Many Americans fail to understand that when employers pay for health care, we are in reality, paying for it ourselves.  Employer cost for benefits is included in the “price at the pump” reality for all goods and services.  And because the cost is ultimately borne by us, there is in reality no such thing as employer provided benefits.

If a manufacturer, trucking company and retail chain provide benefits for their employees, consumers purchasing the manufactured products delivered by the trucking company and sold by the retail chain, pay for the cost of these benefits. This includes the factory workers, truck drivers and store clerks who receive benefits, when they purchase goods and services themselves.

When an employer doesn’t provide health coverage, as is the case for most working class and poor citizens, then it greatly disproportionately effects them.  Not only are they forced to pay for their own coverage or do without, they also end up paying for the health benefits of employees who do have coverage, in the form of higher consumer prices.  Instead, if health care was paid for through federal taxation, citizens would pay for it based on their tax bracket and ability to pay.

The reality now is, upper-middle class and wealthier Americans typically enjoy premium health coverage paid for by their employers. Meanwhile, all American consumers end up paying for “Cadillac-plan” provided expensive high fashion eye-wear, cosmetic surgery and braces on children’s teeth.  And, poor Americans suffering from cancer and diabetes often have no coverage at all. EVERYBODY pays while only a few receive premium coverage.

When Republicans talk about supporting “small” business, what their agenda is really helping, is very large private businesses and publicly traded corporations that gain significantly from tax reductions. Average wage-earners lose far more in service cutbacks than they ever gain by tax reductions.  And, when Democrats talk about “reform”, it invariably results in the same thing, such as the projected rise in health care costs we all have to pay for.

Legislation backed by both parties severely hurts small business and the average American citizen and, the direction both parties are pursuing will ultimately enslave the masses beyond pre-20th Century industrial reality.  And, it will eliminate any semblance of legitimate business, while driving more and more people into financial ruin.

Did the Democrats really reform health care?  Is the Republican agenda any better?  As long as politicians are allowed to be bought and sold by wealthy interests, does it even really matter which party is in power?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for this article

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Why are Rosa Parks and Albert Schweitzer considered morally superior to Bonnie Parker and Adolf Hitler?  Why would all four arise in the same “advanced” modern species? Why is it called “justice” when people imprison other people?  Who gets to decide and, why? 

If babies are born moral and pure, why do we need to be taught how to morally behave?  Why is there a concept of “hatred”?  If we change the word “sin” to “social maladjustment” or “seething mass within”, does it lessen the pain and suffering people inflict on other people?  Does changing terminology change the reality of what men and women do? 

Why do we lie to each other?  Why are there laws against murder, theft and false witness?  Why are there university ethics classes?  Why don’t we automatically love our neighbor as ourselves?  Why did we crucify our greatest moral teacher?  Why do human oppression and civil rights movements exist?  Why is there a song entitled “We Shall Overcome”?  What is it we are trying to overcome? 

If people are born morally “blank” with no predisposition towards evil, as Freud assumed, why are we so self-destructive?  Why do we eat and drink what we believe is harmful?  Why do we abuse both ourselves and other people, often in the face of severe social rejection, lengthy incarceration and even execution?  Why is there a “Nobel Peace Prize”?  Why are adults rewarded for behaving like we believe we all should behave? 

Why is it so difficult to teach children to be what our conscience dictates as “good”, while they are what we consider “bad” quite easily on their own, without any parental reward and, often in spite of repeated punishment?  If it’s against human rights to murder, steal and lie, why do we do so?  If this is not against our reproductive survival, why are Jesus and Gandhi considered exceptional people? 

After thousands of years of education to the contrary, why do even our most educated people continue to add to the pile of global mass pollution, bilk the common masses with complicated financial schemes and, continue to create horrific weapons, even after the horrific evidence of the Great Depression and WWII?  Why didn’t an “Age of Enlightenment” result in peace on earth, instead of even worse wars?

According to modern science and the Bible, our underlying motivations are deceptive and often different than we perceive in our own conscious awareness.  Is it true we “all have sinned” and fall short of moral perfection?  Are people really sinners? 

You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for this article

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According to Jesus, “Therefore, whatever you want people to do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets”.  The added, “for this is the law and the prophets” in the society of Jesus, meant similar to as if today someone said, “this is the foundation of human rights and the sum and purpose of all reason, wisdom, philosophy, science, education, morality and ethics.”  Is this really the best idea for achieving human rights in the modern age?

Upon closer examination, most of the so-called “golden rules” found in other societies, including the one attributed to the Jewish teacher Hillel, are considerably different than that taught by Jesus.  A similar one to Jesus is found in a saying attributed to Mencius.  But unlike Mencius and all of the other known sages of history, only Jesus gives this positive, pro-active version the all-important status of being the foundation for all that matters towards positive human enlightenment and achievement.

So-called “golden rules” found in most societies instruct us not to harm others as we do not wish them to harm us.  But Jesus teaches us to reach out and help other people, even if they do not first help us. Consider how much less effective it is to tell a child not to harm someone, than teaching the same child to pro-actively treat others as they like to be treated.  For example, is a homeless widow better off if someone just doesn’t harm her or, if someone provides her food and shelter?  Isn’t it far more effective to teach us to help each other than just saying we should do no harm?

Some modern intellectuals claim we should instead, treat other people as “they” wish to be treated.  This supposed “improvement” contains at least two significant flaws:  1) It is rather difficult to know how another person wants us to treat them unless we first befriend them as we wish to be treated.  2) If we treat others as they wish to be treated without any measurement against our own well-being, we will soon be extremely tired, penniless and destitute.

Today, the term “empathy” is favored by many, apparently because it is less religious sounding than the idea of loving our neighbor as ourself.  Although it is a good idea to empathize with others, is this idea really an improvement over teaching us to pro-actively love our neighbor as ourselves?

Is the Jesus version of the golden rule the best idea?  Does anybody else have a better idea for curing what ails a race called “human”?  Do we want less than the best for our children?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for this article

Obviously, someone can aim the fickle finger of fate at war waged in the name of religion.  But, even before the invention of the wheel leading to ever-improved knife, spear, bow and chariot design, human science and education has been intricately entwined with waging war. Military applications have long been interlaced with government-funded science, education and modern space exploration.

Consider the Manhattan Project, nuclear missiles and space-ray weapons.  And, the rise of oppressive imperialism alongside industrial age invention; the American, French, Russian and Chinese revolutions; WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq.  Incalculable human oppression has been aided by science and technology and, waged in the name of nationalism, democracy, capitalism, communism, socialism, fascism, anarchism and other intellectual idealism and often, just plain old fashioned human greed and lust for gold.

