Euthanasia and Dying

I don’t support euthanasia for human beings in any of its guises or any other its myriad forms.  I don’t support assisted suicide and I don’t support future government agencies that will possibly be forms of quasi-euthanasia.  Having said this, I must admit that our current policies to those that are dying need to be addressed since this is a stage that all of us must exit from.

The people that should have the biggest say in regards to their life are the patient himself, his loved ones, medical doctors, and clergy.  The government should have little or no say and little or no power to end or recommend the end of someone's life.  If you cede the power to the government to determine whether your life is of value to it, you have broken the very foundations that this country was founded on to your own demise.  Additionally, there is no place for agencies, be they public or private that advocate assisted suicide, euthanasia, or their ilk.  The purpose of life is to live and to find our way back to God, the giver of all life; further it is not our place to negate our own life or to provide "assistance" to someone to prematurely end their life. 

The main issue with dying is artificial life support that is now provided for in so many cases.  We have the means to keep patients alive for extended periods of time in which the patients are non-responsive, terminally ill, functionally disabled, and the like.  This person remains alive because of artificial life support and their life would thereby end shortly if that life support was removed.  In cases in which there is a living will, the pathway is fairly clear as to what to do or not to do and that is a fair and moral process because the choice has already been made by the patient.  However, not everyone has a living will and therein lays a dilemma.  The dilemma, however, arises from the patient, and not from anyone else.  That is to say, each one of us is responsible for the decisions that we actively make or don't make, consequently, in cases in which there is no living will or health care directive, you have sacrificed some sort of autonomy, and society's obligation to you at that point is to be a good steward.

Prolonging physical life is not always the prudent, fair, or ethical thing to do.  In absence of the patient not being capable of making that choice given their current physical and/or mental condition, health decisions made must be carefully and considerately contemplated and monitored.   Those decisions made will not always be correct, that is why is best to err on the side of extending life support and to avail ourselves of all reasonable options until such time as the most reasonable option is the removal of the artificial life support. 

We owe that obligation both to the living and to the dying.

Education

Our primary and secondary educational institutions are in complete disarray.   According to oecd.org out of 62 countries the United States ranks no higher than 17th in any of the three categories of Reading, Mathematics, and Science, whereas our neighbors to the north: Canada, rank in the top ten of all three of those categories.  The United States is essentially no better than average in which we as a country spend in aggregate $591 billion on education or an average of $11,810 for each student.

One of the biggest problems is the amount of money spent on teachers and its accompanying bureaucracy.    A full-time teacher school year consists of 155-180 workdays, with days spent at work that average under eight hours a day; whereas in the private sector you can expect to work 225-250 workdays with a mandatory eight hours a day.   However, the biggest boondoggle for public teachers is their very lucrative pension fund.  While this amount varies from state-to-state, in Pennsylvania, for example, the pension per year is the equivalent to the average of the teacher's three highest years in salary, multiplied by 2.5% and further multiplied by the number of years worked.  So, if your average three highest years in salary were $55,000 and you retired after thirty years as a teacher, your yearly pension would be $41,250, a figure that cannot and will not be matched by the private sector.  Obviously, it behooves a teacher to do everything possible to boost their highest salary before retiring and the $55,000 yearly salary which is the median salary of a Philadelphia elementary school teacher is quite conservative.

This pension deal is a very good deal for teachers and a very poor one for the public at large.  If, our public teachers were the best teachers in the world as shown by our test scores in which we ranked at the very top, there would be real justification in their salaries and pensions being so generous but in fact, that isn't the case at all.  Clearly our teachers are overcompensated for performing their duties at a far less than optimal rate and producing students that are no better than average despite the massive sums of money expended.  But at least our teachers are teaching, whereas you cannot say the same thing about the out-of-control bureaucracy that helps run our educational system.  We have bureaucrats at the city, county, state, and federal level, with the most egregious of them all being the Department of Education which has a budget of $71 billion dollars and appears to have no direct beneficial success with student test scores or graduation rates.

We would be wise, also, to remember that Public schools were created in America to wrest control away from churches and our Protestant heritage.  It was not until 1917 that every state in the Union had compulsory educational laws; until that time, children were mainly homeschooled, apprenticed to a trade, or schooled within a church.  Since the start of compulsory public education the State has made an active and conscious decision to take control of a child's education from its parents in order to more properly indoctrinate that child in the ways and beliefs of the State. 

The State and its agents have failed our children, while weakening the foundations and the aspirations of this country and what it properly stands for: the freedom of thought and the freedom and ability to do the right thing.

Big Brother

It is incredible, remarkable, and eerie, that George Orwell’s 1948 dystopian novel, 1984, has gotten the future, fundamentally right.  We are being watched, by our own government, every day in every possible and conceivable way.  Not just being watched in public, not just being tracked as we drive our cars, but we are watched through our activities on the internet, the channels we watch on TV, through our cell phones, our shopping, our friends, our associates, our activities, in everything except our thoughts.

Like sheep, only too willing or too obedient or too stupid to know any better, we readily in our everyday activities and behaviors want to be shorn.  It shouldn’t be that way, but we the people are only too willing to trade some illusion of safety for giving up our fundamental rights without any real personal battle vs. the State at all.  The government is effective in their propaganda, their semantics, and their activities that are well coordinated and well organized.

Big Brother already knows everything that he needs to know about me and you.   The telescreen doesn’t need to be on in our house, watching us, seeing, us, recording us, because we aren’t a threat to the State in our homes; the State doesn’t need to know our thoughts as our thoughts don’t provide any real peril.  It is our actions and not our thoughts that the state worries about and our actions are tracked through our activities and our movements and our keystrokes.  All the pieces of the puzzle are already there for the government and they have already put those pieces together.  In a way they know us better than we do ourselves and they understand that we are predictable, traceable, and compliant.  Yes, there are a few protests here and there, a few voices that cry out into the wilderness, but that is expected and desired by the State.  The protests are simply no more than a smokescreen that gives an illusion that there is an ongoing debate between our rights to privacy and the state’s right to protect our homeland and security.   In America, it is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a country in which the people serve the government in which they in turn place all their trust and faith.

