Posts Tagged → rights
Good Morning
This image was taken in Tucson, Arizona at the encouragement of my 16 year old son. He saw the foolishness of how the Border Patrol labeled the spot where you put the gas in this truck. I posted this to make a point that the United States government is not the right people to be handling the affairs of ordinary people. If they control the Border Patrols to the point that they tell them where to put the gas then you can imagine their control of your healthcare. I work for the government and I can tell you that the Border Patrol is not an isolated incident. All areas of the government are the same. At work they force us to identify wall outlets in the office so that we know they are 120 volts.
It is early on a Sunday morning and my family still sleeps. Yesterday I had to work an unusual Saturday so the weekend seems short. At work there are some deadlines that must be met while they impose a new web based program on us that is not ready for operation. This is pretty typical for the way the government does things. I really do not like to harp on the government all the time but they have proven themselves incapable, bureaucratic over and over again. The system that we are being forced to use is admittedly not ready yet because many of the tools are not even available to update though we are still being held to the same standards as though they were. This web based system is replacing a stand alone computer program that is saved right on the computer that is being worked on. Anyone that has worked with a web based system knows that you have bandwidth issues with transferring data over the web slowing things down. With every transaction it requires a save, and refresh and each transaction requires this four or five times. With every refresh it can take ten to 30 seconds to refresh. Since we have several hundred tasks, the time taken increases more than four times the old method. This does not even account for the modules that are not available yet.
For this reason, I had to be at work on a Saturday at 6:15 am and will have to work overtime every day this coming week and and then do it again next Saturday. Anyone that has ever dealt with any governmental agency whether it be city, county, state, federal, they know that it can be a bureaucratic red tape to do anything. Just go to the Veterans Administration, or Social Security office and you will find they have requirements that are above and beyond other agencies. The VA for example will require you to see a doctor even if you are not sick as a condition for their covering your medical treatment. This is just the nature of government because governments are not held to meeting a bottom line. They do not have to be concerned about profit margins and so efficiency is usually not even a factor in deciding how to do a process. I am not saying that it is malicious but rather just the nature of how things work in the government. If the government runs out of money, they just force the tax payers to give more. This is done through extortion, threats and intimidation.
This is not me going on a rant but rather just pointing out some observations of my being connected to the government for more than 20 years. When you add to this bureaucracy that inevitably exists in any government agency by nature, that they are funded by politicians that may or may have no idea how to run a business, the problem is made worse. Our government is headed up by 535 Senators and Representatives that have virtually no accountability. We have an executive branch that also has no accountability. The Judicial branch is so out of control and has the least accountability of all branches. Our founding fathers created a system that was supposed to have checks and balances to keep leaders from gaining too much power. What has happened over the years is that we have lost our direction and created a two party system that has created a divisive network of issues that really help no one but are used to drive a wedge between groups of people in an effort to gain votes.
There has become this Republican versus Democrat system set up that has its core issues, none of which help any of their constituents yet they are used to emotionally enflame their constituents to vote for one side or the other. There is never a middle ground or any other issues that matter because they along with a willing accomplice in the American media have successfully galvanized the public to fall for these issues. Either you are for it or you are not. Either you support this candidate or you support the other side that is evil. There is no middle ground. These issues are so predictable and always the same. On the Republican side it is the issues of the legality of abortion, the fight against big government and taxes, illegal aliens, and a host of others. On the Democrat side it is the issues of medical care, the poor, the elderly, the unions among others. On both sides they paint the other sides as villains to their respective cause and people just fall right in line. Maybe it is laziness, maybe it is ignorance but in my opinion it is both. I think it is a willing laziness to just accept what you hear on the television as fact and not hold these people accountable.
Many people that run for political office have no qualifications to run a 7-11 store much less spend millions of dollars of our tax money in an attempt to stay in office. Many times political figures will offer some sort of social program and the entire political movement along with the media stands behind this issue as the defining issue of the day. These politicians will paint a picture of some perceived injustice that is happening to a group of people, usually a large voting block like the elderly. They will put themselves in a position as savior to fix this problem if you just support them. They will offer some social program that will give those voters some sort of benefit that is too small to make a real difference yet large enough to convince them that the politician is on their side. The Democrats are very very good at this. They do this in a way that anyone who would dare go against spending this money is portrayed as evil and against progress. This is how the galvanize their followers to vote not only for the program but against the opponent. The Republicans are not as good as the Democrats at doing this but they are just as dishonest.
