Learning and Vision

America's school kids do quite poorly when compared against other countries in regards to their level of intelligence demonstrated by standardized tests, even though, America spends an incredible amount of money per pupil and is by far the richest country in the world by aggregate GDP.  While there are numerous reasons and theories why America does so poorly, perhaps one of the most compelling reasons comes down to good or corrective vision.

The bottom line is that if you are unable to discern what is written on the blackboard, are unable to read clearly what is it in front of you, you as a student, are dealing with a handicap, especially in comparison to children that have good vision and/or corrective lenses to achieve good vision.  While different States have different directives when it comes to vision, this is an area of healthcare, that if necessary, the Federal government has a compelling interest to step in and rectify.  While it is one thing to verify the health and inoculations of students, there aren't very many things more important though in regards to a child's potential for engagement and success, than good vision.

For instance, a study as reported by the book "Think Like a Freak" which was done in a poor province of China, in Gansu, in which fourth though six graders were tested for the need for eyeglasses and thereby half of those students who needed eyeglasses were given them and other half continued along without them, to which, the result was that "their test scores showed they’d learned 25 to 50 percent more than their uncorrected peers."  According to cbs.nl, the percentage of Americans wearing eyeglasses in 2012 aged 4-12 years was approximately 10%, however, for ages 20-30, that percentage was approximately 40%.  This enormous increase in the need for eyeglasses would strongly imply either one or two things: that as we age our vision gets worse and worse, or that children, because primarily they are children, are typically prescribed glasses well after the time that they actually need them, because adults don't feel that children being so young should need them.

There are many theories and things that are considered each and every year to help improve test scores and learning for our K-12th grade students, but could it be that one of the very best things, fairly easy to accomplish, is to thoroughly check the vision of each student and for those students needing corrective lenses, providing eyeglasses free of charge or heavily subsidized to them, based on the income levels of their parents.  The sheer amount and masses of money that is already thrown at trying to fix test scores that have been stagnant or regressed over the last few decades, needs just about every valid idea, explored and executed.

While there are myriad reasons why students lose interest in a given subject, most of that lost can be attributed to a form of giving up by that student, to which, if you can't see things correctly or easily, this would be a distinct reason why some students do lose their focus at school.

You will Never Know the cost of your Freedom

In 1777, John Adams wrote to his wife the following lamentation on the current status of the fight for our freedom:  "You will never know, how much it cost the present Generation, to preserve your Freedom!"  He wrote this because a mere proclamation of Independence from Great Britain, was not the same as actual independence from Great Britain because to accomplish this massive mission, required stealth, courage, bravery, dedication, outside aid, persistence, and God's grace.

The Founding Fathers along with fellow colonists of this nation, made true their vow and commitment to fight for our freedom, and literally did pledge their lives, their honor, and their fortunes on behalf of this fight for our freedom and consequently for a government that would derive its just powers from the consent of the governed, as opposed to the tyranny and oppression of the British crown. 

The war between the colonists and the British Empire cost the lives and fortunes of many brave men and women, to which, some of those that lost their lives and their fortunes were signatories of our Declaration of Independence.  Some of these signatories lost all of their private fortunes through the confiscation and destruction of their private property by the British, while others suffered imprisonment by the British, yet none of the fifty-six signatories to the Declaration ever brought dishonor to their sacred cause of freedom.

America's Declaration of Independence while signed in 1776, did not mean that all of a sudden the colonists were free, but instead meant that the colonists were willing to fight for that freedom, and this freedom meant the sacrifice of time, money, material, and blood, of which, some paid for the pursuit of that freedom by giving their lives for that cause and by their devotion to that cause.

Once engaged, the battles between the colonists and the British, raged up and down our States, to which, the British had no intention of not bring the States to heel, and the States would not disengage from their fight against the British, despite privations, despite their repeated injuries, despite their repeated injustices, yet continually sacrificed, because they believed wholeheartedly in their cause, which was that each man was born with unalienable rights, and that thereby no legitimate government had the right to counteract or to take these rights from any man.

The freedom that the colonists desired was the freedom of self-determination, and the colonists did not see the validity of paying tribute to those despotic interests that laid across the great Atlantic ocean, no matter for whatever reasons, valid or not.  The colonists had become united in their cause, united in their common defense, united in the belief that they had the right to steer and to guide their own ship, and to thereby make their own place in this world.

