It ain't no disgrace to be poor, but might as well be

The above quote is attributed to Kin Hubbard, as written by Kurt Vonnegut in his seminal book, "Slaughterhouse Five".  Vonnegut's book was published in 1969, and if anything, the legal situation for the poor and disenfranchised in America has gotten appreciably worse.  America has so many laws on the books in so many different communities that in actual fact and practicality, being poor, is not only a disgrace but often a criminal or a civil offense against the State.  While we read in Luke 9:3, that Christ made the charge to his apostles to: "Take nothing for your journey, neither staves, nor scrip, neither bread, neither money; neither have two coats apiece," this would in today's world, mean almost certainly monetary fines, or jail time, or harassment, or possibly physical abuse.  Further in Luke 9:58, we read: "And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head."  Unfortunately, for the Christ, if his incarnation had come about in modern day America, He wouldn't be preaching in public, but would be spending most of His time in jail, under vagrancy laws or perhaps for inciting civil unrest.

The poor in America get the short end of the stick in just about every situation that they come across.  For instance, traffic tickets are an important source of income for many communities, to which, the cost of the ticket for someone gainfully employed is the same as someone suffering from limited opportunities and a limited income while still working the same forty hours as the more fortunate person, but simply being paid appreciably less for doing so.  Further to this point, a traffic ticket has ramifications beyond just the ticket and its payment, to which if you don't pay it on time, or fail to make your court appearance, there are additional penalties and fines imposed, which can lead to a sentence of community service, which is essentially the use of your labor for free, the possible suspension of your driver's license, an increase in your car insurance costs, and should all these events merge together, possible jail time.

When it comes to banking, the poor too are treated like so much chaff, because often they do not have the same sort of access to the traditional banking system as those with money and means.  For instance, many people are able to avoid banking fees, because they have the appropriate balance in their account and further they are able to avoid debit fees because they make sure to use their debit card only at their own bank's ATM or other banks that are networked into the same system.  Whereas, for poor people, often they can't maintain the necessary minimum balance in their account, initiating unwanted fees, and if they should become short of the balance needed to cover a check, they will suffer with additional fees for overdraft protection in order to make good on these checks.  Then there are the unbanked, that have no traditional banking relationship, but instead have to use check-cashing services at a local store, which will charge them a fee for doing so, a fee for money orders or other cash instruments, and a fee and a very high interest rate to borrow money against their paychecks.

The poor are squeezed by every side, and those that have little or no income, and nowhere to rest their weary heads, are often harassed, herded, and/or placed in jail, under the charge of criminal trespassing, for the crime of sleeping in the streets or for general vagrancy.

The reason that the State is so hard on the poor, is seldom because of a real safety concern for residents, but in reality as a way to break their spirit and to control them, as if they were animals; never once recognizing that the poor are our fellow brothers, created by the same God, and entitled therefore to common decency, respect, and love.   

Horizontal Drilling: You against Big Money

When you own your own property there is a general assumption made that you own not only the surface area of the land that you have purchased but also the land beneath it, which would include minerals, gas, oil, dirt, or whatever is contained within the area underneath your property soil.  While that may well be true in most circumstances, there are areas of the country that in general, when properties are sold are only selling you the surface area of the land, while they still retain the mineral rights to the land beneath.  Assuming that you have done your research and discovered that you do indeed own the mineral rights to your land, you might think that makes you king and master of those rights, under all circumstances, but in fact, that is wrong.

For instance, let's assume that you own a large piece of land in which for whatever reason there is a strong supposition that beneath that land there is natural gas or something of value that a company would like to extract from that land.  Even if you are absolutely adamant that you are not interested in leasing, selling, permitting, or having tampered with any aspect of your land, you may find that your protests can be pushed aside legally, quasi-legally, or illegally. 

In general, most people believe that when you drill for something that, by definition, that the drill-bit goes down exactly vertically, but that isn't true, the drill can be angled, and/or the drilling and pipes can be later changed beneath the surface, such as when hitting a shale formation, into a horizontal direction in order to extract the minerals desired, meaning, that in theory, a drilling company, could begin drilling on an adjacent piece of land that they have permission to drill upon, and then for whatever reason, decide to horizontally drill in such a manner so as to extract minerals from your property.  While doing such a thing, this would most probably be illegal, the thing is, unless someone at that company becomes a whistleblower or similar, you probably would never know of this violation since it is sight unseen to you, yet you would have at a minimum legal recourse.

Unfortunately, for those that own their own mineral rights for a certainty and have determined that under no circumstances would they want to be bothered with any drilling on their land, the law as written in certain jurisdictions allows for those property rights to be trumped by drilling companies.  That is to say, through a law known as "compulsory integration", your land and your mineral rights that you believe are in your control, are not.  Those mineral rights, as given by compulsory integration law, means that a drilling company can drill into your land and extract natural gas or oil, and there isn't a thing that you can do about it.  While you will, by law, receive compensation via royalty for your minerals that are extracted, that tribute is often not what you did desire in the first place.

The upshot of all this is that often the law bends to the demands of those that have the deep pockets to influence it, making law in this country hardly one of equality, but instead one of power and inequality.

Happiness is Doing Right

Happiness is very important to each of us as is attested to by our Declaration of Independence which declares that we are endowed with the unalienable right for the pursuit of happiness.  Aw, but perhaps therein lies the rub, as we aren't guaranteed happiness, but within our psyche is a restless and innate desire for happiness.  Many people spend their entire lives not really knowing how to pursue happiness or what happiness really is, but they know that they want to be happy, and so they pursue happiness, chasing it in one way or another, in one form or another, through the shadows, for their entire lives, with varying degrees of success.

The thing about happiness, true happiness, is that happiness and satisfaction is not the same thing.  That is to say, when you have a wonderful meal or something that delights the sense feelings within your body, it will be perfect for a moment, delightful, but invariably those feelings of benevolence, of gratification, will fade away, leaving you essentially back to where you were a few minutes ago, or a few hours ago, and once again in pursuit of that same feeling.  This would imply strongly that the path of happiness cannot be through the satisfaction of your bodily urges, because if that were true, it would be akin to being on an endless merry-go-round, to which there is no satisfying escape.

