Land and Migration

As physical beings we have to in order to live, reside on physical land, to which, land is legally owned either by government and its agencies or by private individuals.  In regards to either the government or to private individuals, the fact that they control the land, means that essentially whether you call it taxation, rent, tribute, or whatever, you as individual have to come up somehow with some sort of income to live upon some part of land, or you will be reduced to becoming a "squatter" by taking over a small portion of governmental or private land.

Not too surprisingly, in areas of a country, such as rural lands in which the land itself is often primarily owned by a few select individuals or organizations, in order to have gainful employment, you as a non-land owner are going to have to play the game per the rules of that given community, which typically means that the "income" that you earn there will only be enough to sustain you and your family, but not enough to provide you the velocity to escape from this particular economic prison.

This means, because of the gross inequitable distribution of land in rural areas, that, one way or another, many residents of such, will find a way to gravitate to cities, not because the land situation will be better in a city in the sense of ownership, but primarily because economic opportunity as well as the accouterments of city life will beckon people to come, for better or for worse.  The above often means though that the new city residents without any material net worth, will take accommodations any way that they can, in any manner that will provide them with some sort of shelter.

This then essentially translates into cities becoming subdivided into specific blighted areas, overcrowding, and slums because the residents of such more often than not, don't own any real property and don't have the means to improve their living quarters because their income is often too low, too erratic, or non-existent. 

The correction to poverty, whether for city dwellers or rural, can come from many means and directions, but, by far, the best solution to such endemic conditions, is a more equal distribution of land, property, and opportunity.  For if a man does not own any land, is not permitted to hunt the land, or fish upon the waters surrounding the land, or to create things with his hands without a license or a permit on the land, to which, in all of these things he has been crowded out of in order to protect the status quo, than he is without the reliable means or wherewithal to sustain himself and his family.

While America prides itself on being perceived as the land of opportunity, the actual reality of it, is that America is a land of a huge divide, between the elite wealthy of the very few worth monetary sums unimaginable, against a massive underclass of those that basically are worth nothing, to which marketplace.org recently stated: "Around 50 percent of the US population, Zucman said, has zero net wealth."  While there are a lot of reasons why this is so, the three most primary reasons are lack of land ownership, lack of capital, and lack of ownership of your own means of production. 

Paroled and no Right to the Internet

As reported by crimeinamerica.net, "An estimated 4.7 million adults were under correctional community supervision in the United States on December 31, 2014," which is an absolutely staggering amount of people that are under probation or parole or similar.  Not too surprisingly, most people in a position of incarceration or the threat of incarceration will sign up for just about anything that the government insists upon in regards to restrictions and access in order to have "freedom" or a modified version of freedom on the outside by being released, rather than being kept locked up.  In some communities, and States, there are restrictions or outright prohibitions for parolees in regards to the access to the internet, in a time in which any smart-phone, tablet, laptop, play station, and similar devices can access the internet readily, and in an era in which many job sites no longer accepting applications except through online forms, and/or employment jobs are basically only listed online, this restriction or prohibition seems to be out-of-touch with reality.

The most basic problem with outright bans of internet access to parolees is that it limits or precludes said parolees from being able to access information or to stay in contact with people and opportunities, so that they are at an expressed material disadvantage to other people, no matter how motivated they are to become productive and gainfully employed citizens of America.  It's one thing to setup monitoring software on a parolee's computer or for governmental authorities to have access to email or other social media sites of the parolee for the purpose of verifying and confirming that the parolee is not operating outside the law, but it's an entirely different thing to simply ban it, as a condition of a given parole.

The fact is virtually all parolees are willing to sacrifice some liberty for the opportunity to be on the outside but it isn't fair to take away necessary and vital tools that are part and parcel of modern life, to a person that will be handicapped enough already, just trying to find something to legally do that provides real worth.  The critics that provide the impetus for the restriction and prohibition of the internet for certain law breakers, in particular those that have been convicted as sex offenders, seem to as a matter of course, want to punish such offenders for an unending period of time, whereas once a convicted felon has completed his time behind bars, that person should not be then judged guilty of future crimes, when they haven't done anything material in the first place that reflects that charge.

in addition, many of the people that are currently under correctional supervision have in common that they are poorly educated, substance abusers, lacking self-control, and with a poor family structure background, so in reality, their biggest crime they have committed is having been born into compromised circumstances.  Far be it for America, rather than making their lives even more difficult, by denying them the internet or mandating other insensible and unreasonable restrictions, should take it upon itself, to willingly provide the tools to these parolees that will enable them to have a decent fair chance, so that they too can pursue happiness.

Christianity and the Resurrection of the Christ

The Bible is full of stories, some symbolic, some metaphorical, and some in parables, so too there is the story of Jesus the Christ.  In order to understand the Messiah, it is important, of vital importance, to comprehend and to understand that Christianity would not exist, without the resurrection, without the ascension of the Christ, and without the Pentecost, because without these events you have a man of great wisdom, a great prophet, and a great mentor, but you do not have the immortal Christ.

While there isn’t anything necessarily wrong with presentations of Jesus that ends with His death, because physical death is almost invariably the lot of humanity, believing this though in such a manner, that Christ died on the Cross, never to return is foundationally wrong, and isn't consistent with Biblical truth, or the life of the Christ.  Those that somehow can't accept the concept that anyone could ever come back from physical death in any form, aren't Christians in the most complete sense of word, but rather are those that are essentially reduced to the admiration of a good man, a prophet, and a wise soul. On the other hand, in order to be considered a Christian, you have to implicitly believe that Christ rose from the dead on the third day, that he thereby consorted with his apostles, later to ascend to the Father on the fortieth day, followed by the Pentecost of the Holy Spirit that descended upon the apostles on the fiftieth day of Jesus' death by crucifixion.

The thing is, the apostles that went forth to preach the Word, did not do so, under the impression that they were preaching about a good man, or simply a prophet, or remembering the wisdom of a wise soul, they were instead specifically preaching that Jesus the Christ, was crucified, that He died, andthat on the third day, Christ rose again as He reconstituted his body, still containing the wounds of his crucifixion, and walked, preached, and mentored his apostles, before ascending to the Heavens, from which he originated in spiritual form, and on the fiftieth day the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles, which created a unity of spirit, through the "tongues of fire" which rested upon each of them.