Arguably because of their belief in God, billions of people have helped the sick, poor and oppressed masses throughout the ages.  Consider names like Isaiah, Socrates, Jesus, Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, Harriet Tubman, Helen Keller, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez and, celebrities like Danny Thomas, Jerry Lewis and Martin Sheen.  Consider the Union Rescue Mission and LA Mission on Skid Row in Los Angeles.  Throughout the European “dark” and Middle Ages, many individuals, including some popes, established public hospitals, housing and bread lines.

Consider modern electricity, medicine, surgery, global travel, computer technology and other marvels of a 21st Century age of science and wonder.  And to be fair, weigh this in the historical balances against WMDs, global mass pollution, depletion of fisheries, rain and other forests, fresh water pollution, mountains of garbage and cesspools of toxic waste left in the wake of the “Age of Enlightenment”.

Why is oppression waged in the name of Christianity, Islam and other religions any worse than that waged in the name of manifest destiny, communism and fascism?  Is human oppression a result of sincere belief in God?  Or, is it rather, a result of human beings wrongly using the sincere beliefs of others for their own devious purposes?

Isn’t it more likely that we all contribute to the negative downside of human history, whenever we fail to treat other people as we ourselves, wish to be treated?  Isn’t it more accurate, as Jesus pointed out and as Freud, Jung and modern behavioral science agree, to blame the “seething mass” of irrationality and frustration buried deep within individual human beings, as being the real cause of our problems?

If we are going to rationally and fairly blame something as being the “cause” of our problems, maybe it’s wise to first take a good look in the mirror.  Does belief in God cause human oppression?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for this article

Earth is larger than it’s immedite neighbor planets.  But, roughly 1,400 earths would fit by volume inside of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system.  And yet, the sun compromises over 99.8% of the total mass of this same solar system.

Most astronomers believe our sun is larger than an average star.  Yet, our sun is tiny compared to a star called Arcturus.  And, Arcturus in turn, is very small compared to another star known as Antares.  VY Canis Majoris is the largest known star in the universe and next to it in illustration in a typical book-sized drawing, our sun becomes essentially invisible to the unaided eye.

Even this largest of stars would easily fit within the vastness of our own solar system.  But our solar system is but a grain of sand in a Milky Way galaxy of 200 billion stars, which is about only 1/5 the size of galaxy M-31, also known as Andromeda, estimated to be 220,000 light years in diameter.  And yet, M-31 is miniscule compared to the estimated 6 million plus light year diameters of the largest known galaxies.

Space is so vast, that the nearest star to our sun is over 24 trillion miles away and yet, there are an estimated 100 billion galaxies of stars in the observable universe.  Some scientists believe that the currently visible approximately 13.5 billion light year radius, represents an area smaller than a period on this page, compared to the actual size of our universe.  And some scientists believe there may be as many universes as there are stars in our own.

It is fair to say that creation may go on forever and ever.  And thus, someone standing on the shore of the Sea of Galilee today might feel overwhelmed and incredibly insignificant. But this is only part of a much larger or as some might argue, smaller picture.

There are an estimated 10 trillion cells in an average adult human body, perhaps 50 times as many as there stars in our Milky Way galaxy.  And about 100 trillion micro-organisms live in a typical adult human gut, about 100 times as many as there are stars estimated to be in the Andromeda (M-31) galaxy.

About 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms are thought to be contained in a typical adult human body.  Atoms are similar in size of our solar system in relation to the sun and and planets, in comparison to the size of various sub-atomic particles within them. And similar to the sun in relation to the planets, the nucleus of an atom contains over 99% of its total mass.

If someone were to illustrate an atom in true scale, showing its protons and neutrons as being about 1.5 inches in diameter, then electrons and much smaller yet other particles, would be less than 0.1 millimeter in size and, the atom itself would be about 6.25 miles in diameter.

Human beings are very large in the light of subatomic particles and, very small compared to the size of the observable universe, thus we are placed inbetween the largest and smallest expressions of creation art.  And, just as a great artist like Rembrant might paint a large mural and yet, pay close attention to the smallest detail of facial expression and slightest variation of color, how much more then, does our Father in heaven, in a grand expression of creation art, pay close attention to the most microscopic realities of creation?

And then, there is the sacrifice of God’s son for the human race on a Roman cross, the ultimate expression of God’s love beyond any and all magnitude of comprehension. Thus, it is no small wonder that no one can deserve God, no matter how righteous, intelligent, strong or otherwise superior to others, we in vain may fancy ourselves to be.

Many people casually assume their religion or viewpoint of God is mainly correct, without ever stopping to consider what and who the known evidence demonstrates God really is and, how little they actually know about either God, life, love or anything else.  Atheists and agnostics pretend the grand design of the universe could somehow magically exist without any Grand Designer, as if a living being as incredibly complex as a fruit fly, could somehow randomly appear on it’s own and magically over time, change into a somewhat less credible human being fancing him or herself as being “educated”.

Thus, we should be quite careful about trusting religionists, scientists and other educators to actually know much more of value than the average truck driver or motel maid.  And, we should be even more careful about passing on to our children what we supposedly know is true about God.

Or otherwise, will the lies we tell our children and mis-information we leave them, come back to haunt us for a very, very, very long time? After all, as the Bible says, let God be true but every man and woman a liar and, there is a most obvious of reasons for the cross.

You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for this article

LINK HERE TO READ BOOK

Since a political leader should know what he or she is talking about without referring to notes, would you announce there will be no teleprompter allowed when you make speeches and hold press conferences?   Would you declare every speech you give will be drafted by you personally?

Would you take questions from press conference reporters impartially by drawing numbers from a hat, regardless of how recognizable their name is or what media they represent?

Would you hold publicly televised townhall events monthly in different cities, where ten members of the public with no press or organizational credentials, were selected by lot and allowed to ask direct unscreened questions?   Would you answer them while the cameras roll without cue cards and if necessary, conduct research and include anything not answered at the next event?

Would you clearly detail your current agenda for the nation at these townhall meetings, demonstrating that regardless of political fallout, there will be no secrecy, vagueness or uncertainty about the specific goals of your administration?

Would you cancel White House social events, annual Christmas and New Year festivities, elite “black-tie” gatherings and similar, until every American willing and able to work has a job that pays enough to afford basic necessities?   Would you promise you and your staff won’t eat better food on the taxpayer’s dime than average working-class families can afford?  Would you forbid your staff to fly on corporate jets and indulge in dinners, events and vacations paid for by someone else?

Although you could not control what members of Congress chose to do, would you put public pressure on all congressional leaders to set the same standards for themselves and their staff?