Then there are others that believe that true happiness comes from owning or having the use of various things, including money and its equivalents.  While money has its place and its value, it too won't bring lasting happiness, because the satiation that money and what money brings can never be truly satisfied as there will always be one more thing, one more item, or something just lacking, that must be fulfilled or pursued.  The pursuit of this material satisfaction won't necessarily lead to unhappiness but at the same time it won't bring you the fulfillment of true happiness.

Happiness can be found only by doing the right thing, no matter your circumstances or your situation.  Each day we are given myriad choices and paths that we can engage upon, and doing the things that are right, will bring the most satisfaction to your soul and your inner being.  How do we know that this is true?  We know this, because when we reflect upon the days and times when we felt the most happy, they are invariably the times when we know that we did the right thing, and not necessarily the easy thing, or the most expedient one.  We did these things because we intuitively recognized that far from this being a world of unconnected people at constant war with one another, we are at our core all created by the same Creator and our soul is restless and unsatisfied, until it aligns correctly with the Master of it all, and that can only come about by performing in a way that attests to that Higher Truth.

While each of us is entitled to pursue happiness as he or she best sees fit, one will find, that each good deed builds upon another, and brick by brick, step by step, happiness come to each of us as we do right, as God gives us the light to see what is right, and through the diligent following of that light, we will find that true happiness rests in the palm of Him who is righteousness himself and total blissfulness.

Form W-2s

People have gotten use to Form W-2s, which keeps track of your yearly income and is reported to government agencies each and every year for purposes of calculating not only your future social security and other government benefits, but also for the express purpose of determining your actual wage income and from that the basis an indication of your tax liability to the State.  The detail of the information provided to the government includes your Social Security number, your legal name, your employer's Identification number, addresses, and wages.  While it certainly makes sense that the government needs to know this information in order to determine future governmental benefits, this W-2 information is at the same time the basis for any agency or entity, to formulate a real good idea of your financial wherewithal.

That is to say, the government or whomever has access to your W-2 and/or your 1099, if applicable, can at its discretion easily determine a baseline analysis of what you should or shouldn't have as material assets primarily based on your declared income and any other activities that are in the public domain.  This means, that the government, in theory, at any time, can prosecute people that appear to have assets that are well beyond what their legal income has declared, for tax evasion, or other similar crimes.

The thing is once the government is materially aware of what income that you make, with a little legwork about your background, they can readily determine forthwith whether you are or are not someone that appears to have more in material assets than what the government believes is conceivable, given your circumstances.  This means that in the scheme of things, that the tax arm of the government, can always be used as a cudgel against people that for one reason or another, the government has not been able to file actionable charges against.

The fact of the matter is that the W-2 operates fundamentally at a level that allows the government to track and to monitor you, and while that may be fine when dealing with governmental authorities that are moral and upright, it is not fine when dealing with governmental agencies that are compromised.  Further to the point, the more information that entities have that are not subservient to you, in which specifically they know the trajectory of your income, the more power that they hold over you.

Nowadays, for the most part you cannot work without proper identification of yourself, and receiving in return a W-2 or a 1099 form for your labor.  While this may seem like a fair and safe thing, and while to a certain degree it is, what it means is that for people that just wish to be anonymous for whatever reason while providing an honest day's labor for an honest day's wage, the government does not sanction such a thing.  In fact, the government has specific rules in regards to the filing and reporting of income that penalizes both the party that should have issued the 1099 as well as the party that fails to declare such income on their tax return.

There was a time when W-2s didn't exist, but when Americans gravitated to a desire for the new "nanny state", it meant giving power to the government to monitor and to track their income, and relinquishing their own sovereignty while doing so.

All Day Advertising

Advertising in America is big business, with people being inundated with ads, while watching TV, listening to the radio, on their Facebook page, popup ads on the internet, billboards, and so forth; it is thereby very difficult to lead a life where you are not seeing ad upon ad upon ad on a daily basis.  You would think that with all this advertising surrounding us that people would readily admit that ads affect their buying decisions, their shopping decisions, and who they really are, but in fact, most people give off the impression that they hardly notice ads at all and that their influence upon them therefore is minimal.  If this was really true would advertisers spend $167 billion dollars in the United States advertising as they are estimated to have done in 2013 by techcrunch.com?

The fact of the matter is that advertising influences people and their buying decisions, all of the time; of course, some people are influenced much more than others, and perhaps there are a few that are hardly influenced at all, but advertising is extremely effective in what it does, which is to influence your buying and your product appreciation.  To the uninitiated, you might think that the point of advertising is something akin to Sgt. Joe Friday, "just the facts, ma'am," but that is virtually something that advertising never does.  The way that products are pitched to consumers depends upon a lot of factors, but at its foundation is their desire to influence you, and to a certain extent, convince you that the idea of buying that particular product somehow originated with yourself.

The onslaught of ads directed against consumers has never been more insidious than it is at the present day, primarily because of the internet.  The reason that the internet is a vehicle that appeals very strongly to advertisers is the fact that because you have identified yourself so conspicuously online through websites such as Facebook or Google, the ads thereby that you now see have a much more specific focus and purpose, because the advertiser has a real good understanding of who and what you are, which they are experts at exploiting. 

Although, to the uninformed consumer, advertising may seem to be one of those irritating things, or possibly even enjoyed, to the advertisers it is absolutely serious business and they are very much result oriented.  That is why, advertisers always want to know more and more information specifically about you, because the more that they know about you and what makes you tick, the more that they can take that information and model it to appeal to your specific temperament.

If advertising didn't work, there wouldn't be any advertising at all, there would instead be only little factual booklets about particular products, and everything would be boxed and displayed in the same drab and dull way.  But, in fact, advertising works all too well, especially in getting people to believe that the product that they are buying and using, will make them better in some way, will fulfill them in some way, or make their life more joyful in some way, which sometimes might even be true.  To the advertiser, while they are definitely delighted anytime that they gain a new product loyalist, the bottom line is that in doing so they want to remind you that the decision that you made was all yours, whereas, in reality, it was carefully and craftily constructed so that the choice you made, was the choice that they made for you, on behalf of you.