Our American political system has become a system of celebrity worship where if the candidate can get the most name recognition, they are the winner. The qualifications of the candidate are not even a factor. There are many candidates in Congress that have never had a real job and yet they are making decisions that affect the rest of the country. Another troubling problem is that in our government we have a disproportionate number of lawyers that are in political office. This is not meant to be a slam on lawyers but rather to point out another observation. A lawyer is a special career choice that specializes in rhetoric. When I say rhetoric, I mean the art of words. Being a lawyer is more than just having knowledge of laws that are applicable but also having a knowledge of the power of words. If you have a large vocabulary and the ability to communicate orally and written, then you have skills that are powerful. The career choice of being a lawyer also requires the ability to make an argument for or against anything using whatever information is available. It is an art that must be learned for most people but some are born with it. In this career it is more important to win the argument than it is to be right or wrong. Success it determined on the number of arguments won rather than how many right or wrong arguments are won or lost.
Just as the nature of government is to be bureaucratic, the nature of being a lawyer is to convince people whether by facts or emotion to agree with one side. This is usually done using emotion rather than facts and most lawyers that I know will admit this fact. The problem that arises is that you have a disproportionate number of people that are in charge that are more driven by success of an argument than they are by the drive to do something that is morally right. When this happens people sometimes get emotionally drawn into the argument of the day believing they are doing the right thing when they are really just being played upon. The power brokers are pulling all the strings driven by staying in power and winning their argument while the people are emotionally tied up in issues that the politician/lawyer cares virtually nothing about.
This is made worse because two of the three branches of government, those being the executive and legislative branches have put all controversial decision making on the judicial branch. The judicial branch meaning the courts are run 100% by lawyers with the same drives that I have spoken of before. The courts have zero accountability with lifetime appointments and no chance of being removed from office. The average citizen has no power in the decisions that are made in the courts. The judicial branch of government was intended to make Constitutional determinations of laws that were made by Congress and signed into law by the President. Their job was to determine the Constitutionality of laws. The judicial branch should be used to say yes or no. Yes it is Constitutional or not. What has happened is that judges and courts in general have gone further by adding their opinions to the decisions. These opinions themselves are unconstitutional. These opinions are being referenced in other cases to determine whether other issues are constitutional or not. Judges have no place adding opinions to cases. Further, the use of case law for deciding other issues is just as wrong.
If one judge oversteps his or her power in a decision, then it opens the door for others to use this previous decision to justify their irrational decisions. Since both the executive and legislative branches have not stood up to their responsibilities by impeaching these corrupt judges, there is absolutely no accountability. The Congress turns a blind eye to to corrupt judges and refuses to use their power to remove these judges. Our system has been further corrupted by those in power.
Those in Congress have forced our children to go to schools that preach a certain political slant. They control the education system with the curriculum and money. They have indoctrinated a whole generation of children to believe that a socialist system is better than a capitalist system. When I say socialist, I mean by definition where the government controls the money and assets. Socialism means that the welfare of the nation is determined by the government because they are the handlers of money. I heard a recent poll that said that only 52% of Americans thought that Democracy was better than socialism. This is a scary proposition because many of these people are too young to understand the implications of socialism. They do not remember the former Soviet Union’s grip on Eastern Europe and the world. They do not remember the Soviet Union’s real name was the Union of Soviet SOCIALISTS Republic (USSR). Governments by their very nature will grab more power than is offered them.
Anytime the people willingly give up their freedoms in the name of security, are also giving up their rights. These rights once they are lost, will never return. Security is something we all desire but not all have the willingness to fight for it. When we become lazy and give that security fight over to a government whose nature is to grab power, we lose our rights. This post is not an attempt to scare everyone to death but rather to vent my frustrations at what I see in the world. I see the nation that had such a great reputation in the world willingly handing over the freedoms that were fought for in the name of becoming secure. How many other nations have done this to see their glory days a distant memory? The Soviet Union most likely desired security. The Nazi Germany likely went down the same path. Please do not be lazy and allow those that may not have your best interests at heart be in control of your future. Do not turn your rights over in the name of security.
Do not allow the two political parties and the media to determine your future. Do not allow those that are good with words to take your rights when they are more concerned with winning an argument. Take responsibility for yourself and be critical of those over you. It is good to be critical of those that make decisions over you. Never accept that anyone in power is thinking of you because by our very nature we are selfish. People do what makes them happy without thought. If we hold each other responsible for our own actions, then maybe we should hold those that make decisions on our behalf responsible. This is not meant to be malicious or callous in any way. This is just an attempt to wake people to understand that you have to take responsibility and not let someone else make decisions for you.
I know I paint a bleak picture of our political system in this blog post.