The apostles of Jesus now well understood, that the man that they had been listening to, learning from, and walking with, was not just another great prophet from God, was not just a spiritual man who could heal people from injuries both psychological and physical, was not just a man gifted with the ability to raise the dead back to life, but that He was the son of man, that is physically present here on earth, as well as through his spiritual oneness with God, the son of God.  This meant, that the Christ the apostles preached and ultimately the Christ that they proselytized about, was the immortal, unchangeable, omniscient, Creator God of the universe, the alpha and the omega.  It was their firm belief in the knowledge that Christ rose from the dead that inspired these good and common salt-of-the-earth men, to preach boldly, knowing that in time that they too would become martyred but that their deeds would live on in the generations to come.

The story of the Christ is not and cannot be complete without the story of His Resurrection and ascension, demonstrating conclusively that fallen man suffers from the illusion that mortality is the end, whereas instead all that we are is actually contained within our indestructible soul which cannot rest till it rests within the heart of God.

Nutrition and their Governmental Regulators

When we go to the grocery store and select our items for purchase, one can't help noticing all the nutritional information placed on the label on the products that we buy, of which, some people pay very close attention to that specific information, and many, perhaps just a cursory glance.  In any event, for most people, the fact that these products are sold in grocery stores in the first place, implicitly means that these foods can't be outright dangerous for our bodies, so typically people stress less about the nutrition and stress more about its price and value.

The government through the FDA and other general rules and regulations appears to have an abiding interest in the food items that Americans eat, in fact, based on charts such as food pyramid, the government provides to its citizens guidelines as to how much to eat from a given food group, so that through this and other means the government distinctly presents the impression that it cares what its citizens eat. 

The FDA has a budget of about one billion dollars specifically earmarked for food items which is directed towards protecting and supporting the public heath of its citizens, but does the FDA do its job uncompromisingly?  One way to answer that question is to understand that the most basic reason why anybody works is to earn an income, to which, people that have expertise in nutrition and food items would be in demand by both private as well as governmental agencies.  Not too surprisingly, the FDA and multinational corporations, clearly have a revolving door type of policy, in which, the regulators migrate over to private enterprise, and private enterprise employees move over to the FDA.  While there isn't anything wrong with this from the perspective that people should be entitled to work where they desire while utilizing best their skill-sets, there is a fundamental issue though, when there is either a quid pro quo or understanding that what is good for PepsiCo, with sales of $40 billion dollars is also good for American citizens as the prevailing viewpoint, supported by an acquiescent FDA.

The fact of the matter is, that the regulators are in fit and function not really independently regulating the food providers in a manner that places real science and real nutrition in the forefront, but more akin to rubber stamping the biggest players in the industry, because multinational companies such as Coca-Cola, Kraft foods, and the like, have billions of dollars invested into their infrastructure and products so that if the government would somehow rule that, for instance, refined carbohydrates or sugar and its equivalencies were a bane to the health of American citizens, their stock price would take a massive downward hit, which would eviscerate market capitalization and portfolios.  If, on the other hand, the government merely allows bygones to be bygones, or gentle suggests that perhaps we should ingest a little less sugar or a little less refined carbohydrates than it will pretty much be business as usual. 

What the FDA isn't going to do, is to actively take on the biggest players of the food industry, for first of all, that revolving door precludes such as action, and secondly the FDA seldom produces truly independent research that challenges prevailing wisdom so as to not come abreast of an inconvenient truth that would thereby force its hand.

Freedom of the Press and Groupthink

The first Amendment of our Constitution grants all Americans the access to a free press as well as free speech, to which these rights are absolutely vital for our country so that we as fellow countrymen can hear and respond to the cacophony and symphony of press and speech in order to become more informed about the things that matter to us.  In order to learn and to be thereby an informed citizen, one must have a free and open press, as well as the right to openly communicate with other citizens on the things that are of most importance to us via an interchange of ideas, thoughts, and concepts.  While America does have a free press as well as free speech, the mainstream press itself has consolidated so much in modern times that the press has fundamentally been reduced into two basic viewpoints: a more liberal leaning one, and a more conservative one, but although it might appear that these two viewpoints are at war at one another, they aren't really, as both have the same basic incentive, to pass off propaganda as news, to keep the masses in perpetual fear and dependent, and to create profits for their corporate masters.

Any citizenry that truly thinks for itself is dangerous to the status quo, because a thinking man is someone that might take positive action to effect real change, and that change, could well affect the dynamics and the players of this great nation.  The importance of a free press that impresses upon the public, real debate, real viewpoints, clear, controversial, and comprehensive thinking and thought, is the type of free press that our citizens deserve, but that isn't necessarily what we get.  Instead, freedom of the press has in the main, devolved into corporate speak, or political hatchet jobs, and is carefully processed and manipulated so as to guide the mass of its citizens into believing that they are truly receiving all the news that is fit to print, but instead are absorbing only the news that the mainstream press feels will best guide these pliable citizens into actions that benefit the media owners and their power structure.

The things that we read and hear are vital to us, because from this information, we build a viewpoint of what America and its citizens represent, so that, if certain views are held in abeyance, or unspoken, or ignored, than many citizens will be blithely unaware of them.  Today's purpose of the press isn't to inform the public of what is really going on, as that is far too dangerous, but to instead sell them a fraudulent bill of goods, that falsely represents what America is, when it really isn't that at all.  If, the press can mold the public into believing that life consists of essentially a benevolent government that bestows a safety net upon all, and/or a government that always makes sure to keep its citizens safe from all enemies foreign and domestic, via our strong military and homeland security, than they have hoodwinked the general masses into essentially acquiescing to such a belief made more intoxicating by providing in whole enough entertainment, food, shelter, and health services to sustain them.

A true freedom of the press is messy, inconvenient, vociferous, controversial, loud, and vibrant.  Our governmental leaders should be challenged, we should think, question, and debate the great issues of our day recognizing that by doing so we become what the government fears most: active, involved, informed, accountable, and with free minds that think and take positive action, accordingly.

The Preacher, the Doctor, and the Lawyer

Preachers, medical doctors, and lawyers are all highly respected professions, which as a requirement demand from its disciples: diligence, studious effort, persistence, intelligence, post-secondary education, and desire.  These esteemed professionals are certainly worthy of our respect and appreciation because we need a good preacher for the good and training of our soul, we need a good medical doctor for our birth and to maintain good health, and we need a good lawyer for the trials and tribulations that living in this complicated world will invariably bring to our door.

