I remember a time when Americans worked for a living, heck we wrote songs about it. Today’s worker doesn’t seem to want to do a heck of a whole lot. Some are happy sitting around complaining that Mexicans are taking their jobs, but are unwilling to accept and do the work that Mexicans do. Some are all too ready to point the finger at Washington for letting their jobs go away, but don’t want to acknowledge what drove those jobs away in the first place. Truth be told America has lost its edge in the workforce. This used to be a country where workers took pride in their craft, and loved putting out a quality product.
Just look at the American automobile. There are cars still running from when I was an infant, cars still running from before my time. Heck I see more 60 – 70’s Camaros and Mustangs than I have of their 80’s counterparts. Try buying an American car now and keep it for 10 plus years, within 3 years it starts to make noises it never made, and run sluggish, I know I own one. Compare that to the Japanese cars like Honda and Toyota, which run forever with very little maintenance. Where did the pride in our work go? What happened to all of that American ingenuity? Personally I feel it was taken from us. Gone along with the jobs that fostered it.
You see Americans used to take pride in their work, and work hard, but over the years certain organizations stepped in to try and “help” the American worker. These organizations told the American worker that they were better than the work they were doing, and deserved more money for doing it. This gave the worker an over inflated sense of value, and pretty soon that job, that put food on the table, was beneath them. Eventually these organizations “helped” the workers get more breaks, and much higher pay for the same job, all the while making the bureaucracy between the worker and management expand. Unfortunately these new prices were higher than the employer was willing to pay, so the work went elsewhere leaving the American worker angry and disenfranchised. Along came Washington, and promised more jobs, so they gave tax breaks to companies who hired American workers, but even that didn’t bring back the jobs, so they continued to promise. Promise a new day is dawning, promise the jobs are coming, promise to fix the problem created when the American workers created a union.
Let me give you an example of how much inefficiency is involved in union labor. Some years ago I was doing installations for call recording systems. A typical install would take about 5 days of steady 17 hour days. It was hard work, long hours and way too much travel, but I was good at it. On one occasion I was sent up to NY to install one of these recording systems. Now mind you we had this down to a science, Days 1-3 were for actual server and phone line setup Day 4 was for serious testing and debugging, and Day 5 was for wrap up and acceptance.
This trip turned out to be completely different. This trip actually went down as my worst and best trip ever. Our first day in NY my partner and I met up with the local field office and took the train over to the worksite. Upon arrival we found a typical server room with none of our equipment in it. Now usually we’d have the equipment drop shipped a week in advance and it would be waiting for us when we got to the site. No such luck this time. Getting the equipment upstairs took about an hour because the work had to be performed by someone in the union whose job it was to unload and move the equipment.
While this was happening my partner and I decided to start punching down some of the 200 plus phone lines that were needed for this task. It was then that we were informed that someone from the union had to do that and we weren’t even allowed to touch the phone block. When the equipment finally arrived, I began to unload it only to be told that I had to stop because I was taking a union workers job by putting the server into the rack. This trip went exactly like this, for 4 days. Every time I was ready to work, I’d be stopped because I was not union. To make matters worse the union people who could do the jobs I couldn’t, were always on breaks and were required to leave the building at 4:45 pm. I found out that they needed the 15 minutes to get back to their office and clock out on time. You see if for some reason they clocked out late they would automatically get time ½ for the first hour regardless of how much of that hour they worked. There was a really intricate pricing scheme for how much they could make, but it’s been some time so I don’t really remember it all.
Now with no one in the building after 5 my partner and I were free to roam NY and take in the sites. Having grown up there, I knew the city well enough and still had friends and family in the city. That’s what I meant that this trip was my worst and my best. It truly was the worst place to work because of all of the union regulations, but those regulations allowed me to enjoy myself more than on any other trip. Having worked for a union, when I lived in NY, I was familiar with how they functioned. But that was just one local for one store; I had never seen how multiple groups functioned when forced to coexist.
