Ruining America

This country is being weakened by failed policies, failed politics, failed economics, failed social and even ethical factors. Unemployment is rising with an unbelievable rate and so is inflation. It's accelerating at a faster rate than it has in 17 years. More than a million homes are now in foreclosure. American wages have actually gone down. They are certainly not enough to keep up with the cost of living. Not only that but according to the Conference Board Index, the Consumer Confidence has dropped from 85 % in 2001 to just below 52% . So, while we normally live beyond our means which is one of our dire problems but now we can not even live in our means!!

We need to admit that we are facing a problem in order for us to solve the problem. That is, if it is not too late. I believe this decline is attributed to many factors: educational, economical, political, social and even ethical. In my humble opinion, I believe the following organizations; companies and people are liable and main factors in ruining the sovereign nation that we live in:

1- George W. Bush:

I saw a bumper sticker once on a car that says "if it's broke, blame Bush". I smiled because while it is an exaggeration, it has truth to it. Since this man became our president, the nation went down like no other. Everyone in the world dislike us, if not hate us. The country is more divided than ever between democrats and republicans. People who used to like us do not like us anymore because they think we are ignorant and stupid for voting for such an imbecile twice and the sad thing is we can not really blame them. People, who did not like us, now hate us completely. Not only that, but we have gone to two wars not knowing when will we come out of them. One war became a quagmire (i.e. Iraq) and the other one is well on its way. Our military is stretched across the world with soldiers serving once, twice, three times if not more. According to CNN, "to date, the country's total debt - which includes the annual deficits accrued over time - is $9.5 trillion." And that will go over 10 trillion dollars very soon with the $80 billion we keep spending in Iraq. People are loosing their jobs, their houses and their livelihood. Our gas prices are soaring high. Thus, basically our economy, politics, foreign policy, military, domestic infrastructure, healthcare, and education are all in the toilet thanks to this one man. And while all this is going where is Bush? On vacation! This man has spent more than 1/3 of his entire two terms either in Crawford, Texas, Camp David or Maryland!! He was on vacation before 9/11. He was on vacation at the time of Hurricane Katrina and when Russia invaded Georgia, he went on vacation!! This man's record as a student and a military or public man is one of continuous disappointment and what is scarier is that he seems to be happy with himself! Is this the image that we want projected to our youth?

2- The Republican Party:

From my understanding, the Republican Party was supposed to be less government control but since King George became a president it somehow became more and more government control. Aside from the fact that republicans over and over ruin our economy every time they come into office and being globally aggressive, they tend to just ignoring the fact that there are normal hard working people in this country who do deserve to live. It would be wrong for me to assume that all republicans are the same but it seems to be the majority of the people who have that power. When McCain ran in 2000 to become a president he ran a solid good campaign and stood for moderate things and many people warmed up to him. However, he now became a carbon copy of Bush and lost himself. Even Republicans who disagree with Bush do not attempt to do anything which is utterly deplorable. It does not matter if you are party is wrong or right. What matters are the people who are living in this country and depend on "their representatives" in the senate and government to make the best decisions for the whole country and not only a few people! The question is why are republicans so set on keeping our country divided? Why democrats are called "liberals" just because they do not share the same Christian beliefs as the far right Republicans? When was religion ever involved in politics? Was this country not created on the separation of Church and state? Do we not have freedom of religion? I mean if we came to this point where we are forcing our beliefs on others then what is the difference between us and those Islamic extremists? And why are we suddenly "unpatriotic" because we like peace? I strongly denounce the Republican Party for its lack of responsibility and respect toward the American people.

3- The Democratic Party:

While I consider myself to be a democrat I have to attack my own party because I believe they have been very lax since they took power of the senate and the house giving aid to more Bush control. They have not changed any of the status quo. We are still fighting an unneeded war in Iraq and loosing our men and our tax money everyday. The economy has not changed to better and it probably will not. They did not do anything with the gas prices. They brought the gas tycoons for questioning just to look like they are doing something but in reality nothing was done. They did not do anything to stop Bush and his shenanigans and when one brave senator, Dennis Kucinich, tried to impeach him they opposed him for political reasons. This party with this lax behavior is responsible for the deterioration of America.

4- McDonald's:

There is no doubt that Mc Donald is a global superpower company that anyone would love to have their stocks. However, I believe they have strongly contributed to a highly obese nation. There are many nations that have a McDonald's but only the U.S. has a McDonald's almost on every other corner. You can sometimes sit in one McDonald's and see the other one! Their super fatty food and the use of trans-fats have clogged the nation's arteries. Sure, someone will argue that it is not their fault, that it is the fault of the people because they are the one who make the choice to go there and they can simply go to subway. I do agree with that people make the choice. But when there are two Big-Macs for $3.00 at McDonald's and there is a 6-inch for $2.49 at subway, the poor person will clearly go with the cheaper, faster choice. The problem is the fact that healthy food in the US is highly more expensive than unhealthy food that uses chemical and biological engineering. This is highly ironic since agriculture is a major industry in the US and is a net exporter of food. But this will go back to the government who does not support cheaper prices for healthy foods and leave the market to be dominated by corporate giants.