However, there is another way of looking at these professions, no matter how noble, and how appreciative we are of them and that is, that these professions are all somewhat dependent or very dependent upon the foibles of human nature.  That is to say, the preacher needs sinners, as isn't this what Jesus the Christ preached about when he said that: "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Luke 5:32).  So too medical doctors depend upon sickness and illness that will bring to them a multitude of patients that will need healing or amelioration on these things.  Then, there are lawyers, who are dependent upon each man's nature to want his own way, regardless and even to the point of cutting off his nose to spite his own face.

It's good to look at things from time-to-time from a different perspective and a different prism, because really if you think about it carefully, if man was so good, he would have no further need for instruction, prophets, or a savior, and the fact that mankind does indeed need these things, reflects that we are not as good as we might wish or believe.  If we all ate healthy foods, exercised, got our proper rest, practiced proper hygiene, and basically carried ourselves in a manner that treated the body and mind as things that needed proper attention and tending to, there would be far more healthier bodies and subsequently far less illnesses.  Then too, if we were better listeners rather than talkers, more concerned with building bridges rather than sowing hatred and strife, there would be far fewer disputes, with far less rancor and far less bitterness than we presently experience, and hence less of a need for lawyers to mediate or to champion such things.

It's a bit amusing or perhaps disturbing, to recognize that preachers need sinners, doctors need sickness, and lawyers need quarrels in order for them to be successful in their respective professions, signifying that even these professions, highly respected and valued, are at least in some respect, parasitic, in the sense that they make their profit off of the errors and shortcomings of man's ways, so that if there was to become some sort of heaven on earth, these professions, would be significantly impacted, for there isn't a compelling need for the preacher to preach to the choir, nor for a doctor to spend much time or attention to the healthy, or for the lawyer to do much of anything if each party treated the other with respect and fairness. 

Think about this: goodness matters, decisions matters, and our choices matter, so that in heaven, there isn't any need for a preacher, because we are one already with God, so too there isn't any need for a doctor, because our soul is now forever free of error, illness, and darkness, and we certainly don't have a need for any lawyers, because our heart now epitomizes pure justice and truth.

Karma ultimately is Always Good

People like to divide karma into good karma and bad karma, to which, it is supposed that good karma consists of doing good things and right actions, whereas bad karma consists of doing bad things and wrong actions.  While there is truth in this statement, this also represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what karma is all about.  Karma isn't about rewarding the good and punishing the bad, it really doesn’t represent that at all, instead karma is more akin to a vital aid that is helping and allowing us to stay focused and on- point in our life and our decisions, because without karma to prick our conscience and to thereby help us mend our wayward ways, we would instead have a strong tendency to keep doing whatever wrongs that we were committing with very little real hope that we would ever change because our thought processes would be fundamentally wrong.

While you aren't necessarily what you think, you are what you are, based upon your actions and the thoughts behind those actions.  That is to say if your mind isn't right in the first place, so that, for instance, you say one thing, but do another, sowing misdirection and deception, all of the above essentially being done in order to serve yourself above all, you are eventually going to have to face those traits in another person who can play the game at a level far beyond yours.  It is often only when you begin to recognize that your behavior is negative and those negative consequences reap what they have sowed, that you will finally recognize the error of your ways, for the pathway back to God can only ultimately be accomplished through the straight and narrow road, no matter what games you play about that with your mind.

You can look upon karma in somewhat the same way that pain acts as a warning mechanism for us, permitting us to understand that searing pain often signifies that something has good awry, and thereby we should correct this thing before the pain becomes truly intolerable and debilitating.  When it comes to our conscience, karma acts as an early warning system, to help to correct us, before one little misstep becomes several significant missteps, and an error of judgment once, becomes ingrained instead as a part of our character and habit.  The more we veer down the path of error, the heavier the consequences, so that, for many, only when the burden gets too heavy, do we even contemplate for a second, that the fault might indeed lie in ourselves and not in our stars.

We need karma for our own good, because without karma life would actually be total chaos, as lives built around one's own selfishness, aggrandizement, lust, and greed, if it was to meet nothing but the same, would result in such a cutthroat world, that it would simply be intolerable, and completely unbearable.  We don't live in that world, because our Creator has gifted us with grace and wisdom, as well as the very tools that we need so as to build our stairway to Heaven, to which, our God, no matter how many times we fail or fall short or do wrong, keeps reminding us through karma, to dust ourselves off, and press on, because His heart never rests till we rest in Him, as it was, from the beginning.

Goodness, Peace, and who you really are

There are a significant amount of people that really do want goodness, peace, harmony, and brotherhood in this world, of course, many of those, simply wish for those things without actually bringing much meaningfulactions to effectuate such a change.  The thing about goodness and peace is that these must first be the primary motivators of your own life, before you can possibly believe that your influence, testimony, and duties will bring positive change to those around you.  That is to say, proclaiming "peace, peace" isn't going to do much good at all if there isn't any peace within your own household, because if one cannot achieve harmony with those that are the closest to them, how it is possible to do so with strangers and other people that one comes across in everyday life.

This signifies then that the very first step in change and in positive healing behavior is to look within, find out what truly motivates you and what upsets you, and thereby do something tangible to bring about a more pleasing balance in your life.  A person that lives a life which is consistent with the words that they speak in conjunction with the actions that they take is a person that has become more transparent and more accommodating to his fellow man.  This world already has enough injustice, hurt, hate, wrong, selfishness, greed, and misery that it doesn't need any more of those things but instead needs the best of what people are truly capable of.

If, when you wake up each day, you are truly motivated by wanting and desiring the good of the other, your behavior will reflect this, by bringing forth love when there is hatred, by bringing forth peace when there is war, by bring forth patience when there is a rush to judgment, as well as bringing forth justice when there is injustice.  To accomplish these things will not be easy, but is there or has there ever been anything of real merit and worth that does not demand in return, dedication, consistency, and effort?   

Far too often, we wrongly believe that the process of change that we deeply desire in this life, is out of our hands, but instead lies in a remote God, or in governmental force, or in more laws, or other people, or elsewhere, but these all miss the very basic point, that it is our deeds small and large, our actions little and big, that each day brings us closer to goodness and peace, or takes us further away.  We may not be able to control the actions of others, but we can certainly control our own mind, our own beliefs, our actions, and our motivating factors and by so doing set an exemplar for others that they may draw upon.

