The Destruction of America

"In the end our society will be defined not only for what we create, but what we refuse to destroy"

John Sawhill.

Although John Sawhill was talking about the environment, the same could be true for the following: Society, Community, Politics, Justice, Corporations, and Government within the United States.

In Comparison to the environment, in my opinion all these other things are even more devastated and destroyed. They are in danger of being totally eliminated or totally dysfunctional to whom they were supposed to serve.

In this seven part series, I will be taking a close look at each of these categories in depth including the environment

Series seven - Government

The expansion of government as made it very inefficient. In fact, I can't think of one thing more inefficient than government. Government continues to grow with more and more employees doing less and less. For example, the FDA has become pawns for industry. A prime example is one out of every ten people that approve a drug; have financial interest in the drug they are approving; they state that their personal financial interest has little to do with their decisions. Somehow I find this difficult to believe. Another example is most states unemployment offices (now called employment offices) have undergone so many changes that few employees actually spend anytime helping people look for work or aiding them in any ways other than making threats of answering the questions truth Ely or be charged with fraud. This "Threaten" theme is becoming a norm in the Government system, words like "Wear your seat belt or it will hurt" "Litter and you will pay", do this and we will do this, is the new theme. I'm not saying don't wear your seat belt or litter, but why threaten? If a person did those kinds of threats in public it would be considered a fourth degree assault.

Laws, Laws, and more Laws. Have you ever noticed that more and more laws are being created? If you were to stop and think about why this is, you might have a surprising answer, that is, if you can find any logic at all, I haven't found logic in many of them. For example in one state after a public bus driver was shot in the act of driving the bus while passengers were on the bus, a new law was created in the State making it illegal to shoot a person on a bus. Maybe it's cities that added a hotel tax for people ending up in the morgue for their family members to pay the cost, or illegal to barbeque on your deck/patio, spit on the sidewalk, wear black on Sundays, look and listen to a person in court filing a complaint about you. These are just a few of the thousands of ridicules laws created each year. Lord be it we hold the government accountable at the rate our government holds its citizens accountable, maybe this explains why we have increased prisons and jails at enormous rates and while the court system is having a difficult time keeping up with all the cases.

Honesty and integrity is something else missing from government; over the years there have always been various scandals, mysterious deaths, and a plain disregard not only for law, but also the American people as a whole. The consequences of this is outstanding, often from filling rich people and corporations pockets with gold, and producing laws to help the rich; while hurting the middle and poor class.

Government hires subcommittees, private firms for assessments, which are often worthless and bring little result. Government reminds me of the light bulb theory that took two or three people to change it, unfortunately with government that still isn't enough, and once they get to the burned out bulb, they forgot the replacement bulb and it cost the taxpayers extra fees for those services.

We are seeing increasing fees for services, suddenly taxes are not enough. Extra fees for license plate renewal, park fees, hiking fees, toll bridges and roads. Government attempts to say those fees are important because those who use the services pay directly, but if that were true, wouldn't taxes go down? Instead they continue to increase at overwhelming rates. The biggest mystery to me is how come when the government increases taxes and adds fees and still cuts programs; why do they continue to hire more people that do less?

When attacking our citizens isn't enough with thousands of new laws, threats, fees and taxes, our government can decide to use its super power status to force other countries to do what they ask. If they don't ad heir, we can go to war, use sanctions against them, or my favorite, starting an uprising in order to overthrow the government of that country.

I guess the biggest question is; can the voice of the American people be heard without having to pay the government to listen and vote their way? In some states they adopted the initiative law. This was suppose to allow the public to introduce an initiative that the people of the state could vote on and approve or disapprove it to become law, unfortunately like so many things in government, the government can get away with either dismissing it stating "It's bad for the State," or they can change the law in a couple of years making the initiative worthless.

If I can sum up the government's view on the majority of the American people, it goes something like this "We know what is best for you, better than you know what is best for you." I believe that is the biggest problem surrounding government today and why so many within government refuses to listen to people. They play the holier than thou role.

I'm not going to place the entire fault on government, our society either remains ignorant, or doesn't care enough to seek the change they want. We have become lazy. Many people use the excuse that it doesn't do any good to try to change things, in my opinion that is no excuse; it does not justify being lazy and not trying.

I remember something that George Bernard Shaw said "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable man adapts the world to him, therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." The majority of the people within our country have taken the approach of the reasonable man, this as led the government and those who finance them to take advantage of the system leaving the majority of the American people behind.

The definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again expecting different results; yet how come when people vote they keep voting Democrat or Republican expecting different results? If true change is going to happen, it starts by voting outside the box and only than can we move forward.