Day #11 - Kinesthetics - Reaching out and Touching the Nations of the World

Foreign Policy.  Fah.  Let's go for what this really is, America.  Call the kettle black already.  America loves to stick it's big nose...as well as its sticky fingers where it doesn't belong.  Right smack dab in the middle of other people's business.

Oh, we disguise it well.  We call it "Political Concern"..."helping our neighbors keep the peace", "Establishing Democracy where it's needed".  Again, I say "Fah".  There's a reason we do this, and I hate to inform you of this, but it isn't helping anybody.  I'm sorry, what I really meant to say is, it doesn't help anyone...except us.  Our motives are very much selfish, of this you can be sure.  Do you really imagine that, when we help people "rebuild" after we blow them to bits, that these people say "Wow...those wonderful Americans, I'm so glad they're here."  You have to be joking.  No, we have our reasons.  Let's shake down at least one of the most vivid examples we have.

They blew up the center of financial dealings in our country.  The symbol of our power.  The highest buildings we have, the Twin Towers.  Because of this, we took our troops to the middle east to get the man responsible.   Osama Bin Lama, the most feared terrorist we knew of.  But wait, this man was no terrorist.  No, Osama was one of our dearest friends.  G.W.'s relative Ex-President George Bush took very good care of this man, and his family.  Heck, we even shuffled his family out of the country first, before we invaded Osama's supposed hiding place in the middle east.  And then, when we couldn't "find him", we then blamed a whole different country and demolished their capital, then transplanted some of our "Democracy" over there for them to experience.  We then decided, since we weren't getting very far on our "Find Osama" mission (not that we looked very hard),  to "take our revenge" out on a guy we hated a lot back in the day, Sadam.  Was it because they were harboring the terrorists responsible for our problems in the U.S.?  Hell no.  The war, and everyone that died for it was one big dupe.  Done in the name of freedom for Americans.  Freedom from fear, and freedom from Terrorists.  Bull.  Hockypucks.  No, we did it for purely selfish reasons, believe it.  But hey, we got that Sadam, just like we promised we would someday...and bonus, we got a foothold into a country that had plenty of gas and oil stored up....no, nothing selfish here.

Oh, we don't have to stop there.  Noooooo......Let's go to Vietnam.  A "police action".  Done to remove the oppression of Communists trying to recover South Vietnam.  Oh, and let's not forget Korea.  Same thing.  Modern examples you ask?  Russia.  China.  The "Continuing war in Afghanistan".  Unbelievable.  You think the citizens of any of the aforementioned people were thrilled the U.S. "came to their rescue"?  I can count them all on my numerous fingers and toes.  After that, there were an awful lot of ungrateful citizens, make no mistake.

Let's look to a few that are a bit closer.  The Philippines.  Guam.  Puerto Rico.  If you're thinking these people were happy to have us meddle in their affairs, nothing could be further from the truth.

The thing I love the most is, we hardly need a reason.  No, we're HAPPY to do it.  We ENJOY meddling, hell, it's in our nature, as U.S. Citizens, to help the little guy out.  Having problems in your homeland?  We'll take care of it.  You can handle it yourselves?  Nahhhhhh.....no really, we INSIST!!  And don't worry, if we blow up 3/4 our your country in the process, we'll help you rebuild, don't worry.

Did we really need to stop Communism?  No, it pretty much took care of itself, as I remember.  Russia quit, cold-turkey.  1/2 of Germany, no problems losing communism there.  China, Korea and North Vietnam are about our only hold-outs.  And we had major wars in both Korea and Vietnam...and all we got out of those were, instead of Communist neighbors...we now have REALLY pissed off neighbors.

Here's another one I love...Natural disaster relief.  Hey!!  Mr. President...eyes FRONT (or for those of you in the military, tennn...SHON!)!  Look around you!  Plenty of disaster 'round here pal.  Pain and death are the natural way of things.  And all those communists we fought back...are still in place, and we're...well, we got killed.  Death, whether experiencing it or doling it out is something we're getting very good at.

Day 11, 15 to go.

Day #10 - Justice, American Style...or was it English Style to begin with? Who can say...

I would have to say, if I were to plant my finger solely on what's wrong with our system of justice, it'd have to be squarely pointed at ourselves.  We let the problem continue, we roll over when laws are passed, and we just open our wallets without flinching when fines are implemented or raised.  But since I don't really want to condense every blog I've done on this into this one, I'll plant that finger on the second most problematic:  Our outdated constitution, and our stupidity at clinging to it like it's the Holy Bible.  Worse yet, like other things that are held as scripture, we've interpreted it so much that most of it, when read by Joe Average, is so twisted we don't quite know what these things say anymore.  Because we leave it to our judges to interpret as they see fit (and as we go on) the original meanings are bent beyond recognition.  Like the Bible, it's true meaning is lost in translation...literally.

I'll throw out a couple of examples, then leave the rest in your hands.

My favorite is the the 2nd Amendment, the one concerning the right to keep and bear arms.  Because of this "right", we Americans are the most armed nation in the world.  "And this is a bad thing?" you ask?  I'd say so.  In 2009, just 5 years ago, there were estimated to be 310 MILLION guns owned by citizens in the U.S.  This figure does NOT include anyone in the military.  In 2010, there were over 8,000 murders committed in the U.S. with a firearm or pistol of some sort.  88% of Americans own at LEAST one firearm.  There were 56 gun related deaths in England.  Only 6% of their citizens own guns.  Hmmmmm....let's see...what's wrong with this picture.

This is all because some nut job, nearly 200 years ago said we have the right to keep and bear arms.  Do you think maybe this language should be applied to our time just a little differently??  Enough said.

Oh, and by the way, one more crack at the NRA...and yes, Letter N will cover this well:  Congress passed a bill granting law enforcement around the country to receive post Cold War military gear and weapons, to be used as they see fit.  WHAT??  Bet old Georgy boy never saw that one comin'.

As far as justice and the system we have in place, there are very obvious things wrong.  There shalt be no illegal searches and siezures, but it happens tens to hundreds of times a day these days (see www.copblock.org, or look up "police brutality" on Youtube).  Innocent until proven guilty...but we're going to put you in jail if we suspect you anyway, just in case you get a little frog-like, and jump.  You have the right to council...if you can afford it, which a good portion of us can't anymore.  So, in that case, you're going to be appointed with a lawyer by the justice system.  Chances are, since he's probably doing this for next to nothing, he's not going to be real experienced though, so good luck with that.  There will be no excessive punishment, no extremely high bails...But bail will be set at 1,000,000, and next month, you'll be sentenced to death with a lethal injection.  Getting the picture?

The Judicial branch of our government is full of holes America.  People are wrongly imprisoned, loopholes in our laws are plentiful, and we leave those laws (as well as the 200 year old paper that laid out the 10 Commandments of America) and the interpretation of it up to a murder of judges...I'm sure there's a different term, but murder just sounded right here, I'm not sure why.

For more on this, I have done up a right glorious series of blog posts named "The law....Itself, also in this blog.  It's a good read.  Look 'er up, willya?  Thanks.

Day #9 - Insurance

Ooooo.........what to say, what to say...

Ah yes, insurance.  Probably tops my personal list of "Best thing to waste your money on", easily.  Someone (or some corporate entity) really had their brains running in 4th gear when they thought of this little gem.

I'm sure to raise a few heated defenses to the good of insurance with this statement.  But really?  Let's talk.

Let's start with the fact that I'm from the town where Insurance is King.  Des Moines, Iowa.  Home to such biggies as "The Travelers"..."State Farm"..."Allstate"...."Nationwide"..."American Family", plus a host of others.  Our state's capital city lives, eats and breathes insurance, so I like to think I know a little about it.  Add to that the fact that I've been dumping my cash down the toilet for a number of insurance agencies all of my life.

