America, the New Rome

The U.S. middle class is slowly dying. Our freedoms are being legislated away for the sake of ‘protecting us from terror’. Our prosperity is being ripped out of our grasp with each corporation that moves overseas to ‘save on overhead costs’.

America and Rome share a remarkably common history. Both rose and prospered, then overextended. Arrogance and greed prevented both from acknowledging the writing on the wall. America is on the edge of the abyss. Its belligerence exceeds Rome’s. Its excesses are unsustainable. Its middle class, no longer able to support the insatiable greed of the power elite is losing grasp of what was once the very bedrock of the American dream, home ownership and an affordable retirement. Democracy has become nothing more than a memory, a figure of speech.

The latest gang of perpetrators of the ongoing slaughter of our middle class, the 112^th Congress, is scheduled to accelerate our demise. In 2011, our guardian and representative government plans to cut social services to the poor and middle class in order to address deficit and budget problems. Never once considering tapping the super-rich to help carry some of the burden it has been instrumental in creating.

Cutting social spending and moving manufacturing operations overseas, these are the only ‘solutions’ our short sighted, single-minded and flourishing aristocracy understand. The exploited working class, already over-burdened with debt due to having their jobs ripped away from them, are expected to ‘tighten their belts’ and accept the only jobs remaining, that of becoming servants to the super-rich.

Incoming House Republicans promise budget cuts of $100 billion, largely on the backs of working Americans who can least afford it. Given Obama’s austerity pledge, bipartisan agreement may target entitlements, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as education, transportation, and other discretionary areas to match 2008 levels. However, achieving it requires 20% cuts across the board from the $477 billion Congress allocated in FY 2010, ending September 30.

As each state defaults they do so without any hope of a bailout. House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan already stated “We are not interested in a bailout.”

Economic Policy Institute (EPI) measurements shows over 21% of Americans in poverty — based on after-tax market wages and salaries, excluding entitlements, welfare, and other government programs that lower the figure considerably but not for millions not helped. Then add higher cost of living expenses, especially for health, food, gasoline, heating oil, and rent at a time home prices are declining. With planned FY 2011 budget cuts, greater poverty ahead looms.

We are currently witnessing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression at a time when bipartisan consensus plans social spending cuts.

Strangely, public outrage is absent. Why is this?

Lawmakers in Indiana, Maine, Missouri and at least seven other states plan legislation to bar private sector unions from requiring rank and file members to pay dues or fees, reducing union treasury funds. Ohio’s new Republican governor, like others, wants public school teacher strikes prohibited, and in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker is targeting the right of state employees to form unions and bargain collectively. What do you think they are preparing for?

States are crippling the American labor movement by removing unions bargaining power. They are crushing organized labor entirely, public and private, driving it back to 19th century impotence and paving the way for unfettered, unrestricted corporate power. The only thing standing in the way of absolute corporate domination of our society and what’s left of our democracy is the American labor movement.

During any other time in our nations history, this country would be ripe for boiling over. Why is apathy so rampant today? Why can’t we find people who give a damn?

The people most in a position to go up against corporate power, union bosses, are on the take, siding with business, getting big salaries and fancy perks, and being more concerned about their own welfare than rank and file members. On January 6 on the Progressive Radio News Hour, James Petras explained. In 2008, Big Labor contributed over $400 million to Democrat candidates and tens of millions more in 2010. In return, Obama and congressional Democrats waged war on working Americans, endorsing layoffs, wage and benefit cuts, gutted work rules, lost pensions, and promised hope from the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The Democrat-controlled Congress rejected it.

It would have been the first pro-labor reform since the landmark 1935 Wagner Act, letting workers for the first time bargain collectively with management on even terms. Though modest by comparison, it promised progress at a time organized labor is virtually impotent, because union bosses, like Democrats, side more with business than their own rank and file.

We Americans shame ourselves by the way in which we simply walk away when our futures are cut down just so we can save our own individual necks. This country used to stand up for each other. Those days are sadly forgotten. As long as we can go home and watch ‘reality TV’, as long as there is a cell phone handy where we can reach out and text everyone about the latest viral YouTube video, we think we are doing okay. The most major issues are being ignored in favor of who is banging who in the celebrity parade. Our very freedom to roam around this country without being a suspected terrorist and being forced through invasive pat downs and screenings are a reality.

Your fellow Americans are losing their homes. Families who have never before been faced with poverty are now experiencing it and things are only going to get worse. Where is the outrage? People are being shot and killed by police for showing lack of respect and the police are routinely exonerated of all wrong doing. How can you not be alarmed by this?