The only other major difference between our Big Brother and Orwell’s Big Brother is that our Government’s face isn’t one that projects any fear or intimidation or omniscience.  Our Big Brother is here to help you, to protect you, and to serve you.  The State sites statistics of how many attacks have been prevented, how many times that we have been saved, and how many threats that have been thwarted.  The State reminds us to go about our business as we always have, but now we can take comfort in knowing that we have no fear to fear about.

Big Brother is our friend, our protector, our perfect big brother, looking out for us, guarding us, fighting for us and fighting beside us.  Our big brother never loses, because like our imaginary big brother he is perfect in every way.  Big Brother never sleeps, never rests, never quits, never ages, and keeps on getting stronger, more knowledgeable, and more powerful. 

He is here, He will never leave, He is watching.

Balance Budget

A balance budget is critical to the future of America.  It's good that most cities, counties, and states have Balance Budget Amendments that constricts government from making imprudent decisions, overspending, and unnecessary expenditures.  Further to this point, all governments should be transparent in their spending and in their revenue receipts.  The population has an absolute right to know how much money is being collected and where that money is going.  Without this critical information, an informed decision by the public is not possible.  While we do count on our representatives to provide for our best interests, a crosscheck to the activities and expenditures of government agencies is our right as taxpaying citizens.

At any particular time a city, county, or state may have a shortfall or surplus to their budget.  While a surplus sounds like a good thing, that isn't always true if it encourages indiscriminate spending for current or future projects in which the need has not yet been demonstrated.  Saving surplus funds for a "rainy day" or investing at least a portion of these funds is a prudent thing to do.  In regards to deficits, an immediate trimming of government expenditures must be affected or the problem(s) can easily compound on itself.  Contingency plans are wise as shortfalls in regards to revenues are often foreseen throughout the year through projections based on historic norms.

Unfortunately, the above mainly addresses our cities, counties, and state governments and not our Federal government.  According to treasurydirect.gov our Federal Government deficit first crossed over the one trillion dollar mark on 9/30/1982.  Thirty years later it crossed over the sixteen trillion dollar mark which is an astonishing amount of federal debt created in an incredibly short period of time in which we the citizens of the United States are responsible for paying it.  None of this could have occurred if we had a Balance Budget Amendment to our Constitution.

Our Federal Government has demonstrated that it is incapable of even attempting to balance our budget, so without a Balance Budget Amendment, our deficits will continue to widen and to increase.  A candid look at our present situation suggests that we are in all probability beyond the point of return but we owe to ourselves, and just as importantly we owe to future generations, yet unborn, to right this ship, so that at least we can say that we stood up and fought the good fight.

Massive deficits have tipping points, we can see that in countries such as Argentina (bankrupt 2002), Iceland (bankrupt 2008, Greece, and Ireland, to name just a few.   The United States is distinctly on the path for bankruptcy, despite its enormous economic size, its massive wealth, its highly educated peoples, and its overall desirable work ethic and work rate. 

The way to get off this pathway towards economic Armageddon is to have the courage, the vision, and the passion to do the right thing and to live within our means.   The USA cannot be everything to everyone and our ambitions must be checked and circumscribed by a Balance Budget Amendment.

Texting

When texting first came out I didn't understand it.  I mean, why text somebody when you can simply call them?  It just seemed to me that if you had something of substance to say and you didn't want to talk you could always send an email, so between texting and phoning someone, I didn't see texting as being even pertinent.  How wrong I was!

Texting most definitely was cumbersome when I began texting because I had a keyboard for texting that matched the old phone dialing system.  So ABC was one option on one key and you therefore had to scroll through each letter until you arrived at the desired one and so on and so forth, so a text took a great deal of time and seemed to defeat the purpose, but texting got more and more prevalent and phones got a lot more text friendly.  For instance, my next phone had a slide out keyboard and since I type fast I loved that keyboard and so I got into texting some more.  My present phone is even better, it's fairly smart and does a real good job of giving you appropriate suggestions to finish the word you are typing, but even better than that, the speech-to-text option is amazingly good.  I'm definitely in the minority by using speech-to-text but when it's working right it's very very good.  Also, it doesn't bother me when the phone gets the transcription wrong, I simply try it again and again.  Usually after the third time with the interpretation being misheard, I just type it in, but honestly sometimes the phone transcribes something that is better than what I spoke and I just keep it.

All of the above is to the good when it comes to texting but there are some fundamental issues with texting that includes the lack of just plain good common sense.   When I am at home, or out and about, I text and receive texts but I don't do it in a movie theatre, but it's pretty common to see people text at movie theatres.  While texting isn't as annoying as somebody talking to a friend at the movies, or someone kicking the back of your seat, it's annoying because of the screen brightness in a darkened theatre and I just don't understand the urgency of having to immediately respond to a text.  I also don't understand people that are on a date and in lieu of talking to each other, or getting to know one another, they'll be texting someone else.  If that's the case, why not date the person you're texting?

While there are issues with people texting and not paying attention to where they are walking, by far the biggest issue with texting is while doing so while driving.  I am not particularly a supporter of additional laws against texting while driving although we do already have that law on the books in my state, I am more of a supporter of private enterprise addressing the issue in a comprehensive manner and they have done so with new features/apps that preclude texting while driving or if you are so inclined you can have text messages read aloud to you and you can also respond by voicing your text. 

The main issue is we live in a perpetual world of "now".  Everybody seems to want everything right now.  The other issue is temptation.  You just have to read that text, or you just have to text that person and so forth.  The problem is that texting while driving means extended periods of time with your eyes off of the road which is incredibly dangerous.  It's one thing to glance down at your GPS, or over at your child, or to tune into a radio station, but it's entirely different thing to spend a continuous amount of time reading your text messages or even worst, typing in your own text message. 

I mean, to me, if it's really all that urgent, why not call or make the call, or text them later.