Here's the thing though, I've never had a case where I've been able to use or benefit from it at all over my lengthy life.  I've never been involved in anything bigger than a fender bender as far as my vehicles are concerned (although, while I had only basic liability on my vehicles, I had a van flip upside-down on a truck of mine at 1:30 a.m., while the police were in hot pursuit, and I wasn't in the vehicle at the time...then 3 weeks later, I had a guy plow into my van's rear end, and he wasn't insured.  In both cases, MY insurance company, Geico, wouldn't cover me on either one, and the offenders involved didn't have verifiable insurance with any company themselves.  Needless to say I started paying for full coverage soon after, and switched from Geico to AmFam), have never had a health issue that required my health insurance to kick in, my home has never been broken into, and as close as I can figure, I'm still alive, so life insurance, which I've yet to purchase, is a moot point.  I guess I'm just a lucky guy, where insurance is concerned...or maybe not so much.  I'd have to say I don't often describe myself as lucky when calling in my payment to my insurance agent, and never needing to collect compensation for it.

Therefore, folks like myself aren't exactly investing money in...well, ANYTHING.  Oh sure, it's easy for a person to say "Yeah, but SOMETHING might happen, someday!"  Yeah, but what if something NEVER DOES???  What a waste of perfectly good money that I could be spending on something else that I really DO need!  The only real insurance I see as anything close to a wise investment is life insurance...and it's not really life insurance, it's DEATH insurance.  You're not insuring that you're going to keep on living, you're insuring you're going to die someday!  Anyway, this one I get.  This insurance is for the sole purpose of looking after the people who outlive you, to help them bury you, pay your bills off, and is for taking care of your loved ones after you croak.  That makes sense.  After that; and yes, mostly because I have yet to benefit from any of it, it's a waste of  a huge pile of good green money.

I'm sure everyone has experienced these thoughts at one point or another.  I'm guessing I'll get plenty of empathy, here.  If nothing else, it sure explains how I came to this opinion of the Insurance industry.

First, insurance companies shouldn't ever be allowed to drop you as a policy holder; unless you've been with them for less than a year, or for some similar reason, like paying out too much in too short a time, etc.  I suppose what I'm saying is, if you pay for, say 2 years...then let's say you get into an accident, and it's not your fault.  The company you've insured with pays you out, then sends you a letter saying they've decided to drop you, leaving you to find insurance elsewhere.  And when you do find a good company with fair rates, one of the first things they ask you is have you had, as well as where you were insured before, and had you received any benefits for anything you might have incurred during your time with them.  For one, if the company you were with doesn't want you as a client because they had to pay you for your accident, then they shouldn't be in the insurance business to begin with, should they?  Isn't this what it's all about?  Why should they be the ones that decide whether to insure you or not?  Wasn't it you that came to them in the first place, to take a policy with THEM?

Second, you've had your accident...wouldn't it be reasonable to consider you, more or less, pre-disastered now?  You've only had the one accident, some ten years ago or so, on your record prior to that, so aren't the chances you'll have another anytime soon pretty far-fetched??  Besides, they can (and usually do) raise your rates to cover it, if they really feel that way about it, right?  Now, because they dropped you, you have to insurance shop all over again.  There should be guidelines, at the very least, if this practice is going to be allowed to continue.  You know, like if you've been with the company a year or less, or the payout amount when you do have one is over $10,000...or something along those lines.

Here's another little bit I love...the commercials these people run, 25/8.  How they can (all) save you up to $532 a year on your car insurance?  Really?  For one, every one of them says they can do this.  SOMEBODY'S gotta be lying.  It was cute when the gecko said it (the first 10 times or so), and I do still greatly enjoy the better portion of Gieco's commercials, but for cryin' out loud, don't they have it down that WE have it down, by now?  That'd be something worth knowing if it were true in every case.  NOTE:  Funny thing, Geico was the company I had my liability with when I was involved in those accidents they wouldn't cover me for...and my payments to them were more than the American Family Insurance payments I made, under the exact same circumstances, for full coverage.  Not only that, the amounts they'd pay out for coverage were bigger too.  So the originator of the "15 minutes and you could save up to $532" slogan, that basically became the same theme of every insurance company to jump on that train afterwards, was charging me twice as much for their liability as I was paying AmFam for their full coverage.  Go figure.

Most of all, I love it when certain companies stop covering certain things because they start happening a lot.  For example, hurricane insurance in the southern gulf states was a booming industry...then the hurricanes nearly tripled one given year, and the companies that offered that insurance discontinued the insurance entirely.  Surely they knew this might happen, and when they were enjoying the moneys that flowed in when the hurricanes were seldom to none, they had no complaints.  When a company that offers insurance sets up shop and specializes in a particular insurance, it should be made to keep it's doors open for a set amount of time, depending on the type of insurance they offer, to make sure they get the bad with the good, I think.

I guess the point to  all of this is that mandatory insurance, to me, is oh so much, a cruel and unusual punishment endured by the majority of Americans.  We already have several insurances to pay for, most before we come to benefit from them...Unemployment Insurance, Medicaid Insurance, Medical Insurance (unless you work for a large corporation that includes this in your benefit pack)...and Dental Insurance; which all comes out of your paycheck, usually in no small amounts.  And as if that weren't enough, you have your home insurance (or your renter's insurance) and your vehicle insurance to pay, on your own.  Oh, and let's not forget cell phone insurance, electronics insurance, and, quite possibly pet insurance (or deposit, if you rent).  Add that to the unbelievable amount of income tax and social security (one could almost call this "Just in case you're not able to work anymore" insurance) they take out of your check, it doesn't leave a whole lot for living basics, does it?

Now I'll go along with the fact that, on occasion, insurance is, and was, in it's former glory as a new and budding business, a good thing to invest in.  I've seen people get in horrible accidents, for example, that even involved a lot of future pain or even death, where, if you hadn't had insurance, the compensation given to the persons hurt would have broke you beyond your years, and probably would have dipped into  the next two or three generations' wallets as well.  Also, I've seen house or business fires, where the building was burnt to a crisp, or was seen by many floating down the river after a mudslide, where the insurance adjuster became your personal messiah with little stretch to the imagination.  In these cases and those like it, I'm sure our citizens were more than thrilled to have paid all of the money they did for their policy.  Yet, for the majority of us, insurance is a deadly sin, a black hole that sucks your wallets and your banking accounts dry.

The wealth of money these companies gouge from us is as obvious as driving through our cities' downtown streets.  Nationwide, for example, takes up nearly 4 blocks of our downtown area, with all new buildings and enough employees to fill a town half our size.  I feel new regulations and rules should be implemented where insurance is concerned, along these lines:

1.  No client drops, depending, of course, on the number or the size of payouts to you, or the length of time you've been a client, when a big payout is made.
2.  The ability of clients to recoup part or all of the payments made into the policy when no reason whatsoever, covered by the policy in question, occurs.  If you pay fire insurance for 30 years, and no fire ever occurs in that time, for example, maybe fifty percent of the policy should be refunded to that customer.  A lot of the insurance companies we invest with nowadays have been around for a good number of years, so it's not implausible.  If an insurance company can't handle covering those kinds of refunds, then they shouldn't be allowed to start that sort of business to begin with.

With these sort of regulations in place, maybe then we wouldn't feel like we're being ripped off on a daily basis when paying between 3-5 insurance premiums a month or per paycheck, hmmm?