These brave colonists took on the greatest naval power of that age, and with pluck, tenacity, outside assistance, some good fortune, and courage were able to break free from the bonds of Great Britain, and thereby establish a republic and a Constitution that we live under until this very day.  The costs that these valiant men and women made on behalf of the United States of America were enormous, and we owe them our eternal tribute, properly paid by living by the true principles of America: of which that we are all created equal, that we are all are entitled to equal justice, that our government is one of checks and balances, and that this government is and shall ever be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, to which when such a government becomes destructive of those things it is the right of the people to abolish or to alter it.

The Concentration of Wealth leads to the Concentration of Power

America likes to talk about how it's a democracy, one person, one vote, no matter how rich or how poor you are and while it's true that some people, typically poor, typically of color, often find it more difficult to actually even register to vote, there aren't prohibited by law from registering or thereby voting.  This would seem to mean, that just based on sheer numbers, in which in America, according to the dailykos.com the bottom 50% of Americans own just 1.1% of the total wealth in America, that those people, more than any other people, would want policies in place in which their democratically elected representatives would help to ease such a wide discrepancy in income, but in fact, over the last two decades, the bottom 50% have seen their wealth eroded from just 3% of total wealth to that 1.1%  as of 2010.

In America, according to thenation.com, "20 People Now Own As Much Wealth as Half of All Americans", as well as "the 400 richest Americans now have more wealth than the bottom 61 percent of the population."  This demonstrates without any doubt whatsoever, that America is a country with a very high concentration of wealth, which still for many Americans, seems to be something that they are okay with, as in theory, America is a capitalistic and meritorious country.  However, something is rotten in the state of America, because with wealth in so few hands, this would indicate beyond a shadow of a doubt that this country is in actuality, unfair, unjust, underhanded, unprincipled, uneven, and fundamentally un-American.

The thing about wealth, for most people that have wealth, is that they often have little or no interest in sacrificing any of the wealth, to the greater good, or even if they set up foundations to, in theory, benefit the masses, these foundations are still whether literally or by proxy, controlled by the wealthy and/or surely in lockstep with what the wealthy desire.  In addition, governments need money to effect their policies and wealthy people have the most money, to which, wealthy people prefer to be able to disburse their funds to as few hands as possible so as to concentrate their wealth only into the pockets of those that can directly or indirectly benefit them and the policies desired.  So too, for governmental employees and policy makers, they prefer not to have to deal with all sorts of intangibles, so instead, the laws are written or interpreted in such a way so as to favor a few at the expense of the many, so that these governmental servants will serve their wealthy benefactors, and, of course, keep the revolving door activated, so that no matter which side they currently reside at, each side benefits in their symbiotic relationship.

Those that have a lot of money aren't interested in a democracy or even a republican form of government, they are interested only in seeing that their wealth is both protected as well as benefiting specifically from governmental policies, which often is accomplished in situations in which government and the wealthy, are essentially combined into a plutocracy, disguised as a democracy.  Those that are employed on the governmental side recognize that in order to remain in power, they must satisfy their constituency, which rather than being the people as a whole, are those that directly or indirectly place them and reward them in their current positions.

Wealth only leaves the hands of the wealthy, when it is disrupted or dissipated, and that only occurs thru losing favor with others of their ilk or supervision, unwanted war, incredible incompetency, or through taxation.  By virtue of concentrating power in the hands of the few and well placed, the wealthy maintain control of their collective taxation fate as well as industry practices, thereby maintaining and sustaining their wealth, at the expense of the people, while making sure to provide to their loyal and dedicated governmental enablers the tributes of money, praise, and respect.

Compare at pricing and Shopping

This is America, and Americans love bargains, love to shop, aren't particularly good at math, and retailers of all various stripes know this.  You might think that the fact that discount stores are ubiquitous, such as TJ Maxx, Marshalls, as well as many others, that people wouldn't need to see a price tag with the words: "compare at" or "retailed at" on the clothing merchandise to understand that the price that they were seeing more often than not represented a fair price, but there is something about "saving" money, there is something about "bargains", there is something about "discounts", that makes certain shoppers salivate at their projected savings and thereby buy more stuff.

For certain people, when looking at tags which state, "compare at" or "retails at", they don't pay any attention to such nonsense, knowing that it's a game played by the retailers to "anchor in" a price within your mind, so that you wrongly believe that you are receiving some sort of privileged discount, instead, they see it as essentially misinformation and misdirection, and thereby decide whether to buy a particular item based on its merits and their view of its intrinsic worth.  However, there is a rather large subset of Americans, that take words such as "compare at" and "retails at" as if these really mean what they believe that they purport to mean, which is, that somebody, somewhere, is purchasing or has purchased this very good or something similar to it at that price, and therefore they are "getting over" on the retailer by purchasing this item from them, at such a massive discount.  Really?