The race in this world has not ever and is not to the swift, but to those that seek the very things that are everlasting and are a true reflection of the beauty that our Creator has bestowed us with, and we can find these in the beatitudes of the Christ, for these are the very lifeblood of all that are consistent with the very essence of the Alpha and the Omega, to which this should be the primary motivating force of our fruitful lives.

Man and Self-Restraint

Depending upon what nature channels you watch and the content of the shows, you may be somewhat under the misimpression that there are some sort of harmonious relations between different animal species, and a sort of beauty contained within the animal kingdom.  There is a small amount of truth in this observation, but animals especially and particularly carnivorous animals, out in nature, without the interference of man, are no agents of mercy, but instead most definitely follow the adage of survival of the fittest, so that the strong devour the weak, and live that out on a daily basis.  This is the nature of the beast within animals, which utilizes its instinct, strength, and force to prey upon primarily the weak, the defenseless, the unfortunate, and the injured.

In this world that so often views itself as secular; man has consciously thrown off the cloak of spirituality to embrace the "fact" that man is the measure of all things. So too, it then follows logically, that mankind now sees itself as just another animal, even believing, that its brotherhood is not one of spiritual brotherhood, having in common thereby the divine spark of our Creator, but instead, that we have evolved from apes, and therefore are, no better and no worst, than mere animals in this material world.

When you believe that you are just a sophisticated beast, than quite naturally, you will behave as one, which is what we see so often in the politics and play of today's society, to which, mankind has thrown out the book of justice, peace, equality and liberty, and instead replaced these with the simplicity that the strong will vanquish the weak, the strong will control the defenseless, and the strong will exploit the impoverished.  We see examples of this in how America rather than risking its own personnel and soldiers, drops "smart bombs" on target after target, acting as judge, jury, and executioner, to those countries of illicit rebels which do not have the air defense mechanisms to properly defend themselves, or the collateral damage done to its innocent civilians and infrastructure.  We see this as well in the financial exploitation of third world nations, in which the ever "generous" America and its cohorts, eviscerate local economies and thereby dump their own goods onto these peoples, so that they are perpetually dependent, and thereby forced to borrow from western nations sums of money that they will never have the means to repay, and be therefore perpetually indebted to us.  Then too we also see it in our criminal justice system in which the poor, uneducated, and indigent are rounded up and selectively prosecuted to sweep them off of our public roads and streets so as to be tough on the crime of being poor, whereas our feudal overlords milk the rest of our population for tribute leaving them little but a hollowed-out American dream of a car, a home, two children, and a job that never lets them get too far ahead of their household debt.

The difference between an animal and what a man at his best represents is self-restraint.  An animal has no compunction about tearing another animal limb by limb, because that is its nature, and neither will it have any guilt, because that is its instinct.  A man to actually really be a man, demonstrates this attribute by exercising self-restraint, which can be exhibited by love, by mercy, by self-sacrifice, by teamwork, and by caring for the other as if the other is as worthy as thy self.  Unfortunately, way too often, America demonstrates again and again its material belief that might makes right, which is a throwback to the time of cavemen and pure brutality, while in actual fact, man only does right when he is able to see the divine spark within each man, and lives by the credo of turning swords into plowshares, and enemies into friends.

European Immigration of the 19th Century and Free States

During the 19th century of the antebellum era in America, European immigrants came in waves of somewhere around 100,000 to 400,000 peoples per year and while the most popular debarkation point was the great harbor of New York, there were also ports available for European immigrants in Boston, Baltimore, New Orleans, and others.  At the turn of the 19th century, the most populous State of the Union was Virginia, yet, by 1850, New York had nearly three times the population of Virginia, Pennsylvania was doubled the population of Virginia, and Ohio had nearly 75% more peoples than Virginia.  This meant, in a relatively short period of time of about 50 years, the North and Midwest portions of the United States, had gained a considerable number of people, whereas the South, while growing in number, was in aggregate falling further and further behind.  The biggest factor in the population growth of these sections of America was the great wave of European immigrants that came to our shores.

While certainly there is an advantage in being the port of choice, as in New York, immigrants aren't stupid, as the most basic point of them immigrating to the United States, was to take advantage of the opportunities that the country offered them and for that, they would as a matter of course, go to where they perceived the opportunities were most favorable in regards to employment, land, skill-set, and so forth.  It is in this regard, that the North and the sparsely settled Midwest offered far more basic incentives for European immigrants than the South, as for instance, the Midwest had plenty of open land, available for agricultural and for homesteading, while the Northeast was the great manufacturing center of America, ideal for skilled artisans and the like.  The problem that the South had was that the distribution of their land was held in very few hands that utilized as a matter of course, slave labor to enrich their lands and themselves, so that many Europeans would not have a great interest in trying to compete against interests that favored the ruling class, as well as trying to compete with their free labor against slave labor.

Had the South been more accommodating to European immigrants, the history of the States, might well be different, but because the South was setup essentially as a feudal republic, this closed society, fundamentally limited itself to land assets and the fruits of their lands, as opposed to mechanization and the industrialization, as well as the education which were all part and parcel of the Northern States.  This meant that the European immigrants that came here, highly motivated and delighted by the economic opportunities now available to them if they applied themselves in the meritorious North, as well as appreciating the basic freedoms of religion, assembly, and speech gravitated to the States of the Union that did not or were in the process of eradicating legal slavery from their territory. 

The obvious thing about the economics of slave labor, is that if you as a free man have only as assets your own hands and the skills that you bring to your labor, and those that would employ or need your services have the choice of paying you a fair wage or taking labor from the sweat of the brow of a slave, than they will do the latter, and you, as a free man will find somewhere else more accommodating to ply your given trade.

Smalltime Towns and the Lure of Wal-Mart

America is an open and mobile society so that just because you are born in a particular town or city or State, you don't have to spend the rest of your life there.  This means, that there are small communities that stay small, or even regress, for a myriad of reasons, with one of them being opportunity and the quality of life.  Big multinational corporations are always looking to grow, because they know that if they aren't growing, then that means that someone else is catching up with them or surpassing them.  A case in point, is the biggest big box retailer of them all, Wal-Mart, which has a market capitalization of about $232 billion dollars, and sales of nearly $500 billion dollars annually.  Wal-Mart employs about 2.1 million peoples worldwide, of which about 1.4 million of those employees are located in the United States of America.  To get a better idea of just how big Wal-Mart is, its market capitalization is larger than the GDP of either Portugal or Greece, and its sales are nearly as much as the GDP of Taiwan.  This would signify that when Wal-Mart comes knocking at your town's doors, that they are a formidable force.