Would you prevent all lobbyists from being allowed access to either you or your staff, other than those representing individual taxpayers with specific individual needs not related to corporate interests?   Would you especially put intense and unrelenting public pressure on all Congressional leaders to do the same?

Would you require members of your cabinet to hold at least two scholarly degrees in their area of expertise, while insuring none of them are former lobbyists or, a member or former member of any financial institution?

To remain impartial, would you refuse to appear on media programs primarily devoted to politics and rather if invited, appear on popular shows like Oprah, Leno and Letterman, where you could freely communicate to the American people your concerns and goals, without being rudely interrupted by talking-point pundits with a private agenda not in the best interests of our nation?

Would you insist that neither you nor any member of your staff earn a wage higher than the median American wage?

If you were in charge, what would you do?   You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for this article

1) Thou shalt not kill,
2) Thou shalt not steal and
3) Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

The conservative religious sounding tone and threatening archaic style of this language here in a digital age land of once shining seas, likely comes across as threatening, mean-spirited and religiously offensive to most Americans, as it does to me personally.

Instead of insisting on using the flowery archaic King James version commonly found and far less commonly followed, in many conservative fundamentalist hard on one’s backside pews of today, consider how the original Hebrew could and arguably should be translated into our modern common usage English reality:

You shouldn’t kill.
You shouldn’t steal.
You shouldn’t say untrue things about your neighbor.

By revising the same English language into modern usage form while remaining fair to the original source, a much more reasonable sounding, kinder and less threatening God suddenly emerges, in language making perfect sense if God actually cares about people.  As opposed for example, to a vague and distant “deist” type of God, who doesn’t give a damn about how we treat each other or otherwise, rape, pillage and pollute his creation to the  high heavens, kingdom come and beyond to our collective capitalist enterprising hearts’ content. 

Virtually all modern progressives are in complete agreement with these three basic moral laws, even if they don’t ever read the Bible or even believe in God.  Thus, among other things, this short illustration demonstrates how language and other cultural barriers, in particular from centuries past using the same “English” language, often leads to all manner of erroneous misconceptions, conclusions, deliberate falsifications and outright lies.

Today the archaic King James English version is invariably branded by liberals as belonging in a category labeled “religion”, being entirely undesirable to even mentioned in a supposed “free and democratic society”.  While the less religious sounding updated English example is universally viewed as being basic to human rights, common decency, morality and ethics.

And, it remains a significant cornerstone of not only American, but global ethics, morality and legal law.  Not to mention, it is both prudent and correct to adhere to such common moral decency if we are to have any hope of living in a peaceful and just 21st Century reality.

How accurate is the Bible? Perhaps a better question is, just how badly deceived and otherwise completely and entirely misinformed, are modern-day Americans in general and, often hard working, tax paying and, most unfortunately for everybody including their own children, “church going” sincere religious fundamentalists in particular? 

You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for this article

A recent infestation of zillions of ants in the greater Houston area sounds a whole lot like biblical plagues to me, but who am I, an untrained common layman, to argue?  However, what about the recent invasion of tiny frogs in Bakersfield?  What does the Creator have against Merle Haggard?

And logically following, since citizens of Pat Robertson’s red state of Virginia recently voted in record numbers for “godless” liberals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the home of Robertson’s onward Christian soldiers of fortune must be high on the Creator’s retribution list.

It becomes a rather selective and dangerous path to tread down when those claiming to represent Jesus, while promoting the opposite of what he actually said and did, determine within their own self-righteous minds, to point the fickle finger of judgment at others.  Perhaps there is a good reason why Jesus taught to “judge not, that you be not judged”.

If weather is a fair and reliable barometer of God’s judgment, then one must consider recent earthquakes in China and Iran, not to mention the great 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and resultant Tsunami.  And, one could go on and on, about recent horrific fires worsened by severe winds in California, drought in several farm belt states and unusually severe winters in the Northeast.

If one truly believes the New Testament record, as Robertson and Hagee claim to do, then according to what Jesus actually said, God will judge the United States and every other nation by whether or not we help the sick and poor.  And according to the prophet Ezekiel in the Old Testament, God destroyed Sodom because she did not help her sick and poor.

Logically one would assume then, that the most patriotic thing for Pat Robertson, John Hagee and the rest of us to do, would be to stop pointing a finger of judgment at everyone else and instead, start using our energy and excess financial resources to help the less fortunate among us.

Come to think of it, perhaps Robertson and Hagee have a point.  Just why wouldn’t our Creator be angry with a nation that is responsible for the deaths of over a million Iraqi civilians and the maiming of millions more, while it’s citizens back home continue to ignore homeless seniors, veterans and children, vote for leaders who oppose universal healthcare, allow imprisonment without trial and torture and, purchase SUV’s in the face of looming oil shortages and a global warming crises?

Maybe we have been weighed in the great divided red-blue state historical balances and found more than a little severely wanting.  Was Hurricane Katrina God’s judgment on New Orleans?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for this article

A Bob Dylan song back then touched on this “Mr. Jones” mentality of modern society and, what with large gas-guzzling SUV’s being purchased by American middle-class “McMansion” families in the midst of Middle East wars, oil shortages and looming planetary disaster, certainly nothing much has changed.

Liberal authors tend to blame corporate branding, but such a “keeping up with the Joneses” reality has existed since ancient Babylon and, traces back into the mists of prehistoric time. Tribal cultures on a global basis display culturally dictated rings, beads, feathers and other ornaments, paint faces and bodies in peer-pressure proscribed ways and, mimic each other in dress, speech and custom.

Ancient warriors often trimmed beards and hair in certain proscribed fashion and displayed specific tattoos and other body markings. Cultures throughout history display their own unique concepts of beauty, manliness and femininity, often directly contradicting what other cultures dictate. Heterosexual men in many societies have worn clothing that even the most overt homosexual male wouldn’t wear in our own.

Today, tattoos and body piercings are all the modern rage and women deliberately reveal bra straps they worked diligently to keep hidden not long ago. And, we are inundated with harmful food and “must have” gizmos and gadgets that no one in their right mind would consider purchasing for logical survival or any other purpose.

Are designs carved on ancient pottery and inlaid jewels on swords functionally necessary at all? And, was expensive architecture, art and sculpture purchased by kings and popes in the midst of massive poverty and famine during the Middle Ages, any less moral than modern Wall Street paper-shufflers earning 10,000 and more times as much as those who pick their fruit, cook their food, cut their lawns and pick up their garbage?