The Military-Industrial Complex

As President Eisenhower left office on January, 1961, he warned us about the Military-Industrial Complex.  This was a man to pay certain attention to as he reached the pinnacle of power not only as our countries' two-term president, but also previously as our Supreme Allied Commander and 5-star General in World War II.  President Eisenhower had a unique and truly inside knowledge about the power and dangers of our Military-Industrial complex and warned us presciently.  Here are a few choice remarks taken from his speech:

"Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry."

"We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations."

"The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted."

Since his speech in 1961, things have gotten much worst, and the Military-Industrial complex has never been stronger.  Upon the changing of the guard in 2008, with the election of President Obama, virtually all the protests over our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan came to a standstill, but since that time has the Military-Industrial complex been weaken?  Unfortunately, not at all.  The NY Times reports:

"Mr. Obama decimated Al Qaeda’s leadership. He overthrew the Libyan dictator. He ramped up drone attacks in Pakistan, waged effective covert wars in Yemen and Somalia and authorized a threefold increase in the number of American troops in Afghanistan. He became the first president to authorize the assassination of a United States citizen."

Now, President Obama is trying to make the case to attack Syria.  None of this makes a lot of sense considering that you're talking about the man who previously won the Nobel Peace Prize, but it does make plenty of sense if the Military-Industrial complex is in fact the de facto arbiter of what does and does not happen in regards to our military activities.  Not only that, the Military-Industrial complex now recognizes for acertainty that business with a Democratic President is even better than under a Republican because with Obama in office, virtually all the protests have evaporated.  This is an example of partisan politics at its worst and total hypocrisy.  If a war is considered wrong or unjust, shouldn't that be decided on the actual merits for said war as compared to the political label of our President?

The Military-Industrial complex is unelected, unsupervisedand undemocratic, yet they control billions upon billions of dollars and have their tentacles into virtually every facet of American life of consequence.  But their influence spans far beyond our borders and affects the world at large for better or for worst.  Our so-called Defense expenditures are excessively high and place obligations and debts onto future generations not yet born to face enemies that do not exist.  Spending money on armaments for a proper defense of one's sovereign nation has its place, but there is no place for unnecessary aggrandizement for selfish reasons under the guise of a false moral superiority.

Home depot pricing

Some people love to shop in stores and some people love to shop online.  In fact, some people love to shop wherever and whenever they can, online, in stores, anywhere, it doesn't really matter and then there are people like me who don't like shopping all that much and prefer the convenience and comfort of shopping online.

Anyway, I had to buy a floor lamp the other day to match the table lamp that I had purchased.  My friend had told me that the floor lamp should cost a little under $50 but when I went searching and found a couple Hampton Bay floor lamps in which one was a perfect match and the other was a nice alternative I couldn't find that pricing range at all.  My price online through Home Depot was $89.97 for the one that matched perfectly and $94.97 for the other one that looked perhaps a little better and would be suitable as a match.

As I said, I like shopping online and I certainly like getting a deal so I did a bit more research by typing in the description of the floor lamps that I was looking for and using my Google search engine to check things out but I still wasn't able to come up with any improved pricing from anybody. 

I then got an email from Home Depot indicating that they were having a special with up to 50% off on overstock lighting which I check into but again came up empty handed.  Now all of this was becoming a real problem because I hate to pay extra money if I don't really need to and I really did need to purchase that floor lamp.  So I went back to the Home Depot website on a different day and I didn't see any change in pricing on either lamp but since I knew that I didn't want the lamp shipped to me and that I was going to pick it up at the Home Depot most convenient to me, I selected one of the lamps and then selected "pick up in store FREE", changed the location of my default Home Depot store to one most convenient to me, andsuddenly within a blink of an eye the price changed from $89.97 to $49.97.  Wow.  I then selected the more expensive lamp and did the same thing and it too changed from $94.97 to $49.97.  Incredible.

Now to understand the facts correctly, during my search with Home Depot they had defaulted me to a store location that I typically don't go to, the reason that Home Depot selects that particular stored is based on my internet connection location.  Had I been logged into my Home Depot account they would have defaulted me to my preferred location but I wasn't logged in. However, once I logged into my Home Depot account, walla!, the price dropped down to $49.97 each.  That makes sense, because logged in they now had the correct Home Depot store for my account and at that store the price for each of the floor lamps really was $49.97.  But I had to take one step further, so I logged out, and then found the same lamps at the $89.97 and $94.97 and this time I didn't log into my Home Depot account, didn't change the default store, and then checked out with the merchandise as a "guest".  I got all the way to the payment page with no changes so I find it safe to conclude that I would have paid those higher prices had I completed the purchase.

So what can we conclude from this?  That Home Depot most definitely has more than one price, depending on how you are purchasing a given item and that it is up to you, the consumer, to ascertain this.  In this real-world example, the in-store price was the lower price by a considerable margin, but that price would be honored if bought online through the steps that I ultimately took.

Do I have a problem with what transpired and the discrepancy in pricing?  No, not at all.  There isn't any doubt in my mind that online prices need not be the same as store prices and in fact it would be difficult to accomplish this goal for stores like Home Depot, even if that was the desired policy. 

So buyer beware.

Hold Em Poker

I enjoy playing poker both online and at a real-world casino and while I'm knowledgeable in virtually all poker games that are played for money I spend the vast majority of my time playing Hold Em, not so much because it's the best game, but mainly because it is the game that is most popular and readily available.  Having said this, there is room for improvement of the experience and I here submit some of my better ideas.

4 Color Deck:

The 4-color deck is my default for playing online poker because there are 4 suits in a deck of cards and each suit should have its own color for ease of reading your hand and the board.  This is not only sensible but right.  I'm just at a cost of words as to why in real-world casinos they are still using 2-color decks.  I know that there are selfish players that want to keep a 2-color deck specifically in the hopes that a player will misplay his hand by assuming he has a flush when he doesn't have one but that is at best, unsporting and a negative reason to keep the 2-color deck in play.

In order to get the 4-color deck back into consideration, one of both of these things should happen.  For final tables on televised events, why not have a card-deck manufacturer pay a small fee for sponsorship of their 4-color alternative decks.  In regards to real-world casinos, why don't they take their slowest night of the week and specifically sponsor a 4-color deck day to see if that might attract some new players into the casino.  The risk would be minimal, the cost would be minimal, and it mirrors the experience players already have online.