The super rich funded stock market schemes that sent this nation’s economy into a crash dive and they are the people who were bailed out, with our tax dollars. Not the average American taxpayer who lost so much more than these crooks and liars. Where was the outrage of the American taxpayer?

We are being downsized to the point of extinction through loss of high pay, loss of benefits, loss of labor rights, loss of political empowerment, loss of our standard of living, loss of our personal freedoms, and loss of our retirement future. Where are the protesters who once marched on the nation’s capitol to demand equality and a secure future?

The middle class has become the serf class to the super-rich. And we gladly accept it. Our politicians endorse it, and the remaining few ‘American patriots’ are getting hammered in front of their big screen televisions watching ‘Dancing With the Stars’. Pitiful.

Whose Money Is It?

The Republicans rode in on their white horses, at the last minute, and saved the day. Everybody cheer! Pats on the back to everyone for a job well done! Hip, hip, hooray!

The party atmosphere in the White House is almost palpable. Champagne corks are flying, party favors are passed out at the door. While that address on Pennsylvania Avenue celebrates its heroic victory of snatching Wall Street investors from the jaws of almost certain doom, taxpayers are footing the bill, again. Ex-homeowners are setting up new residences in tent cities across the country adding to the already shameful number of homeless right here in the richest and most affluent country in the world.

Sure, bailing out these large financial institutions was the most expedient method to prevent an even deeper recession, which, by the way, was created by these very same people, but how about sending some help to those people whose dreams of owning their own home were preyed upon by unethical money lenders whose own personal goals were to sell as many loans as possible.

By extending credit to questionable, borderline, at-risk individuals whose qualifications were based on some pretty creative credit score criteria, these short-sighted, greedy mortgage lenders knew these loans would probably never be able to be repaid and therefore they became one of the instruments that brought this economy to its knees. They were paid their salaries so they didn’t care if the loans would be paid or not. After all, to their irresponsible way of thinking, it wasn’t their money.

The result of the devastating wave of foreclosures will be felt for years to come in neighborhoods across this country, with the potential to affect entire cities. But, hey, it wasn’t their money so why should mortgage lenders care. They think their responsibility began and ended on the dotted line.

Lenders and servicers who hold those loans need to now step up and restructure high-risk loans, that they were responsible for, into lower-rate mortgages to help people stay in their homes in order to continue to be productive in this economy instead of a drain on it. It is their moral responsibility.

Here’s a message for anyone who deals with money: any government bailout comes out of our taxes and takes money away from other necessary projects. Projects we all benefit from, so, yes it is your money too. These narrow-minded mortgage lenders who wrought such havoc on our society will pay for their bad decisions, right along with the rest of us.

They share the blame for this faltering economy with those heroic rescuing Republicans on their white horses who saw to it that the wealthy don’t pay as much tax as the rest of us. In pushing corporate welfare they have upset a very basic tenet of a capitalist economy: there has to exist a buyer and a producer. When the buyer is drained of all financial ability to buy then the system falls apart. Very simple explanation, true, but this is what is happening. This republican government, in its zeal to do everything in its power to shift as much financial wealth as possible to the wealthiest among us, has, without going into an actual depression, created the largest welfare-dependent group of people in U.S. history.

The very backbone of this economy is being bled dry. America cannot afford to go deeper into debt. Americans cannot afford to support the fiscal irresponsible republican sacred cow of throwing money at a problem until it goes away. Corporate America has unashamedly raided pension plans to cover their leaders bad financial decisions, the federal government has tapped the Social Security system to cover short falls from a vast array of financial mis-management. An illegal war has drained billions of dollars away from needed infrastructure projects, healthcare, education, etc that still need to be paid for. The health and welfare of the American populace is being pushed aside to protect the rich from the after effects of their own lack of financial responsibility.

While the CEO’s and politicians responsible for this economic misery walk away, counting their financial spoils, millions of American taxpayers will be saddled with this bailout for years to come.

While politicians are enriched by corporate America’s lobbyists and CEO’s savor their sweetheart golden parachute deals the American taxpayer struggles to pay the ever increasing costs for the very basic needs of survival that these same politicians and CEO’s will never have to struggle for.

As long as our political leaders are more concerned with ensuring a profit for corporate America than for the public welfare of the working class whose hard work and purchasing power are instrumental in creating that profit, taxpayers will never get a break.