Does a wise society reward athletes with enormous sums to play games in the midst of rising poverty, homelessness and human suffering? Do wise people stand in long lines to see the latest film or to meet celebrities who really haven’t accomplished much of anything at all? How many Americans blindly believe we represent the greatest society in history, without even bothering to actually study much of human civilization, if any?

Culturally induced conformity might appear harmless, but it extends into endorsing the amassing of private wealth and consequent enslavement of the masses, supporting wars in a guise of false patriotism’ and, endorsing racism and classicism in order to “belong”.

Is it really true that “all we like sheep have gone astray”? You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for this article

War didn’t begin with the American Revolution, nor did it end there; many soldiers who fought against the British rose up in “Shay’s Rebellion” against wealthy colonists who were taking their land and throwing them into debtors prison.  Soon after, another war against the British erupted.

Then came the Mexican-American War, Civil War, Spanish-American War and War in the Philippines.  And then, the so-called “war to end all wars”, WWI, soon followed by WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War and now, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Spaced among this long sad bloody list of war after war after war, were several slave uprisings, a long drawn-out war against Native populations and many smaller wars and battles.  There have also been many “uprisings” within the U.S. population, including mob murder of African-Americans, Irish, Jews, Mormons, Chinese, Latinos, adult and even, child workers on strike.

Yet today, after all this bloodshed, we find ourselves at war, yet again.  In spite of the overwhelming historical evidence, a morally bankrupt American population remains quick on the trigger and very slow to understand, that war will never “secure the peace”.  Is President Obama acting any wiser than Bush by continuing to stay the course in Iraq and increase troop levels in Afghanistan?

Some people claim Gandhi was wrong because he ended up a martyr.  Yet, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez and a great many others claim to have been inspired by him.  Did Gandhi lose in the great historical war between pro and anti-human rights forces, the only war that really matters?

According to Jesus, the solution to war is to put down our swords.  A small child can easily grasp this crystal clear logic of Jesus, yet we find people today pretending to follow him, who still promote war as the solution to somehow secure the peace.  The life of Jesus has inspired millions of people to promote peace and goodwill.  Thus, he won a far, far, far greater victory than all of the military generals in history combined.

It is entirely logical, that if I promote peace and goodwill, I will help humanity and leave a positive legacy for others to emulate.  It is likewise, entirely logical that if I promote war as a solution, I will hurt humanity and extend the trail of tears for others to emulate.

We as individuals have little choice what our leaders or other people do.  However, we each have a personal choice to make, to either stand up for peace and goodwill or, to bow to peer pressure and promote war and other violence.

It takes courage to stand up against one’s own society, which is why Isaiah and Jesus continue to be revered by millions.  It takes only a victim of societal pressure to promote war.  It is mature to promote peace and goodwill; it is childish, historically and patently absurd to promote anything else.

Is Obama any smarter than Bush?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for this article

For example, amidst growing public outrage over corporate bailouts and other corrupt political shenanigans, why aren’t political pundits on either the so-called “liberal” or “conservative” side calling for a national cap on interest rates at a reasonable 5%? This would do far more to stimulate the economy, insure the long-term health of the banking industry and actually help the average citizen, than all of the trillions tossed down the historical sewer and all of the nonsensical cosmetic “reforms” offered up by both “sides” combined.

In the debate over universal verses private health care, why is there no discussion regarding the obvious immediate and long-term ramifications of contagious diseases? If conservative mothers actually knew how severely in danger their own children are, even if insured, we would have had universal health care long ago, like any reasonable and sane government today should and does provide.

Amidst much feigned “outrage” over political corruption, why is nobody on either side calling for a constitutional amendment banning all political contributions of any and every kind except by private individuals and, limiting individual donations to 1% of the median income? Given the historical track record of the Supreme Court siding with business interests against any and all legitimate political reform legislation, it should be obvious even to someone without fancy degrees attached to their name, that the only way to achieve true political reform is by constitutional amendment.

And, when obviously crooked and entirely corrupt leaders in White House and congressional halls decide to engage in foreign wars of aggression, obviously designed to consolidate political power and enhance corporate bottom lines, why is the American media in total lock-step mentality, found proudly “embedded” in flag-waving “patriotic” support of such atrocities? CBS featured the oft-maligned supposedly “liberal” Dan Rather embedded right on cue in real time during Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq, whispering in hushed, reverent tones, describing in detail how adept our military is at invading and bombing a completely out-gunned city full of civilians into “democratic” submission?

American media has long focused on the so-called “health” of the stock market as the leading indicator for whether our not the economy is doing well. This in spite of the well known historical facts that often during a prolonged bull market, the majority of Americans continue to lose economic ground. Whether or not the market is doing well in the short term Wall Street reality has little to zero bearing on the economic lot of the majority of American citizens.

Media would be informing us far better if it focused on rising energy, food and housing costs relative to the median wage and better yet, the minimum wage, as leading economic health indicators. What good is it to average Americans, if a few more billionaires are created, when less than zero percentage of growing market prosperity “trickles down” on the vast majority of our citizens?

What is the real agenda behind the carefully controlled piece-meal information dolled out by the New York Times and Wall Street Journal? Is CNN, Fox News and MSNBC giving us the information we really need? Why aren’t mainstream media outlets informing us correctly and adequately regarding various major issues of the 21st Century?

Is American media really legitimate, or is it just a big waste of everybody’s valuable time? Would we be better off burying our radios and televisions in our backyards, that is, those of us who still have a backyard to bury them in?

You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for above article

Many veterans have lost their civilian jobs due to extended tours in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere and upon returning home, find it very difficult to support themselves and their families.  Many who are not currently homeless are in danger of becoming so, especially in growing economic hard times.

In 2006, approximately 196,000 veterans were homeless on any given night, up from an estimated 194,000 in 2005.  Estimates of the total number of homeless veterans in the United States currently exceed 500,000; this figure doesn’t include spouses and children, who may also be homeless or severely impoverished.

An additional half million more pay over 50% of their income to cover their rent or mortgage.  In the United States, 26% of the homeless population are veterans, while they represent only 11% of the adult population.  In Tennessee alone, there were approximately 2800 veterans homeless on any given night in 2006 and, numbers have steadily increased due to the worsening economy since then.

According to many social service providers, while lack of income, disabilities, physical sickness, mental health issues and substance abuse all contribute to homelessness, the primary reason veterans are homeless is the lack of affordable housing.  And, this problem keeps getting worse, rather than better.

Regardless of religious, political or other persuasion, there is no excuse for the citizens of the United States to allow even one veteran or one veteran’s spouse or child to be homeless.  Politicians who refuse to help them should be voted out of office and candidates who don’t place helping them at the top of their agenda should not be voted for in the first place, regardless of party or position on any other issue.