As might be expected, consumers have rights, and retailers have to conform to such rights, so that when posting prices which state "compare at" or "retails at" there are specific rules and regulations that retailers must adhere to.  However, the law is somewhat nebulous, and in a country that offers an attorney at every corner, that isn't too surprising.  Each store seems to have its own set of rules as to what constitutes a sale in regards to regularly priced merchandise and what "compare at" or "retails at" means, to which the retailer as a matter of course posts a sign dealing specifically with this issue; of course, virtually nobody reads the sign, if they even take notice of it.  So too, the Federal Trade Commission weighed in as to what regular pricing should represent which essentially boils down to a good being offered by a given retailer at a regular basis for a reasonably substantial period of time.   However, missing from this equation is whether the given item at any time, was ever sold at that retail price, or what percentage of that item was sold at that retail price, which is something that the retail store probably knows but obviously doesn't divulge.

If all of this fake discounting or illusions of fantastic bargains was done tongue in cheek, it would be one thing, but in fact, it is part and parcel of the business model of many of these retail stores.  While it is true that bargains and discounts do exist on many items, it is also true, that the percentage of those items and the percentage of true discounts are skewed in such a manner so as to display to the consumer compelling significant savings that aren't truly there.  The fact of the matter is, these stores are profitable, indicating for a certainty that the stores selling the products are well aware of the underlying cost of the products being sold, whereas the consumer dupes herself or is duped into believing far too often that all that glitters is gold.

The 40-Hour Workweek

Most people take it for granted, that a normal work week of full pay without overtime is 40 hours, and thereby conclude that it always has been 40 hours and so forth, but that is a long, long way from the truth.  The truth of the matter is, as society gravitated from being an agricultural-based economy into the industrial revolution and service industry, the rules of the hours necessitated for those laborers working for management were not established at eight hours a day, but were considerably longer, often necessitating 12 hours per day, six days a week.  Not only were the hours long, but the pay for those hours, often was sufficient only for the basic necessities of life, and nothing much more.

Not too surprisingly, those working the long hours, recognized that although each individual was in of himself, essentially powerless to effect change for their labor, recognized though that groups of individuals united in the purpose of achieving both better pay as well as shorter hours, could achieve change.  This meant that even in the late 18th century, in cities such as Philadelphia, then the second biggest city in America, labor strikes by carpenters, for instance, occurred, demanding that the standard day should be reduced from 12 hours a day to just 10 hours a day.  This agitation by labor for reduced working hours was to continue for decades, in which, through starts and stops, through strikes and violence, through voluntary cooperation and court order, the tide slowly began to turn so as to provide more fairness to the common laborer, who seemed entitled in a free nation to appropriate leisure as well as rest time.

In the aftermath, of the devastating civil war, President Grant issued a proclamation in 1868, declaring that for federal workers, eight hour workdays would become the norm, but despite this proclamation, the workaround for this new charge, was to reduce wages to reflect the less hours worked, and the courts while recognizing the validity of the new law, essentially declare it not "obligatory", since wages and hours worked must be "…determined by the inexorable laws of business."  Nevertheless, this proclamation gave new impetus for the labor movement at large to work harder at achieving their goals of “8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, and 8 hours for what we will.”

In 1914, Henry Ford, Founder of the Ford Motor Company, determined that not only was 48 hours a week, too long for workers to labor diligently, but that reducing the work week to 40 hours a week along with actually increasing pay would be good for both the company as well as the worker.  Ford reasoned that if his laborers made more money that they would thereby spend that money buying the very products that they created, increasing profits, as well as being able to enjoy thereby the fruits of their labor, something that historically had been seen as a "class privilege".  Ford's foresight was instrumental in the continuous push for universal eight hour work days.

In 1938, Roosevelt signed into law the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established both a federally mandated minimum wage as well as setting 44 hours as the standard work week, to which, this was phased out to both a higher minimum wage as well as lowering the standard work week to 40 hours over a period of seven years.  The Fair Labor Standards Act, though amended, is still applicable today, to which, both eight hour days as well as 40-hour work weeks are the baseline standard for American workers.

Don't Call This a Revolution

Most children are taught in school that America fought a revolutionary war to free itself from Great Britain and while on the surface that might seem correct, it wasn't the correct perspective at that time, as we can discern from the reading of our Declaration of Independence.  The Declaration of Independence is America's seminal document, as it was this document that our Founding Fathers risked their lives, their honor, and their fortunes upon, to which, defeat for any or all of these men, would mean ruin, or death.  At the time of our declaration, Great Britain was the superpower, the sole empire of the world, to which the sun never set upon its vast territories, and it was this country that the colonists had the audacity to rise up against.