So, in the end, the venerable and steadfast hard working American taxpayer once again has his pockets ripped open by the unethically greedy and immorally bloodied hands of this administration in order to scrape out the last remaining nickel to cover their mistakes and feed the insatiable greed of corporate America.

Once again I ask, Whose money is it?

Grow up and help us

This is appalling! I am against the war too, but you should be ashamed of yourselves for calling on our fellow Americans to kill themselves for doing the bidding of a misguided, underhanded, illegal, self-serving federal administration.

Put the blame where it is due. Not on the common foot soldier who most likely joined the military because they couldn’t find a decent paying job in this dysfunctional economy that is in the toilet due to the greed and misguided policies of those buffoons in Washington.

Turn your protests around onto the self-indulgent fossil-sucking fools who covet the wasteful oversized SUV’s and monster trucks, the Ford Excursions, the Chevrolet Suburbans, the Hummers, the Cadillac Escalades, etc that are driving gas prices up and destroying the very environment we all live in while the rest of the country tries to actually do something to help save it from ourselves.

Focus on the greedy home lenders who allowed vulnerable under-qualified home buyers into the housing market that inevitably fell on its face due to their reckless search for more financial profit and then walked away with wads of cash and not one bit of culpability for the damage they did.

Put your energies on ferreting out the many low-life scum bag child molesters, rapists, and drunken drivers that live amongst us masquerading as polite good-guy friends and neighbors. Turn these people in and demand they get treatment so they stop preying on the innocents among us.

Expose the self-serving politicians and bureaucrats who think taxpayers are their personal ATM machines.

Lets keep our priorities straight people. A bunch of bong smoking hippies do not speak for the majority of this country. Now go run back into your parents basements into your shallow little world of self-piety and try to concentrate hard enough, between bong hits, on how your next little laughable anarchistic foray out into the real world is going to insult the rest of us.

We tried protesting in the 60’s, before you were born. It didn’t work. Come out of your drug addled minds and do something positive. Help the world fight corruption and greed, don’t just throw tantrums and expect the world to wake up and suddenly ‘do the right thing’.

True cost of Iraq War

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, has calculated the total cost of the first four years of the Bush/Cheney illegal war on Iraq. Their lies and schemes cost American taxpayers $720 million per day. This figure takes into account interest on the war debt and long-term care for the wounded.

The American Friends Service Committee has analyzed what America could buy with only a single day's worth of the money we're spending on this mightmare. For $720 million, we could:

* Provide health coverage for a year for 424,000 children.

* Build 84 brand new schools.

* Buy school lunches for a year for 1.2 million needy kids.

* Provide 6,482 units of affordable housing.

* Pay for a year of renewable-energy electricity in 1.3 million homes.

* Pay the annual salaries of 12,500 new classroom teachers.

* Put 35,000 students through a 4-year state college.

Any of these could be had for just one day of war funding. One week of spending at this rate would pay for every item on this list.

As if the money alone isn’t atrocious enough, as of March 4, 2008 we have lost 3,974 of our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, aunts and uncles, friends and neighbors so that Bush, Cheney and their cronies in the military industrial complex and the new military intelligence complex could bolster their financial bottom line.

Iraqi citizens, who only pleaded for help in removing Saddam Hussein and his tyrannical family from power, has paid for this ‘service’ with over 38,000 of their fellow neighbors lives. Over 2.5 million have been forced out of neighborhoods that they will never be able to move back into. Jobs and careers have been unalterably changed. The entire social/economic/religious complexion of the entire country and the Middle East has been changed. All because Americans wasteful thirst for more oil and money.

Iraqi citizens are still deprived of adequate water supplies, sewer systems, and electricity in their homes. Do you think maybe they are sorry they ever asked for our help?

All of this is currently going on in a country that never threatened us directly, but since they had oil the U.S. felt ‘obligated’ to move in, ‘just for their own protection’.

I would say that the balance sheet in this ‘we help you, you help us’ scheme is just a bit unbalanced.

How much money are Bush’s buddies making off of us?

From the Boston Globe March 6, 2008

Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation's top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in Cayman Islands. The Defense Department has known since at least 2004 that KBR was avoiding taxes by declaring its American workers as employees of Cayman Islands shell companies, and officials said the move allowed KBR to perform the work more cheaply, saving Defense dollars.

Need more proof that Bush/Cheney look the other way while their buddies siphon money from U.S. citizens while lining their own pockets?

Halliburton has been accused by the Pentagon of overcharges in the amount of $1.4 billion.