USPS: the Servant of FedEx and UPS

The United States Postal Service (USPS) has not turned a profit since 2006, has flat revenues, and has seen its overall mail volume plummet over the last decade. Additionally, the USPS has legacy costs that pretty much preclude the USPS from being a service that is sustainable without taxpayer funded aid now and far into the foreseeable future.  Since the closing of the previous century the price for 1st class postage has risen nearly 50%, and there isn't any reason not to expect similar increases to come.

The USPS is a government monopoly to which they are the only agency legally allowed to deliver 1st class mail, amongst other mail products to the mail boxes throughout the United States.  However, as everyone knows, there are other companies, such as Federal Express (FedEx) and United Parcel Service (UPS) that deliver all sorts of packages, of all different sizes and delivery priorities throughout the United States to people's doors and garages throughout the day.  These businesses are for-profit, and while there isn't any guarantee that UPS or FedEx will make a profit in a given year, they consistently do so.

Most people might find surprising that although FedEx and UPS compete against each other, they don't really compete with the USPS. For instance, the USPS has packages such as express mail, priority mail, and 1st class mail, which are flown by FedEx to their destination point.  In fact, FedEx is USPS's go to company for the rapid and efficient delivery of mail packages that are sent via USPS, as demonstrated by the fact that in 2011 FedEx received nearly $1.5 billion in revenues from the USPS, which made them far and away the biggest supplier of all to the USPS. 

So while FedEx and UPS garner revenue from handling the mail needs of the USPS, it also works the other way, in which the USPS handles the delivery of packages from these companies, in the so-called "final mile" for FedEx and USPS for the delivery of packages and other mail-related items to customers.  While on the one hand, this almost sounds like a win-win situation, because the USPS is obligated to make home delivery of mail, Monday through Saturday, there is one fundamental fly in the ointment, and that is the fact that UPS and FedEx must answer to their Board of Directors as well as to their stockholders, and subsequently we can be assured that they know their costs backwards and forwards, whereas the USPS, is well, a government monopoly, that wants to keep their employees busy.

The USPS parcel select service which handles the final mile for FedEx, UPS, and Amazon, has according to marketwatch.com: "surged nearly 500% to about 1.29 billion packages in 2013 from about 223 million in 2009."  This signifies the importance of this final mile to FedEx, UPS, and Amazon, but in the absence of real transparency, in the absence of an actual cost analysis, in the absence of a realistic estimate of what this service would cost these publicly held corporations for doing the same thing, we are left at a lost as to whether it is good for USPS or not.  All things being equal, the answer is probably not.

The State's only Fear is the Church

In today's court we get bad law, bad decisions, and circuitous reasoning that have taken a country that was founded upon the solid ground of Christian principles, freedom of religion, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and has replaced it instead with a wall of separation between church and State. This is a policy that is anathema to the very meaning of America's Declaration of Independence, and diametrically opposed to the reasoning for our revolution in the first place.

What few people know is that the longest part of our Declaration of Independence is the specific list of grievances against the King of England, who was not only the highest civil authority in America at that time, but also the highest ecclesiastical authority for the Anglican Church in America.  That is why it was so important that in the fight for America's independence from Great Britain, that this revolution would take the scepter from the hand of arbitrary power and give it instead to the people of the land, so that their power was supreme within America, a power by the people, for the people, with representatives from the people, to assure that the government was of the people.

Our Declaration of Independence made it clear that our inherent rights come from our Creator, and not from the divine right of Kings, or from any other manmade governmental power.  Upon the founding of America, it was clearly recognized by the highest powers of this land, that this was a country that understood that it had been blessed by God himself, and that as George Washington stated: “religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.”

Fortunately, for America, our revolution was a success and through hard work, dedication, freedom, principles, and rule of law, America became the greatest and most powerful country in the entire world, a position to which it still holds today.  However, over a period of time, nefarious entities within America dedicated to power, lust, and mammon, came upon a basic truth, that the only thing keeping the people away from declaring their absolute obedience to the State was religion.  This meant that the State through legislation, judicial decisions, media and propaganda had to make every effort to wean away the public from believing in the efficacy of our Creator or even of God's necessity.  That, in fact, man is the measure of man, and that God, was a throwback to a different age, in which mankind was ignorant of his evolution from primordial slime to risen material man.

This prevailing interest by the highest forms of government within America is not just to increase profits and exploitation of mankind throughout the world, but has as its most abiding interest, to disengage God from its own citizenship.  In all situations, the powers-to-be that run this great nation do so with a basic understanding that they are vastly outnumbered by the people, so that there is always the fear of the people, uprising and throwing off their shackles and chains.  If, though, this is a material world, that there is no God, than the State can play off any hint of revolt, by providing as a matter of course all material comforts that the public needs, such as making sure that wine, bread, and circuses are provided in abundance to placate the people.  However, if the people believe that they do have eternal souls, that there is a Creator that watches over them and cares for them, their loyalty to the State may be questioned, and a subject that believes its obedience is best made to God, himself, is a subject that is capable of rebelling against the State, and receiving the just rewards for having done so.

The Real Reason for Separation of Church from State

All sorts of people spend an inordinate amount of time and effort, trying to convince present-day Americans, that the foundation of our country was always based upon the separation of Church and State.  While there is some truth to this statement, the statement in of itself, is deceitful, as the first Amendment to our Constitution makes it quite clear, that this so-called separation is in reality, a mandate that the Government at the highest level, will not now, nor never, ever establish a State-sanctioned Church to the exclusion of all other denominations of churches.  This in substance means that rather than their being a separation of Church and State in America, that instead that the State sanctions the free exercise of religion in America, and will not interfere with it.