That being said it’s no wonder that jobs have slowly and steadily moved oversees. Personally I’d be hard pressed to allow that kind of bureaucratic nonsense at my company. You see companies make money when companies are efficient. Having multiple layers of red tape reduces a company’s efficiency and costs it money. I’m not saying that the guys I worked with were lazy. In fact they seemed every bit as annoyed by these rules as I was, well some of them anyway, but for the most part I can see how this could breed the current society. Imagine a society of people who feel they should be paid much more than they deserve to do a job. Imagine a society of people who don’t show up or bring business to a halt when they don’t get their way. That is America.
For all of the good that unions have brought to this country, they have also done this country some serious harm. You see its one thing to demand safe working conditions. It’s one thing to want overtime for working longer hours. Those things are fine, they’re expected, but we as a country have gone overboard and the unions have essentially priced their workers out of a job. Like every other bureaucracy the unions have become what they were never intended to be. They have become a hindrance to the American worker, and the worst part is that they have been coddled by the American politicians into believing that they deserve to exist. Let’s be honest, Washington goes out of it’s way to speak to these union workers and get them on board with it’s vision.
Am I against the workers? No I’m against the unions which have hurt the workers. If the average, blue collar, American worker wants to know why they closed down the plant that put food on his family’s table, they need look no further than their union rep. Unions have bled American companies dry and forced them to go elsewhere. American companies have moved manufacturing jobs to places like China, Mexico and Korea because American workers cost too much. Heck I’m as patriotic as the next guy, but can you really blame them? Why pay high taxes on employees, deal with inefficiency, and union regulations that have gone way too far, when you can get people somewhere else for a ¼ of the price?
My question to American politicians is this; Why not tell Americans that? What’s so difficult about saying to the American worker “Listen I want to bring jobs back here, but companies are tired of dealing with American taxes and unions” Yesterday I argued that if we as a country went to a fair tax system, we could lower the cost of doing business, for American businesses. This is just an extension of that argument. If we can somehow break the hold that unions have on us then we can lower business expenses even more, and bring more jobs back to this country. With lower taxes, fair wages, and less bureaucracy; I feel that the average American company would rather bring work here to America than ship work out. Every time a company ships a job out it takes a risk. For manufacturing jobs that risk is copyright or patent infringement. Some countries, like China, have a history of looking the other way when it comes to knock offs. This costs companies money, but is accepted because it’s considered a tradeoff of doing business.
There are many benefits to keeping work within the United States. For one it keeps American money in America, where American workers can spend it on American goods. There’s also the issue of training and education. Depending on the field, Americans have a much better education than most of their third world counterparts where these jobs end up going. Then there’s the language barrier. Being a software developer, I’ve had to work with people all over the world, who contract out to my employer. Some of these people are easily understood, and easy to work with. Some have difficulty getting their meaning across and cost me time spent on translating their intentions.
What is the solution to this problem? First we Americans have to realize that we will not be paid executive salaries for entry level positions. We need to understand that certain jobs are going to fetch a higher salary, and that the only way to those jobs is through hard work and schooling. Second we need to be willing to take a job that we see as “beneath us” because the truth is we need it. America needs to produce again. America needs to get back into the business of designing and building things again. That is what made America great, that is what will make America great again. Just think right now we buy and spend more than we make, how long can America live this consumer life, without becoming a supplier of anything? Finally the unions need to dial it back some. Give up some of the "rights" they've won, because Americans need a place of work more than they need 3 coffee breaks, and tripple time after 6pm.
We Americans have to learn to accept our particular place in the grand scheme of things, and remember that nothing is permanent if we’re willing to work for something better. Right now you might be a worker drone slaving away in a factory, but after some hard work, and night classes you too can be the suit that gives the orders and gets to leave early. That’s the beauty of this country; the only limit is the one we impose on ourself.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
What have you done for me lately?
Our tax system is broken. For a country founded on the principal of low taxes, we sure have made a mess of things. We actually went to war, and became a country because of high taxes, and here we are taxing everything including the kitchen sink. If that isn’t bad enough, some things have more than one tax on them. Let’s take my income. I get taxed yearly on what I make. If I put that into an account and save it, when I die my kids will have to pay taxes on what I’ve already paid taxes on.