Americans who sit idly by and make no attempt to address and alleviate problems of poverty in general and the plight of homeless veterans and children in particular, demonstrate a severe lack of patriotism.  And, they display a severe lack of historical and moral understanding and absence of personal ethics, responsibility, respect and dignity.

Do Americans who ignore the plight of homeless veterans really support the troops?  Can we march in parades waving flags pretending to be patriotic while continuing to ignore our growing homeless population, regardless of the reasons why they are homeless?

What manner of nation claims to be the greatest nation on earth and to be a beacon for freedom and democracy to the rest of the world and yet, her citizens continue to look the other way while growing numbers of homeless veterans and children struggle in plain sight to somehow survive?

Why are there homeless veterans in America?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for the above article

Some plead we should care about the less fortunate while others pretend private care is preferable, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  Today, U.S. citizens pay much more for coverage than citizens of any other nation, yet we are ranked 37th in health care quality and even lower in availability.

Several former Soviet block and Southeast Asian nations offer better coverage; even Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate.  Over 45 million U.S. residents have zero health care; at least 80 million more have highly inadequate coverage.  More and more citizens with expensive plans are being refused coverage for expensive problems.

Every week, more citizens lose employer-paid care and retirement benefits, including long-term coverage for less healthy retirement years.  Depending on provider, 10-30% of every dollar spent on private coverage goes to overhead not related to care, while less than 8% for government-sponsored Medicare does, even though Medicare helps the oldest and sickest among us.  Very plainly, private health care as we currently have, is not the solution.

Politicians on both sides of the political charade continue to pretend they care about America’s security, while continuing to ignore our immediate health care reality.  Whether or not we care about our neighbor is only part of a larger equation, because disease knows no boundaries.  Children of the poor can, have and will, infect children of the wealthy.  Medical facts clearly demonstrate that private coverage is no guarantee against contagious diseases.

In reality, less than 1% of U.S citizens can afford to pay for their own catastrophic needs.  All forms of private health insurance are “shared responsibility” programs,dependent on the majority of those covered to remain healthy, while majority pay-outs go to the sickest minority.

Yet, right-wing media pretends coverage is not a “shared responsibility”, that we should all take care of our own selves.  People who claim this have never faced $250,000 per year cancer treatments on a working class income.  And they clearly don’t understand their own immediate financial jeopardy if they were to lose coverage.  Or, what can and will happen to their own children, if their neighbor’s children remain uncovered.

Scientists claim our planet is overdue for a major disease epidemic, while history clearly dictates that all of our politics, education, science and weapons won’t protect us against the onslaught of disease.  And the media is clearly failing American citizens by not instructing us accordingly.

Is it fair to say that citizens who do not push for immediate affordable and adequate health coverage for all persons residing permanently or temporarily within our borders, are decidedly unpatriotic?  Is it fair to say they don’t even care about their own children?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for the above article

How many times must we endure Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh blather on and on about how we can’t trust our own selves, the government?  We can’t trust ourselves with tax dollars, we can’t trust ourselves with health care and we most certainly can’t trust us the government, to decide a convicted felon shouldn’t be armed to the teeth with every bazooka-type weapon imaginable.

Apparently, the so-called conservative “right” can’t even get our own Constitution right.  The idea of democracy isn’t to openly condemn ourselves by claiming we can’t trust the government.  Rather, the idea is to elect leaders to represent us and, to replace them when they instead, become right-wing corporate stooges and vote against our best interests.

Besides pretending to care about the unborn while totally screwing the already born, what the right-wing agenda really amounts to is, “we don’t believe in spending tax dollars to actually help taxpayers”. Rather, their goal is to use tax dollars for enhancing the bottom-line of the military industrial complex and otherwise, enriching corporations at the expense of us the taxpayers.

Any and every use of taxpayer dollars that will actually benefit taxpaying citizens is branded as “socialism” over and over again, the new all-purpose “red scare” bait-and-switch term of the 21st Century. The now entirely discredited Joe McCarthy appears “fair and balanced” alongside these Savage Nation and Coulter forty-five toting, hate-mongering meglomaniacs.

Education is supposedly high on the right-wing “safe issue” list, but conservative legislators consistently vote against increased spending for education.  Whatever they can’t eliminate because of political popularity, such as Medicare and Social Security, they try to “reform” into oblivion, creating huge funding black holes designed to funnel trillions of taxpayer dollars into big pharma and other deep corporate pockets.

Otherwise, the right-wing agenda is to convince average Joe Americans that all regulation of any kind is evil.  When in fact, wise regulation is what keeps tainted meat from ending up in all-American hamburgers, Joe American construction workers safe on their jobs and American Air Lines planes from falling out of American skies.

Wise regulation is the reason banks were relatively sound under Eisenhower.  While deregulation is obviously why they began their substantially crooked turn for the worse under Reagan, controlled by bloated greedy bastards of mass deception by the time Bush Junior was finished cutting a final slice out of the deregulation corporate mega-pie.

Is branding human beings “illegal” and blaming them for job losses and contagious diseases any different than what gave rise to Adolf Hitler and Auschwitz?  What is the real agenda of slave masters? What is the agenda of pure evil?

What is the real right-wing agenda?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for the above article

For example, Jesus is very clearly not the founder of Christianity or anything remotely like it, nor is it any more fair to blame Jesus for what people do in his name, than it is to blame Copernicus and Isaac Newton for Hiroshima.  The same applies in varying degrees to Buddha, Confucius, Zarathustra and certain other so-called “founders” of various religions.  There is no greater critic of fundamentalist religion or religious hypocrisy in history than Jesus, nor is there any greater advocate for personal, local and global peace.

Like religion, science and education are historically intimately entwined with war and human oppression on a massive scale, tracing back from ever more effective designs for ancient war chariots, DaVinci’s war-machine inventions and, on up through the Manhattan Project, the modern-day military industrial complex and ever worse weapons of mass destruction.  The American, French, Russian and several other revolutions were fomented by so-called “enlightened” intellectuals.

It is correct to say religion is a tool often used to foment war and human oppression and, it’s just as fair to point out science and education are often used for the same purpose.  However, it is not accurate to pretend either one is a root “cause” of human aggression. Believers in God and scientists both often leave a positive legacy and, many of history’s most revered individuals demonstrated a profound personal belief in God.  Jesus correctly singled out religious hypocrisy, rather than belief in God, as having a significant negative societal impact.

Since the invention of printing, which helped break the societal stranglehold of organized religion, justification for war has more and more been shifted away from religious to other excuses.  In a so-called “post-Enlightenment Age”, wars are now often fought in the name of democracy, freedom, communism, socialism, anarchism and even human rights.  Those who blame belief in God for war, rather than placing the blame for war where it squarely belongs, on individual human beings making their own poor choices, are plainly liars.

