Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Hand Me Down Beliefs

There is very little that everyone on the planet has in common with his fellow man, but we all share one thing. We are all brought up to believe what our neighborhood support system believes, at least at first.

Family, friends, teachers, and the community we live in all shape our belief system, at least through our formative years. Local and national religious beliefs offer a clear example. If you are born in Japan you will likely become a Christian since Japan has the largest concentration of Christians on the planet. If you are born in India you will most likely be Hindu, or in China a Buddhist. If you are born in Utah, USA you will most likely become a Mormon.

As a result of the cacooning nature of local bias, people seldom question their own given belief system. Instead, they question and challenge all belief systems different than their own. Unfortunately, in some cases, countries go to war over differences in their beliefs

It is OK to disagree. It is OK to hold strong opinions. It is, IMHO, insane to fight or go to war over hand me down beliefs. Sane people will agree that as long as your belief system doesn't require me to change my life we can co-exist peacefully. So why is our country at war? Constantly!!! No nation on earth infringes upon us, our beliefs, or our way of life. (A cynic may say none would dare, and they would be correct.)

Are we insane? We are currently involved in several presidential wars at a cost in excess of a trillion dollars. Neither the world and its citizens nor the USA and its citizens benefit, with the exception of the war mongers and their manufacturers and merchants of death. How can we preach "love one another" while we are blowing the bejesus out of the middle east?

While claiming to be a friend to the planet, we are by far its biggest polluter
per capita. Why do we in this country seem to have magoo style lenses when we look at ourselves? We seem incapable of coming to grips with our nation's hyprocracy. Who are we really?

Sunday, June 5, 2011

No One Can Fix Stupid.


An incredible number of smart people are trying to patch up the government money gaposis but the real problems are never addressed.

For example, incredible as it sounds, our Congress voted to require the Medicaid and Medicare systems to pay for drugs provided to seniors at full retail prices. Congress did this without regard for the fact that government is paying up to 10 times what they could be paying if they were able to negotiate lower prices. In what kind of make believe world does a policy like that make sense?

In other words, the biggest consumer pays the highest prices. Plain goofy if you ask me. Congress votes to require Medicaid spending increases in the billions annually by requiring highest drug prices to be paid to big Pharma for all the beneficiaries under their plans; and then complains bitterly when it comes time to borrow the money to pay the bill.

Until we can vote the stupid and greedy out of politics our situation will not improve.

Another million examples can be found in the trillions of dollars wasted on our military. We spend, as taxpayers, hundreds of billions yearly to businesses overseas which then contribute a ridiculously small US tax on that income. In fact our tax laws are so stupid these giant multinational corporations can't even bring that money back home. Our military gets away with wasting hundreds of billions of dollars annually with little or no oversight.

Until we require our lawyers (the Congress of the USA) to work for "we the people" and not the rich and greedy, as they do currently, the middle class stands no chance at all in sharing in the nation's prosperity. For that change to occur people will have to get off their intellectually lazy asses and pay attention to more than reality TV and their iPads. For us to get the leeches and bloodsuckers off the national stage and their fingers off our Nation's financial purse strings we need to study the issues. In order to vote correctly, I. E, in our own best interests for a change, we need to get a whole lot smarter or the middle class will grow no more.