Congress has found that $10 billion has been mismanaged and wasted.

$9 billion of U.S. taxpayers money and $549.7 million in spare parts shipped in 2004 to US contractors remains unaccounted for. Also, 190,000 guns, including 110,000 AK-47 rifles.

$1 billion in tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other equipment provided to the Iraqi security forces is missing.

Pentagon auditors have determined that of the $20 billion paid to Kellogg Brown & Root to supply U.S. military in Iraq with food, fuel, housing and other items, $3.2 billion is questionable or unsupportable.

Will anything be done to prosecute or even conduct meaningful investigations into this mismanagement, theft, graft, deceit and lies surrounding this illegal war? No!

Need more proof that George W. Bush and company doesn’t give a damn about the welfare of his fellow citizens? His 2009 budget to Congress will give $515 billion to the Pentagon and slash spending on healthcare programs, Center for Disease Control, low-income energy assistance, and family literacy.

Health, education and welfare continues to take a backseat to military funding. Why? Because there isn’t enough money to be made on health, education and welfare. His fellow citizens mean nothing more to him than warm bodies to put in harms way so he and his buddies can reap billions in profits while our nation’s infrastructure falls into disrepair, our social security program remains underfunded, our healthcare system dies a slow death, and the value of our dollar recedes into oblivion.

Bush’s answer to ease our suffering due to his ruinous economic policies is to throw us a meager bone, in the form of a $300 check, with a grin while telling us that we are free to spend it on whatever we want. Gee, thanks George. This brings to mind Marie Antoinette’s famous line ‘Let them eat cake’ when she learned the peasants had no bread to eat.

And what can we spend this surprise windfall on? Products made by foreign governments so that all of this ‘free’ money goes directly to stimulating their economies. Great plan George! Here’s an idea, how about bringing back some of the New Deal economic recovery plans that Franklin D. Roosevelt put into action to help the country through the depression? Oh, but then, you would have to admit that our economy is not as resilient and fundamentally healthy as you and your cohorts proclaim it to be. If you would just view the exercise as ensuring you had healthy young men and women available for your dirty little war, you just might be willing to try it.

Blackwater, the White House’s Corporate Army

Disband the armed thugs before Bush/Cheney get any more out of control. These two shameless, brazen, war-profiteers need to be neutered and have their powers taken away from them before their power hungry, blind-ambition for more corporate profits mires us in a war with Iran. They have already created a ‘military’ force that outnumbers the U.S. military by nearly 20,000 that has proven itself to be out of control.

Mercenaries are paid to do one thing, to enforce the will of whoever owns their contract. Blackwater is paid to do the bidding of the Bush/Cheney White House. They are not bound by our constitution, they do not fight to uphold our constitution. They are freelance killers. They do not feel the need to answer to the American public or American policies. By design, they are not governed by the same rules that a governments military is.

The White House has decided that since they cannot get the necessary approval to further their financial interests as they want in Iraq then they will circumvent Congress and hire their own corporate army. They are using U.S. tax dollars to buy the allegiance of these hired guns.

This administration has committed enough illegal and reprehensible acts, from making up lies in order to force our military to do pre-emptive strikes against sovereign nations to hiring a private militia to keep the citizenry of that nation in check and protect their own financial interests.

While their cronies are stuffing their bank accounts in the name of spreading democracy our young men and women are giving their lives, and the survivors are given substandard medical care, insufficient compensation, and worthless medals for their patriotism.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney do not give one good damn about the number of military personnel it takes to keep their business interests in the black and they prove it by demanding more and more of our tax dollars to fund their latest corporate venture. They fire commanding generals until they find one who will step in line with their views to be used as a mouthpiece to tell the world that we cannot stop now or all will be lost.

What would be lost is this administration’s reason for being in Iraq. That is, to set up military bases to protect the oil and gas shipping lanes to the U.S. Any country that threatens that flow, such as Iran, is seen as a threat to their profits. This is where Bush/Cheney focus their attention. If the Iranian threat was lessened or, even better, in their view, eliminated, then Bush/Cheney and their cronies would almost certainly be guaranteed access, for years to come, to the wealth that these natural resources provide. Don’t think for a minute they would attack Iran to protect our troops. They will do it to protect their interests.

If they could get the American people behind an attack on Iran, then Bush/Cheney and their cohorts could have military bases on both sides of the Persian Gulf virtually guaranteeing and uninterruptible flow of their profits.