Tournament Blinds Increase:

Virtually all real-world tournaments have a clock in which after a certain expended period of time the blinds are increased and this continues throughout the tournament until it is concluded.  On-line tournaments are setup the same way, although there are a few exceptions on minor tournaments online in which the blinds are increased over a set period of hands which I find to be the superior method.  Here's why.

The problem with using a set period of time for the raising of blinds as opposed to a finite amount of hands is that not every player takes the same amount of time per hand.  So that if you are at a table in which the play is extra slow, the amount of hands dealt per hour will decrease, leading to an increase in the luck factor to the detriment of skill.  Low blinds in reference to your chip stack allows for more "play" in a tournament, so that the more hands that you have to play the more "play" or skill is involved. Structuring tournaments around the amount of hands dealt is a fairer structure.

I recognize that to make this change in a tournament structure would be difficult, even problematic, and is probably best suited for online tournaments as opposed to the real-world.  I would like to see this structure become the default online.

Poker Clock:

The online world uses a poker clock and rightly so.  I love the clock because it is efficient, effective, and fair.  Real-world casinos do not use a poker clock and that needs to change.  To be clear, I am not referring to calling a 'clock' on an opponent that then gives the player one minute to decide, I am talking about a tournament game clock.   The easiest implementation of the Poker Clock would be at the final table in which the seats and players are fixed.  Each player is given the same amount of time, perhaps 30 minutes, and the clock for each player can be handled by the Tournament Clock Director.  Each player

will be given an initial 10 seconds to act, before the clock is started, after that period of time your player clock will begin to countdown, should that clock ever expire, you will now be given 10 seconds to act for the duration of the tournament and failure to do so will result in an automatic fold.

The only issue that will come up, is how about when a player asks a legitimate question, such as how many chips that his opponent has; I believe the best answer to that is the Tournament Clock Director, he will decide as to whether the given question(s) is superfluous, a deliberate time-waster, or legitimate, because there isn't any doubt that some players would use this tactic to gain time so not to have to use their clock.

This poker clock is far superior to calling a "clock" on an opponent, because, in theory, there are hands in which you really do need to spend more than a minute before making your decision and if you have not previously run down your poker clock, you should be accommodated on this action because those type of tough decisions are what brings the drama of poker alive.

GPS

I had a subscription to OnStar on my vehicle and while using it I enjoyed it and realized its practicality.  The main benefits of OnStar for your car are:

            Turn-by-turn directions          

            Automatic Crash response     

            Stolen vehicle assistance

You can also make hands free phone calls, and if you lose the location of your vehicle in a huge parking lot, for instance, OnStar will help you find it by beeping your horn and/or flashing your lights.    I used OnStar in lieu of a GPS and appreciated being able to have a human being providing me with directions so that I could get from place-to-place.  However, eventually the cost of the subscription just didn't seem to be cost efficient for me and since I was unable to get them to lower their price to keep me interested I went ahead and got my own GPS.

Now I realize that while I had OnStar that in all likelihood they could track me down to my exact location to the accuracy of their device which I suspect is around 30-40 feet of your true location and further that they could probably extrapolate my speed and basically reconstruct everyplace that I went with that vehicle.  For a criminal, this would be a big problem, for me it really wasn't a big deal, but it was something that I wanted to be cognizant of.  Not too surprisingly, they later came out with a "family link" in which OnStar is so kind as to provide you, the subscriber, with the exact location through your computer of any vehicle signed up with the plan.  That is a definite game changer.

The difference between me signing up for a service is if I am at all diligent, I know the good and the bad, of what the service can or can't do for me.  If the bad outweighs the good, I can simply walk away and be done with it.  Now when another driver, like perhaps your spouse, your significant other, or your child, gets into the car and drives, they may be completely clueless about the score and therein lays a serious problem.  Yes, sure, it's probably meant for good, but in this case there are massive unintended consequences.

Specifically, if you know where someone is at and they don't know that you know, you are in a godlike position and that gives you an incredible power over them.  It puts you in a 'sting-like' situation in which you can just gather information over a period of time before deciding how best to use it or if you feel an urgency you can react to this information in virtual real-time.  Quite frankly, although the system is ostensibly setup to make sure that your loved ones, for instance, arrive at their destination safely; I believe that the family link is really setup for you to find out whether your loved ones are going to a destination that isn't on the approved list.

It's the nanny state, except run by yourself with no supervision, other than your own conscience, and I suppose your own justice system.

Fatalities and Wounded

In Afghanistan, through 2011, about 1,780 U.S.  servicemen and women (according to CNN) have died during this conflict, and according to the Pentagon over 14,000 U.S. troops have been wounded.  Through modern medical practices and logistical operations more soldiers are able to stay alive from wounds and traumatic events that would have invariably killed them in previous military affairs.  Being wounded is something that can easily have lifetime consequences, for instance, amputation and brain trauma are wounds that most definitely will affect your quality and the duration of your lifespan.  Yet we often only hear or read about just fatalities as opposed to the much greater percentage of wounded soldiers which is a great disservice to all Americans.

I do believe that if our headlines combined both fatalities and the wounded in their totals, that the impact and gravity of these foreign wars in the eyes of your average American would be much more appreciated and therefore would be assimilated at a more telling level.  Dying at a young age for your country is a tragedy and a great lost for our communities and our families. Yet those that are wounded, who are still among the living, are in fact living lives of what appears to be a lesser world, in which their sacrifice is underappreciated and the seriousness of their condition(s) apparently unfathomable by the public at large.  For these young men and women, the impact of the war will be with them until the day that they depart from this world.

Therefore it behooves us to take the necessary steps to not only reduce fatalities for our soldiers but to also greatly reduce the amount of wounded soldiers.  The easiest way to reduce those numbers is, quite obviously, to avoid the conflict of war in the first place.  Secondly, while we can applaud noble efforts in the defense of our country, in the appropriate defense of other countries, and of supporting what is right, a war of aggression is seldom justified.  Our wars should be for legitimate self-defense, limited in scope, and efficient to the primary purpose at hand.