Depending upon the size of your country, your town, your little city, and so forth, the annual budget for such a community could easily be significantly less than $100 million, with essentially part time civil servants typically making modest pay.  The thing about Wal-Mart is that they are experts in understanding the law, politics, taxes, real estate, demographics, and so forth, and consequently only a fool would believe that in a land and tax deal negotiation with Wal-Mart that they would be their equal at that table of negotiation, yet, many communities seem to feel that this is so and while they may smile to the cameras later and get praise often through their local paper, the deals that are typically constructed with Wal-Mart are of questionable benefit for the community at large, as way too often, the civil servants sacrifice the very thing that they most desperately need, which is the fresh money of new tax dollars, in poorly structured deals, that directly benefit Wal-Mart though their property tax set asides, which is not only incredibly unfair to all the other real property owners in town that aren't privy to such tax benefits, but to the residents of the community itself.   Sure, no doubt, Wal-Mart will bring to their new locale some employment, but for goodness sake, it's Wal-Mart, so almost by definition, these aren't exactly high paying jobs.

Of course, every town that gets suckered or burnt by the allure of Wal-Mart, says something to the effect, that they had to do the deal that they did, because, this is what is necessary to do business with Wal-Mart and with the legitimacy that Wal-Mart brings, things will get even better.  The thing is, once you open up the lockbox for Wal-Mart, all other comers, will want to drink at the same trough, so the time to negotiate the best deal is right there at the beginning, so to speak, with Wal-Mart.   The best way for the city council members to negotiate with Wal-Mart is to bring in competition, that is to say, if Wal-Mart is bringing to the table a developmental proposal, than almost for a certainty, competitors such as Target or Costco, or others, would probably too have an interest.  The bottom line is that if you want to have any hope of getting a fair deal from Wal-Mart or similar, you have to contact its competitors, and work them one against the other, and if things fall through, they fall through, but there isn't any good reason to give away the store, especially since Wal-Mart never does.

Spider-Web Laws

In the 6th Century BC the Scythian prince and philosopher, Anacharsis, who later was to be murdered by his own brother, stated:   “Written laws are like spider's webs; they will catch, it is true, the weak and the poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.”   What was said well over two millenniums ago is just as pertinent today.  The United States is a country full of laws, laws upon laws upon laws, yet, when you look at our prisons and jails, they are filled almost without exception with the poor and destitute, the uneducated, the undesirables, those lacking the right skin color, or lacking the right religious faith, and almost all far removed from the powers that run this nation.

For instance, think about the worst crimes committed by multinational corporations in which virtually never do corporate officers go to jail, and if they do, they are typically able to call upon a seemingly endless amount of appeals, and only in the most egregious or notorious cases does anyone actually do time, and usually that is only one person whereas probably scores of others should have done time with him.  Consider also the big oil companies that have polluted waters, to which, via accident or oversight or incompetency aside, typically are slapped with monetary fines, which are almost always the type of penalty that they would prefer, because being able to go back to business as usual, will soon recover those monies, which they simply look upon as "opportunity cost" gone somewhat awry.  Then too there are institutions that are so fortunate as to be labeled "too big to fail" signifying that whatever financial shenanigans that they operate under, that literally steal billions from the public that they, will never have to suffer or personally be held accountable for it.

America purposely has far too many laws, which, are unequally applied, and selectively enforced.  This effectively means that the average citizen if he has political views that are outside of the norm, or a lifestyle that is considered to be abnormal, or strange habits or weird trades, that this person can be and is, selectively targeted by the government and its agencies in a manner in which a dossier is collected on that individual keeping tabs of who, what, when, and how he conducts his personal business.  This is very convenient for the government that can at a time of their own choosing, find the vulnerable spots in the target's life, and exploit these in order to disrupt his life, or to apply pressure on innocent family members in order to bring this person to heel or to turn State's evidence against someone else.

The rich and powerful on the other hand, don't have to worry about these things, no matter what part of the political spectrum that they are, whether conservative or liberal, because over and above their political leanings, the main thing that they care about, is maintaining their privileged status in life, which essentially comes down to exploiting the powerless to favor the few.  The law is very clear in what it almost always does, which is to protect and to serve the status quo, that is to say, their masters, as their employment, livelihood, and the special powers that the law enforcement apparatus have over the general population depends upon it.  The only possibly exceptions ever seen to this general maxim are true grass-roots uprising that have unsettled the masses so much, that the law must as a matter of course, cede some ground. 

The government well understands the value of having so many laws, so that they call upon whichever law fits the bill of the purpose that they have in mind so as to keep the population under wraps, if not quiescent.   Every once in a while one of the rich and powerful are selectively sacrificed so that the population believes somewhat in the illusion that justice truly does wear a blindfold, the only problem is, America's justice clearly knows what it is doing and those privileged people that control those levers most definitely do.

Variable Speed Limits

Depending upon where you live and what freeways you are in the habit of driving upon, you may or may not have come upon variable speed limits.  These variable speed limits are not controlled by whether it is daylight or nighttime but basically are "smart" speed limits which adjust their speed according to the density of traffic on the road, to which, their point in existing is in theory by giving advanced notice to drivers that there is heavy congestion ahead, that these drivers will then adjust their speed lower far in advance as opposed to driving too fast, only to have to slam on their brakes, creating a stop and go movement that slows down traffic even more.

While variable speed limits might seem to make sense to Department of Transportation, or traffic engineers, the actual usage of them, seems to be the wrong tool for the wrong place.  For instance, if the normal speed limit is 65 mph, and the variable speed limit for signs further down the freeway drop the speed to 55 mph, than 45 mph, and finally to 35 mph, you might well conclude how brilliant this variable speed reduction was in reducing the vehicle speed on the roads in a conscious and cognizant manner, thereby reducing vehicle speed variance by quite a bit, but that isn't even close to the truth in reality.  In reality, the variable speed limit signs, don't do much of anything, as first off because of traffic congestion you aren't able to drive close to the variable speed limit, and secondly, the traffic ahead has already made it abundantly clear to you that you aren't going to be traveling too fast anyway.