5- Coca Cola:

Everybody knows Coca-Cola! Everybody drank coca cola at one point of another. And a lot of those drinks two cans, three, and four cans a day if not more. How a drink is ruining America? Coca-Cola is not a drink anymore. It is a global superpower. It is the most known brand ever known to man or woman. While coca-cola has been around since the late 1800s, it did not become popular until the early 1900s. It was actually developed to replace an alcoholic French wine drink. According to Michael Liewbowitz, author of The Chemistry of Love, Coca-Cola used to have nine milligrams of cocaine init but it was removed in 1903. The cocaine was removed because it was unneeded. The 10 teaspoons of sugar that are in a coke are enough to give you an instant high in the first 10 minutes you have the drink. Those ten teaspoons are 100% of your recommended daily intake. Thus, more than one can means 200% and 300% etc. Now, after you have your drink your blood sugar spikes and your liver responds by turning sugar into fat. Without going into excruciating details, a can of coke will give you a high, converts all sugar in your system into fat, makes you want to pee, takes away all your calcium which was going to your bones, gives you a sugar crash, and makes your irritable or sluggish. That is just one can. Now with all the massive advertisements, no one will just have one coke. You will have one around in the morning, one in the afternoon and maybe one in the evening. But, we are adults so we should know better. What about the children or the teenagers? Coke is now pretty much everywhere. It is in vending machines in schools, it is in your grocery store and vending machines outside of your grocery store. It is at McDonald, Burger King and Wendy's. It is in almost every restaurant you go to. It is in the movie theater and almost every place you like to go to. And if all this is not enough, you will find their ads everywhere and they will even help you get your son or daughter get into college but they have to drink coke. Sure, there are other options to drink but why would you drink boring water when you can have a coke? That is how a teenager thinks and that is how the marketing department of Coke thinks. And even if you want to drink water, guess what? Coca cola bought them to. In fact, Coca cola have bought any company in the states or in the whole world who tried to compete with its sales, from India to Sweden to South America. In fact, under its wings, Coca Cola has over 100 brands at least and they are simply unstoppable. They will keep ruining our health and diet for more generations to come and we will keep being the fattest nation!

6- American Auto Makers:

The CEOs of these companies for the last 20 years are completely retarded and deserve to go to jail. Those people who are always proud to buy American cars that are built in America, are slowly switching to other manufacturers because they realized that American cars are no longer built in America and have the reliability of those levees during the Katrina storm. Many people have been screaming, including me, have been screaming that our cars are too immense, too unreliable, too exhausting to the environment but the Ford and GM kept making the cars bigger and bigger. That is how we got to the disastrous Hummer which went from a status symbol to something people run away from like the black plague. Moreover, now all SUVs are losing their values with an exponential rate because of the gas prices. The Japanese automakers were smart because they realized something everyone already knew: Fuel is not infinite and therefore smaller cars will need to be built. The Europeans followed and made small, fuel efficient cars. The result is clear. One company such as Toyota sold more cars in the last few years than the colossal GM which includes Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer and recently Saab. Now of course the big auto makers are asking for a bail out because of the bad economy we are in. This will keep on going until we have a complete shift in the way we think about the environment as a whole and not just ourselves.

7- The Media:

Can someone explain to me what is going on in the media? We have over 250 channels and yet sometimes you are browsing and you can not see something that you can actually benefit from. It is not even entertaining! Why do I care if Britney Spears got knocked up again or if she walks around without underwear? Why do I care if she lost her babies or not? Who cares if Tom Cruise is nuts? Why do we have to have a reality show on every person that is unimportant? It is like a reality show for the former celebrities or the celebrity wannabes. Kim Kardashian's celebrity came from the fact that she is just a friend of Paris Hilton and what a great friend she is. Now she has her own show with her two lovely sisters and sometime I can not even tell the difference between those three. Why the focus on highly unimportant stuff? People do not know what is going on in the world anymore because the extreme focus on mindless matters. You have endless shows that do not have any point in life. Has any winners from America's Next Top Model actually became something beside a cover girl for like a week or two? Or do they just end up on MTV on yet another stupid reality show? What is the point of Dancing with the Stars besides giving the "stars" or former stars to just have sex with a new person? There are endless shows without any purpose in life but to waste our brain cells. Studies show that we are loosing our focus abilities because of our habit to watch short 32 seconds ads. Yup, it is actually happening. The average American logs 4.5 hours of TV per day!! Imagine how many ads they watch during that time. Our brain just simply became programmed to that. Because of the gazillion shows out there, the quality of the content has diminished. Now, anybody who has a silly idea can just make a television show. If Kevin Federline and Bobby Brown had a show why can't anyone else? This is wasting our brain cells and more importantly it is wasting our children's futures because they see these wrong role models and they try to imitate them.