According to Jesus and some New Testament authors and, according to ALL known scientific and historical evidence, the root cause of humanity’s problems is sin, causing individual human frustration, greed and aggression, resulting in negative choices being made by individual human beings.  Families, tribes, cities, states, nations, armies, religions, political parties, corporations, unions, educational institutions, professional scientists and all other “groupings” of human beings, are made up of individual people, each making their own individual choices.

It would be refreshing if modern educators and people like Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens could grow up just a little and, begin placing the blame for humanity’s problems where it belongs, squarely on our own self-contradicting shoulders. Perhaps then, a modern species in grave peril of losing it’s own commonly shared global habitat, could begin to have a little more unbiased and accurate understanding of where Jesus and the authors of the Bible are actually coming from.

Were the American, French, Russian and Chinese revolutions, WWI, WWII, Vietnam and Iraq, among hundreds of other wars from the 20th Century forward, caused more by belief in God, organized religion, intellectual idealism, nationalism or just plain old common human greed, as ALL wars can invariably be traced back to?  Does belief in God really cause war?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for the above article

Another form of pacifism allows for the defense of one’s own physical person and immediate family or small group.  This form is possibly, but not necessarily in agreement with Jesus, when taken in context of several different teachings; it’s never accurate to extrapolate only some of what Jesus said, as conservative Christians often do.

Jesus drew a distinct line against war and violence.  From an accurate historical perspective, war is invariably about either protecting one’s own wealth or taking someone else’s wealth and almost always, about both.  Thus, war is not the same as self defense, which is protecting one’s physical person.

In war, soldiers are compelled to obey orders from the top down, regardless of how right or wrong they personally believe them to be. Following orders from the top down in WWII, soldiers who may never had previously violently attacked anyone, dropped atomic weapons on a large civilian population.

No side is right in war, because seeds of one conflict trace to a previous conflict.  Just as seeds of WWII trace to WWI and back even before the American Revolution, which was also about wealth; perceived unjust taxation, which was minuscule compared to what U.S. citizens routinely pay today, was a primary revolutionary motivation.

One of the supposedly most “justified” wars in U.S. history is WWII, based on the theory that Japan attacked the United States without provocation.  The problem with this theory is, long before Pearl Harbor, we had gained substantially monetarily by supplying England and France with weapons which were used against Japan.  And at the time, we were attempting to blockade supplies coming into Japan, which was a threat to their population’s survival.

It is not that Japan was right and we were wrong but rather, war is invariably about both sides being wrong.  No nation profiting from a war is guiltless concerning that war.

Perhaps the best American historical example of justifiable self defense in regards to war, is when Colonel Chivington attacked and massacred a tribe of natives, who were sleeping inside their homes with white flag raised.  If there was ever a justified response, it is how American natives responded to Sand Creek.

Jesus taught the way to achieve peace is to lay down our swords. This solution is so obvious, a small child can easily understand what apparently, is too profound for many educated historians and conservative preachers to grasp.  In the book of Revelation, this command is repeated and, those who resort to violence and war as a means to an end, are placed on the wrong side of God, human rights and human history.

Is laying down our swords wise?  Has picking up a sword ever “secured the peace”, preventing war from breaking out again?  Is there a better or any other solution to war, other than laying down our swords?  Are you smarter than Jesus?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for the above article

Unlike many modern educators, Jesus is not about stroking his own ego by pushing his own private vision and agenda.  Rather, Jesus is about promoting the “best” idea that will best help humanity.  Thus, if an idea was already the best, Jesus used it, if it could be improved upon, he improved on it and, if he had a better idea, he taught that instead.

This is a far more advanced and “enlightened” concept of education than we find in this so-called “post-Enlightenment” age, where various “pop” pundits are out to make it big on best seller lists by pushing “their” supposedly “new” ideas.  As the Bible says, “there is nothing new under the sun.”  Regardless of how we change and re-arrange terminology, violence, human oppression, suffering, sorrow and, the solution for alleviating and eliminating them remains the same.

We live in an age of extreme soapbox bias, an age of defending various political, intellectual, religious and other “sides”, rather than an age centered on a search for what is really true and, what actually might be the best idea.  Modern education is divided into distinct categories like “science”, “history” and, “religion”, as if we can divide up reality and expect to have any idea what is actually true.  We conveniently place Jesus in “religion” category and thus, our children entirely lose out on the best ideas in human history.

Jesus taught that treating other people like we want them to treat us is the sum of all wisdom; does Richard Dawkins have a better foundation for human rights?  Jesus implied the more we know what is true, the more free we will become; does Richard Dawkins have a better foundation for education?  According to Jesus, a common grass flower is better clothed than Solomon was; does Richard Dawkins have a better foundation for environmental awareness?

Jesus taught the way to honor God is to love our neighbor as ourselves; does Richard Dawkins have a better foundation for morality and ethics?  Jesus taught the way to achieve peace is to put away our swords and spread peace and goodwill, rather than like scientists, create more and bigger swords, which is the Greek, Roman, American and world civilization history method of “securing the peace”.  Does Richard Dawkins have a better idea?

Why do modern scientists, after 10,000 years of moral education to the contrary, continue to create weapons of mass destruction?  In a post-Enlightenment age of atheism, science and wonder, why does war and the poor still remain with us, as Jesus predicted they would?

Richard Dawkins implies Jesus was delusional.  Is he smarter than Jesus?  Is anybody smarter than Jesus?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for the above article

Such universal assumption is the most likely conclusion given the known evidence and, much of what science “believes” is based on similar assumptions.  Even though people can create things that can repair and even create other things by themselves, all known evidence indicates no finite living being or object can exist without a creator.

Descartes first principle of philosophy, science and reason states: “Accept nothing as true that is not self-evident”.  The history of science tracing prior to ancient Greece on into the present, is a history of the most likely conclusion based on the current known evidence.

Just as all evidence indicates for every action there is a re-action, likewise all evidence indicates nothing can be in motion by it’s own volition.  All known evidence indicates a universe filled with “zillions” of complex parts within ever greater complexity of parts and, containing intelligent finite beings of conscience and conscious awareness, requires Creative Intelligence.  Thus, the correct postulate of true science is “Eternal Creator(s)” until proven otherwise.

Pretending that “science” is somehow different than belief in God is an obvious lie. Just as scientists “believe” in black holes and invisible light based on mirrored evidence, much more so, mirrored evidence of a Creator(s) is overwhelmingly self-evident.  And, just as if someone claims the earth is cube-shaped or, A2 + B2 doesn’t equal C2, the burden of proof remains on atheists, because all known evidence indicates the opposite conclusion.