Additionally, each war has at least two sides.  The USA is the strongest and most powerful military force in the world, for every one soldier that is wounded or killed on our side, the impact of the other side is exponentially higher.  Costofwar.org estimates that through 2011 as many as 19,013 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan.  How many more have been wounded, displaced, disenfranchised, unemployed, or suffered mental health problems is not known, but the numbers must be staggering.  The cost in human suffering for those that are so unfortunate to have been born in Afghanistan is massive and an unnecessary human tragedy.

Wars have consequences which are long reaching and the subsequent ramifications of these wars are seldom pondered or addressed.  We owe each soldier a valid reason as to our actions, we owe it also to our country, our Founders, our God, and our conscience.  The dead, the dying, and the wounded are the results of our actions, whether those actions truly be in the right or the wrong.

English-Our language

Although English isn't the national language of the USA, it is the de facto language of our country and has been so since our settlement by English speaking peoples in the early 17th century.  Although the French and Spanish once owned and occupied large portions of our country, the most densely populated parts of America have historically been English speaking and subsequent events over history have made English the dominant language throughout this country.  The controversy over what language should be spoken in America has been with us since our inception.  In fact, in 1753, Benjamin Franklin stated in reference to German immigration:

"Few of their children in the Country learn English; they import many Books from Germany…. Advertisements intended to be general are now printed in Dutch and English; the Signs in our Streets have inscriptions in both languages….  they will soon so out number us, that all the advantages we have will not in My Opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our Government will become precarious."

Benjamin Franklin's point was well taken and is applicable today.  While I don't have any issues with private enterprise putting up signage and conducting business in non-English languages, I don't believe that it is wise for government agencies, be it federal, state, or local, to conduct business in any other language than English.

One should look upon language as a form of taxation.  If you wish to be a part of this country, it would behoove you to learn to speak and write English.  If one makes this a firm foundation of what it means to be an American, than peoples that are non-English speaking will either assimilate to our nation or remain somewhat separate and apart.  That is an individual choice.  The more that our government encourages or inadvertently helps residents to maintain their own language in lieu of speaking English, the greater overall disservice we provide them.

It's tough learning a new language, especially if you are an adult, but technology has never been better and the logistics to help people learn in this country are quite strong.  Providing people the option of listening to directions in languages other than English, taking tests in languages other than English, and so forth, only encourages them to remain set in their ways while residing in America which is an English-speaking nation. 

There is nothing wrong with knowing two languages or more, in fact, I encourage it, but those that fail to learn English have too often the means of using crutches that we provide to them and will not let them go, which fails both ourselves and them. 

Not only is English important because it is the language of the USA, it is also the de facto business language of the world, making it even more valuable as the language of choice.  While it may be your prerogative to learn or not to learn English, not learning English puts yourself in a vulnerable and undesirable position.  Speaking English is an invaluable way to communicate your ideas, desires, and viewpoints and readily gives you the opportunity to receive the same.

This is a country united, and in order to remain so, we should, at a minimum, be speaking the same language.

Drug Wars and Our Choices

President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs in June of 1971 which continues until this present day and although the semantics of this "war" may have changed, the policies certainly have not.  Why is it that this declared war has been such an abject failure?   There are a myriad of reasons but the primary reason has to do with money and I don't mean the lack of monies spent trying to intercept and interdict drug smuggling--I mean instead the power of money to corrupt.  There isn't any doubt that our police, our paramilitary troops, our justice system, our government agents, out cities, counties, and states have all implicitly or deliberately aided and abetted drug trafficking into our sovereign nation.

The illegal drug trade is in aggregate a massive criminal enterprise which could not continue to be successful without the appropriate acquiescence or support of the same peoples that are paid to put it out of business.  This corruption breeds not only contempt of the law but also rewards the very behaviors that the war on drugs is suppose to eliminate.  This prohibition of the drug trade has met with the same lack of success as prohibition of alcohol beverages did upon its passage.

America's bully-beating to put down the illegal drug trade and trafficking is an exercise in futility.  Additionally, it is the height of stupidity to spend time and resources to incarcerate small-time drug users in lieu of going after the peoples, networks, and organizations that provide the very drugs themselves.  Incarcerating a drug user serves little or no benefit to the community at large.  How is it the government's business what chemicals we put into our bodies.  If our body is not our own sovereign instrument than whose is it?

Drug wars are a further waste because it allows the government to arbitrarily determine what or what isn't legal or illegal to ingest or inject or to smoke.  This is a prime example of the government creating crime where a previous behavior was accepted through historical precedent or community standards.  Therefore, instead of providing real human aid, our government often runs havoc over those that are less fortunate and powerless to protect themselves from this misapplied force.  In addition to these misguided efforts, the Federal Government takes it upon themselves to run roughshod over State rights in regards to drug laws in which the Feds have no real or compelling reason that they must do so except that they can.

Times and people do change.  For some, the usage of illegal drugs is a rite of passage, that is there for a period of time and then gone. For others, it is a social thing, or a weekend activity, that brings some sort of relief or enjoyment no matter how fleeting.  Then there are those in which illegal drug usage becomes a chronic problem but that problem is best dealt with and by organizations that take a whole-person viewpoint in which they can also provide group support and logistics to address the problems at large.    

Life goes on, let us live it.

Cameras and the law

Video cameras and pictures have changed history.  There is little doubt that when the civil rights activists were being fire hosed down, attacked/intimidated by police dogs, beaten by police batons, treated roughly; and all of this with contempt and disrespect by law enforcement, that in the end Middle America changed their viewpoint on civil rights from perhaps a general non-interest to a belief that this sort of lawless behavior by the law should not be tolerated in America.

When Rodney King suffered his beat-down, had it not be captured on video, he wouldn't even be a footnote to history.  Video and pictures help to even the score with those that are called to "serve and protect" us and that's a very fundamental point.  The fact of the matter is that there are so many laws, arbitrarily and capriciously enforced that any of us are subject to arrest at any time for virtually any reason.  Additionally, cops have all the weapons to enforce "their" law on the street and we seldom have the right to protect ourselves from this unwise enforcement of the law by police officers.