The main reason that the Church has been separated from the State in our national Government, is the fact, that the colonies as originally constructed all had State-sponsored religions, in which, for instance, the States of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and New York, had at one time, the Anglican Church as their established church in their State.  The Anglican Church is also known as the Church of England, and the Church of England is the established Church of the country, England, to which, the head of that Church, is at the present time the Queen of England, but at the time of our revolution, it was King George III, the very monarch that our Declaration of Independence railed against as a tyrant. 

Therefore, it then follows, at the time of the American uprising against England, that those that lived in States, such as our most populous State Virginia, which was the home of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and James Madison, could not at that time, nor in the future, both rebel against their motherland, England, yet on a spiritual level, be loyal to the Anglican church which was the established Church of England.  Consequently, this meant that our rebellion was a rebellion against both church and State, with the important caveat being that the rebellion against the Church was a rebellion against the established Church, the Anglican Church and its representatives, which could not be allowed to be established in our free land as the arbiter of our liberty, freedom, and our pursuit of happiness.

Consequently, upon the founding of the United States of America, no Church was established at the national government sanctioned level to be the one church that all would have to worship and pay tribute to.  Instead, in America, its citizens were given the established right to worship as their consciences deemed fit, without government intrusion upon their faith.  This did not mean, however, that the State had no interest in religion, was opposed to religion, or was constitutionally set against religion for its people.  It meant, instead, that the State would not favor one religion to the exclusion of all others, while recognizing through its laws, through its interactions, and through its affairs, that its faith in a Higher Power, our Creator, was the very foundation of all our freedoms, and that these rights were unalienable and given to use freely by the very hand of God.

The People that Don't File Their Taxes on Time or At All

Despite the fact that most people that work for legitimate employers in legitimate jobs, have at least a portion of their taxes taken out during each pay period, and even though these very same employees will receive a W-2 at the end of their fiscal year, which is the fundamental basis of the determination of their tax liability or not, there are an inordinate amount of Americans that never get around to filing their taxes or are late in doing so.  According to investopedia.com we read: "In 2009, a spokesperson for the U.S. Internal Revenue Service estimated that 8.2 million Americans owed over $83 billion in back taxes." While there are myriad reasons for this sad sight of affairs, one very basic reason for non-filing or the late filing of taxes is that there are a lot of people in America that are simply overwhelmed by the idea or concept of filing taxes in the first place and simply have no clue as to how to successfully do so. 

That does lead to the general complaint that schools, in general, should probably spend more time with students, simply dealing with practical matters that people will have to tackle at some point in their life, so that things that seem mysterious to them today, will not be something that they will fear or become intimidated by.  Another point to be made, is that rather than having all these tax stores that are setup to profit upon man's ignorance, there should be, especially in lower socio-economic areas of cities, at least a few storefronts at no cost to the taxpayer, that are specifically setup to help those that need assistance in doing their taxes, because often times getting off to a good start is the key to creating success now and into the future.

There are two basic types of people that don't file their taxes, the first type is the aforementioned people that are either intimidated or ignorant of how to file their taxes, and seemed overwhelmed by the entire process of such.  The other type of people, are those that have either through their own incompetency, their lack of cash, their poor business practices, non-interest in paying back child support, or through outright fraud, aren't going to file their taxes because they know that they have place themselves into a position in which they have committed a basic tax infringement and they don't want to own up to it.

The thing is once you get yourself into the position in which you haven't paid your taxes as estimated by the IRS, nor have made contact with the IRS, after they have tried to make contact with you, the IRS will take steps to recover their monies owed by establishing garnishments and liens, along with the invariable penalties for failure to file, while, in reality, in most cases, the IRS is quite willing to make some sort of accommodation with you in order to work things out.  Additionally, once the IRS determines that you owe the money to the government, any refunds of overpayment of taxes in future years that you have coming to you, will be seized by the government, including any penalties and interest that they have added to the principle amount.

Unfortunately, in today's world, your social security number is essentially your national ID card, and consequently in order to get legitimate work, you will have to divulge this information, which allows the government often to get a basic idea of your tax obligation on any given year.  The failure to file taxes isn't going to help you, and it could most certainly hurt you, so even though you might forget or forsake this obligation, the government won't, and that is a certainty.

The End of Cash as We Know It

According to the huffingtonpost.com "Last year 27 percent of all point-of-sale purchases were made with cash and that number is expected to drop to 23 percent by 2017."  Nowadays, consumers have a multitude of choices in order to pay for products which do not involved handing over cash such as their debit card, prepaid card, gift card, credit card, smart-phone, or things of a similar nature, and more and more people are paying for their products by using this type of payment as opposed to cash.  In virtually any marketplace transaction today, there will be at least one electronic option to pay your bill in a non-cash way.  While one can applaud these advancements as being of a convenience to the consumer, there are, negative aspects to a cashless society as well.

For instance, the shadow economy is much more inclined to deal with cash based transactions for both convenience, as well as the fact that cash is basically anonymous, unless steps have been taken such as in a string operation, to record the S/Ns of the cash bills being used.  Another additional advantage of cash is that it is fungible, which means that the liquidity of cash cannot be beat by any other cash equivalent instrument as cash in on itself, has instant recognizable and transferrable value, whether the electronic grid is up or down, whether websites are functioning or not, and whether banks or open or closed.

There isn't any good reason why cash and alternative means of paying for goods should not continue to exist side-by-side as there are advantages for each type of medium, and in specific situations, each medium will have its advantages over the other.  However, the powers-to-be in commerce, industry, banking, and government have an abiding interest into seeing that cash is marginalized within society.  One prevailing reason as to why government and other entities would like to see cash eliminated is that the electronic means of payment such as through your smart-phone, credit card, and debit card, all leave a clear and evident footprint so as to how that you as a person are spending your money.  This information is invaluable for merchants as well as for the government in being able to profile you quite distinctly.  Perhaps even more importantly for these same entities that are tracking you, is that the elimination of cash allows the government and its cohorts in times of civil unrest, economic disturbances and such, to control your access and ability to use your electronic forms of payment, and/or to specifically deny you access to your own money in such a way that you cannot function.