8- Education

That is a huge one. Let me just say that as an educator, our education system is a disgrace. It is a joke to say the least. Students are spoon-fed the information from kindergarten all the way to high school. Due to this, they come to high school and they have no sense of responsibility and expect everything to be given to them as if it is their right which would prove disastrous later in life. Education became a joke because of the concentration on the social aspect versus the academic aspect. Students now are more focused on their social life and they care less and less about their education. They care about the clubs they are part of; about the sports they play versus doing their homework or studying for an exam which becomes a nuisance to them. They come to school because it is their social gathering place not because it is a learning place and that is fault of the way we are teaching and the way our philosophy has changed and it keeps changing for the worse especially with the No Child Left Behind Act which was and is disastrous. NCLB is the epitome of spoon feeding the information to the students mind because teachers became force to teach for the exams because they want to raise the scores. Not only that but NCLB focuses solely on math, science and reading while there are many other subjects that need to be focused on. Another problem is the fact that the US Department of Education is filled with people who have nothing to do with education and therefore make decisions which are simply idiotic. To top it off, the Secretary of the Department of Education's specialty is not even education. Another problem is of course funding. Our government funding in education is abysmal compared to other programs while it should be the opposite because if we do not educate the future generations properly then we are putting ourselves in a dire situation.

Our focus need to change immediately in the school to focus more on the academic aspect of the school vs. the social and the athletic aspects. I don't think every school should pride itself in how many clubs it because that is simply idiotic. I don't think every school has to compete in every sport there is. Furthermore, I don't agree with the fact that we need to have two or three and sometimes four teams for every sport. One team per sport is enough. This will create a strong competition among students, better teams and of course less money.

In addition, we must begin to challenge the students at an early level. We must have faith in our students and not just simplify everything for them. These students can achieve more with more challenge. Spoon-feeding the information must end immediately. Also, students should not be allowed to pass from one year to another if they failed in classes as it happens often in middle school. We must strengthen our student's education in English, geography, and history. We must include foreign languages at a much early age. I have full confidence that students can learn a FL as early as Kindergarten.

But before all this happens, we need to channel our financial funds to education because there is a catastrophic lack of funding in our education. We have to understand that education is our investment into the future because right now the outlook is very scary.

9- Banks

Banks are the devil. Let me say this again: banks are the devil. Banks, big or small, do not really care about their clients. They only care about themselves. One of the main reasons we are in this economic quagmire is because of the banks. When the stock market was crashing in the early 2000s, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates which made it easier for companies and individuals to borrow money. When it was easier to borrow, it was easier to own. So people flooded to buy homes they could not afford and the mortgage originators knew this fully well and they gave away the loans anyways so they can make their commission. What happened to the consumer after was not really their problem. Furthermore, the banks started selling these loans to other companies and they received the money upfront therefore getting richer and richer. All this is going on and the Government regulators did not intervene and we managed to borrow 3 trillion dollars from foreign countries which was unheard of but Bush came out and say that "the fundamentals of our economy is strong" and the parrot McCain repeated the same later. But the fundamentals are not strong because Wall Street crashed again. The problem is that day to day people put their money in the bank while the bank turns around and give loans to people. If these loans are risky and the banks are not getting their money bank than the people would ask for their money back of course which now the banks do not have. And after the banks and their ridiculously rich CEOs made all this money, they turned around to ask for a bail out!!

10- Henry Paulson

The secretary of Treasury may not ruin America but he definitely made a huge dent with his complete utter stupidity. The man who was worth $700 million in 2006 came to department of the treasure to fix the gap between rich and poor. The son of a jeweler, Ivy League graduate, multimillionaire was about to fix the gap between rich and poor. Of course he did not fix anything because I am not sure exactly he knows what poor is. Furthermore he made matters worth with his complete misunderstanding of the economy. And why would he? He graduated from Dartmouth College majoring in English which if my memory serves; it has nothing to do with economy. But, that is the man who Bush relied on so of course he messed up very well with one wrong decision and after another. Here are a few statements by the treasury clown:

-"The mortgage fallout will remain largely contained due to the strongest global economy in decades" August 2007, The Boston Globe.

-"it's a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation" September 23, 2008, CBS NEWS.

- "We have no plans to inject any capital into Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac" August 2008, Bloomberg Worldwide. Few weeks later, Fannie Mae and Freddie Max went down.

When a European minister asked what happens if the treasury's bailout plan failed, Mr. Paulson replied " We have nothing else." Indeed we have nothing else when we have such man in charge.

Someone once said that the problem with France is that it is full of Frenchmen. Well, today I believe that the problem with America is that it is full of Americans. Americans who are ignorant, uneducated, self-centered, greedy, close-minded, fat, dumb, lazy, hostile and completely oblivious to what is going on around them. True, not all Americans are like that but there is a good majority which is bringing this country to peril. I believe the people, the companies and the organizations I mentioned are directly involved in weakening and ruining the goodness of America. Without an ethical, moral and social evaluation we can never improve. In fact, we will deteriorate.