I REALLY AM A PATRIOT!

I really AM a Patriot
Current mood: contemplative


Here's the thing: Life is not supposed to be that hard. If life seems really difficult, it's time to step back and figure out what the hell you are doing wrong.



The only reason I know this is because I have lived for a while, and sometimes things got to be very difficult, but the older I've gotten, the more I know that while it isn't easy, we're usually the one getting in our own way.




I totally forgot, until just now, how pissed off I was about the suspension of the Colorado school teacher who actually ASKED HIS STUDENTS TO THINK!!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2072905,00.html

The schools are so busy trying to satisfy the religious right and the most worthless of all programs: No child Left Behind that they seem to forget that we are actually going to expect these kids to be productive and informed members of society.

It should come as absolutely no surprise that there are some pretty scary similarities in the way both Hitler and Bush's administrations accomplished things.

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

"Patriotism does not oblige us to acquiesce in the destruction of liberty. Patriotism obliges us to question it, at least.
--Wendy Kaminer, 2003

Question authority!

Remember: "No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots." Barbara Erdreich

corporate welfare

Corporate Welfare (Don’t Get Me Started)

The purpose of corporate welfare seems to be a way for corporations to rid themselves of tax burdens by basically encouraging cities and/or states to offer them incentives to locate or relocate in their area(s), leaving the unpaid tax burdens on the communities for a very long time; that includes the people that they end up hiring.
The cities and states need to offer these incentives and abatements to entice the corporations and companies to bring economic development to their particular areas. The problem is that someone will have to pick up the tab for any of these bribes in both the short and long run, and it falls on the individuals in those communities, and they are generally those who can least afford the extra expenses, and most likely would not be allowed to draw any type of personal welfare, even with the additional tax load put upon them by a business.
It seems that our government has lost its collective mind to pay multi-million-

dollar companies to do the very things the companies are in business to do, or that the government has done itself. In the case of Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, the government closed the facility, and then ended up offering almost 400 million dollars, between city, state, and federal governments, to re-open it for pretty much the same duties it had. In the past two years, they have added a 1 billion dollar incentive that is to create 6,000 more jobs, at a cost of 166,666 dollars per.
I realize that locating or relocating of some of the businesses would be beneficial to both the companies and the areas they move into, however; according to our “free market” system, the move would benefit both without gross misuse of tax cuts and dollars from anyone. That also means that big business gets the welfare and small businesses and individuals get the shaft.
My guess is that government, whether they are local, state, or federal, are uninterested in the welfare of people, it is only interest in the bottom-line for corporations. In my lifetime, we have had wars on poverty, drugs, and terrorism-all established by the government and they have all done nothing to abate or end the problems; they only cause them to become worse.
Corporate welfare is unfair. It is unfair, but I have learned that life is unfair. We have over 1 million homeless in our country. We allow laws to be passed that put or keep non-violent people in prison for years or the rest of their lives without giving them any reason to have any self-respect, most of them poor minorities. The rich keep getting richer in the U.S. and that’s the way they like it, whether it is their corporation, or themselves, anyone else be damned.
If we insisted that our government spend the money on actual solutions for our poor, disadvantaged, and minorities instead of pork-barrel spending that seems to only perpetuate the problem in many communities, we may get somewhere, but that would entail making new laws that actually prevented government officials from taking money from the companies or their interest groups. That is where the biggest problem stems from. When we learn that we must first take care of people before business, we may get somewhere.

Politics where have all the hippies gone?

Well, the idealists of the 60's and 70's abandoned the task of creating a Utopian

society after they were seduced by money-making in the Reagan era.

Now these same people are the one's we keep electing and re-electing into offices

where we allow them to continue trampling on the poor and middle-class while they

continue to distance themselves in class and ideology from the exact people they are

supposed to represent.

I'm getting sicker just thinking about it.