If your smart-phone will not function as a form of payment, and your other plastic substitutes are also not usable, you are in a very vulnerable position which cannot be alleviated unless somebody sympathetic to your plight but not in the same boat as you, takes mercy upon your condition, or unless you satisfy the government authorities in such a way so as to get access back to your money.  Cash, on the other hand, is at the present time, fungible, real and valuable.  A world without cash is a world in which your freedom has been compromised to such a great extent, that the government and the force that it represents can in a very short order of time, control you, should it so desire, lock, stock, and smoking barrel.

Password Cracker

The internet is like the wild, Wild West, but unlike the wild, Wild West which was really just a metaphor for the lawlessness and the general disrespect of the rule of law, that came about from the expansion of America and its Manifest Destiny mindset; the internet is truly global and worldwide.  This means that even though America and other nations may very well have specific rules and regulations as to what is or is not permitted on the internet, and what is or is not legal, in regards to the internet, these laws have little or no standing or any effectiveness in countries that do not respect the law, or through laissez-faire attitudes care little about specific laws, or just have a plain inability or non-interest in policing its own citizens, especially if such activity does not negatively impact that country's internal power structure.

So, in effect, your password is something that may easily be considered to be "fair game" by others, in which in order to obtain your password, sophisticated programs are available for sale or usage to do such a deed. For the uninitiated or for those that don't really think about these matters, you might believe that a hacker trying to retrieve your password can only do so through the "front door", so-to-speak, that is to say, they have your email address name, or your account name, or your Facebook log-in name and now they will attempt to make an educated guess as to what your password is, based on perhaps some other information about you that they are aware of, in regards to you.  The problem with this sort of attack is you only get perhaps three tries, before you are locked out, unless you also have a program that fools, for example, yahoo, into believing that each attempt that you are making to break the password is the first attempt, even though it isn't.

In most situations, in which an entity knows little or nothing about their intended target except that they want to get into their personal account, the attacker does his job much more efficiently by getting a copy of your stored and encrypted password and then attacking that offline.  That is to say, through your Wi-Fi, which has been compromised or perhaps you are using a public Wi-Fi service, you will at some point type in your password to the website that you are visiting, and the attacker will snag a copy of this encrypted password.  Now that the hacker has a copy of your encrypted password, through his own ingenuity and the tools of computer programs and their ability to handle and process incredible amounts of information in very short periods of time, the hacker at his leisure can begin to ply his trade.  For those, that just don't believe this is possible, Eric Escobar writes: "… let's say I had an 8 character password made up of just numbers. Using my graphics card, it would take about 200 seconds--just over 3 minutes--to crack this password." 

There are plenty of websites that sell programs or services that will crack passwords, while I cannot vouch for the validity of any of them, one can easily state that the business model that works best for this type of work, is one in which the service that is being sold, actually works and is effective.  Further to the point, through the power of computers, the experience of master cryptologists, and budgets dedicated to tasks such as this, it is a given that many of your everyday passwords for the tasks that you commonly use can be easily broken, should someone or some agency have a deep desire to do so.

Medical Doctors and their Legal Right to Kill You

People have all sorts of fears, some sound, and some completely of their own making.  There is in many people a general fear of the unknown, and specifically for many people, a fear of the "undiscovered country"--that is death.  But if death was an unnatural order of things, completely against the laws of nature, we would not be surrounded with the endless cycle of birth, death, and re-birth, over and over again.  However, in the West, as so many have repudiated God, religion, and a belief in a soul, death has become something incredibly frightening, something to be feared, and if one in the natural previously could not control the time of one's death, perhaps there is comfort in knowing that, in today's world, that you most certainly can. 

In America, there are four States that have legalized assisted suicide, which thereby allows medical doctors to kill you, by you giving your consent, to do so, in those States.  Quite troubling, fundamentally, physicians in this country should not be allowed to legally, implicitly or not, court ruling or not, legislated or not, to take the life of their fellow citizens, as this not only degrades the meaning of what a physician should be about, which is the respect and sanctity of human life, but by virtue of any medical doctor taking the life of a patient, degenerates the entire profession, itself. 

If, physicians and citizens truly believe that to take the life of another human being, is a noble or dignified thing to do under certain circumstances, than this country should set aside a specialty just outside the medical field, to which those previously studying for medicine, can get a certain, specified designation, sanctioned by the State, that allows them to kill patients, subject to State oversight.  These learned people, perhaps might be called, Euthanasia Quietus practitioners, in which they would not under any circumstances be trained as a medical doctor with a medical degree, but they would instead be, specifically schooled just to kill people, who desire to be killed by the State, with dignity, and sanctioned as such.

The advantage of such a system, would be that you as a patient, would have far less to fear, when being attended to by a physician, since his highest obligation, would still be "…an active advocate for each patient's care and well-being," rather than being subverted into a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality, in which, whether feeling pressure by the State, by your physician, by your relatives, your conscience, the inconvenience, the pain, the medicine which addles you brain, or whatnot, somehow the conversation turns to,  you "voluntarily" desiring to relinquish your life, and the physician merely nodding his head, and indicating, that he would be delighted to make that service available for you.

While States such as Oregon might feel, that their suicide legislation as written is clear-cut, and that their mercy killing of individuals with dignity act, is the height of some sort of convoluted humane act of justice, it is nothing of the sort.  Basically, it's exactly the opposite of its so-called intent, and will in its effect, invariably lead to carte blanche State sanctioned killing of individuals, starting with the weak, the defenseless, the feeble, and the old, and ending with truth, liberty, and justice.

Cable and Satellite TV Will Invariably Change

Back in the days before cable and satellite TV existed, all the TV programs that you watched, you watched for free.  Of course, back then the channel selection and variety was rather limited, but there is something about free, that just feels good.  Not only that, there is something about coming up with the money for the television, plugging it in, perhaps adjusting the antenna, and instantly having content without having to contact anyone or to do much of anything or to wait for the provider to arrive within their four hour allocation window.