What do we need? We need to rid ourselves of this complex tax system that rewards creative accountants and brings headaches to millions of Americans every year. We need to tax everyone the same, once. Yes I am in favor of the fair tax, and here’s why. People hate taxes, it’s a fact. Another fact is that most people will do whatever they can to avoid taxes or minimize taxes on their life. Taxes are, unfortunately, a fact of life and a necessary evil, but our current tax system is a mess and wrought with loopholes that the best and brightest have learned to abuse. I will not get into the details of the fair tax, but you can read them here http://www.fairtax.org/.
Instead I will argue an argument made by economists as to why this fair tax will not work. Most economists feel that a fair tax will simply not raise enough money to support our economy. Based on our current economy with our current pattern of spending, and our ever increasing desire to spend more, these economists are correct. A fair tax will never bring in the money America needs to cover its wants. America’s needs, however, can be met by the fair tax. What’s the difference you ask? Simple America has become lazy, and in our laziness Americans have stopped trying to work and think for ourselves, and have passed that job on to the government. Every time we push off our duties to the Federal or State governments we give up a bit more freedom and cost our government just that much more in taxes.
One need only look at the silliest aspect of our life and we’ll be confronted with the truth of how much freedom we’ve actually given up to the government. Take television, a simple enough thing right? We watch for news, entertainment, information, but the government has censors to rate certain things. Why? Because we as American parents are too lazy to monitor what our kids watch, so we create a rating system, and institute a v-chip to block certain programming. How about being a good parent? What happened to telling your kids NO, or better yet monitoring their shows yourself and then telling them NO. Believe it or not this costs the government time and money. People have to meet to determine what constitutes a certain rating. Agencies are set up to enforce ratings, people are employed to handle something the average parent can handle in 5 minutes.
Another pet peeve of mine is welfare. As Americans we’ve given up our freedom and exchanged one form of slavery for another. In pre civil war times slavery was outright. White man bought black man or woman and sold them as they pleased. Then the black man was freed and made equal, but another form of slavery was on the horizon. One that wouldn’t be limited to the black race, but instead would have the freedom to target the less educated in every race. It started off innocently enough. Poor Americans needed a hand up, a way to escape the depression era poverty that was claiming America. Over time that helping hand became a black hole for men and women everywhere. Now we have whole generations raised in the welfare system, only to become as dependant as their parents.
How is this slavery? Simple when you depend on someone or something else for your very existence you cease to be free. You exchange your freedom for the convenience of being kept. You become like a pet dependant on its master for food, and a place to sleep. Americans have given up their God given right to the pursuit of happiness and have exchanged it for cheap housing and free food. Like a domesticated animal, they cannot hunt or gather on their own, but must instead rely on someone else to do it for them.
These social programs, originally intended for good have gone awry and have become a black hole, sucking up tax dollars that could be spent elsewhere. Gone are the days of asking what we could do for our country. Now we ask our country to do for us; to think for us, to moralize for us, to fix our every problem, and take away our consequences. Our banks loan money to people they know cannot pay back and now they cry foul. And on we go, having to bail out bad decision after bad decision, becoming more and more enslaved to the very system we created. Here we are asking the government to remove the consequences of our actions.
How do we fix the problem? Simple, tell the truth and educate. Tell Americans to start thinking about their decisions before making them. Tell Americans that we will help for 2 years only, and retrain them to provide for themselves. We need to cut the strings that bind, and make the problem worse. We need to help the kept, domesticated Americans become wild and free again by teaching them to work for their food and rewarding hard work over laziness. We as Americans need to start pulling back some of these freedoms we have given up and take charge of our own lives.
Why should the government have to monitor what our children watch? Can we not do that ourselves? Why should the government have to monitor how much food we feed our kids, as opposed to how much exercise they get? Isn’t that our job as parents? Why should our government have to worry about educating our children about sex and drugs? Are we not capable as parents to teach our own children morals? We were at one time. We were responsible enough to run our own lives but now we simply ask for more than our needs, we ask that the government now help with our wants. We need to learn that bad decisions come with bad consequences, and take care with our decision making process. We need to get educated on the problems of today and figure out how to face them without becoming dependant on someone else to bail us out.
We need to stop blaming the government and asking them to fix our every woe, only to complain when they come up short. We need to remember the words of John F. Kennedy and take them to heart, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”. Only after every American commits to do for themselves, will this country’s social and economic issues go away. It will be painful, we will have to tighten the belt but this is one issue that can be fixed. Only then can our tax dollars go to what they were intended for, the protection and continuation of the United States of America.