Jefferson's appeal in our declaration to the opinions of mankind was absolutely sincere, and this appeal was not for revolution, but for the dissolving of our political bands as well as a formal separation from this great empire.  Further to this point, Jefferson went above the divine right of the king, a right which presupposed that the king's right to rule his subjects came via the will of God, to turn that on its head by stating that all men are first created equal, and are subsequently equally endowed with unalienable rights gifted to us by Nature's God, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Jefferson went on to say that to secure these rights; governments are instituted amongst men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that when such a form of government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.  Jefferson then went on to list the usurpations and injuries suffered by the people by the tyranny of the present king, unjustly ruling over the colonists. Jefferson wanted the world to know that the colonists were the ones' wronged and further to the point, Jefferson wanted the world to know that our unalienable rights came not from kings or government, but by our Creator, and those that would subvert or take away such rights had no legitimacy or right to rule.  This meant that our declaration of independence, set forth to the world at large, was a carefully crafted instrument that laid out the unalienable rights of men in which their natural state was life, liberty, and happiness to which governments are instituted amongst men by the consent of these same men to secure those basic civil rights.

The colonists wished to be independent from Great Britain, because Great Britain had demonstrated repeatedly that they were destructive to the unalienable liberties of the colonists, in addition to the fact that Great Britain had demonstrated over a lengthy period of time that they were intractable in such behavior towards the colonists.  This meant that in order to be free from the chains of such oppression and tyranny, that the colonists would have to unite and to fight against the empire of Great Britain, and our Declaration of Independence as signed by the fifty-six signatories to it, was a commitment that these men would, if necessary, sacrifice all so as to become an independent nation or die trying.

Our Declaration of Independence meant war with Great Britain, and the fundamental purpose of that document, was to declare the legitimacy of the colonists position as opposed to the tyranny represented by Great Britain, and the signatories appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world, was an appeal that justice, liberty, and truth would be the foundational blocks forged in the birth of this great new nation.

The Success of Japan v. the Failure of Iraq

Japan was on the losing end of World War II, and besides suffering from that defeat which entailed the fiery destruction of much of residential Tokyo, it also suffered through two atomic bombs dropped onto its country by the United States of America.  You might think that the above would have created massive resentment within Japan of America, but in actuality, to the credit of the Japanese government and the Japanese people, they accepted their defeat with equanimity, as essentially being defeated by a stronger nation which led to their desire to learn from the best, which Japan aptly accomplished.

There are huge economic advantages to being located in the Far East and subsequently being treated by the greatest economic power in the world as a "favored" nation within that sphere.  Additionally, the dismantling of the Japanese military- industrial complex meant that monies, equipment, personnel, and resources that were previously spent in the upkeep of being an imperial power, were now redirected into becoming an economic power, to which, the United States was the partner that helped to provide the necessary resources and capital to jumpstart the Japanese miracle.  So too Japan represented an insular society, with little or no internal division, hard working people, intelligent, educated, and determined to do better, with a young work force and the resiliency to perform at a highly competent rate.  All of this led to the Japanese economic miracle, to which in the decade of the 1960s Japan averaged GDP growth of a staggering 10% a year, eventually to which this island nation with little natural resources became the second largest economy in the world by 1978.  Japan, today, remains very close to America, and would not be the same country if not for its special relationship with America, in conjunction with its dedicated work ethic and consistently high labor productivity rate.

In 2003, America, decided for whatever dubious reasons that Saddam Hussein, President/Dictator of Iraq, must be forcefully removed from office and thereby America with assistance from other coalition forces attacked Iraq and within 45 days, President Bush declared victory by stating, "Mission accomplished".  Despite the United States calling their military operation: "Iraqi Freedom", thirteen years after this military invasion, nobody would consider Iraq to be a free state, let alone a successful state, but most would consider it to be a failed state.  The GDP per capita (constant LCU) for Iraq in 2002 was $3,716,142, whereas in 2014 it was measured at $4,871,914, and while this is an improvement, it's hardly earth shattering, in fact its rather pedestrian, despite the fact that Iraq's oil production is 50% higher than what it was in 2002, and further to the point that Iraq is one of the largest oil producers in the world.

While there are myriad reasons why Iraq is a failed state, one need not look too far to understand that the artificial borders created out of the Ottoman Empire, created tensions, by virtue of the fact that these borders included within the same nation state factions that historically did not get along well with each other, which in particular were the Sunnis, the Shia, and the Kurds.   Any President of any country having to deal with these divisive interests would be hard pressed to have or to bring lasting peace to such a nation, and in this, Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, was no exception.  So too, when occupied by the United States of America, Iraq fared no better, degenerating into local battles between different factions with America often caught within the crossfire.  