Day nine has come and gone.  17 more to go.  :D

Day #8 - Healthcare: Past and Present

Needless to say, this one's bound to be a doozie, right kids?

Now, we all know how things USED to be.  Whenever you'd call for an ambulance, and you didn't have health insurance, you were probably looking to be mailed a nice $700-800 bill to add to your portfolio of medical bills that you haven't had the money to pay off yet.  If you weren't on some social program of any type, your prescriptions would have ended up costing you anywhere from $30-$130 apiece to fill.  A night's stay in any local hospital?  $400-$1,000 a night/day.  Surgery could run you, depending on the level of its severity, upwards of $10,000 or better, probably averaging out to around $50,000, realistically, unless it was far more critical.  Then, I'm sure, surgeries topped $100,000 or better.  So that system was pretty unreasonable in it's demands on John Q. and Mary..  Even with health insurance, you still had to pay a deductible, and a pretty hefty bill.  This was, of course, due to the ridiculous rates in our hospitals, that doctors in private practice charge, and for the high salaries of nurses and other medical assistants...right down to the nifty cleaning crews they have mop and wax their floors at night.,  Manufacturers of medical equipment and supplies got to where they were putting a pretty stiff sticker price on the merchandise they sold to hospitals, mostly because they got a little greedy, after finding out what the hospitals were getting out of their clients......so why not lasso in on the profits they bring down?  In a lot of hospitals across the country, they were charging people $5.00 per aspirin. Wow.

Personally, I would think that, instead of changing the method, or the way we acquired the previously presented healthcare (as well as the rates we were charged for it), it really would have been much simpler to just cap prices.  We could have started by mandating that rates go down on tuition for those learning to be doctors and nurses in the medical field.  As soon as our universities realized just how much doctors were bringing in, I'm sure they huddled together in their boardrooms and said "Hey, we really need to gouge these guys!  They can afford it!!"  It's always about the damn money, isn't it, no matter what business you're in?  Then, with that accomplished, we would have had the means to say to our medical practitioners:  "Hey, you're charging just a little too much to care for your patients, aren't you??  Then, with those prices regulated down a little, quite possibly, the suppliers of medical goods may have thought about it a bit and maybe they would consider lowering the prices they charge private practices hospitals for their supplies.  Oh, and let's not forget the unreal money that health insurance companies charge us these days, thanks to people that are scamming the industry (of course, we shouldn't bring up that maybe these companies are scamming us though, should we?)...how about a little regulation on these people?  It's gotten to where some doctors are charging people sky high, or recommending surgeries and procedures because they know insurance companies will pay for it (albeit, at times, within reason.)  All in all, if we could accomplished these few things, tomorrow might just be a lot nicer day to wake up to.

But we didn't do any of these things.  I'm sure no one in congress even had these thoughts, let alone had the chance to either express or suppress them if they did.  Besides, the things listed in the paragraph previous don't make anyone any real money, do they?  Matter of fact, I see all those things taking money away...medical staff salaries going down, colleges losing money, the medical supply company would have less profits, and the insurance companies, well, they might have to tighten their belts somewhat too.  "GOD NO, we can't have THAT, now!!", I can hear someone on the Hill screaming, "No, I say, we come up with a good plan for unified healthcare, where everyone pretty much pays the same, lowering healthcare costs and showing people it's good to sign up for this..then when we get enough sign-ups, then we stick it to 'em...specially when we need to line our pockets.  If our citizens don't sign up for it, or don't like what we propose?  Fine the bastards a couple of thousand dollars!  Have the IRS be the enforcers in charge of collection.  That way we make some money out of the deal, and it gives the IRS something else more constructive to do besides bothering right-wing political groups."

One thing I did realize, though, was that the original healthcare bill presented to Congress was actually pretty damn fair.  The problem was, there were too many people left out of the mix.  Insurance companies were essentially left to fend for themselves...as well as others.  "How are we going to make any money out of this?" they asked.  Then when the bill originator came back with "Tough!!", well then they lobbied the members of congress that cared about money the most...the Republicans.  They poisoned their minds against the bill, and asked that they demand that the people who would lose out on this deal be written back into it.  And if they didn't, they threatened a deadlock over it...which would really translate to GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN!!  And not just one little one either!!  You don't want/need that, do you Mr. President?"  Sure.  A little blackmail never hurts anything, when you're trying to get your way, does it?

So our Commander in Chief had to concede and write all these losers back in.  They gave insurance companies, as well as others that shouldn't have had a damn thing to say about the healthcare industry, a way to make money on the deal too.  He had to give in!  If he didn't, it would have meant that it would have been buried in committee again, like it has been just about every time we write up such a bill.

And because of all the concessions...the changes to what we had in the beginning of this bill's existence, changes we were bullied into making, it all boils down to this...we The People get SCREWED....again!  And what did we do when it got passed, regardless of what we heard might hit us, as far as higher premiums, etc.?  We rolled over, just like we always do.  "It must be OK, surely our government wouldn't do us like that, would it???"  Never mind that there were little conditions that had to be made that we would have never gone for, had we but known, like that employees of government wouldn't have to abide by the new plan, or that they wouldn't be penalized for not getting it for themselves.  Yeesh.  And as always, when something like this gets implemented, it costs billions of dollars, even though saving money is always presented as the reason for the change. And when it costs government?  As usual, what that really means is that it's going to cost US, whether the bill shows up now, or further down the road.

Done right, this could have been a good thing.  But because all of the outsiders, who previously had made a killing on the former system, all wanted to dip their greedy little fingers in our newer one and make good, we, as citizens lose out again.  It'll not be much of an improvement to what it was before, I'll warrant.  It will be better in some ways, and worse in others, evening it out to pretty much equal to the former, just in different ways.  Healthy citizens will pay more, independent physicians will more than likely have to close up shop, and the line in to be seen will more than likely be long, noisy and crowded.  It'll will, more than likely, just represent (as well as revive the age of ) the age of the HMO, an acronym I was truly hoping to NOT hear again after our slow departure away from them in the 90's.  I shook my head when the bill was put into law.  Oh to be sure, It'll take some time for us Americans to fully realize just what we agreed to...it's not like any of us really had the time to open it up and read the whole thing, heck, i don't think we would have understood a word of it anyway, if we had tried.  I truly hope we acquire some sense in the near future, and work to get what was done repealed, before it all goes south, then try and get a different more efficient one drawn up...or at the very least get some really fast amendments implemented to the one that was voted in.  But I sincerely doubt that we will.  And even if we all gather together and ram down the doors of our Representatives and Senators' offices, getting them to change what's done, has, and always will be, one of the most complicated and truly fruitless things we Americans try to do.  Especially when they've made up their minds to keep things the way they are.

So much for Day #8.  Only 18 days to go.

Day #7 - Greed

I will not even dignify this word with its definition.  Anybody with 1/5 of their brain power and three years of life under their belts or better know what the word is and all it's associated with, especially in this, our newest century.  Oh, some only wish they could compete.  Gold rushers?  The Grinch?  Daffy Duck?  Ebeneezer Scrooge?  Snidely Whiplash?  Donald Trump?  Amateurs.

No, if I had to say a word about every person in America alone that has exhibited or whom has practiced the art of greed, in one fashion or another,  I'd be talking about it till the day I die.  This is in the top ten, one of the big heavies, as well as the most likely winner in the "Death To Us All" category in our version of the Life Game.  Greed, selfishness and self-absorption have attributed to all but just a wedge of the sludge on our souls, which are mostly beyond any benefit of repair.  Random Acts of Kindness are becoming more extinct as the generations pass and we breed more conscience-proof, self-serving citizens.  Corporations, in their on-going battle to make more money, ship our jobs over-seas and lay-off indigenous employees.