What do we need? We need to rid ourselves of this complex tax system that rewards creative accountants and brings headaches to millions of Americans every year. We need to tax everyone the same, once. Yes I am in favor of the fair tax, and here’s why. People hate taxes, it’s a fact. Another fact is that most people will do whatever they can to avoid taxes or minimize taxes on their life. Taxes are, unfortunately, a fact of life and a necessary evil, but our current tax system is a mess and wrought with loopholes that the best and brightest have learned to abuse. I will not get into the details of the fair tax, but you can read them here http://www.fairtax.org/.
Instead I will argue an argument made by economists as to why this fair tax will not work. Most economists feel that a fair tax will simply not raise enough money to support our economy. Based on our current economy with our current pattern of spending, and our ever increasing desire to spend more, these economists are correct. A fair tax will never bring in the money America needs to cover its wants. America’s needs, however, can be met by the fair tax. What’s the difference you ask? Simple America has become lazy, and in our laziness Americans have stopped trying to work and think for ourselves, and have passed that job on to the government. Every time we push off our duties to the Federal or State governments we give up a bit more freedom and cost our government just that much more in taxes.
One need only look at the silliest aspect of our life and we’ll be confronted with the truth of how much freedom we’ve actually given up to the government. Take television, a simple enough thing right? We watch for news, entertainment, information, but the government has censors to rate certain things. Why? Because we as American parents are too lazy to monitor what our kids watch, so we create a rating system, and institute a v-chip to block certain programming. How about being a good parent? What happened to telling your kids NO, or better yet monitoring their shows yourself and then telling them NO. Believe it or not this costs the government time and money. People have to meet to determine what constitutes a certain rating. Agencies are set up to enforce ratings, people are employed to handle something the average parent can handle in 5 minutes.
Another pet peeve of mine is welfare. As Americans we’ve given up our freedom and exchanged one form of slavery for another. In pre civil war times slavery was outright. White man bought black man or woman and sold them as they pleased. Then the black man was freed and made equal, but another form of slavery was on the horizon. One that wouldn’t be limited to the black race, but instead would have the freedom to target the less educated in every race. It started off innocently enough. Poor Americans needed a hand up, a way to escape the depression era poverty that was claiming America. Over time that helping hand became a black hole for men and women everywhere. Now we have whole generations raised in the welfare system, only to become as dependant as their parents.
How is this slavery? Simple when you depend on someone or something else for your very existence you cease to be free. You exchange your freedom for the convenience of being kept. You become like a pet dependant on its master for food, and a place to sleep. Americans have given up their God given right to the pursuit of happiness and have exchanged it for cheap housing and free food. Like a domesticated animal, they cannot hunt or gather on their own, but must instead rely on someone else to do it for them.
These social programs, originally intended for good have gone awry and have become a black hole, sucking up tax dollars that could be spent elsewhere. Gone are the days of asking what we could do for our country. Now we ask our country to do for us; to think for us, to moralize for us, to fix our every problem, and take away our consequences. Our banks loan money to people they know cannot pay back and now they cry foul. And on we go, having to bail out bad decision after bad decision, becoming more and more enslaved to the very system we created. Here we are asking the government to remove the consequences of our actions.
How do we fix the problem? Simple, tell the truth and educate. Tell Americans to start thinking about their decisions before making them. Tell Americans that we will help for 2 years only, and retrain them to provide for themselves. We need to cut the strings that bind, and make the problem worse. We need to help the kept, domesticated Americans become wild and free again by teaching them to work for their food and rewarding hard work over laziness. We as Americans need to start pulling back some of these freedoms we have given up and take charge of our own lives.
Why should the government have to monitor what our children watch? Can we not do that ourselves? Why should the government have to monitor how much food we feed our kids, as opposed to how much exercise they get? Isn’t that our job as parents? Why should our government have to worry about educating our children about sex and drugs? Are we not capable as parents to teach our own children morals? We were at one time. We were responsible enough to run our own lives but now we simply ask for more than our needs, we ask that the government now help with our wants. We need to learn that bad decisions come with bad consequences, and take care with our decision making process. We need to get educated on the problems of today and figure out how to face them without becoming dependant on someone else to bail us out.