I have never heard of any corporation yet who will willingly give up a lucrative contract. Iraq has become more lucrative than even Bush/Cheney imagined. Now that the prospect of having protection from both sides of the Persian Gulf is within reach, well, their greed just simply will not allow them to back off now. If they have to fabricate a story about Iran supplying arms to Iraqi insurgents, then they will do so.

The overwhelming majority of this country wants us out of Iraq, we want us out of Afghanistan, we do not want to go to war with Iran, but Bush/Cheney has already proven they care very little what the American people want. This Congress, this group of spineless, manipulating, self-serving, cowards that we have empowered to be our voices to represent our will either refuse to do anything about it or are simply ineffective to do anything.

I do not understand the sway that this bumbling, amateur politician from Texas and this shifty, distrustful, trigger happy, corporate tyrant have over Congress.

George W. Bush’s approval rating is at an all time low at 31% as of today. Even members of his own party are breaking away from him. Yet he is still in office. What the hell does it take for him to get kicked out? President Clinton was impeached for a blow job! President Bush started an illegal war based on lies costing untold suffering and damages in deaths, injuries, and property not to mention the damage he has caused in foreign relations and he stays in! It is unfathomable how much and what the public will accept from its leaders. I hope all of you realize this is settings precedents for future administrations. Each new low that is tolerated becomes acceptable practice.

This is why this country’s morals and ethics have diminished into the low state it is currently in, because the population will not rise up and kick his ass out. We get the government we deserve by not voting, by not standing up for what we want. There are so many people out there who currently thinks that their vote doesn’t count that if they all did, by some miracle, get out and vote they would become the new majority. But you have to pay attention to what these candidates are saying, to what they have done in the past. Do your homework. It is your future too. This has become ‘the government of the few over the many’ because we have let it be.

We the people have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by elected officials who kowtow to the whims of an arrogant sociopath who surrounds himself with unethical lackeys who obediently change laws to further his blind ambitions.

We the people allow ourselves to become victims by not voicing our opinions at the voting booths.

I am from the small towns and countryside of America, I have no vested interest in political office and therefore am not blinded or muzzled in order to tow-the-party-line. I am much less suspect of the word of my working class peers in Iraq, and other countries, than I am of the ruling class. These people live the truth. They survive through their own cunning, despite the greed and lust for power of an endless stream of rulers who claim they are protecting them while stuffing their own pockets with the profits of the working peoples sweat and blood. Only when their voices are not filtered through our mass media can we see the everyday truth of what our leaders have brought down onto them.

Our mainstream media outlets are doing the American people a grave disservice for not exposing the Bush/Cheney White House for what it is and for sucking up to them just because of the office they hold. The media is allowing Bush/Cheney to perpetuate their lies by covering up, candy-coating or burying stories that are detrimental to the war or White House policy.

Any reporter who stands up to speak the truth while in employ of the main stream is banished to some small market where their voice cannot be heard and cannot, therefore, do damage to our leaders reputation, even though the leaders reputation is so ruined, as evidenced by popularity polls, as to have no honor.

Iraq’s citizenry is not any better off under the military rule we have imposed on them than they were under Saddam Hussein. It is just a different breed of madness through the use of hired goon squads. Because of their religious beliefs they are still fearful of stepping out of their homes, they are still fearful of walking the streets, there are whole sections of their city they cannot walk in or drive through without fear of being killed. They can only go to certain hospitals because of their religious practices (Sunni’s control some hospitals while Shiites control others).

How many more innocent citizens are going to be gunned down because they did not move quickly enough to satisfy a power hungry maniac with an automatic rifle? How many more U.S. soldiers are going to come home in body bags before we finally stand up against this administration and put a stop to this wanton misery? How much more resentment can the families of those same soldiers take?

Either hold the presidential election early or impeach and let the next in line take over in the interim. Nancy Pelosi cannot possibly do a worse job than these greedy liars. But I have been proven wrong before.

If we have to re-impose the draft until this madness is over then we should do so. This would be a much preferable arrangement than paying hired gunmen who answer only to the White House. While it is true the military can be called ‘hired guns’ they are under a much less cavalier set of guidelines on when and when not to fire upon the civilian population. I don’t believe we ever will invoke the draft because Bush/Cheney don’t want this war to end. It would cut into their profits.

With the current trend in outsourcing our responsibilities it is only a matter of time before our entire Department of Defense becomes outsourced to the highest bidder, all in the name of saving money. Hell, why not outsource the presidency? Then our government would not have to be accountable for anything and we can place the blame for wrongdoing on the board of directors.

