War....Huh...What Is It Good For?

Truth About Guns

 

You can celebrate this #1 spot that America perennially finds itself in and secure your future by checking out this link.

Crime and a Secure Future

Another way in which criminals cost tax payers is what we are forced to pay in order to keep them locked up.

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations boasts that it "has been called 'the greatest entry-level job in California'—and for good reason. Officers earn a great salary and a retirement package you just can't find in private industry. They even pay you to attend their academy." That's right—instead of paying more than $200,000 to attend Harvard, you could earn $3,050 a month at cadet academy.

Still think you would rather wear a suit and tie to sit in corporate meetings? Training only takes four months, and upon graduating you can look forward to a job with great health, dental and vision benefits and a starting base salary between $45,288 and $65,364. By comparison, Harvard grads can expect to earn $49,897 fresh out of college and $124,759 after 20 years.

As a California prison guard, you can make six figures in overtime and bonuses alone. While Harvard-educated lawyers and consultants often have to work long hours with little recompense besides Chinese take-out, prison guards receive time-and-a-half whenever they work more than 40 hours a week. One sergeant with a base salary of $81,683 collected $114,334 in overtime and $8,648 in bonuses last year, and he's not even the highest paid.

Sure, Harvard grads working in the private sector get bonuses, too, but only if they're good at what they do. Prison guards receive a $1,560 "fitness" bonus just for getting an annual check-up.

Most Harvard grads only get three weeks of vacation each year, even after working for 20 years—and they're often too busy to take a long trip. Prison guards, on the other hand, get seven weeks of vacation, five of them paid. If they're too busy racking up overtime to use their vacation days, they can cash the days in when they retire. There's no cap on how many vacation days they can cash in! Eighty officers last year cashed in over $100,000 at retirement.

Checkout this little ‘bonus’ - the defined-benefit pension. Unlike most Harvard grads working in the private sector, prison guards don't have to delay retirement if their 401(k)s take a hit. Prison guards can retire at the age of 55 and earn 85% of their final year's salary for the rest of their lives. They also continue to receive medical benefits.

Whoever claimed that crime doesn’t pay was looking at it from the wrong perspective.

Let’s tal about qualifications - you have to be a U.S. citizen with a high-school diploma or equivalent; you can't have any felony convictions – note: possession of marijuana is only an infraction in California, so, no worries. There's also a vision test, background investigation, psychological evaluation, physical exam, tuberculosis screening, and a fitness test that measures your grip strength. The hardest part, however, is the written test, which includes word problems like this sample test question: "Building D currently has 189 inmates, with 92 beds unfilled. Building D is currently at what capacity?" If you've somehow forgotten how to add and divide, you can bone up on your basic math with Barron's "Correction Officer Exam" prep book.

Over 120,000 people apply every year, according to the state Legislative Analyst's Office, but the academy only enrolls about 900. That's an acceptance rate of less than 1%. Harvard's is 6.2%. The job also has a better retention rate than Harvard. Only 1.7% dropped out of the service last year, compared to 2% who left Harvard.

All they really want is people who will readily and eagerly follow orders and enjoy ‘busting heads’ and lording their authority over any and all inmates.

American workers got what they deserved

COLUMN — American workers got what they deserved - Holland, MI - The Holland Sentinel

Read it and weep. Many of us have been saying this for years, you need to actually participate in politics in order to get what you want out of it instead of what those who do participate dictate for you.

Are you going to continue with the same and just impotently complain about it or are you going to actually get off your couches and do something?

Intolerance and Hypocrisy Harms All of Us

Here we go again, the ugly face of intolerance and hypocrisy is being displayed on American soil by Americans. I have voiced concern over how our government is systematically stripping our freedoms from us through various manipulations of our nations laws and now this religious zealot - Florida Pastor Terry Jones - has taken upon himself further their cause by trying to ‘cleanse’ our country of an opposing viewpoint and stabbing our forefathers in the back by practicing the un-American, redneck, Nazi-like, KKK-based idea that these rights are “for me and not for you”.

The headlines read ‘Pastor plans to defy order and protest at mosque’. Here in America, we have a time-honored right to protest. I would fight to my dying breath to keep that right. But Americans and Christians also have two other tenets that are being trampled on. Freedom of Religion and Christian tolerance. These concepts are lost on this fool. It wasn’t enough that he burned a book that is holy to the Muslim religion, now he wants to defy a court order and hold a protest to their very presence here in America.

His actions is giving America and Christianity a black eye. But then again – in keeping with his narrow-minded Christian view - he is just the latest in a long list of fools who think human rights belong to only a ‘select’ few.

Denying a group of people the right to practice the religion of their choice doesn’t sound very Christian to me.

Don’t interpret this as being sympathetic to Islamic law. I am not by any means a fan of sharia and its systematic demeaning treatment of women, but, and this goes to the city of Detroit where Jones was arrested for his protest, he does have the right to protest just as the Islamic followers have a right to practice their religion. We created this country on these rights and we cannot deny those rights to anyone if we expect to remain free ourselves.

A much larger issue here is that Terry Jones was arrested and held not over something he did but what he said he plans to do. Since when is our law enforcement community authorized to arrest and detain Americans for planning?