To help even up a very unfair playing field and with technology never having been better, why not make it a prerequisite that all officers of the law wear video cameras as a matter of policy.  Although some police officers and their superiors may initially object, I do believe that it is common sense that people behave better when they know they are being recorded and/or watched.  Police work is difficult, sometimes dangerous, and a video camera will help to show a complete perspective of their encounters.

If, in fact, police officers are upholding the law, and serving and protecting their community, wouldn't they be even more appreciated if videos were released attesting to that very behavior.  Over and over again, we hear that, we the public, shouldn't be afraid or leery of our privacy being violated, being watched, monitored, and tracked.  If that type of 'big brother' activity is OK for the government to engage in under the pretense of protecting its citizenry, then we as citizens should be able to monitor and watch police activity in our community.

Interaction with police ranges from total benevolence to something approaching a real horror show.  The more that we know about the real world in regards to police work and its consequences the more that we can appreciate the nuances and complexities of police activities. 

A safe public is an engaged and involved public.  The measure of a man is their decisions that are made under  trying circumstances, and those types of decisions have a great deal of impact in the community at large.  Police are our agents to help bring order, fairness, protection, service, and safety to our communities.  A good police officer is someone that can perform at a level that ensures the public that their best interests are in mind.  Video cameras are an important and critical crosscheck to help verify that we the people remain the cornerstone of our democratic society.

Billboards

I really don't think about billboards all that much, I just sort of accept them as part of the experience of driving.  Whereas there are some people that think of billboards as an eyesore or a blight, I seldom look upon them that way.  Most billboards don't garner much attention from me but occasionally there is a billboard that is displaying something of interest or catches my eye for some strange reason.  Honestly, what I like about billboards the most is their light at night; I consider it a windfall for the city to get private companies to pay for a billboard in the first place and then as an extra benefittheir billboard is visible at night because it is well lit, making the roads a little easier to see.

The biggest change in billboards nowadays is that some of them are digital.  While I suspect that digital billboards are regulated by city ordinances these are the best billboards of our age because they are extremely bright and can display over a 24-hour period more than one ad and more than one message.  I like them a lot because the ad changes and I appreciate their added illumination.

Billboards are most effective for me as an advertising device when I am driving in an unfamiliar area.  I definitely do keep my eyes open for things like restaurants, hotels, and gas stations because all of those items can be quite applicable to my situation.  While I realize that my GPS can help me with those tasks too, it's not advisable to be accessing your GPS while cruising down the highway at a high rate of speed and it can't really replace the sheer convenience of a billboard.

Anyway, what really got me thinking about billboards was I was pumping gas yesterday and I heard these incredible bird calls that were really loud and persistent.  It didn't make any real sense to me and when I looked up to the sky I didn't see any birds whatsoever but I did see a nice billboard nearby and although I couldn't actually see the speaker on the billboard, I put two and two together and figured that the billboard definitely had a speaker that was sending out those birdcalls to keep those birds away and it appeared to be pretty darn effective, although louder than what I thought it should be.

In looking at previous billboards I remember seeing seated propellers in constant motion to prevent birds from roosting and also spikes to do the same sort of thing.  Birds are wonderful creatures to look at, but roosting birds, nesting birds, and birds that are relieving themselves can be a significant nuisance, even a health hazard, and absolutely no fun at all.

I like signage, billboards, advertising and all that sort of stuff on our roads because they provide information which we can pay attention to at our discretion while also providing revenue, lighting, and employment.    Far from being considered a nuisance, to me, a town or city without billboards or advertising is either a place that is superrich and elite in a very negative way or a place of utter and complete desolation.  Billboards are a convenient way of keeping track.

Stop and frisk

Not all law is good law and not all law coincides with true moral law.  This is a country of laws and our 4th Amendment rights are directly challenged when we give in to dubious 'laws' such as 'stop & frisk'. Our 4th Amendment states that: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…but upon probable cause…"  Stop and frisk as currently practiced is a direct violation of this statue.

Taking NYC as our template, their implementation of essentially a police state, all in the name, of reducing crime or protecting citizens, is a false flag to harass, embarrass, humiliate, intimidate, and abuse those that either have no power(s) within themselves, or are easily made to be scapegoats.  NYC tactics are deliberately setup to ostracize and marginalize peoples that don't meet a certain legally suspect criteria within the NYC power structure.

The proponents of stop and frisk, believe that they got their foundation for their validation of this application of 'law' from the Supreme Court Decision of Terry v. Ohio (1968), if this be the case, they are grossly mistaken, because the Terry v. Ohio (1968), does not and never will be the validation of stop and frisk laws. In fact, Terry v. Ohio (1968) invalidates stop and frisk and it always has.

First, let us get a better understanding of Terry v. Ohio (1968).  Chief Justice Warren stated in his opinion that: "we have no occasion to canvass in detail the constitutional limitations upon the scope of a policeman's power when he confronts a citizen without probable cause to arrest him."  Clearly, this says that in Terry v. Ohio (1968), there was probable cause to arrest Mr. Terry.  Therefore, had there not been probable cause, the Supreme Court decision in all likelihood would have ruled in favor of Terry.  In NYC, in 2011, 685,000 stops were made in which only 770 guns were recovered.  In Terry V. Ohio, each of the two suspects searched, Terry and Chilton had a firearm.  This demonstrates that NYC stop and frisk policies are virtually never about probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion (a clause nowhere found in our Constitution) but about harassment and extralegal tactics.

Further to that point, what exactly is a stop and frisk?  If I am stopped, by a police officer, without probable cause of some crime, I have for all intents and purposes been "seized" by said officer.  If I am then frisked, I have also been "searched" by the same officer.   At a minimum, according to any reasonable interpretation of our 4th Amendment, the officer needs to bring directly to my attention what action(s) that I committed that gave him "probable cause" to search and seize my person.  If that is not done, or if there are no penalties asserted against this action, we are essentially living under a police state in which at any hour, at any time, for any reason, while you are in a public area, you can be accosted by the police an unlimited amount of times with no probable cause to do so.