We need to stop blaming the government and asking them to fix our every woe, only to complain when they come up short. We need to remember the words of John F. Kennedy and take them to heart, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”. Only after every American commits to do for themselves, will this country’s social and economic issues go away. It will be painful, we will have to tighten the belt but this is one issue that can be fixed. Only then can our tax dollars go to what they were intended for, the protection and continuation of the United States of America.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Do You Want Me To Lie to You?
Every four years, Americans go to the polls and pick someone to lead them for the next four years. Every four years, representatives from America's two dominant parties come up with all sorts of catchy phrases and cool buzz words to attract American voters. During the campaign season little, if anything that is said, is expected to come true. In fact we Americans seem to expect and welcome our politicians to lie to us. To quote "A Few Good Men", "We can't handle the truth". So we happily sit by and watch as politicians lie to us, fill us full of hope, and try to convince us that they are both competent to lead us, and that their word actually means something.
These politicians go to great lengths to create a sense of trust. They work hard to make sure that “We The People” are willing to put our trust in them to fix our problems. They want us to put our faith in them to lead us and make us prosperous. The problem as I see it is that this rarely if ever works. In fact most of the time these politicians break their promises, and do things both before and after the election to prove how untrustworthy they really are. The last few years have seen an election process that, for many Americans, is more of a choice between two evils, than a choice between two competent individuals. Additionally most Americans seem to prefer being lied to than to be told the truth.
My question to America is WHY? Why would we rather have someone tell us that life is rosy, and things are great, when they’re not? Why would we put our trust in someone we KNOW is lying to us? Why would we prefer a candidate who would say one thing and do another? Are we so apathetic that we’d rather put a pretty face on our problems and blame it on a bad president than to actually do something about it? The fact is that there are and always have been bad presidents. But a democratically elected president who does poorly is simply the result of a bad choice by his / her electors.
Let’s take this latest batch of would be leaders.
On the one hand you have a person who has been in Washington for quite some time. He is deeply ingrained in the system, he knows how to maneuver and manipulate the system. He is the system, yet he’s painted as a maverick, which is willing to buck the system. Prior to him becoming the party candidate he was blasted by his own party as being too liberal, not a real conservative, but now they all seem to have lined up like good little drones to support him. His big catch phrase is “Change you can believe in”, or some such nonsense. Do we really expect change from a man who has lived the Washington life for as long as John McCain has? Are Americans so naïve that we expect someone who is part of the problem to all of a sudden come up with a solution?
Next we have a new contender, new blood, someone with so little Washington experience that if this were a job interview for a high level position, the interviewer would probably put his resume on the reject pile. In fact his only real claim to fame is that he is a great speaker, and that he’s not part of the broken system. Let’s examine this a bit. His speeches all center on Hope, hope to fix our country, hope to repair a once great nation. Hope for the poor. Ok Really? How does he feel he can do these things? Simple he’s going to raise taxes cut military spending and invest in alternative energy, all while giving Americans socialized medicine. I don’t know about you but this seems like a pipe dream to me. Fist off to raise taxes in an economy where the people are crying broke, businesses are failing and banks are asking for handouts is just political suicide, never mind the prelude to a depression.
As you can see I’m not happy with either choice. The reason I’m not happy with either choice is simple, both parties want me to believe something that simply isn’t true. They want me to believe their lies, and put my hope in them for the next four years. For a candidate to win my vote he or she is going to have to tell me and America the brutal truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I prefer that politicans tell me the truth about what's wrong with this country, rather than tell me that everything is going to be ok if we hope it will.
You see I have yet to hear a politician tell the truth about the problems that plague us. All I hear is them offering solutions to bandaid the problem, but not fix the problem at the root. What exactly is the problem? Laziness, plain and simple. America has become lazy and in it's laziness has slowly given up and cheapened the American dream. This can be seen in our approach to everthing we do, from how and why we pay taxes to our work ethics, to the laws we allow to pass. So there you have it. This blog is about the truth, as I see it, but neverless the truth. I want to get to the bottom of what exactly it is that has turned this once great nation into a pale imitation of it's former self.