Whether Iraq is ungovernable or not, America now knows that Iraq despite its great natural resource of oil, is no Japan, and never will be, indicating that it is foolish to believe that divisive factions with long standing animosities towards each other will somehow or another, unite under the umbrella of American hegemony.

The Decline of America's Labor Participation Rate

While there are all sorts of charts, statistics, numbers, and so forth, purporting to show the health or lack of health of today's economy, one of the most important numbers and chart, is the labor participation rate.  The labor participation rate basically measures the amount of citizens ages 16 and above that are either employed or actively looking for work, as compared against those not employed or not actively looking for work, which wouldinclude retirees, disabled people, students, and those incarcerated.  The current American labor participation rate is 62.9% as of September of 2016, which on the surface seems okay, but well below countries such as the United Kingdom, Russia, Italy, and Canada, while being higher than Germany, Japan, and Mexico.  However, beneath the surface, those numbers don't look nearly so acceptable.

For instance, at the beginning of this century, the labor participation rate in America was 67.3%, demonstrating that the current labor participation rate of 62.9% is a significant and very distressing reduction of around 6.5% of our labor participation rate, from January of 2000.  This equates to literally millions of people that are no longer part of the labor participation rate, and while critics contend that the reasonable explanation behind this decline can be attributed to an aging work force, that answer isn't completely candid or satisfying.  That is to say, looking specifically at the labor participation rate of those aged 25-54, considered to be the "wheelhouse" of employment and then comparing the labor participation rate for that group against three other mature countries, in this case, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom, for both male as well as females, the United States has the lowest percentage of labor participation in that group for both male as well as female categories as reported by aei.org for the year 2014.  This signifies in a nutshell that America's labor participation rate once adjusted for demographics ranks behind countries such as Japan and Germany.

As much as America desires to tease the numbers to make it seem that all is well, the truth of the matter is, something is fundamentally wrong, as America's labor participation rate has been in a steady decline for this century, somewhat due to the aging of our population, but also significantly due to the fact that a significant portion of those in their prime earning years of 25-54, have given up on finding work.  So too does this signify that the "puritan work ethic", that Americans have prided themselves on for generations, has effectively been nullified, perhaps, forever.

In point of fact, as less and less Americans are laboring to support in our welfare state more and more Americans that are not, there will come, sooner or later, a reckoning, when the massive deficits that this nation runs must either be paid back or repudiated, which would as a matter of course, demand from the population, significant belt tightening and grit.  For those that do not work, have no desire to work, and won't work, when this event occurs as it surely will, domestic insurrection will occur at unprecedented levels, for idle hands are the devil's workshop.

Dorms didn't use to have their own Phones

Never have so many gone to college as today's students, to which, almost to the person, they have their own cell-phone for their instant communication needs and desires.  This means that for parents, that their access to their collegiate children is as simple as dialing or texting that phone and thereby, "helicopter parents" can easily keep tabs on their children, as much as they so do desire, as well as children being able to easily contact mom and dad for any financial needs or other pressing concerns.  There was a time, however, which would essentially be before the 1970s, in which telephones didn't exist in any of the dorm rooms, whatsoever, and therefore, meant that the usage of a telephone, was reduced to common areas, or at the end of the dormitory hall, or gosh, public pay phones.

In addition, depending upon the physical distance between the parties, the marking of these phone calls was not cheap, it was "long distance" and definitely cost money, which necessitated conversations that stayed on point, rather than meandering, along with the fact that each story of a particular dorm hall had several student rooms in which each student in those rooms was entitled as a courtesy to have equal access to the common hall dorm phone, thereby meaning that conversations, along with being essentially public, could not be conducted forever.

In point of fact, once your child went off to college, most parents except perhaps for the very first week of classes, wouldn't talk to their child any more than once bi-weekly, if even that, and real communication would actually be done utilizing the postal mail, that is actual letter writing, so that pleas for money from parents was often something added to a letter while updating parents on a particular student's progress and as a tax, so to speak, on parents, for receiving information about a student's status.

The upshot of the fact that these young men and women were not available to be hailed by the parents or at the beck and call of their parents, meant, that these young students had to be more adult and more responsible for their behavior.  Not only that, back in the 1960s as well as earlier, the legal drinking age, was eighteen, signifying unlike today, that people that turned eighteen were actually treated as adults rather than being put into some sort of purgatory of neither a juvenile, nor a true adult.  So too this meant in an era in which your best friend could not be your iphone or your tablet and so forth, that students were more likely to make friends by engaging other students in real conversations, and by virtue of the fact that parents were not able to micromanage their children, students became closer with fellow students, as a sensible substitute or replacement for the lack of parental oversight and monitoring.