Smile

I love a great smile and while I suppose it isn't mandatory that your teeth be straight and white, it certainly does help bring if you have it all together with your pearly-white smile.  People that smile, seem happier, and bring more happiness to others.  Although, like a lot of things, smiles can be faked, they can also be quite spontaneous and very natural.  When you see someone with a genuine smile it makes you feel good.  Smiles are just a more effective way of making others believe that you like or care about them.

Although a good smile isn't a requirement for employment and social settings it is certainly a wonderful benefit for both.  People that "light up the room" with their smile are the type of people that captivate you and make you feel good about them and yourself.   A smile can ease the tension around a personal or group session and can bring people out of their funk or shell in a very positive and emotive way.

Smiles are excellent in making people feel acceptance and it further helps to relax them.  A sunny disposition and a smile seem to go together and that is why we equate smiles with people that are either happy or in a good mood or both.  A smile is a wonderful way to greet somebody because it allows the other person to smile back in turn, sort of creating that "I'm OK, you're OK" vibe.

A wonderful smile is a great first impression, it's a way of saying, "I like you, I'm interested, I value you," all rolled into one.  Having a great smile is much more important than a great handshake because the smile comes first and at a further distance.  Also, for those with great smiles and teeth it is a subtle way of saying that you're healthy, have good hygiene and all the rest that is implied with it. 

If you don't have a great smile, is it worth doing so?  Of course, it is.  I am grateful that I received braces at a young age to correct my protruding teeth.  Although as a very young teenager I wasn't particularly sensitive about my teeth, as that was well before my dating years, I was also savvy enough to know that I certainly desired to have them corrected.  Had my teeth remained the same as they were with my two noticeably front teeth protruding it would have absolutely affected me in a very negative way.  I have no doubt that I would have dated less, been less confident about myself, less popular, less desirable, less successful, and much more introverted.   A good smile is worth every penny of the expense and the trivial inconvenience and pain.

While there may be plenty of things you can do or accomplish to make yourself a better person a smile is certainly one of those things who's worth is far beyond superficiality and will bring you and others a lifetime of satisfaction and pleasure. 

As Louis Armstrong (he, of the prodigious talent and great smile) sang: "When you're smiling, keep on smiling, the whole world smiles with you."

Rich cities, poor cities

Why is there such a huge disparity of wealth from city to city in America?  Additionally, what makes one city rich and another city relatively poor, or what makes one city more desirable than another.  While it's difficult to come up with a completely satisfactory list of all items that differentiate between a rich city and a poor city, the following items would seem to be of prime importance overall:

1.       Crime rate per capita

2.       Arts and cultural events

3.       Physicians/hospitals per capita

4.       Climate

5.       Natural resources and beauty

6.       Water

7.       Higher Education

8.       Government subsidies

9.       Transportation

10.   History

While traveling around virtually any major city you will typically see areas of modernity, high-worth, impressive architecture and on the opposite tack you will come upon dilapidated buildings, impoverishment, and lack.  That's just within one city.  However, when traveling from city to city and from state to state, you can't help but notice that some cities are much richer than others.  The poor regions often have prominent tell-tale signs such as roads in need of repair, abandoned buildings, infrastructure shortfalls, weather-beaten housing and the like. 

Is it possible that some cities have more income/monies coming in and therefore are able to upgrade and advance, whereas other cities have not enough income to maintain services and their population and consequently are in a downward spiral?  I do believe so.

First off, taxes are not evenly distribution throughout cities, counties, states, and through our federal government.  That is to say, taxes are taken away from certain communities and not replaced at a 1:1 level, so that in certain cities, millions upon millions of dollars leave those communities every year and something considerably less than that finds its way back.  That obviously makes certain cities poorer and other cities richer.

Another factor that influences the makeup of a city is the employment of its residents.  In general, the fewer people employed, the less income; although the makeup of the jobs and their consummate salaries plays a very significant part in overall size of the income pie in a particular city.  But a city in which there is high unemployment without residual income from retirement or pension accounts is a city in decline.  Additionally, there is a direct correlation that those with Bachelor's Degree or higher make considerably more money than those that do not have Advanced Educational Degrees.    In fact, that is an important reason why some cities have gone from rich to poor, because the middle-class jobs that employed their predominantly blue-collar cities has declined precipitously over the last twenty years. 

Finally, people vote with their feet.  When the opportunities are few and far between for employment in your particular community, you will seriously consider looking for work and employment opportunities elsewhere.   The most motivated people will leave first, leaving behind those that are less able, older, and those set in their ways. 

While cities in decline can turn it around, to do so, takes vision, determination, and carefully planned long-term decision making.

9/10 of one cent

There is one common item that most of us purchase that is priced out to the one-thousand cent and that is gasoline.  When we purchase gasoline the price should always be rounded up by $.01 because the gallon price of let's say $3.57 is in reality $3.579 which translates into $3.58 per gallon and what appears to be $3.57, is essentially a penny more or more precisely $.009 more which is exactly 9/10th of a penny more.  This extra $.009 which may seem trivial does add up. For instance, the average consumer who uses 500 gallons of gas a year would spend an additional $4.50 (500 x .009) on gasoline because of this 9/10th of one centWhile that might not sound like much, it's enough to get yourself a decent meal at a fast food place. 

Of course, from the oil business perspective the view is a little bit different, because they deal with really large numbers.  According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in 2011 the United States consumed about 134 billion gallons.  Assuming that all those gallons had an extra $.009 tacked onto them that would mean an additional   $1,206,000,000 (134,000,000,000 x .009) was spent on gasoline just from that modest and almost immaterial increase per gallon of $.009.  That's right, folks, that's 1.2 billion dollars more spent on gasoline for that innocuous $.009 that is tacked on and hardly noticed.

Having stated the above, I often wonder why more retailers don't add on this $.009 charge, especially given that everything is computerized and consequently adjusting your cash register to handle and round up a given number would seem to be a relatively trivial matter.  While I'd be the first to admit that while selling something for a high price, let's say $20 and above, it might not be worth the exercise there are plenty of stores that sell goods for consistently low prices or have consistently low margins.  In particular, I think of grocery stores and those bargain stores such as Dollar Tree, Dollar General, and the like.