As more refugees (as well as illegals) pour over our borders, and jobs get harder and harder to find on our own soil, Americans get more possessive of their belongings and the money they've slaved for all of their lives.  Oh sure, diversity is our middle name.  We take all poor, hungry, etc.  But it's when the poor and hungry get smart and figure that out and start to take advantage of us that we get miffed, and the word 'MINE' becomes more a part of our vocabulary.  But as we hug our earnings closer to our chests, our government is already thinking of new and different ways to strip you of a larger percentage of it. In the meantime, we get angrier and angrier.  Our mental health suffers greatly, when all you do is work.  Some are taking on 2-3 jobs apiece just to keep up with the amount they ought to be making to live where they do and buy the things they need.  The rich are greedy, and the poor are needy.  Both hoard their money, but it's the poor that have to.  Morals fall apart, and some turn to breaking the law to get the job done.

And why not?  What choices are left us?  Retirement is a word reserved for comedy shows these days, becoming fast a fictional ideal. Success is yet another word headed for extinction.  "The American Dream?"  Forgotten.  Discussed, imagined and believed only by people in worse shape than we are, and remembered best by American historians, learned and knowledgeable of life in the post World War II era.  New words and phrases have replaced them.  Hoarding.  Stealing.  Conning.  Dog-Eat-Dog.  Brother screws brother.  It's in vogue to be involved in any number of lawsuits in a given year.  And the human condition, at its best?  America's benefit?  Non-involvement.  Miserly behavior.  Cynicism.  Unrest.  Next thing you know, they'll be picketing the White House using Facebook and cell phones, in addition to everyday picketing and riots.  And for every cent we lose, and every rule we impose, the more money taken out of our paychecks, and the less credit we get for what we've done for human-kind, the more we learn to keep our wallets closed, close-by, and hidden, to lessen the possibility of it ending up in the hands of of others.  Compassion, empathy and sympathy are words in danger of becoming cuss words someday.

I've done more than enough blogging on this subject, so let it be known that greed, in all of it's inhuman glory, will, if we're not careful, be our legacy, as well as our downfall.  See you tomorra!!

Day #6 - Federal Reserve

The Fed.  Oh yeah, this has GOT to be one of my FAAAAAAAVORITE subjects!

I remember, I used to never know what "The Fed" was.  As soon as I did, however, I knew it was BS.  And Fort Knox, that magical place, guarded by tens of thousands of magical soldiers that are under oath, to guard, with ferocity, our national supply of the remaining gold we have.  Oh, and our gold is not just held here, there's more that we can't verify we have either.  Yes, another massive supply is being held at The Fed as well.

Fort Knox and the gold we have in reserve was "Audited" last in 1953.  80% of the gold in Fort Knox, has, since then, disappeared overseas (and if you read up on the audit of 1953, the use of the word "audit" is pretty laughable.) It was a best guess after the government appointed inspector (supposedly) formally tested less than 5% of that gold reserve and deemed it authentic.  Outside auditors were and are not allowed.  And neither are visitors to Ft. Knox.  A magical place indeed!!  I'm betting that same magic has made the gold, that MAY have been there once...magically disappear.  Of course, we'll never know.  No visitors.  No outsiders, other than allowed by the government.  Land mines, barbed wire and more cubic ft. of concrete than it took to build our tallest skyscrapers, stop us from ever really knowing what they have.  The funniest thing of all is what we get away with, when we "borrow" money from other countries.  Most just take our word for it.  "Yeah, we got it.  What, you don't believe me?  Well, here's the sheet of paper we filled out this year, promising that we have gold stashed away."  And the German bank buys it!!  I can't believe we still, after all these years, get away with that!

The Fed, the central "Bank" of the United States, is ALSO magical.  It produces American moneys out of thin air.  When we need more to spend, we "create" more.  "Fire up the presses!!  The President wants to spend a billion dollars today, and we only have half a billion available!"  More magical than the Magic Kingdom at Disneyland.

Now here's what kills me.  We have all this debt.  Trillions upon trillions.  Yet, the Fed (in 2008) was magically able to "loan" AIG Insurance Corp. 85 billion dollars...one lone company...to STAVE OFF BANKRUPTCY!!??  Why??  Sooooo......here are the things I'm forced to wonder.  How can our central bank loan 85 billion dollars to one company to stop it from going bankrupt, something that happens probably a 1000 times a day with other companies in the U.S., when our national debt is trillions of dollars large?  By definition then, I shouldn't worry about starting a business here...when I near bankruptcy, it's OK!!  The Fed will come to my rescue, right?  They've shelled out as much as 85 billion dollars before...I should be FINE!!  No one knows where the money came from...or why it wasn't used to pay off part of the national debt...but they did it!  MAGIC I tells ya!!  Heck, the national debt gets too big, we can just borrow money from ourselves and fix it, from the way it looks!  And if there's not enough?  We can just print up extras, no sweat.

Really America.  A gigantic magical castle in Kentucky holding all of our gold...probably guarded by a monstrous dragon on the inside, hoarding our gold and frying all who dare come near.  The Fed, our "national central bank" and Government pocket.  Magical paper Monopoly money with no proven backbone.  One day it's gonna come out.  Our citizens will storm the minefield and the 30,000 strong soldiers (and the ferocious dragon) to find out what we've suspected for over 50 years, that our ace in the hole, our collateral on countless world loans, was systematically squandered away, and the government, that's been merrily spending all of our money (taken from us beginning at the same time as "The Fed"s birth), I'm sure, mostly because they ran out of their own.  So more boxes were added to our paychecks.  So now, instead of just a third or better of our income, they began taking out social security money, adding to it even later, medicaid money to be taken out...then, adding insult to injury, the state had to come up with yet another little scam to compete with federal greed, "Unemployment Insurance".

All of these little boxes were added because of the shortage of government moneys to spend.  Oh sure, like your standard Ponzi scheme, you use new money coming in to pay out on debts...and when you can't pay anymore because the money's running out, then you look for new ways to gouge your clients...in this case, the investors, the gouge-ees in schemes like this, are not all that different in definition or looks, to us, the American Public, in our relation to government.  We're "Investing" in our nation for reasons the government sells you, then when the money's not there and the payouts aren't given to you anymore, not unlike the Ponzi scheme initiator, the government implements more new funds with different investors, and that money is used to pay off existing ones.  When the money runs dry and the accounts and assets are frozen, the little guys that funded the whole thing start to see their futures go down the drain.  And what happens to the lead manager of these little schemes?  Pretty much what'll happen to us someday.  Justice will come a callin', and the nations of the world and their banks will start calling in our debt.  And when they find out it was all a con?  There's gonna be some really pissed off people out there. A lot of them have not only been dying for a reason to mess us up, they'd be happy to do it, just out of spite.

By the way, notice that the retirement age, before you can collect back the social security money you put in for it, is steadily creeping further and further up?  And why not?  By the time most get to that age, the further up it is, the chances that you're dead before that collection age is increased, and the number of years that you would live after that (and the money you collect of course) would decrease.  Besides, they had to raise the retirement age...they had to quickly make up for the number of people the baby boom produced, as well as the increase in the number of Americans in our country, factor in our increased life expectancy in this day and age and the government (whom if we had inspected closely, might just notice them sticking their fingers into it to "borrow" some of it) had to come up with a miracle, and FAST!!

