Our Messed Up Country

How in the world did our countries political system get so screwed up? I suppose it was a gradual demise. I don't want to embellish or take extreme stances, but I believe it is probably beyond repair. The issues that are important in America don't even get discussed unless some candidate thinks it is an issue they can take a stance on that will get them elected. As a citizen I have no confidence that they actually believe in the stance they take, only that they believe it is a position that will get them votes. Ideally they could ignore the voters altogether and just have the candidate that raises the most funds win the election.

Our country is TRILLIONS of dollars in debt. Our trade deficit is mammoth. We have a huge health care crises, border and security issues, we are in the middle of a war we can't win, and as education becomes less and less valued more and more nations gain on us in technology and production. We are on the verge of losing our status as a superpower, and while I'm not altogether fond of being a superpower, it beats getting pushed around by other superpowers. We are on the verge of importing more food than we export. In case you don't understand what that means, that puts us in the same boat with food as it does with oil. Dependent on foreign countries. All of the free trade agreements our government has signed have done irreparable damage to America in the big picture. They have provided sub-par products at a low price, but at what cost? We have lost millions of manufacturing jobs and billions of dollars to foreign countries as our businesses move to cheaper soil and labor, and outsource tech support and customer service. I call my bank and who do I get? India! Microsoft? India!

Our political system is shot. It is so tied up in money and favors to big business and lobbyisits that politicians have no inclination or reason to care about the average citizen. Most, if not all, of our major politicians are millionaires (at least!). They have no connection with families earning under six figures. They have no concept of what our struggles are. Nor do they care. After the election they are done with us. That is why there are so many promises during campaigns that go unkept. After the election, they really don't need to worry about the common man until the next election, when they make a bunch more promises. The next time I hear a politician call himself a public servant I think I'll vomit. If my writing sounds like a rehashing of Lou Dobbs "War on th Middle Class," it is because that book clarifies and documents everything I've been saying for years.

In 1980 the average CEO made 42 as much as the average blue-collar worker. From 1980-1990 that number went to 84 times as much. By 2005 CEO's were making 431 times as much. While this is a business issue and not necessarily a political one, it is one of the largest problems facing Americans. Our money is polarizing. The wealthy and the government are accumulating more and more of the countries wealth, at the expense of the hundreds of millions in the middle and lower classes. The rich hord the money while the government wastes it, in most cases giving loads of it back to the wealthy. I mean seriously how much money do Exxon Mobile, Chevron, BP, and Conoco Phillips need? They have more billions in the bank than I can even comprehend, and are making billions in profit every quarter. In 2005 Exxon made in excess of $36 billion in profit. The highest for any company ever! That could easily have broken by them or another oil company in the past two years. What are they planning to do? Inhabit a new planet? Take over this one? What could you possibly do with that much money? What does Congress do to alleviate the disparity? They give tax breaks and incentives to the oil industry, which of course has many of the executives who fund their campaigns.

Ted Stevens, R-Senator from Alaska, has made a career of getting humungous unneeded earmarks for Alaska. Hundreds of millions for the least populated state. With Stevens wielding his power with a bloody hammer as big shot on the Senate Appropriations Comittee, Alaska yearly leads the nation by a landslide in funds alloted per capita. Stevens latest public servant charity work included letting VECO spend hundreds of thousands of dollars (not a penny of which he paid for) builing an addition onto one of his homes. VECO is a large government contractor with a large presence on Alaska's North Slope. If you think Stevens was not planning on being generous to VECO in return you have not been paying attention to how our governement runs lately. Politicians spend more time returning favors to large donors, than they do on our countries problems. This in turn ensures more donations and more favors and the cycle continues.

Why do 90% of our Presidential candidates have to be grads of Yale or Harvard? I don't even know a grad of Yale or Harvard! Don't know that I've ever met one. It seems that even the other Ivy league schools aren't elite enough. What about Brown or even Princeton? In addition why do they all have to be lawyers? Are lawyers the only smart people in our country? Last time I checked lawyers aren't even high on the list of respected professionals in the U.S. Why can't our next President have a degree in Economics or Business from the University of Iowa, or Ohio State? It might even help from my perspective if they had to work or take out student loans to pay for that education as opposed to having Mom and Dad fund the entire degree out of the estate. Within the parties it is such a good ole' boys club it is getting more and more difficult to creep up the ladder unless you meet their requirements of familiy ties and Harvard law degrees.

I wish we could just scrap the whole system and start over. This system is not working. Fire all the politicians and re-write the constitution for current times. Scrap the two party system and see what we can come up with. We are headed down the road to ruin and blissfully so as we chow down our Double Whoopers and drive our SUV's to Wal-Mart to buy a bunch of crap we don't need.

OK - I'm done.