In fact, one of those stores did make the change and took their price all the way out to the one-ten-thousand of a cent.  That store is the 99 Cents Only Store which implemented a new pricing policy of 99.99 cents or $.9999 in 2008 and got hit with a class action lawsuit in 2010 for their troubles.  The suit probably says more about our litigatious society rather than the merits of the suit because I believe their price increase was absolutely brilliant and probably necessary.  To put this in perspective, Family Dollar, which despite their name does sell goods for more than $1, claims that their average transaction in 2010 was $9.91.  Using this number for the 99 Cents Only Store this extra $.0099 would cost the consumer about $.10 per trip which is trivial.  For the 99 Cents Only Store this $.0099 price increase was probably a necessary step in order to maintain or improve their gross margin and it essentially gave them another penny to absorb any additional costs involved in purchasing the products that they sell--meaning that they can hold the line on a larger variety of products for a greater length of time.

It is this extra penny that businesses with low margins and/or low pricing need to make a play at.  The consumer is pretty much is acquiescent to it and/or easily accommodative to it.  A penny here and a penny there do indeed add up. 

Grocery Stores

You'd be an unusual adult if you didn't frequent some type of grocery store, but I wonder how many of us take grocery stores for granted.  To me, every time that I go into a grocery store I am amazed at the amount of products on display, their freshness, their organization, their convenience, their quality, their good customer service, and their very reasonable pricing,  All of this is available to me, for just a short drive and the competition is fierce in this industry.

The logistics of getting fresh produce to your grocery store in plentiful supply is impressive.  This takes an extraordinary effort of coordination, transportation, refrigeration, packing, unpacking, distribution and knowledge.  Supermarkets are one of those things that we just assume is a given, and don't pay any mind to, unless something goes terribly wrong. 

To be able to get fresh food, or readily packaged food, is a real godsend, and something that in the great eons of time has seldom been available.  At my grocery store, pretty much everything that you want in order to have a balanced and nutritional diet is available with no questions asked or unnecessary fuss.  This is really astonishing and makes our lives much better.

The ability to transport foods and keep them preserved or fresh is the reason why we have such an abundance of these foods in our grocery stores.  Being able to stock up on foods that we need or crave is a time-saving and money-saving convenience.  Most Americans do not grow or have the inclination to grow or hunt for their own food and would be befuddled should it ever come down to that.

Yet, despite our taking grocery stores for granted, it takes a complicated series of maneuvers that are carefully orchestrated together to make everything look so effortless and complete. In order for a grocery chain to be efficiently stocked with products that fill its consumer needs, a sophisticated inventory system is setup which takes into account: distribution cycles, pricing, reliability, turnover, historical norms, and safety stock.   Through this sophisticated analysis and with the benefit of a database that can run through more than one scenario, decisions will be made that have worldwide implications for food distribution since food and food products have become completely globalized.

These foods will often make their way from their original distribution point to massive and centralized distribution centers of 350,000 sq ft or more for storage, organization, and ultimately to the efficient distribution of their products to us.

All of this handiwork takes the utilization of energy.  Without the necessary fossil fuels or reliable and refrigerated transportation, the whole process would come to a grinding halt.  Energy, more than any other factor, is the Achilles heel of the supermarket business.  Should energy shortages ever become the norm in America, or should energy costs rise in cost or become unstable in some fashion, the ramifications for us as consumers would be felt very quickly in the price, availability, and reliability of our day-to-day grocery shopping habits.

DUI

Driving under the Influence (DUIs') aren't really about making the roads safer for me and you; they are a lot more about the symbiotic relationship between 'opposing' attorneys, extra and unmerited revenue for government agencies, and in some jurisdictions: free and undeserved mandatory labor.  While I would agree that people that actually do have  their driving abilities impaired should be subject to a reasonable penalty for using our public roads, I do not agree with our current DUI laws which are arbitrary, capricious, and morally suspect.

For instance, how is it that the needle for a DUI is constantly moving ever downward so that the blood alcohol level to be considered DUI is becoming lower and lower.  That isn't good science, that isn't science at all, which makes for arbitrary and very bad law.  For instance, in Georgia, in 1954, you were considered to be under the influence of intoxicating liquor at 0.15 percent.  Since that time, Georgia has reduced its' definition of "under the influence of intoxicating liquor" to 0.12 percent, then to 0.10 percent, and now to 0.08 percent.   Then,  in May of 2013 the NTSB put out their recommendation that a DUI should be further reduced from its current 0.08 percent (in all 50 states) to 0.05 percent.   Since the Federal Government likes to wield its big stick and withhold highway construction monies from states that do not adhere to its dictates, the chances of this becoming the new standard for a DUI are quite high.

What a DUI should be about is actual driving impairment and nothing else.  Therefore DUIs should be based on sound science with proven and reliable studies as compared to the arbitrary levels to which we are subjected to daily.  It is these studies that should solely determine the amount of alcohol level permitted to define whether a driver is or is not "under the influence of intoxicating liquor".    The inability of government agencies to follow this reasonable and sane process is demonstrative proof that DUIs are in fact not about good law but instead a source of revenue, harassment, and oppressive police/government actions.

DUI proponents love to recite statistics that demonstrate how many lives have been saved from having strict DUI laws in regards to blood alcohol content.  Their premise is that if you continue to lower DUI levels, our roads will become safer and less deadly.  If this was indeed the case, why allow any public consumption of alcohol whatsoever!   In fact, why waste your time lowering the DUI levels, as opposed to simply eliminating alcohol as a legal beverage in this country.   Isn't this the ultimate objective?

While driving is a privilege and not a right, it's biased and unfair to arrest, incarcerate, compel to enforced labor, and monetarily fine drivers who have committed no crime other than to have an arbitrary amount of blood alcohol in their body.  This serves no good purpose and many bad ones.  Bad laws and bad justice do not make good citizens and builds contempt for the law.