Therefore, the collegiate students of the 1960s were probably more mature individuals because unlike today's students they actually had to very quickly adapt and learn to stand up on their own two feet; whereas today's collegiate students are too often spoiled to the max, exist in manufactured "safe zones", coddled, and ultimately stuck with the outrageous educational bill for such babying.

An uneven distribution of money creates unnecessary deprivation for others

America is a capitalistic society, although,  actually it's not a true capitalist society as the game has been fixed to favor certain players over others, depending upon their connections with powerful vested and important interests in government, in justice, and in the administration of these things in the real world. This signifies that while the winners may not be predetermined or fixed forever, that there are privileged cliques of people, industry, and governmental authorities that rule over the masses of our society and thereby have accumulated both power as well as money.

Because America is a wealthy nation, many people are okay with this uneven distribution of money, especially so as America's propaganda machine does a stellar job of selling the illusion that just about anyone given the right circumstances can go from the outhouse to the penthouse in one generation, which encompasses what most people consider to be part and parcel of the American dream.  The thing is not everyone can realistically be ridiculously rich, in fact, most people in America at the present time, are distinctly not as reported by the washingtonpost.com, as the bottom 60% of Americans have in aggregate just 3% of the net wealth in America. 

The most significant problem with such a huge percentage of Americans that aren't really worth much, and that struggle day-by-day to make a living can be conceptualized by understanding that the GDP of a given country is based upon the finished goods and services that a country generates in which, there are basic necessities that every family needs such as: shelter, food, clothing, education, sanitation, and healthcare.  If you were to picture someone that is worth one billion dollars, recognize that this family only can eat so much, only can buy so many clothes, take so many vacations, and so forth, and the great bulk of the value of his money would be set aside and either saved or invested, but not consumed.  On the other hand, one billion dollars provided to one million impoverished people, would give each of those people, exactly one thousand dollars, of which they would almost for a certainty use that money to purchase goods that they need or require on an everyday basis.

Those that have way too much money typically aren't spendthrifts, and even when they behave like spendthrifts and purchase extra homes, private jets, yachts and other assorted big-ticketed stuff, most of that stuff sits unused or underutilized almost every day of the year, and consequently provides very little net good for society at large.  On the other hand, those that are barely scraping by will utilize whatever funds that they receive for real purchases of clothes, food, car payments, insurance, and rental payments, with any extra money being spent on other assorted desirable items that catch their fancy.

The truth of the matter is when the lion's share of monetary assets are held in very few hands, the rich aren't going to do much with it because their most urgent needs have already been met, so other than banking it in one of its myriad forms this wealth no longer circulates, leaving those that have little or nothing, high and dry, with little or no opportunity to make money, because that wealth isn't theirs, won't ever be theirs,  isn't accessible to them as theirs, making them very poor players in a rich man's world.

Turn your Back on the Declaration of Independence to your own Peril

While most Americans are familiar with our seminal founding document, the Declaration of Independence, most people do not understand the fundamental and guiding principle behind the document, as the document, is much more than men simply declaring their independence, as a careful reading of it indicates that our Founding Fathers believed that their appeal for independence was as witnessed by the last paragraph of the document an appeal by men to our Creator, "We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions…"  Yet, we now live in a country in which day-by-day, a significant part of the most powerful interests of the establishment, the most powerful interests of the military, the most powerful interests of justice, the most powerful interests of industry, together are determined to tear asunder our people's connection to God, and pretend that not only is this presently a secular nation, but it was created at its formation as a secular nation.

In point of fact, whether you wish to call those that push relentlessly for this secular state: treasonous, misguided, ignorant, or whatever, it is they that are in the driver's seat, and it is they that spit in the face of God, to which, our Bible admonishes us:  "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." (Psalm 9:17).  If, we as a people allow those that are the leaders and power brokers of this country to continue along its present course, then this country will as all other countries before it have done, collapse, because its legitimacy has been torn asunder from the very grace of God.

Be that as it may, Abraham Lincoln, our greatest President, recognized that the Declaration of Independence was the essence of America, and stated in 1858 in Lewistown, Illinois, "… come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence."    Lincoln was nobody's fool, gifted with a mind that never could rest in the sea of lies, deceit, hypocrisy, or pretense, for he was instead an unparalleled leader during the most perilous of times, who worked within the Constitution, who worked from the Declaration of Independence, so that America would have a new birth of freedom, and such freedom could only be eternal and forever binding if it was seen as it properly should be seen as both unalienable and gifted to us by our Creator, if only we were able to hold true our course and our purpose.