The solution?  Raise the ages that you're allowed to retire.  Yeah, that'll fix everything.  Notice that our security payments never seem to increase a whole lot?  I've been noticing, too, that the amount of money taken out of your checks for social security not only got larger, but SURPASSED even, every other amount taken from you in your paychecks.  Hmmm....Medicaid needs are growing, yet pay-outs seem to be on the decrease, and with Obamacare the new norm?  Medicaid is on it's way out.  I mean, it's just barely feasible to keep it going, isn't it?  Notice that is the LEAST amount taken out of your check.  That's because it's soon to be extinct.  The less they take out (the numbers taken out have been getting steadily smaller in relation to the others), pretty soon?  You won't even remember it was there.  When you get there, of course, you'll say "What about all that Medicaid I paid out all those years I worked?", but it'll be a dream forgotten by then...it's already that dream, and this is the way you'll be forced to forget about it, with the implementation of our national health act, and the slow decrease in Medicaid you pay out.  When the amount is negligible, (about where it is now), the box will probably just forget to include itself on your paychecks one day.  When you bring it up, it'll be a forgotten ideal that we just rolled over on and let go.  You may not even be able to tell your children what it was by the time you get to your social security years, not only because you forgot what it was, thanks to your dementia, but because it was oh so long ago that you paid it out of your paycheck...or you'll be six feet under.  That's probably more likely.

Back to unemployment insurance...payouts are more and more restricted, fought against, etc...yet they take this money, whether you want to pay it or not, under the #1 American con name of "Insurance", which, by definition should be paid out when you're in need of it, in a perfect world.  Yet, when you REALLY need it...when you're unemployed, of course...it's a big war - with the state, as well as with your former employer (who always seems to have all the right reasons that you were let go, ready to roll for denial or refusal to pay up), to even be approved to receive it.  It can take as long as a month to kick in after you're let go.  If you're lucky enough to be approved, that is.  In this respect, I suppose,  it appears to be very MUCH insurance...since insurance companies are extremely experienced at finding reasons NOT to give you your money back after you've paid it in, so that makes the premise for unemployment "Insurance" acceptable, correct?.  No wonder they called it insurance!  Now it all makes sense!  (Please see my upcoming Day 9 of America's deadly sins, Insurance.)

And then after you start receiving it (also not unlike insurance companies), they're on you to hurry back out there and get a job again before you even get the first check!  And be sure and report all the job hunting you've done, with an address of that guy you talked to about getting it, just to be sure that you're not just sitting on your butt and taking a very much needed vacation from the 20 years of straight sweating you did up to that point, without one.

To wrap it up (we're just listing the sins, right?  Not writing BOOKS on them, for chrissakes), The Fed is an opaque, secretive, magical place (not unlike a cardboard store front) that not only prints all of our money, holds our gold boullion for financial back-up, and doubles as a deep pocket for increased government spending.  Riiiiiiight.

Open it up.  Audit that sucka.  Stick Ft. Knox on the list as well.  The sooner the better.  Personally, I wanna see how deep the rabbit hole really goes.  How many, former as well as current Presidents that we can catch with their hands stuck deep inside the proverbial "Golden" cookie jar.  I'm guessing it'll be more like egg on their faces, when we look inside and find...nothing.  No magical gold bars.  You can't convince me that, after spending over 80% of that gold over 60 years that they just....stopped one day.  They said "Kids!!  NO.  We just can't spend any more of our citizen's gold!  They trusted us with it!!  We can't do THAT!!" and left it alone.  Gimme a break.  I mean how gullible ARE YOU PEOPLE????  Suddenly "Beach Front Property" and "Arizona" come to mind.

Day #5 - Elections/the Electoral College/Education

The letter E consisted of more than one subject I wanted to cover.  This letter, therefore will help to indicate not 26, but 27 deadly American sins...but, if you like, you can lump them together using the sub-subject mode in writing.  I sure didn't want to mis-represent the main header.  I just felt that both subjects were equally pertinent is all.  This will, I guarantee it, happen again, at least with Day 20 (the letter T), and might happen yet again to some other letter as well.  We'll see.

I have a couple of links for you this time, BEFORE we get going here.  This is something you should not only file away, this is something you need to post on every possible social media site, memorize, and put a copy up wherever you go, so you can re-check your list as events occur in our country.  Most importantly, make sure all of your friends and family READ IT CAREFULLY.  Before you write off or chalk any of this up to paranoia, you'll be shocked, as well as downright upset at what you find. Be sure to Google each and every one.  Not for me.  Not for my satisfaction.  For your protection and safety, I insist.  For your children.

2nd, I'm posting another link to an ad that someone is using for profit...but if nothing else, listen to the first half of it.  It fits things occurring in our nation just a little too nicely.

The first?  A list of warning signs that your country is going fascist.  I read this and I was, the whole time, just nodding and saying to myself "yeah...yeah, that's it...check mark THAT"...and moving on.

http://prorev.com/fascisthints.htm

The second, like I mentioned, is really just a scare tactic to make you buy something.  But listening to that first half, you simply have to nod in agreement and say "Yup.  Makes perfect sense."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cbyoqotxtk

All right, so now that you are better informed on the direction we might be headed towards, this makes my job a heck of a lot simpler.

One of those checks is fraudulent voting counts.  Remember G.W., the man we supposedly put in office not just once, but twice?  There's one for the books.  Gore had it, then next thing you know?  Out of NOWHERE comes the "Good Ol' Boy" supreme, out of our favorite well-to-do family (as well as former presidential family), the Bushes:  and just pushes that man right out of his rightly-won position.  Oh sure, we questioned it.  Funny how they didn't allow the re-count.  Funny too how G.W.'s brother was involved as well.  Of course.  Because they WANTED G.W. in office, regardless off what we wanted.  Why?  It all goes onto one of the bigger piles of crap ever put over onto the American public:  The Electoral College.

The Electoral College, a place where representatives of our state, the number depending on how many elected senators and representatives each one is allowed to send to Washington D.C., votes for our President, for us....supposedly.  There are, of course, things that most Americans don't know.

1).  The representatives of the Electoral College are pre-disposed to vote for a chosen candidate.  It's called "Pledging to a Candidate."  Even though it's only happened 4 times, it's bad enough that the Electoral College even ONCE went against the popular vote when determining the President and Vice President that would occupy their respective offices.  The fact that it even happened once should have abolished the E.C. right then and there.  Most recently, it was the 2000 election of G.W. Bush that it happened last.  Before the vote even happens, Electoral Reps already know whom they're voting for.

2.).  This way of voting is only for the offices of the President and Vice President.  Why??  Why do we need this?  We don't.  This is a safeguard, in case we decide we like someone Congress doesn't.  It takes the vote out of our hands, and places it in the hands of the Government, people who, as far as we know, vote for whomever they like...worse yet, that could be turned to vote for others we don't want, for whatever purpose.

This practice was taken up a long time ago, and is out-dated.  What's more, it gives congress the power to over-rule us when voting in the most important election we have.  We need to remove it from being what it is.  A way to over-rule whom we want to see running our country.

On the subject of Electronic voting, people, this is a no-brainer.  Get rid of it, vote against it, whatever you like.  Just get it gone.  With something as important as the popular vote, the main thing democracy is known for, this is way too big of a thing to get wrong and shouldn't be left in the hands of a computer...especially since the possibility of messing things up is so prevalent.  This system of voting fairly screams non-tamper-proof.  Virus codes, one of the things we computer users fear the most have been shown to totally discredit the software of these systems time and time again.  Why anyone went along with it to begin with is beyond me.  Sure, our old way of voting was slow and tedious, but the accuracy and tamper-proof-ness of the older way is much more trustworthy.  Vote tampering, candidate tampering, and group-tampering will never be completely extinct, but the more we put our votes in the hands of machines, the more we can bet that our votes will never completely be guaranteed to be what we really want.