The bottom line is that there are few, if any, drivers that believe that they can always, without exception, irrespective of traffic, weather, and other factors, drive the speed limit on the freeway to begin with.  As a basic law, you are not permitted to drive faster than what is safe for current conditions, so if the traffic is at a standstill ahead, you can't actually drive at 35 mph, or 45 mph, or even higher speeds, because it isn't physically possible.  For those, that just want to stop all the sudden accelerating, relentless lane changing, and sudden braking, a better method is to have available to drivers, an app to their phone, which tells drivers in real time the average speed one mile ahead of them.  In addition, instead of useless variable speed limits, variable message signs would be of far more value, stipulating either the average vehicle speed ahead, and/or giving travel times for exits up ahead, to which, the driver can thereby calculate about what the speeds are going to be and intuitively know how fast or slow traffic is ahead.

While it is good that traffic engineers want to experiment with tools to help with traffic flow, variable speed limits just seem annoying, useless, and stupid, as in almost all cases, the driver is clearly aware already that traffic is slow ahead and thereby the posting of such a variable speed limit, doesn't inform the driver of the most valuable information which would be the actual average speed of the traffic directly ahead of him.  If, the Department of Transportation truly wants to come up something to improve traffic flow, variable speed limits, are a rather poor attempt to do so.

Turning Criminal Motivations into Positive Actions

If you aren't a motivated person, with at least a modicum of get up and go, than you probably aren't going to be a very good employee and almost for a certainty not make for a successful criminal.  If all you ever want to do is forever punch keys and interact with your smart phone all day, or just vegetate in a corner of your living room, you probably aren't going to be a real threat to society, then again, you aren't going to be a benefit to society, as you will almost for a certainty be a burden to society.  The motivational factors that operate within any given individual makes a significant difference as to how they are going to perform and what they will perform on a given day.  The problem that today's stratified and segmented society has, is that at a very early age, there is a seismic gap between those that are nurtured, loved, cared for, and attend good schools, as opposed to those that come from substandard housing, an overburdened household, and schools which don’t care, don't teach, and don't demand much of anything from their students.

Yet, inside most people, there is an urge to be something, to do something, to be about something, and when you are located in an area of a city in which the door of opportunity is shuttered closed, or essentially non-functioning, or simply labeled as "dead end", than you will find as an individual, that your choices are severely limited.  This means for a sizable portion of our impoverished elements of society, which has little hope for any meaningful change, that they will in the normal course of things, begin to turn, or have turned to activities that are considered by society to be crimes, whether that be illicit drug dealing, prostitution, con games, and the like.  America's avowed solution to these given problems is to arrest, convict, and then to lock up these criminals, which per the letter of the law, seems correct, but to the spirit of the law, is not.

Millions of people go to work each day, for the primary reason that they need to earn money so as to pay bills and so as to purchase essential goods and services.  While that is a good thing, if you don't have ready access to money, nor capital, nor to meaningful legitimate jobs, this doesn't somehow mean that you no longer have a need to pay bills, or to purchase essential goods and services, because, in fact, you still do, the fundamental difference is that you don't have a steady job which will allow you to.  Not too surprisingly, where there is a will, there is a way, and while some people will see crime and criminal activities as an unmitigated evil, that viewpoint is both rather simplistic and often comes directly from the prism of their own peculiar viewpoint, which allows them the luxury of thinking so.

The fact is, while crime in general is an undesirable activity, the motivations that create some crime, such as preplanning, preparation, desire, persistence, courage, risk taking, need, and so forth, are often the same attributes that are necessary tools to be successful in the regular workforce.  What so many people that turn to crime are lacking are the foundational skills of not only reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also a firm moral code, along with a fair opportunity.  While there isn't much one can do for an apathetic criminal, there is certainly hope for a motivated criminal, so that with proper leadership and direction, time and persistence, the criminal element in the man can under the right circumstances be redirected into being a positive contributing member of society at large.

Take care of your own House first before you try to take care of mine

Life is full of busybodies who are people that feel compelled to direct or to correct your life and life decisions, even when they don't really know you, don't care to know you, and are themselves of very doubtful wisdom or credibility.  It's one thing for there to be a busybody in your life, to which, you can, as a matter of course, simply ignore them, or politely and simply walk away them, or even pretend that you are listening to them, and ultimately just go about your business as if they didn't exist.  On the other hand, it is an entirely different thing to be dealing with a busybody, who has moral suasion over you, because it's your parent, or your boss, or what you consider to be your best friend, or the worst of the worst, the government.

The problem with the government, is that there is never anything that you can possibly do that will properly satiate or satisfy them, because the government is a ravenous beast and once they get a hold of your private life, they will, like a very bad virus, infect into everything.  That is to say, if you need government benefits; and government agencies do have plenty of programs and benefits, there is a price that you have to pay, usually by completely exposing yourself, in regards to who and what you are; your criminal and arrest background, your past employment history, your medical records and mental state, your family history, your children's history, your history, your income, your assets, your address, your complete identity, your credit status, and so on and so forth.  The government wants to know everything about you, not because it actually needs to, but in order to maximize their hold over you, because when the government knows everything about you and you know virtually little or nothing about what is going on behind the scenes about them, than you are in their power, and all this so that you can receive a token piece of something that will allow you to minimally function and live in society.

The government likes to sell you the illusion that they are special people, born to be your leaders and you are born to serve or to placate them, but in actuality, governments when broken down into little pieces, are in fact, made up of people like you and me.  This signifies, that not only do we have a right, or more like an obligation, to know who our leaders are, but in point of fact, there are fundamental qualifications that our leaders should or must have, especially those that have massive powers and influence.  That is to say, the character of those that wield power is absolutely a relevant aspect, of their legitimacy to hold that power in the first place.

It is fair to ask, that if a man cannot hold his own house in order, how is it even conceivable that he can run a community, a city, a State, a country, or the world.  It is also fair to say, that if the background of a man is one of lies, deceits, double-dealing, corruption, and vindictive, than these are not the characteristics of a legitimate leader.  This signifies that those that would run for the highest offices, if they are honorable people, should be the very first in line, to show complete transparency of who and what they are, it is, at the very least what they owe the people, that in theory, that they are supposed to be held accountable to.