However, people have not only a desire to one-up another, but also have a desire to utilize their products to their maximum effectiveness, so when cable stations came out that offered content for a more mature audience, or variety that just wasn't readily available on their TV, or allowed a TV to function in areas of the country that couldn't reliably receive a TV signal, that extra cost was something that consumers were quite willing to pay, mainly because it added value to their TV experience.  Since those early days, cable and satellite TV providers have morphed into providing just about everything to everyone but at a price. 

The thing is that in the age of the internet, and our desire for instant gratification, the watching of TV in which you have to wait until it's 8:00pm for your show to start, doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, especially considering that the programming that you are eager to watch is pre-recorded.  So in the absence of a live sporting or newscast event, it would make much more sense for you as an individual to be able to watch the content that you desire, at the time that you desire, for your own convenience.  That is exactly what sites such as YouTube, Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix for the most part provide for their consumers, on demand programming of what you want to watch, when you want to watch it, and the ability to watch it repeatedly, or pause it, and so forth.   

For the consumers of cable and satellite TV there will always be a subsection of their consumer base that are pretty happy and satisfied with the status quo, but for those that have grown up with the internet, appreciate the convenience and power of the internet, and are on the go, the current way of providing content on these services seems out-of-touch.  These consumers demand not only the flexibility to watch the content that they desire when they desire to do so, they are often also willing to watch such content by providing something in return to the service for doing so.  This means, that if in order to watch the program that they desire, that they have to log onto a particular website, fill out a one-time profile, and then their content begins they will do so.  Further, this means, that if they have to watch advertisements specifically taking into account particulars in regards to their individual profile, they will also do so. 

In many, many cases, consumers will willingly give up detailed information about themselves, in order to watch content for free and at their convenience.  While advertisers on mainstream television programs, have a pretty good idea of the general makeup of those watching TV programs that they advertise on, they would certainly prefer to be in a situation in which they know specifically who is watching, when they are watching, and where they are watching their TV content, so as to be more effective in their advertising content.

What cable and satellite providers will find out, for the most part, is that the watching of TV and how it is paid for has come full circle, that is to say, in the future, far fewer people will want or desire to pay a premium for cable, but will gladly provide information about themselves, or go through targeted websites or smart TVs in order to watch their desired content, for free.  That loss in revenue can be made up by the satellite providers by advertisers.

American Indians and Broken Treaties

America was a land occupied by American Indians before the arrival of Europeans to which these two very different cultures clashed repeatedly with the ultimate and clear victor being the Americans from Europe which would in the process later create the colonies and a new Constitutional government which we know today as the United States of America.  Unfortunately, for the American Indians, they were over a period of time, quickly outnumbered, outmaneuvered, hoodwinked, divided, outgunned in war, denied true justice, and forced off of their traditional tribal lands, irrespective of whether they had legal rights to that land or not.

The American Indians were no match for the machinations of the American government, to which the American Indians believed that given their precarious position, that bargaining with the white man was their best choice, and therefore they signed numerous treaties with the United States government, all to little or no avail.  A treaty, by definition, is an agreement between two or more parties with specific terms and conditions to be followed by both and with specified penalties for any violations of such.  What the American Indians did not realize was that their signatures to treaties, really didn't mean much in practicality, as the American government, unilaterally re-interpreted, broke, amended and subverted treaty after treaty with the American Indians so as to achieve their desired aims, which was to push virtually all Indians off of virtually all lands east of the Mississippi and to displace them to the unsettled west, by force, if necessary.

In effect, the American government vacated every treaty with the American Indians and/or interpreted such so as to favor whatever that the American government wanted in actual results.  This meant, effectively, that the American Indians were treated as wards of the State, which continues to this very day, and that the American government was the sole determinant of what the American Indian would or would not receive, own, or have on any given day.  The overarching objective of the American government was to displace the American Indians onto worthless land, from every single perspective of the word: worthlessness, and to have nary a concern about American Indians and their traditions, their ways, and their tribal territories.  To make matters even worse for the American Indian, if it was later discovered that the land that they occupied had some worth, such as minerals, strategic or other, no matter the terms of said treaty, the American Indians would be moved again.

The upshot of the American government's treatment of American Indians and the treaties of such, was that in effect, the treaties were just a means to sell the illusion of fairness and justice to the American Indians and to a lesser extent the American public, while in actuality, the purpose was to marginalize and to neutralize the American Indian in such a manner, that it looked somewhat civil in its effects, while being incredibly devastating and potent in its design.

While the American government can be proud of its conquering and the submission of the American Indian, it did so in the most underhanded and deceitful way possible.  There is no honor in unilaterally violating a treaty made in good faith, nor is there any honor in not keeping your word.

Air Rights and Privacy in the Era of Drones

The owning of property by the common man is something that many people aspire to have, as the old maxim states, "a man's home is his castle".  The general thought before the age of technology, was that property ownership meant in effect, that the owner owned not only the soil to which his home rest upon, but the sky above.  However, in the advent of the aviation, the air rights above was further defined by court law, so that heights of 500 feet and above, were considered to be "….  a public highway and part of the public domain."  Nowadays, air rights in conjunction with the ready availability and low price-points of drones have changed the game again, and many States are in the process of creating and legislating appropriate rules and regulations for drones, which in the end may ultimately be mandated by the Federal Government, itself.

While it is one thing for a drone to simply be traveling from point A to point B, in which during this travel, it flies over your property but does not create a noise issue or any conceivable nuisance issue, nor does the drone take any video or still photography; it is entirely a different matter, however, if a drone flying over your property has camera resolution so precise that it can see and record everything of substance on your property grounds, including but not limited to discovering illegal plants upon your property which would not be discoverable except from an aerial vantage point.

It has been said, that "good fences make good neighbors," but in this era of one-upmanship, any neighbor with a few dollars in his pocket can now see exactly what is going on in regards to his neighbor's property through the eyes of a drone.  Further to this point, not only can a drone easily see what is out in the open on your property, but depending upon the sophistication of the camera of the drone, whether windows are open or shut, thermal reading capabilities, night-vision capabilities, and depending upon lighting conditions both internal as well as external, a drone can easily record very intrusive information from inside a home.