These politicians go to great lengths to create a sense of trust. They work hard to make sure that “We The People” are willing to put our trust in them to fix our problems. They want us to put our faith in them to lead us and make us prosperous. The problem as I see it is that this rarely if ever works. In fact most of the time these politicians break their promises, and do things both before and after the election to prove how untrustworthy they really are. The last few years have seen an election process that, for many Americans, is more of a choice between two evils, than a choice between two competent individuals. Additionally most Americans seem to prefer being lied to than to be told the truth.
My question to America is WHY? Why would we rather have someone tell us that life is rosy, and things are great, when they’re not? Why would we put our trust in someone we KNOW is lying to us? Why would we prefer a candidate who would say one thing and do another? Are we so apathetic that we’d rather put a pretty face on our problems and blame it on a bad president than to actually do something about it? The fact is that there are and always have been bad presidents. But a democratically elected president who does poorly is simply the result of a bad choice by his / her electors.
Let’s take this latest batch of would be leaders.
On the one hand you have a person who has been in Washington for quite some time. He is deeply ingrained in the system, he knows how to maneuver and manipulate the system. He is the system, yet he’s painted as a maverick, which is willing to buck the system. Prior to him becoming the party candidate he was blasted by his own party as being too liberal, not a real conservative, but now they all seem to have lined up like good little drones to support him. His big catch phrase is “Change you can believe in”, or some such nonsense. Do we really expect change from a man who has lived the Washington life for as long as John McCain has? Are Americans so naïve that we expect someone who is part of the problem to all of a sudden come up with a solution?
Next we have a new contender, new blood, someone with so little Washington experience that if this were a job interview for a high level position, the interviewer would probably put his resume on the reject pile. In fact his only real claim to fame is that he is a great speaker, and that he’s not part of the broken system. Let’s examine this a bit. His speeches all center on Hope, hope to fix our country, hope to repair a once great nation. Hope for the poor. Ok Really? How does he feel he can do these things? Simple he’s going to raise taxes cut military spending and invest in alternative energy, all while giving Americans socialized medicine. I don’t know about you but this seems like a pipe dream to me. Fist off to raise taxes in an economy where the people are crying broke, businesses are failing and banks are asking for handouts is just political suicide, never mind the prelude to a depression.
As you can see I’m not happy with either choice. The reason I’m not happy with either choice is simple, both parties want me to believe something that simply isn’t true. They want me to believe their lies, and put my hope in them for the next four years. For a candidate to win my vote he or she is going to have to tell me and America the brutal truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I prefer that politicans tell me the truth about what's wrong with this country, rather than tell me that everything is going to be ok if we hope it will.
You see I have yet to hear a politician tell the truth about the problems that plague us. All I hear is them offering solutions to bandaid the problem, but not fix the problem at the root. What exactly is the problem? Laziness, plain and simple. America has become lazy and in it's laziness has slowly given up and cheapened the American dream. This can be seen in our approach to everthing we do, from how and why we pay taxes to our work ethics, to the laws we allow to pass. So there you have it. This blog is about the truth, as I see it, but neverless the truth. I want to get to the bottom of what exactly it is that has turned this once great nation into a pale imitation of it's former self.
More to come
This is my first attempt at blogging, and I hope to be adding to this soon, but I'm still getting used to how this works and trying to set up my site. For now whoever reads this will have to settle for just a bit about what I plan to blog about.
As the blog name suggests I feel America needs to get a wake up call. I will elaborate on this as time passes but for right now let say this, America has gone down the entitlement road for so long that it has forgotten what it takes to be a great country. Now I'm not saying that the US isn't a great country, but we are fast becoming a second class country, and seem to be all to happy doing so.
Over the next few weeks I will outline some of the issues that I feel have brought us down over the years.
As the blog name suggests I feel America needs to get a wake up call. I will elaborate on this as time passes but for right now let say this, America has gone down the entitlement road for so long that it has forgotten what it takes to be a great country. Now I'm not saying that the US isn't a great country, but we are fast becoming a second class country, and seem to be all to happy doing so.
Over the next few weeks I will outline some of the issues that I feel have brought us down over the years.
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