The Rising Unsolved Murder Rate

According to the FBI the national "clearance" rate (clearance meaning: solved or arrested or warrant issued or death by offender or no witness cooperation) was once at 90% for all murders in 1965, and has for the most part been in steady decline since then, so that at the present time it is around 64% with an incredibly wide diversity depending upon the city or State that the murder was committed in.  For instance, according to anepigone.blogspot.com, States such as Idaho, Wyoming, and North Dakota all have murder clearance rates of over 95 percent, whereas the District of Columbia, and Illinois have murder clearance rates of fewer than 50 percent.  In fact, Chicago, according to dnainfo.com, states that: "... gunmen who shot and wounded people escaped charges 94 percent of the time," with an overall anemic murder clearance rate of "…. 26 percent."

All of the above signifies, that despite the fact that police budgets have never been bigger in aggregate, and even though we have DNA analysis, sophisticated forensics, and so forth, with all of these tools never being more readily available than they are today, that somehow police agencies in many communities, can't seem to solve a staggering amount of murder cases, to which eventually, these cases become "cold cases".  If you're thinking that perhaps policemen aren't doing all that well with murders, but they are doing very well in solving forcible rapes, robberies, larcenies, burglaries, and motor vehicle theft, you would be wrong, as each of these crime categories are all cleared at less than 50%.  This might well lead you to the somewhat disturbing thought that perhaps our police departments are either not very competent or are deliberately selective in their pursuit of crimes or both.

One of the most basic problems that police forces appear to have in the present day, is that they do not often know their communities, do not know the people that make up these communities, and often do not have reliable contacts within those communities.  In addition, if police are perceived more often by certain members of communities as a threat, rather than being seen as servants of the community, meant to "protect and serve", than it isn't any wonder that police are nearly completely out of step and sync with their communities, and those people living in them, recognize this, and subsequently have more to fear from criminal elements, with no apparent safe sanctuary to turn to.

So too there is a question of personnel resources within police departments in regards to where and how their monies are spent.  If, for instance, a given police department has too few homicide investigators, who are overworked, and undersupplied in the sense of tools, resources, and management, than it isn't any wonder that they cannot resolve and will not resolve numerous murder cases.  While one quick answer might be that we need more police officers, or higher police budgets, throwing more money or personnel at a given issue does not necessarily resolve it.

The fact of the matter is for police to do a better job in clearing murder rates, than the police are going to have to do a better job of building bridges and connections to communities, because certainly as the way things stand today, it isn't working acceptably well in many selected communities.  The bottom line is that the victims and the families of such, deserve much better, and the perpetrators of these crimes, deserve much worse, and the police can either be a material part of an improving resolution, or we will continue to see as reported by npr.org as written in January of 2014, that in NYC, 86 percentof homicides involving a white victim were solved, whereas just 45 percent with a black victim were solved, indicating that when it comes to solving homicides, that clearly black lives do not matter.

The Insanity of Super Expensive Exotic Cars Sold at Auctions

There are 24 hours in every day, and with news channels having to report some sort of news each and every hour, that news has to come from somewhere, to which, although the amount of people that are eligible or inclined to purchase an exotic car built, let's say in 1962, but selling at an auction for over $30 million dollars, is absolutely minuscule, these people watching such news reports whether bored, car aficionados, or reduced to living their lives vicariously through others, are the reason why these news events, are duly reported.  For instance, a Ferrari GTO 250 was recently sold at an auction for over $38 million dollars after its attendant auction fees, to which, this particular cars' claim to fame is that it finished 2nd in the 1962 tour de France, yet, later in the same year, it was involved in a fatal crash.  Not only does that fatal crash, shed a somewhat sobering  and somber look upon the car, but clearly also means, that the car that sold in 2014 for multi-millions is not the original car, although its reconstruction may be consistent with that car of that day and age.

All of the above, means that exotic cars sold at these types of prices are being bought and sold to people who are not like me or you.  These people are primarily doing one or two things, the first being playing a sophisticated "shell game" in which each party drinks from the same punch bowl, and somehow are mesmerized into believing that a vehicle that originally sold for $18,500 in 1962, which has few of the original parts, is somehow worth millions upon millions today, whereas it is still just a car, with a utility value close to zero, or at best, several thousand dollars based on its history, notoriety, and scarcity.  The other big reason why these auctions are conducted and reported upon, with real people really buying these exotic cars has a lot to do with people that have money that has come from questionable places or activities and are looking for some diversity so as to put their money into something that has proven "value" based on previous sales, stable history, a somewhat rigged marked, fairly liquid, and considered to be above board.

It's troubling that exotic cars that have been involved in serious crashes, and thereby reconstructed, with parts that may or may not be OEM parts, or whatever, but no doubt, professionally redone with careful precision and quality, could possibly be sold for millions upon millions of dollars mainly because the integrity of that original car no longer exists.  As bad as that is, the people that purchase these types of cars, aren't ever going to drive them, as instead, at best, the vehicle will sit in a hi-end garage so that occasionally certain privileged peoples can ooh and aah at them, as if these exotic cars somehow have been blessed by the very hand of God.

The thing is, this game of pushing the sales price of these sort of exotic cars ever upward, will eventually at some point, end rather poorly for somebody, as everything has its cycles, and objects that are sold with little or no real relation to its intrinsic value, are especially at risk, no matter how much the game is controlled.

Defense spending, but all of this money for what?

Most people believe that we have three branches of government, the judicial, legislative, and executive, with the President of our country, being the Commander-in-Chief.  While this sounds nice on paper, in practicality and in actuality, none of this is actually true.  They say, follow the money, and if you follow the money, there is only one conclusion that a reasonable man can possibly come up with, and that is this country is firmly and has been firmly in the hands of the military-industrial complex.

We know that this is true by looking at the federal budget for discretionary spending for the United States of America.  In fiscal year 2015, out of discretionary budget expenditures of $1.11 trillion dollars as reported by nationalpriorities.org, America budgeted $598.5 billion dollars for military spending as well as $65.3 billion on Veterans' benefits, for a total of $663.8 billion dollars which represents 59.8% of the entire discretionary spending of the United States.  While, America does spend even more money per capita on healthcare and social security, these expenditures are considered to be part of the social fabric of the government's obligation to its citizens, and thereby are properly classified as mandatory governmental spending.