While for the most part, the worry of one neighbor intruding through the use of a drone of another neighbor is fairly minimal, since in so doing, the risk to reward ratio is rather weak, this mindset does not hold when it comes to the government, and government proxies.  A sophisticated drone, in the hands of the military, paramilitary, or police forces can easily obtain information that is actionable against property owners and will in conjunction with the already impressive arsenal of surveillance tools at their disposal, find great fruition. Those then that are targeted will be at the mercy of agencies that in aggregate will hear everything and see anything, to which there will be no sanctuary.

Those that venture out into public space understand that there are rules and regulations that govern that space.  Once the walls of privacy have been successfully breached inside private space, your decisions, your behavior, your rules, your life, have been compromised and are no longer in your control.

Wards of the State

The amount of Americans that receive government benefits continues to increase at such an astonishing rate, that soon, if not already now, more than 50% of all Americans will receive at least one government benefit.  The wsj.com reports that: “The 49.1% of the population in a household that gets benefits is up from 30% in the early 1980s and 44.4% as recently as the third quarter of 2008.” This effectively means that a significant portion of Americans have abandoned or don’t consciously recognize our Puritan work ethic heritage, but instead have replaced this mindset with an “entitlement” mentality and an innate dependency upon the generosity of the State.

The fact that such a huge percentage of our population is dependent in one form or another upon their Government to sustain their way of living creates an incredible amount of problems.  For instance, once any person is dependent upon another, or is counting upon another to continue to do things that they have been doing for them, especially have done so for a long period of time, the taking away of such will have enormous consequences, especially if this aid is taken away in a blink of an eye.  That is to say, if you have not taught a man how to fish, and you thereby take away his daily supply of fish, you have created a monstrous type of problem, because when people are in a situation to which the answer is to sink or to swim, most of them ultimately will do what they need to do in order to survive.

This means, in effect, what our government has done in creating such a huge underclass which is so dependent upon receiving the same benefits that they have been receiving, day by day, and year by year, is that this dependency cycle cannot be suddenly stopped for any reason, for absolute chaos, civil unrest, and all other attendant problems would for a certainty rear its ugly head.  On the other hand, as a greater and greater percentage of Americans become wards of the State, the good American ship, is in danger itself, of not being able to steer itself into safer harbors.

While the government, has its reasons, both good and bad, for allowing or having such a high percentage of people that are dependent upon the liberal hand of Government, Government itself, must take or tax or steal or rob social welfare from its productive citizens in order to accomplish this re-distribution of income and property.  Additionally and very importantly if government does not compel its citizens to earn their own keep through their own labor, except in cases of infirmity or other debilitating diseases or circumstances, but instead misguidedly eases certain classes and categories of citizens into states of indolence and slothfulness, than that potential and that labor from these people is lost forever, and the government is an accessory to this malfeasance to its own people.

While it is one thing to be charitable to those that are less fortunate than ourselves, it is another thing entirely to encourage one’s own citizens that a life of ease is what we are entitled to upon our birth.  In Proverbs 22:6, we read: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”  America must ask itself, what indeed, have they wrought when asking so little from its citizens, and should not be surprised, when they find out, as they will, that dependency breeds contempt, and instead of love and admiration directed towards our government, there will be hatred and much bloodshed.

There is no such thing as the Independent Party

America has two big political party choices, Democratic or Republican, and beyond those massive establishment parties there is a multitude of minor political parties that any registered voter can affiliate themselves with.  However, voters are also given the option when registering to vote to choose the "non-enrolled" box or "no party affiliation" although there are some voters who get confused and select the American independent Party, believing that represents the non-existent Independent Party, when in fact, the American Independent Party, is in actuality a paleo-conservative party and most definitely is its own political party.  This means that when we hear the term, "Independents", on newscast and similar media outlets, we need to understand that what the pundits are referring to are people who are registered to vote without any particular party affiliation, hence Independent, and/or referring to people that claim that in principle they don't relate to either the Democratic or Republican parties and "self-identify" themselves as Independents.

If we look at the Congressional makeup, there are two Senators and no members of the House of Representatives that claim to be "Independents", and when they ran for election they did so without direct affiliation with the Democratic or Republican parties, but in fact, if we look at the two Independents in the Senate, we have Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who when he ran for the Senate was endorsed by the Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and at the present time, is running for the nomination of the Democratic party for the Presidency of the United States, so clearly Sanders is a Democrat, despite his self-professed Independent designation.  The other Senator, who is also an Independent, is Angus King of Maine, who basically made a deal with the Democrats during his election run, and has consistently caucused with the Democrats since he was elected.

While the forgoing might imply that the Independent designation appears to be in reality a proxy for the Democratic Party, that isn't necessarily true, or even the point.  The point is that those that run without party affiliation, sell the illusion that they are truly independent, whereas they aren't independent at all, they will, in essence, break bread with one of the major parties in order to be effective in their elected role, and therefore independents as a political choice, is really just a shell game, in which, those elected under such a label, aren't independent at all.

This means that those voters that self-identify themselves as Independents, are really showing their distaste or disgust or disagreement with both of the major parties, but their so-called independent stance, resolves actually none of their disagreements, because in one form or another, the person being elected will almost for a certainty be either a Democrat or a Republican or someone that will be one of those in all but name. 

So the bottom line for Independents is that you don't actually have an Independent party in America, and your non-affiliation with any party major or not, simply means you haven't taken the time to figure out what it is that you want from your government representatives or perhaps you don't really care. 

The Rise of Soccer in America is Inevitable

America offers four professional sports leagues that make up what is known as the Big Four, which are the NFL, NBA, MLB, and the NHL.  When it comes to Forbes annual rating of sports franchises globally, out of the top 50, the NFL has the most franchises listed at 20, the MLB has 12, and the NBA has 10 franchises, whereas the NHL has none.  Also, within that global list there are seven soccer franchises that make the list, of which three out of the top five in franchise valuations in the entire world are, in fact, soccer franchises, with Real Madrid leading the way as the most valuable sports team in the world.