Now, as to Education?  This one is huge.  I'm embarrassed to say that I don't believe we're ever given the education we need anymore.  We push everyone through.  I know this from personal experience, both because of my wife's high school education as opposed to her knowledge and success in college (she finished one term of college prep classes with a .34 grade average), and also because of my experience with acquiring a pre-law degree/certification.  Most colleges seem to be more about the money they get for tuition than the subjects they teach and the ways they teach them, and, in order to keep attendees coming, are given to pushing their students through with passing grades rather than failing them.  Worse though is the OBVIOUS pushing through in our public schools.  People want their kids to pass, therefore the schools are pressured to throw these students to the harsh world with passing grades, whether they deserve them or not.

When the "No Child Left Behind" program came to fruition, I remember visibly shuddering and shaking my head, waving bye-bye to the ability to swear that our students were prepared for any curve our world might throw at them.  Illiteracy is up to record levels, and math skills are as good as out the window.  No, they have calculators and computers that do all that for them now, so what do we need traditional math skills for? One of the biggest mistakes we currently make is thinking that all the lights will never all go out, and that those skills might, at that time, be desperately needed in accordance with our survival.  Each generation that passes by and that hands off more and more of their harder-thinking tasks to computers may someday wake up to a country deprived of its electricity...and where then would they be?  How many of those students do you imagine have the girl-scout/boy scout training we had when the majority of us were graduating?  I'd be curious to find out the knot-tying-type survival skills known by the average high-school graduate today.  I'd have to say I'd be scared to death to depend on the leadership abilities of any of them that might someday be in charge of...well, anything.

Education and learning is more crucial to our existence and survival than just about anything else we humans do for ourselves.  Every time we Google anything, it's been proven to lessen our ability to recall.  And that, I'm sure, is only the tip of the ice-burg.  Our brains get lazier and lazier with each new do-it-all device that comes out on the market.

See you manana...:D

Day #4 - Drugs

Sure thing.  You knew it was coming.  What else could it be?

But here's something you DIDN'T know.  I have absolutely no intention to lecture you on the same five major drugs we've been beating down since the invention of the snuff-box.  As a matter of fact, I really don't intend to discuss drugs and the evils thereof...at all.  What I do intend to do is talk about are our attitudes where drugs are concerned, and what we're wanting to accomplish as opposed to the good those things are doing.  That's where the real problem lies.

You see, the thing I really love about America is just how absolutely two-faced people can be.  Parents especially.  Dad starts on you about the evils of Marijuana while he smokes his fifth cigarette in an hour and blows the smoke right into your face.  Mom gets on you about sniffing coke while she inhales a glass of straight vodka and pops a Valium.  But those aren't my REAL favorites.  No, my absolute favorites are all linked to the government.  Cigarette companies continue to flourish in our nation, while the government is campaigning and encouraging law and legislation to get us to quit.  They fight the "War on Drugs", yet leave the border wide open to Mexican immigrants (the direction a lot of our drugs come into the country.)  They jail, where they should be offering treatment.  But my number one favorite is that they completely cater to and fund every single pharmaceutical company in America, and hold almost no one responsible in these companies, when the drugs they produce harm, or even kill people.

Nothing, however, says it better than this cartoon that was sent to me once:

Ain't it the truth.  But I'm afraid I have to leave the pharmaceuticals to "Day 16".  That's something I'd like to cover then.

So we're back.  Let's go over our history with drugs, shall we?

In the 1800's, opiates were widely used and distributed as medicinal cure-alls and not regulated whatsoever. It was when these drugs were finally regularly abused that they became an issue and laws were passed.

In the 1950's, there were cases of marijuana use, but most of it was kept hush-hush.  When the 60's came, however, and well into the early to mid -70's, it was used a lot more, and people that had never tried it before were giving in.  Since they couldn't beat it or get the government to take it nearly as seriously as the more damaging ones, they resorted to dubbing it the "Gateway Drug"...the one that people start with, then supposedly move right on to the more serious ones.  *Personal Note*:  I don't see marijuana as the gateway drug...NICOTINE is more the case.  If you have no issues smoking cigarettes, then you usually end up trying marijuana as well.  It's about the smoking, not marijuana or it's effects.  At least not before you try it, anyway.

Cocaine, another biggie, went the same course.  Just about everybody snorted coke in the 70's...heck it was actually COOL!!  Then crack came along and messed that up.  Now it's embarrassing to say you've even tried it, and if you're stuck on it, well, you're just lost.

And of course, then came meth.  What fun.  All I have to say on that is, it's produced more wrecked homes than any of its predecessors.

Whether it's cigarettes, joints, pills, drinking, acid, opiates, meth; none of it ever starts out as something we want to take with us to the grave.  But there's always a reason that anyone, of any age, generally begins doing any of these things...and of those, there are only two, in my opinion that make any sense or would hold water with me, if I was the Judge of my own court.  One is peer pressure.  The other is rebellion.  Peer pressure, for most in their teens, is extremely difficult to overcome...or at least it used to be in my day and age.  I'm sure the same applies today, but just in a different fashion.  The most prevalent reason to me, though, is the rebellion concept.  It's all about rebelling in your teens.  Against your parents, against society, against the times, against what's happening in the world out there, and most of all, against the law.  Actually, all authority.  And the best way we figure to do that is to try all those things that we're not supposed to do...sex, drinking, smoking, drugs, etc.  We want to show THEM!!  We want to express, in our naive little ways, that we're adults, and we can make our own decisions and handle them.

Or maybe we want to upset our parents or authority figures on purpose.  We want to hurt them like they hurt us.  So we do the things they asked, lectured or ordered us NOT to do.  What we DON'T count on however, is the addiction to these things after we try them.  Then, when we turn to the people we love for help, they turn their backs on us, and you feel ashamed and depressed.  Pretty soon it becomes all you know, and you turn to doing things you would never have done before to get what you need.  And because you're so set on the reward, you mess up and get caught.  Then here's where we do wrong America.  When that person is caught, we don't try to help.  We slap them in irons and ship 'em off to the nearest prison.  Then after a few years, doing wrong and being in jail is all they know.  A good deal of serious addicts become life-long residents of our prison system.

OK, so how do we do things differently?  More effectively?  Well, that remains to be seen.  The war on drugs has been long, arduous, costly, trying, and, essentially, unsuccessful.  Every time we chop a head off of the monster that is smuggling, two grow back in its place.  Arrest a dealer?  Same deal.  We're turning our wheels here America.  What we're doing is evidently not working, and if it is, it's not working well.  It's time we come up with a better solution.

My thoughts on the matter are, education first, and legalization.  Not just of marijuana.  Of ALL drugs.  When we cut off the ingredients needed for production of a drug (which, like in the case of meth, are all everyday ingredients for the most part), raise the term served in jail, etc., all you're doing is causing new and novel ideas for getting high that are still legal.  Kids are turning to cough syrup, taking pills in excess...anything.  It was like marijuana's synthetic replacement, K-2.  Someone out there, one day, wanted a marijuana taste and effect that you could have that wasn't on the law books as being illegal, as yet.  Why?  C'mon you rocket scientists....marijuana was ILLEGAL!  K-2 is killing people, but if marijuana had been legal?  It would have NEVER EXISTED, and your kids would be kickin' it to this day.

You can't take the world we've had available to us before those things were abused, all off the shelves just because it's used to make drugs or use them to get high.  What happens when you take these items off the market (or regulate them...a big pain in the hiney-ho), is, they find an alternative ingredient or find something else to make into the needed high.  It's a lot like putting everything up 3 ft. when your son/daughter learns to walk.  It really doesn't solve the problem, it only puts it out of reach until they grow another foot.  Pretty soon, we'll have to lock everything up.  It's really ridiculous to do this America.  This is how drugs like meth came into existence!!  If Johnny Law hadn't been right there to slap handcuffs on you for the last drug you did, then someone else wouldn't have tried to mix battery acid and anhydrous and make it into a new drug to get high on.