Write your congressperson and senators to stop funding these mercenaries. A website has been setup to help you identify your congressperson and senator, by your zip code, and then forwards your comments to all of them with just one click is C-Span.org.

Humanity shows its ugly side

The latest fiasco in Iraq, involving Blackwater USA, serves to illustrate the downward spiral of depravity that humanity is taking. Another example is Abu Ghraib.

Those individuals involved in these two atrocious incidents validate to the world that we are a violent nation bent on destruction.

Sure, we have laws and rules against this kind of behavior but that seemingly does nothing more than merely indicates civility, because when individuals are placed in situations such as these people were, well, just look at the results. If we did not have this tendency to ‘devolve’ into violent beings then these two situations would not have turned out as they did.

There are many other examples of mans inhumanity to man.

Another example is how easy it is for religious groups to kill other religious groups because they don’t worship God as zealously as they do.

Saddam Hussein ordered the slaughter of anyone who defied him, the Myanmar government killed monks because they stood up to their repressive regime, Hitler killed Jews just for being Jews, Pol Pot killed millions for trying to better their own lot in life.

Americans killed Indians because we wanted their lands. We enslaved people for our own financial gain. The list goes on throughout history and involves every country that has ever been touched by human rule.

Human rights are being trampled on in every nation. The blame cannot be placed only on the nations leader who is derided as a sociopath. We are all becoming sociopaths. There is a basic flaw in the human psyche that has been loosed onto humanity that needs to be identified and repressed.

You see it every time you are in your car on today’s highways. The car riding on your rear bumper sees you as nothing more than an obstacle that is blocking their path. They don’t give a second thought that you are driving the posted speed limit and have every right to. They flip you off because you are in their way. It doesn’t concern that person that you are a human and could be seriously injured or killed if they run you off the road for slowing them down.

It has become too easy for the common man, the everyday Joe who is under so much pressure to just get by, to resort to violence if he feels he has been wronged. This behavior did not use to be this common.

The easy availability of handguns is directly related to the rising murder rate and only serves to facilitate our uncivilized, downward slide into de-evolution. But the problem runs much deeper than the accessibility of handguns. There is always something that can be used as a weapon.

People kill each other out of simple greed, jealousy, or perceived disrespect. People kill each other over material things that are valueless compared to human life.

Human life is devalued every year, every month, every day by people who have no respect for themselves. Gangs live by a rule that dictates if anyone ‘looks at you wrong’ or ‘dresses wrong’ or is ‘in your hood’ then that person should die. What the hell is this all about?

It has become too easy to objectify each other. Too many people have forgotten that we are all in this together and should work together to make life more beneficial for each of us instead of only looking out for number one.

Once you objectify a person, making them seem less than human, it becomes easier to kill them, to steal from them or force them to work for you. You can, at that point, forget that they are flesh and blood, made of God’s flesh, that they have family, that they suffer pain just as you do.

Insurance companies demand their monthly payment on time to keep active a legal document that they know is meaningless when you need it the most. Look no further than the Hurricane Katrina victims to see this in practice.

Big oil companies purposefully hold back oil in order to artificially drive up prices of a commodity they know we will pay ever higher prices for.

Corporate executives raid our retirement funds for their own personal use knowing they will be long gone when it comes time for us to collect and we discover there is no money.

Politicians line their own pockets with our tax dollars knowing we can do nothing about it and if they get caught the punishment isn’t enough to prevent others from doing it.

Our president lies to us to send our husbands, sons, and brothers into harms way so his wealthy cronies can get richer from lucrative pentagon contracts.

People are becoming more and more ruthless everyday. We are becoming immune to the damage we cause others in our quest to get what we want.

What can we do about it? Each person has to find it in themselves to stop behaving like the world owes them as if they are more important than anyone else.

We have to forgive past transgressions and move on. Or we could just kill everybody for wronging us and simply start over.

Which is the best way? I’m pulling for humanity to straighten out before it is too late. We each have the power to make this world a place worth passing on to our kids. And it takes each and every one of us to make that happen. We can’t just put the responsibility off onto someone else.

Have you ever noticed that children have the ability to get along with other children without regard to race or socio-economic background? If you have ever ‘allowed’ your children to be around children from other socio-economic backgrounds then you would see that they do get along quite well. It is only once they become adults and start seeing these superficial differences that the world changes. This is where adults do a great disservice to their children and ultimately to themselves. This is a sure sign that the problem is within us, just as the solution is.