According to Jesus, as well as many historical scientists and sages of note, basic to wisdom, education and survival itself, is to attempt to sort out what’s actually true, from whatever fiction the cultures and religions we are born into claim is true.  As Jesus implied, if we don’t know what’s true, we have no hope of being free.

Believing the earth is square doesn’t change the reality of the shape of the earth.  What is true about the earth remains the same, regardless of what we believe or, fail to believe.  Whether we label it “science”, “religion” or something else, what is actually true remains the same.

Someone can’t just assume a steel ball and feather will fall at the same rate of speed and call it a “scientific theory”, without significant supporting evidence.  There is nothing more unscientific and irrational than pretending there is no God, because all known evidence indicates the opposite conclusion.

If someone says they don’t know if there’s a God, perhaps they just need to get out and smell the roses once in a while.  However, if someone says there is no Creator, they are by all scientific and other rational default, plainly a liar, because there is no evidence to support such an absurd position.

Is atheism scientific?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for the above article

Now, several right-wing hate mongers have used the 2009 so-called “Swine Flu” outbreak to pour more fuel on the already blood-drenched, hate-filled immigration issue fires.  Massachusetts talk radio’s Jay Severin, apparently an illegal alien from a galaxy far, far away, was suspended after he called Mexican immigrants “criminalians”, adding emergency rooms have become “essentially condos for Mexicans”.

Daily media diatribes of overt racism and human hatred have resulted in significant violence against poor immigrants in the past several years.  According to Southern Poverty Law Center statistics, hate crimes have increased dramatically, including the beating death of Mexican immigrant Luis Ramirez by Pennsylvania teenagers, who were later acquitted of murder by an all-Anglo jury.

A viral disease can “break out” in any apparent “country of origin”, as a result of external transmission of the virus.  European-borne diseases that destroyed entire native cultures would appear today in the same “real-time” ill-informed media reality, as if America was the land of origin.

Since Mexico City and surrounding areas are well-known tourist destinations, it is quite possible (perhaps even probable) that the “outbreak” of the “swine flu” in Mexico was a result of transmission by someone from a relatively immune population.  Thus, the real country of origin could be China, France, India, Israel, Australia or even the United States.

People living in Mexico may be less immune to this particular virus than a population located elsewhere, while that population may not be protected as well against another type of virus.  Even close-proximity populations can have immunities that neighboring populations lack, which could explain why “swine flu” in the U.S. was not immediately as severe as in Mexico.

A contagious disease could just as easily appear to “break out” in the United States, transmitted by a tourist from Scotland, Germany, Saudi Arabia or some other population and, be more harmful to people here than even those living in Mexico and Canada.  Anybody who doesn’t understand that disease is by-and-in-large, a global crapshoot, doesn’t belong on the public airwaves spreading gross deceptions of superstition, fear and racist-fueled hatred.

Some historians suspect diseases that were extremely detrimental to American native populations were transmitted by, you guessed it, herds of pigs that explorers took along with them as a food supply. What killed off native populations could literally have been a form of “swine flu” that European immigrants were immune to, because unlike native populations, they had built up immunities for centuries living in close proximity to their pigs.

Who’s going to immunize us against inhuman alien swine-balls dolled up in right-wing lip gloss?  Can we blame Swine Flu on immigrants? What is the real legacy of human hate-mongers?  You decide?

Link to footnotes and documentation for the above article

The word “gun” is found nowhere in the Constitution, a very carefully worded document.  It should also be noted that in the Consitution’s pre-amble, one of the main purposes listed is to “insure domestic Tranquility” (also capitalized).  To honestly and correctly interpret the intentions of the framers, everything that follows the Preamble, including all ten original amendments soon added, must be viewed in light of the Constitution’s stated purpose.

For many years, the NRA has been guilty of drawing a non-existent, artificial line down the center of the 2nd Amendment, limiting the debate to guns, knives, grenades and similar small arms.  To contend that the 2nd Amendment permits unlimited unregulated private ownership of modern assault weapons, is no more Constitutionally rational than to pretend that the 2nd Amendment allows unlimited private ownership of chemical weapons, nuclear bombs and space-ray weapons, which are also modern “Arms” unknown to the framers.

In order to engage in an honest Constitutional debate, the NRA must admit that, according to their interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, we have just as much right to own private nuclear bombs and Anthrax as we do to own a multi-round handgun, none of which existed when the 2nd Amendment was drafted.  If we wish to have a society at all, then the 21st Century question is not “if” we are going to restrict the NRA’s interpretation of the 2nd Amendment but rather, in what manner are we going to restrict it.

For the record, if any living Americans have the right to argue in favor of restricting the 2nd Amendment, it is Jim and Sarah Brady.  And, as the “founding fathers” wisely allowed for, we can always amend what they originally wrote down.  A perhaps better and much saner idea would be to amend the NRA, entirely and altogether, by forcing our reluctant media to point out their deceptive and entirely irrational position.

The NRA has no more rational or Constitutional right to limit the 2nd Amendment to an issue of small Arms ownership than the ACLU has a right to restrict the 1st Amendment to their Constitutionally, historically and scientifically irrational interpretation of the known evidence. Perhaps Thomas Jefferson’s re-write of the New Testament, while he was a sitting president, would today include the following wry observation:  If conservatives and liberals crawl into a similar dark bed of deception, they will likely both end up in the same bottomless black hole, accordingly.

Does the NRA really defend the 2nd Amendment?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for the above article.

Jefferson edited the New Testament while a sitting president and, attempted to have his version become the official U.S. government-endorsed version, ensuring it would be read in every public schoolhouse of his day.  Madison stated he believed the 1st Amendment would aid in the spread of Christianity and, Franklin openly complained the framers were not seeking God’s guidance enough while drafting the Constitution.

Many so-called “experts” interpret “religion” to mean belief in God, while it is far more likely it meant institutional religion to the framers.  Regardless, protection of free expression has nothing to do with what is actually true about God, science or anything else.  Whether modern evolutionary theory is true or just a poorly constructed fairytale, is not relevant to 1st Amendment protections.

According to various polls, over 80% of adults and 50% of American educators believe in a Designer.  Though several major living scientists believe the evidence indicates design, the ACLU refuses to protect their highly credentialed scientific viewpoint.  Instead, they demand American educators deliberately lie to our children by omission, leaving out the known fact that major historical and living scientists and every Declaration signer believe(d) the scientific evidence indicates design.