Today we live in a country that feels too often that mere lip service to God is good enough, that mere acknowledgement to those that founded this country is good enough, that mere half-hearted thankfulness for Lincoln that kept and solidified this great nation at the time when brother fought against brother, so that all would eventually be truly united as brothers, has too often been negated by today's lust for pleasure, today's selfishness, today's ruthlessness, exploitation, and deception toward other nations and peoples, today's lack of character and rectitude, all in service to today's god, which is mammon in all of its various forms and disguises.

The country that was created at the time of our Declaration of Independence is being eroded not from outside elements, but from the enemy within.  The bloody battles that were fought at our foundation and at our separation were fought so that those that gave their lives for their nation would enable that nation, under God, to live.  These noble dead have done their part, our founding fathers have done their part, great men of our civil war have done their part, those of the greatest generation have done their part, it is to those that are of the living that must so determine to dedicate their lives to the unfinished work of their part so that under God, this nation will have a renewed birth of freedom, in recognition that all are created equal, that all have unalienable rights, and that all are entitled to the golden door of liberty as sanctioned by the light of our Most High and Righteous God.

Police and their Loyalty

The concept of police and their duties, presence, and compensation, are essentially seen in today's society as if this has always been the norm and always will be the norm, but that simply isn't the case whatsoever.  There wasa time, when police, especially in their everyday duties and expectations, didn't really exist, instead communities would handle their law enforcement needs typically through a less formal system, a far less invasive system, involving watchmen, offer voluntary or compulsory as a duty to the community, with a constable or sheriff in charge who answered to the civic leaders of a given community,  and the payment for these men was often based on tasks accomplished, such as the serving of writs, the collecting of taxes, and the apprehending of those accused of crimes.

The advantage of the previous form of policing was the fact that the crimes that the sheriff responded to typically dealt with robbery, property theft or damage, public drunkenness, public fighting, murder, and prostitution, in which often times, the watchmen responded to crimes as perceived by citizens that were directly affected by them.  This also meant that the sheriff would as a matter of course; respond to crimes taking into account the property ownership and social status of the citizen engaging with them. That is to say, sheriffs and their watchmen were in essence, primarily there to protect the status quo from theft, damage, harm, and public nuisances.

Today's police force has a chain of command, and that chain of command doesn't really take into account that the law should be equally and fairly applied, but to the contrary, that the law is purposely opaque, subject to all sorts of interpretation or misinterpretation, arbitrary, endless, contradictory, all for the given purpose so that the police as designated agents of the State, can without much meaningful controversy,  arrest and deal with the common man in a manner that quickly allows the State to keep order, so as to protect the vested interests of those that are important or have significant assets, from outside elements that would destroy wealth or the public order.

When the police designate on their government vehicles that they are here to "protect and serve", that motto isn't fundamentally meant for the people that own nothing, have no real opportunity, and are barely able to make ends meet, but instead all that protecting and serving is in reality designated for the privileged people of the community and really nobody else.

The foremost duty of the police in essence is to protect and to serve the status quo, at all times, for the very reason, that if they fail to do so, they will summarily be replaced by those that will not fail to do so. 

The police answer to their paymasters, and those paymasters are the leaders both civic and private of that community, to which, their primary desire of those leaders is not to have trouble, because trouble is bad for business, and bad business is bad for their pocketbook as well as being  inherently destabilizing, so that, the best way to take care of trouble is to use the domestic policing arm of the community to crush the bad elements, typically by demonstrating overwhelming force, and if necessary, by using that same force until the opposition is put to heel.

Shopping Malls and Curfews

There are two basic types of curfews: of which the most pertinent one is a curfew set for emergency reasons in regards to a real public safety issue because of a natural disaster or rioting or similar, than there is the other type of curfew which is at the convenience of the State, arbitrary, and basically takes those that are under eighteen and imposes a curfew upon them, which based on the day of the week, and the time of the actual curfew, may be perceived as reasonable or not.  The thing about curfews in general is that the Supreme Court had this to say:”the right to walk the streets, or to meet publicly with one's friends for a noble purpose or for no purpose at all—and to do so whenever one pleases—is an integral component of life in a free and ordered society."  However, when it comes to juveniles, the Supreme Court has permitted exceptions to this basic rule that the public is allowed to walk the streets freely, and then when it comes to private property, in particular, certain shopping malls, private property rights muddies the curfew waters even more.