When it comes to defense spending the very first thing to recognize, is that this world, has been completely discovered, as there are no more, and have not been for a long time, any uncharted or undiscovered countries.  This means, that it is a fact, that these are the known knowns, and there are therefore no unknowns on this planet.  Since World War II, the one country that has been brought up again and again as a possible rival to America's current world domination, is Russia, yet Russia has not attacked America and realistically has absolutely no intentions of every attacking America, and it probably never really has.  The fact of the matter is wars are typically fought for two things, plunder, that is resources and continental development, and to a lesser extent for cheap exploitable labor.  In an era in which physical labor has become of less and less worth, because of technology, robotics, and the like, this leaves as the most fundamental reason for war as plunder.  The thing about plunder is that with trade barriers having been eradicated or eased in virtually every country, and the fact that multi-national corporations, really are truly massive, intercontinental, and practically ubiquitous in any country of real substance, is that plunder no longer needs to be at the point of a sword, as it is already being conducted by trade agreements between countries or the elites of those certain countries on behalf of well-placed multinational corporations and their cronies.

This means, in effect, that a significant chunk, probably exceeding well over 50% of our current defense spending is for things, personnel, weapons, and so forth, to which there is absolutely nothing that is being accomplished of any positive worth, other than those in that business that are profiting from it.  It would appear that nearly every bomb that we build, every tank, every war plane, or air carrier, is literally food, shelter, and education being taken from the oppressed and poor of our own country, so that the military-industrial complex can continually feed off of and exploit the citizens of America, as well as constantly to saber rattle, invade, disrupt, corrupt, and terrorize sovereign nations and peoples all over the world, who are almost always no material threat to America, whatsoever.

Parents, Children, Buses and Responsibility

Depending upon where you live, buses may or may not be a common feature in your neighborhood, come school season.  However, in many, many places, buses are ubiquitous, to which, at least buses have a real purpose which is to pick up and at the end of the school day, drop off school children.  In an era in which there has never been so many single parent households this is a real boon, to have that public transportation available, in addition to the fact, that never have so many traditional two-parent households, had both parents working.  All of this basically makes sense, until you realize that at virtually all of the school bus stops that there are parents standing there with their children in the morning, and then later waiting for their children at the end of school day.  What gives?

From a certain perspective, it's hard to fault parents or guardians for wanting to make sure that their children do safely get on the bus in the morning, or for being there when their precious kids come home from school at the end of the day.  The best way of looking at this, is it is a parent's prerogative, and if they so wish to devote their time for safety reasons, social reasons, or whatever, to be at the bus stop for their children, than that is their choice.  There are, however, a couple comments to make on this, as for instance, when school districts as part of the ever expanding nanny state, insist that they will not drop off your child at their designated bus stop, unless the authorized parent or guardian is there, but instead, will actually take the child back to school, to await the parent to pick the child up later, in addition to the fact, that a visit from child care services will be activated for this sort of mishap.  While a policy like this, sort of makes sense from the perspective that a little kindergartener is vulnerable, so is the fact, that children are not nearly as helpless, hopeless, and clueless as bureaucrats might believe.  In point of fact, neighborhoods are typically filled with other children, parents, neighbors, friends, and so forth, in addition to the point that a parent need not have their child in their visual field 24/7.  The second comment about dropping off children without their parents being around, comes down to the fact that if children are treated as if they can never be outside of their house, in their own neighborhood, alone, than one should not expect these children to ever develop the capacity to make decisions on their own.

The fact of the matter is, that all of these bus stops, all of these parent's cars, all of these parents milling around, just typically makes for more time and resources wasted, because they are missing the biggest point of all, which is, these parents mistakenly believe that they are diligent and good parents by taking and picking up their children from the designated school bus stop, rather than recognizing that the most important part of the day is what is actually being taught to their children at school.  While it may be commendable that parents care about their children's physical safety, they are missing almost the entire boat, if they don't also recognize it's what goes into a child's head that creates our future leaders, for better or for worse.

Taxes, Permits Licenses, and Privilege

You might think that the current taxes, permits, and licenses that we have in our communities and States in America are all there to serve the greater good.  That is to say, the point of these taxes, permits, and licenses is to as a whole, to make things fairer and safer for not only the general public, but to level the playing field for those inclined to open up businesses and the like.  The problem with this viewpoint is that it isn't close to being correct, as not too surprisingly, when power is ceded to various governmental authorities, which oversees and legislates them, this essentially means that the government is permitted to decide who and what to tax, who does or does not get a permit, and when or when not licenses are issued, creating a dynamic that will invariably by design favor some against others.

In point of fact, at the conclusion of our civil war, and the passage of the 13th through 15th amendments, slavery as an institution was a dead letter in America, so that nearly 4 million peoples that formerly were in the bonds of servitude were now free citizens with, in theory, all the incumbent rights of all other citizens of this country.  Obviously, especially within the defeated South, to allow freed black men and women to compete for jobs that previously were the dominion of whites, would be intolerable, thereby, various laws were created which would in effect, preclude or make difficult for freed black men to compete against whites.  So that, for instance, in many trades and professions that blacks were proficient in, such as shoemaking, stonemasonry, ship building, carpentry, blacksmith, and so forth, laws were enacted, that compelled people in those particular trades to have to pay taxes specifically for that trade, or be licensed, or to have a permit, in which, because most blacks were pecuniary poor, they often were unable tothereby continue in those professions becoming essentially priced out for lack of monetary assets or the ability to pay for these various things.

Anytime that the government decides what is or isn't going to be taxed, licensed, or permitted, and further those legislating these things are working in conjunction with the favored classes or on a quid pro quo basis, than all sorts of verbiage will be created saying all sorts of things in beautiful flowing language, which often translated can be stated into the simple terms of those in power support the ruling class and oppress all other classes.  While, no doubt, there are times and reasons for taxes, licenses, and permits to have their place, far too often, these are specifically put into place to protect those in that business from free competition from those that wish or desire to be in the same business.

Every barrier to entry, every tax, every license, and every permit, should in a true free enterprise economy, be carefully scrutinized to see if this is really necessary, whether it is truly for the protection and benefit of the public, and if not, should be phased out and eliminated.  The bottom line is that the more bureaucracy in opening any business enterprise, the more red tape, the more hoops that you have to pass through, or palms you have to grease, is a system in which the privileged win, and all others must pay tribute to.