Here's the deal everybody.  Everything you make illegal, or add stiffer fines to the law breakers concerning said illegal substance, it becomes rebellious to do it...thereby making it more attractive to try.  And once one of your peers try it, well, you do it too, just to stay cool.  Next thing you know, you're selling your car to get more and wondering what happened.  It doesn't have to be this way.  If you take out the no-no's, it tends to have the same affect as reverse psychology.  If it's not cool, or if it's not rebellious to do it (or against the law), then it takes all the fun out of it.  I'm positive, as sure as I'm sitting here, that if I hadn't stopped and thought "Boy, my mom's gonna HATE this!!" and smiled at the thought, that I wouldn't even have tried cigarettes, and I wouldn't be hooked on them today.  I even remember every time that she caught me with cigarettes and threw them away, giving me the longest lecture on the subject.  Every time that happened, I went out and bought more, privately knowing it would make her even madder and more adamant that I quit.  Next thing you know, I'm hooked, and I can't put them down.  I've tried to quit 4 or 5 times now, to no avail.

The only difference, really, between cigarettes and liquor and the myriad of other drugs out there, is that they're legal.  And they tried to make drinking an offense...and you see what happened.  It turned the same way our baddy drugs do today.  The mafia got involved, and crime rose, attempting to get illegal liquor back out there for the Americans already into it.  How do you think cartels came into existence?  BECAUSE cocaine and marijuana are ILLEGAL.  Legalize them, and you put the kingpins out of business, just like the repeal of prohibition put an end to the liquor crime wave.  Best of all, with my plan...you make everything legal.  All the addicts that refuse to get help and abuse the hell out of them die off, and a new smarter generation that's been exposed to the bad side of drugs in public (like in Paraguay) will never try them in the first place.

And speaking of Paraguay, how'd that go?  Well, after 10 years, it's going quite well, really.  the move towards help and recovery has tripled, and the new user number is dropping more all the time (teens, of course).  They took all the fun out of doing and trying them.  New cases of AIDS, the entire reason for Paraguay's radical shift in the war on drugs, dropped 17% in ten years.  Our cost to constantly keep drugs away from America is costing us tons of money and taxes, and is accomplishing NOTHING.  And jailing the offenders has more than doubled in the last 2 decades.  These people aren't learning anything, and neither are the ones that are still free.  It's all about the money.  For the customer, it's all about the thrill.  Take the thrill away, take away the threat of jail, make it available at your local shops, and pretty soon those guys are going to go out of business and choose college instead and live for an additional 20-30 years.  Think about it.  :-)

Day #3 - Capitalism

Day three of this series promises to be good.  Let's go, shall we?

I don't really have to say what Capitalism is, do I America?  Let's be honest, deep down in our greedy souls, we all know what this is.  Don't make me define it.  If you're still not ABSOLUTELY positive as to what capitalism entails, well...look around.  It isn't too hard to miss.  Heck, even that brownie on the corner selling lemonade has it lasered into her brain at a young age.

 Capitalism, not unlike Democracy, is all well and good.  It's been proven to be a good system.  It has, and could well again, work for us.  Only one thing I gotta think, here.  We just have to get rid of that pesky GREED thing!!  It's there...always Getting...in the WAY!!  It really messes everything up, ya Know?

Well, you know as well as I do America, that our Father (No, not THAT Father) the GOVERNMENT is greed supreme, and a heck of a tutor.  Our billion-dollar corps have learned about all they can, and learned it well.  They've been out of the nest for quite a while now, flying high all on their own and doing very well, of this there is no doubt.  And the trickle-down doesn't end there kids....noooo...those greed lessons have obviously been offered to the general public as well.  I remember one of our generations...I couldn't tell you which one, nor do I care, mostly, because if the label has been applied to that one, it's WRONG.  What did  they say??  The ME generation.  I'm sorry America, but there isn't a ME generation.  Oh, to be sure, there's most certainly a ME century...and it's the one we're in now.  Only the latter part of the 20th were we just getting started; it was most certainly a preview.  But this is it.  Scope out some simple things...greed is everyplace.  No one pays the price people ask for on Craigslist, or what an item is worth.  Answers to ads tend to always have a preclusion that entails offering a heck of a lot less...then we laugh, but we always file it away, just in case we can't sell it.  Oh, but when we go to buy those things!!  Sheesh.  I used to get $5 for used CD's back in the day.  Now I can't get 25 cents a piece for 'em.  DVD sets I paid over $100 for, I can't pawn for over $1 apiece.  I paid $2,010 for a brand new 4 poster bed...and a year later was lucky to get $800 for it.  The computer I bought for close to $800?  If it's out of box at all, I'm looking at $400 if I'm lucky, and I just bought it a month ago.

"Oh, c'mon now...it's not all that, is it?"  Nope.  Not yet anyway.  You see, under the S category of our sins, we have yet another, besides the one I plan to cover, when we get there.  What's that?  Socialism.  Oh, we're not socialist, we're capitalist.  Ohhhhh.  Really.

OK, so let's compare notes, shall we?  We, the people, are most certainly capitalists.  The government we have, however, is not.  Oh, it LOOKS like it is, but it's not.  That's a cover.  See, there are recognized signs that are widely approved, that indicate a move to socialism.  Fraudulent vote counts (Remember G.W.?  You really think we loved that man that much?  That we voted him in twice?  No way Jose.)  A President that ignores (and passes law that ignores) in place and nationally voted-upon legislation (G.W., again...and now Obama, at least 10 times worse).  A police state, and a cry going up from the public that this is happening (check out Youtube and copblock.com).  Media that sees this and reports it (see the same places).  This, even though a lot of you have no idea about it, is happening...NOW.  For example, did you know that we gave away our cold war military weapons and gear....to our LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT???  Yup.  Congress passed the law to do so back in 1994.  Here.  It's unreal.  Here's what worries me though.  Before, we were paying attention.  We could see what was happening.  Mostly because we had very little to distract us.  But not anymore...

NOW we have computers.  Laptops.  The internet.  Cell phones.  iPads/iPhones.  PS4's/Xboxes.  And games.  Every single item I just mentioned has CAMERAS, some front and back.  Oh my lord, at the very least, 3/4 of our free time is all about the games we play.  Slots.  Candy Crush.  You name it, we play it.  Everywhere.  On the bus.  At work, on break, at the doctor's office.  The other quarter of our free time, we're messaging.  It's nuts.  Oh yeah, I'm guilty.  I have tons of things to do, and it's actually hard work to quit playing or Facebooking long enough to do those things.  It's a wonder I've actually managed to make time to do this series at all.  Not unlike a coke habit, I've actually DREAMED ABOUT PLAYING THESE GAMES...that's not a lie.  And, the more we stare down, the less we see.  We're not paying attention.  So one of two majorly bad things are bound to happen here.  Either a country (not unlike China, who's been bursting at the seams and piling people on top of each other for a good century now) is gonna whomp in and take over, or our own government, when it sees it can get away with stuff, starts pulling the wool over our eyes and turning out the lights so we don't notice what's going on, then gets too big for it's britches and huddles all the power to the mount on which it sits.

So what does this all have to do with our sin of Capitalism you ask?  Should be obvious.  Can't believe I even have to explain it.  Corporations, hand in hand with the government, are turning us into socialists, using capitalism as a cover.  And we're not looking.  We don't pay attention to it anymore.  The time is ripe for some kind of takeover, and from what I understand, we might be in the middle of it right....this....minute.