Currently, the most value team in America’s own soccer league, the MLS, is the Seattle Sounders at $245 million as estimated by Forbes, whereas the least valuable hockey team in America is the Florida Panthers at $190 million.  While the NHL franchises in aggregate are much more valuable by a considerable margin over the MLS franchises, the most valuable NFL franchises are Canadian and not American, in addition the NHL is a league that has been around for generations whereas the MLS was created in 1993.  Yet, on every single metric that measures the popularity of sports and value, the NHL will be trumped by the MLS probably within the next generation.

While the NFL is the most popular and most valuable sport in America, the NFL for many reasons, such as violence and physical size, will never be able to be translated into a sport that will be played throughout the world.  It may be watched in many countries outside of America, and popular within those countries, but it is seen primarily as a unique sport peculiar to America.  The most popular sport in the world, played in virtually every country in the world, is soccer, and this popularity is unassailable.  The reason why three out of the top five sports franchises in the world are soccer franchises, is because soccer is truly a global sport which has branded its biggest teams and names throughout the world quite successfully, and although soccer is still a relative minnow within America, the forces behind soccer and its success, desperately want to add America as its crown jewel, and it is only a matter of time before this happens.

The major businesses, advertisers, media outlets, and sports owners, are always looking for a way to increase popularity and value of the overall sports world and the fact that soccer, as well as specifically the MLS, have built a solid foundation within America, is exactly what everybody involved desires.  This means that the people that finance and support the sport of soccer in America, are seriously motivated to see that soccer becomes a secure fixture within the American sports world, which it has already essentially become. The true test will come, though, when franchise values of MLS teams reach and break through themagical $1 billion mark, an absolute certainty, by 2050, if not earlier.

The Man in the Mirror

Are we Spirit or are we our body or are we an amalgamation of both?  Most people for obvious reasons strongly identify with their body, but our body, which we assume is the same each and every day, is in fact, constantly changing itself, because millions of our cells out of the 50-odd trillion that we have that makeup our body are dying and regenerating themselves each and every day.  Additionally, although on a day-to-day basis it is difficult for us to recognize any cognizant changes to our body and our look, over time, clearly our body and our look do change.

Most people, even people that are very spiritual in nature, closely identify with their body.  The reason that we know this intuitively is that if we were to one day wake up, and look at a mirror and see that the face and body that is reflected back to us is not our face and body, that clearly we were indeed looking at someone that physically appeared not to be us, most people would find it difficult, to maintain equilibrium under such conditions because we truly believe that our physical presence is ourselves, when in fact, our true essence is not our finite body, but our ethereal nature and our spirit.

This then leads us back to the question, as to who we really are.  If we trap ourselves into believing that we are only our physical presence, we have encased ourselves into a finite existence that can only have one possible ending.  However, if we recognize that the truth is that our physical body merely encases our soul, than we will perhaps spend less of our time in things of the material plane and more of it engaged on things that are more eternal in nature.  In Romans 8:6 we read: “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”

This means that the change that we are looking for is at the very core of our being.  That is to say most of the time, money, and energy that is spent on our physical self, will, in the end, profit us little, although there is good profit in taking good and proper care of our physical self, but far less in making it fundamentally the master of our lives as many of us are prone and have the tendency to do.

Those that wrap too much of their identification into their physical presence, will spend an inordinate amount of time and effort in holding back the sands of time, an effort that will at some point end in defeat, as there is only so many fingers that can cover up the holes in the dike.  If, in fact, we lived in a world in which our physical presence was far more transitory, and far more ephemeral, we would concentrate far less on our physical form and far more on our spiritual, because we would recognize the illusion of the physical form.

Remember this well that should there come a time when you look at the mirror and the picture that reflects back is not you, your reaction to such, will be the very definition of who you really are.

The Demonization of the Opium Poppy

The Opium poppy (papaver somniferum) has been around since millennia, to which its beneficial properties of its highly effective pain relief, tranquility, as well as being a sleep aid, have been of a great welfare for mankind.  In today's society the opium poppy has been demonized to which the American government has spent billions of dollars attempting to eradicate and/or control opium production to absolute abject failure as well as on the other hand, promoting and acceding to pharmaceutical demands that opium derived drugs such as heroin, morphine, codeine, oxycontin, and vicodin, are medically prescribed to the general public for pain relief.

In addition, to the legal prevention of opium poppy direct usage by the general population, as well as severe penalties for the usage of such and/or distribution of such by those without expressed written permission by the United States governmental authorities, opiates are still "abused" by the public each and every day.  In absence of having a legal prescription to opiates and/or a legal access to opium, Americans will get their opiates from either the "street" or through third parties that specialize in providing a product for those that are in need, with all the obvious attendant problems that doing something like this presents, such as crime and lack of quality control.  Not too surprisingly, people die from the over-dosage of bad or contaminated product; lose their livelihood from the abuse of such, and commit crimes in order to feed this particular addiction or habit.

America is living in world of complete opium poppy hypocrisy, to which on the one hand, any and everybody that abuses the product in a way not legally permitted by the United States justice authorities are severely punished, regardless of whether the crime has no victim, other than the person using the opium in an unauthorized way.  On the other hand, however, America allows, permits, and even encourages pharmaceutical agencies to prescribe and promote all conceivable forms of substitutionary opiates to the general public that cost the Americans and medical insurance companies billions upon billions of dollars. 

This means, in effect, that all America has really done over recent years is taken the permission of the opium poppy from being used by the common man, and through their legal and policing authority, replaced it so that the pharmaceutical companies directly benefit from the prescription and control of product, while the public has to pay billions of dollars in order to access the beneficial properties of the opium poppy. 

If the opium poppy is evil, in and of itself, and if the opium poppy is nefarious, malicious, addictive, and destructive, than all derivatives of opium, without exception, should also be illegal to prescribe, procure, or create within America, but this clearly is not the case.    This means, that the America public has been duped, that in fact, the beneficial properties of opium and control of such have been transferred to pharmaceutical companies so that they can directly profit upon man's pain and misery, whereas, mankind would be far better served if it had legal access to the opium poppy itself with minimal governmental intrusion.