The “God question” is central to the scientific thought and inquiry of virtually every major historical scientist, including Darwin himself.  Still, so-called “progressives” pretend God is not a question for science.  To allow only one myopic viewpoint is to teach children questioning what is true is not relevant to education. These are the same ‘progressives’ who are angry over the one-sidedness of talk radio.

Modern evolutionary theory does in fact, address the “God question”.  Any theory assuming that everything in the universe is a result of “natural” unguided processes is stating there is no God, not to mention, scientifically completely wacko.  Nobody from our perspective could possibly know the overall process is unguided. Atheism has no more protection under the 1st Amendment than Catholicism. Is freedom of speech or science really being served when only a non-evidenced based superstitious assumption is allowed to be taught?

According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Albert Einstein said:  “I have a deep feeling of faith, a deep religiosity that comes from my appreciation of the way the Lord made the universe.” Every signer of the Declaration of Independence agreed the evidence of a Creator is beyond all rational dispute.

Should we forbid Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, DaVinci, Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, Faraday, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Einstein and leading DNA expert Francis Collins to teach a public science class?  Or, should we petition our Creator to toss the ACLU into a bottomless black hole and throw away the key, allowing our children a proper education without any further undue hindrance from the feeble-minded?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for this article:
http://www.freedomtracks.com/500/firstamendment.html 

Anyone who has owned a small business knows that the entire “Joe the Plummer” charade is just one great big lie.  Few plumbers or owners of small privately-held companies in America earn a net taxable income over $250,000 per year.  Most of them are much smarter than that, re-investing excess profits to grow their business and otherwise, to avoid paying taxes. 

The higher people are taxed on excess income, whether or not they own a business, the more incentive they have to invest that income back into what will grow the economy and increase jobs.  Raising taxes on net taxable income above $250,000, as President Obama proposed, would serve to increase jobs and stimulate the economy, the exact opposite of what bought-and-paid-for politicians and right-wing media hacks pretend is true. 

If Medicare was expanded into a single-payer universal system, health care could be paid for by taxing everyone the same percentage rate above the poverty level. This would greatly stimulate the economy by removing a huge financial burden off employers.  It would eliminate employee wage taxes for Medicare and Medicaid and the significant cost of employer-provided health coverage.

Because income up to the poverty level would be exempt, it would cost the poor almost nothing to have quality health care.  And, it would cost the working and middle-classes considerably less than they pay now, when lower costs for goods and services are factored in, along with the elimination of the mega-bite of at least 25 cents that insurance and other unnecessary industry components take from every health care dollar. 

There is no rational argument when weighing the current U.S. patchwork health care fiasco against the universal health systems of France, Germany, Japan and Sweden.  Average income citizens in these nations receive much better care and, the cost to insure everyone is 10% or less of their GNP.  The cost to Americans is a staggering 15% of GNP and, this much greater cost still leaves almost half with inadequate care and one out of six Americans with no health care at all.

When taxes are lowered on the wealthy, as they have consistently been from Ronald Reagan forward, everybody eventually loses, including the wealthy.  The poor, working and middle classes reach a point where they can no longer afford to purchase goods and services.  This is clearly seen today, in blocks of houses sitting empty, banks and mortgage companies failing, auto dealerships and major stores closing down and many areas with double-digit unemployment.
 
Is “Joe the Plumber” just a scam?  Is the entire Demo/Publican 2-party system just a scam?  Who is really scamming who?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for this article:
http://www.freedomtracks.com/500/scam.html 

1.  We need to reform health care.  It costs too much.

Republicans under Bush did nothing to reform the health care industry.  There is no historical track record of Republican health care reform.  Thus, current proposals reek of partisan political charades and complete and total dishonesty.

2. Make health insurance portable so Americans can keep their coverage when they change jobs.

3. Provide tax credits to make health care more affordable and accessible. 

In addition to solving none of the things noted previously, this was first proposed by John McCain while running for president.  Prior to that, there is no record of Republican tax credit proposals.  On the contrary, Republicans in Congress under Bush pushed to reduce federal funding, including opposing helping uninsured children.

5. Democrat proposals will raise taxes by 800 billion, mostly on small business. 

President Obama has proposed raising taxes on personal net income over 250K to help pay for health care reform.  Republican opposition is a continuation of the ongoing “Joe the Plumber” lie never dissected properly by the media; almost no plumbers or owners of small independently-owned companies earn over 250K annually after deductions. Also, businesses employing less than 50 people will not be required to pay for health care under proposed reforms.

This is not at all what Obama and the Democrats are proposing but even if it was, it would serve to greatly reduce the cost for everyone, if the health care industry was forced to bid against the entire U.S. population base.

Nothing illustrates this need better than the current crop of malfeasant Democrats, who since regaining control of Congress in 2007, haven’t done a single thing we the people obviously want.  Other than passing a minimum wage law that was over ten years too late and as many dollars too low, lack of health care, education costs, poverty, infrastructure decay, joblessness and homelessness have all dramatically increased.

Rather than helping average Americans, Congress has engaged in endless bend-over political charades, increased rather than reduced troop levels and war funding and signed away even more of our quickly disappearing rights.  And since 2008, they have sold our children’s future down a no-strings-attached, golden-platter river of unprecedented corporate bailout malfeasance.

Because the Supreme Court will always otherwise, declare any and all manner of corruption-eliminating reform “unconstitutional”,  the only way to get rid of big money influence is by constitutional amendment.  Attempts at other methods of reform have left a long historical trail of tears of utter frustration and defeat.

We need an amendment making it punishable by life in prison without parole, for any organization or group of people of any kind, for any reason, to contribute one penny or anything of higher value, to one small-town city council office seeker on up to president of the United States.  And we need to limit individual contributions to 1% of the median income per candidate per year, including candidates themselves; approximately $480 in 2008 dollars.

In order to be licensed for broadcasting on what are theoretically “the people’s” airwaves, we need to require all radio and television stations to grant free equal airtime to “qualified” candidates; qualification determined by obtaining enough signatures of registered voters, amount determined by office and number of people represented.  And, we need to eliminate the electoral college, elect everyone by popular vote, hold all party primaries on the same date and require a verifiable paper trail.

There is much tweaking necessary for the amendment proposed here, but this sketch outline is sufficient to grasp the basic idea.  No law will eliminate all corruption, but what is suggested here would eliminate well over 90% of the current problem and, would allow the majority of we the people to actually have a voice.

Will the bottom-feeding miscreant corporate-puppet juvenile delinquent treasonous reprobates of Congress ever be eliminated and put in federal prison where they belong?  You decide.

Link to footnotes and documentation for this article:
http://www.freedomtracks.com/500/congressionalreform.html