I'm on level 190 of Candy Crush.  Tomorrow I might be in handcuffs, or, thanks to Socialist sign #4, I might just be a victim of "The Assassination of key public figures."  Only next week will tell.

Day #2 - Banks and Banking

Welcome back.  Today we'll be opening up a whole new can o' worms.  Today's deadly sin?  Banks and Banking.

Now, here's where I may get just a bit vague.  Then, when I'm more knowledgeable about the financial system and the way it works, I'll come back full circle and tear into it a lot better.  Until then, if it sounds like I'm just spouting things off that I know little or nothing about, then I probably am.

Anyhow, I digress.  Let's start with banks and banking in the most general fashion.  A bank, as it is loosely defined, is an establishment for the custody, loan, exchange or issue of money, for the extension of credit, and that facilitates the transfer of moneys.  Banks came into existence in the 14th century, and we have no one to blame but the Italians for their invention.  But, of course, our more modern banking processes were refined by none other than...yessir, you guessed it.  The country we tried so very hard to get away from (yet we adopted their method of law, as well as their banking policies), England.

In my opinion, there is no better waste of a good building on this earth than a building that sports a bank, especially with the advent of the digital age.  Now most of us just bank online...unless of course you're trying to get a loan.  Then we might just crawl away from the screen to go meet with our bankers.  To me, banking is not only a waste of your valuable time (something we have oh so little of these days), but with every fee they add to their service to us, my mattress looks better all the time.

There's a show on CNBC I strongly suggest you watch for a minimum of 3 full hours before you ever darken the door of another bank, or check their homepage, or deal with any other type of intermediary that handles your money:  American Greed.  America's deadly sin for day G? Oh yeah baby. The plan will most certainly be to hit that one with some serious fervor.  Financial laws in this country, which are lax, if not non-existent, do little or nothing to protect the rights of any type of investor.  No, the general rule in this country is "Buyer Beware"....and if you mess up?  Well, we'll most assuredly bring criminal charges against the wrong-doer involved, but as to your investment?  Good luck w/that."  Ponzi scheme after Ponzi scheme has crossed the desks of the FBI, and they're always quick to a bust.  Safeguards have been implemented in the financial world...signs to look for, et cetera, and yet they aren't meant as a storm warning alarm for investors, only for the people in the financial business.

No, private or noob investors (as they are when dealing with America's other exclusive clubs, i.e., The Law Lodge and the Masonic Medical clubs) are pretty naive to the scope, ease and frequency that financial fraud is executed with these days.  Anyone with the slightest charisma and half a brain can get away with millions of dollars if they properly set their paths to it. And we're not just talking about blue collar Mr. Smith investing the $2500 he somehow managed to save up over a five-year span; some of these people losing their money have hundreds of thousands and even millions to invest.  If they can't see a scam like this coming a mile down the road, poor Mr. Smith's future can't even be dim.  What does this say to me as an average consumer?  It screams out that people involved in financials are a jealous and self-centered lot (as well as a more and more greedy lot), and aren't afraid to rat out the people that are taking advantage of clients or cheating the system, but don't care one iota about you, the end-user consumer, or your investment...unless they're directly involved.  Otherwise, regulations would be a lot tougher to evade, and jail terms would be a whole lot stiffer, don't you think?  You'd have to believe that after this happened 20 times or so that they'd be able to quash these scam giants even before they THOUGHT about drawing out their first hundred thousand.  "Oh, he bought a helicopter with Mr. Little Guy's money you say?  And he won't let me take the wife and the kids for a ride?  Get the FBI on the phone, will you?  We'll see how he acts after rotting in Federal Prison for a few years."  No matter about Mr. Little Guy's money...he/she/they should have known it was a scam, as far as they're concerned.   Thank God for CNBC, or we'd still be throwing our nest-eggs freely down the toilet without a half an idea of what hit us.

I can't help but remember the days (geez, I'm getting eld) when I got my piddly 3.5% interest on my checking account, and the more whopping 5-6% on my savings account.  Now you get, what, 1.something percent?  ON YOUR SAVINGS!!  And nothing but since-added fee after fee for your checking/debit account.  See my articles concerning ROLLING OVER under my politics and law blog on Blogger.com.  Banks are the playground bullies these days, and we're the ones just taking the ongoing beatings!  Worse yet, when they over-extend themselves, or scam the working folk out of their money, then ask our government for a bailout?  Guess who pays to cover that?  YOU DO!  It might not be all at once, but you pay up for that in some other fashion, believe you me.  And it was YOUR MONEY THEY OVER-EXTENDED ON/WITH IN THE FIRST PLACE!!

Finally, I intend to wrap up our little discussion on these major financial whiz-kids with only one of the biggest plays on America that we ever rolled over on...our Federally Mandated Income Tax.  Wrought by none other than the banking industry, income tax came into our lives to stay in 1913.  The only reason it was ever considered in the first place was because the government was losing money due to alcohol prohibition.  To make up for it, the heads of our great nation got together with the financiers of the time and settled on charging us for part of the money that we earned honestly, with no small amount of blood, sweat and tears, and had all to ourselves, free and clear of any tax; the way it should have been, and should still be to this day.  Our state governments, of course, jumped all over it too, conscience be damned.  What did they care?  They made more than enough money, and if they didn't, they'd just raise their salaries to compensate.  Anyone who might have opposed this went for it anyway, because it was presented to them as a TEMPORARY solution to the government's money loss.  When they voted to amend the Constitution to fully implement it as a PERMANENT solution to many possible future issues that might arise, what did we Americans do?  Uh -huh...we ROLLED OVER!!  You can't tell me this was the only viable solution they could muster in their meetings.  They did it because they knew we'd swallow the need for it and someday open our wallets and give it up without even thinking about it, with the proper amount of brain-washing.

It was, by far, the easiest solution.  Why?  Because, by this time, we were sitting prettier that we had been for some time, and were well on our way to becoming the nation of rollovers we've been conditioned to be today.  This is why gas, oil and the prices of just about everything else is sky-high.  Doesn't have a single thing to do with inflation or the CPI (the Consumer Price Index) nor is it even supply and demand.  No kids, this is yet another example of good old governmental greed; which, just like anything else, is learned, taught, then passed down through the generations like a legacy.  I'd even go as far as to label it an influential model for our current American corporate moral compass.  I guarantee no company in this land of ours would have tried an "Enron" back in the days the income tax was implemented.  It was unheard of.  The heads of corporations in those days truly feared consumer backlash.  Corporate conscience and accountability are most certainly things of our once great past.  Nor does our law accurately cover us with the proper insurance when incidents like these occur.

If you want some well-thought out advice?  Look into the price of safes these days.  You and I both know you could justify a high-quality one of these in no time whatsoever, when pitted against the bank fees you pay over the course of even a few months.  Sure, you lose out on Federal Insurance, but look at how much money they get back to the victims of some of the biggies in nest-egg clean-outs.  How much of your money do you imagine you'll get in return as opposed to what you put in?  I'd look into that, if'n I were you.  I've heard tell, when the banking system of a well-known super-power was told that they would be going under soon enough? The financiers of their banks kept it quiet as long as was possible.  And when it went public, as you might well imagine, there was a rush of private citizens all running to their local banks to clean out their accounts, to no avail.  So it happened that Russia's banks went bye-bye a mere week or so ago.  The heads of those banks kept that information away from their clients ON PURPOSE!!  Do you believe, for one minute, that put in the same situation, our banks wouldn't do the same?  Think about it.  Such could be the extent of deadly sin #2.