You might think that shopping malls would be interested in as much foot traffic as possible in order to conduct their day-to-day business, but that isn't really true at all.  In fact, a significant amount of shopping malls are particular about who shops their malls, and whereas, you might suspect that the shopping mall philosophy would be that youth must be served, above all, that isn't the case in all shopping malls.  Instead, certain shopping malls have enacted specific rules mandating that juveniles must be escorted by a parental authority after 6PM, for instance, and that those that disobey such authority will be in violation of curfew, and subsequently it is within the rights of the mall to escort such juveniles off of the property.

There are many issues with this type of curfew, of which, one is the fact that juveniles, being juveniles, often wish to congregate amongst themselves, rather than being with their parents at all times, and parents as well, do not want to be with their children at all times.  An additional issue is that certain shopping malls have movie theatres and because the movie theatre is on mall premises, this means, that parents cannot drop their children off to the movie theatre, after 6PM or engage a showing which will end after 6PM, which is hardly beneficial for the movie theatre or for the biggest patrons of movies in general, which is young people.  Further, to the point, and in reality the elephant in the room, is the fact that despite the fact that the mall may already have certain dress codes, behavior codes, along with specific rules that deal with gang paraphernalia and gang colors, the mall, because of fear of lawsuits or whatever, theoretically groups all juveniles under one umbrella, rather than dealing with the element that they believe is disruptive and thereby bad for business.

As bad as that is for juveniles, incredibly, at the present time the Atlantic Station mall of Atlanta, GA, has an even more insidious and quite debatable further curfew for those that are under the age of twenty-one but at least eighteen years old, in which their curfew at the property is 11PM, even though restaurants and the movie theatre are all open later than 11PM.  The above, is a prime example of how someone that is legally an adult, is still treated as if they are something other than an adult, and is ultimately of dubious legality.

For those that believe that private establishments should be allowed to set the rules of their particular establishment and thereby to treat their patrons in the manner that they best see fit, this type of mindset, that the business owner can do whatever that he desires with his property, was essentially nullified by the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, so that private establishments could no longer discriminate against patrons on the basis of their race or similar.  Today, with these shopping mall rules,

juveniles as well as adults less than the age of twenty-one are discriminated against, to which, underneath the surface there is a more than a distinct feeling that these laws are primarily enacted to treat certain specified people, separately and unequally.

America wouldn't bat an eye to the Stamp Act today

In America, most people are rather indifferent to history, or rather poor at it, or don't really care about it, to which, none of this lack of knowledge counts to the credit of America as whole.  For most people, there is a general knowledge that we fought for our independence from Great Britain, however, a significant amount of people don't really know why, but figure it has something to do with us getting tired of being pushed around and shot at.  While the actual reasons for our fight for independence are myriad, certainly one of the most important ones came down to taxation, to which, unlike the present day, taxes were primarily seen as the intolerable confiscation of wealth, and in general frown upon, as the undue use of force against colonists.  So too, this meant, that the colonists when they had imposed upon them the notorious Stamp act, were vociferous in their protest of it.  The colonists were especially upset on two accounts, of which one being that they were being charged a direct or internal tax, without having representation in the British parliament, which they found to be especially insidious, as well as being compelled to pay that tax without legal recourse.

While there are a multitude of taxes that we deal with today, the colonists at that point in history, looked upon taxes as being in one of two categories, of which one was an external tax on for example imported goods, in which, because it is a tax based on consumption as to what one wished to purchase or not it seemed understandable and often without controversy, as the ultimate decision was left up to the consumer of such a good.  Then again, in situations in which the British government controlled the market by banning other competing imported goods, as well as there being little or no domestic industry in that commodity, boycotts and protests were vociferous.  As for an internal tax, in this case the Stamp Act, that was deliberately set as being a tax upon all official documents such as writs, deeds, wills, and contracts of all sorts, that without the purchase of State approved paper bearing the State stamp, would by definition, not be recognized as legal in a court of law.  This meant, that in order to conduct business in the course of events, you would as colonist, have to pay the Stamp Act tax.

Although it is true, that in America, as a sovereign nation, we do now have representation, it is problematic as to whether that representation actually represents the common man, whatsoever.  In any event, the amount of taxes that Americans deal with on a daily basis, would make our Founding Fathers' heads spin, because we pay taxes on so many levels, which are not fairly or equally applicable on or for: social security, Medicare, State income, Federal income, excise, fuel, corporate, hotel, airlines, sales, property, and so forth, to which the list goes on and on and on. 

If this government, was to pass a law, mandating that all legal contracts have a special Stamp seal associated to it, as a fee or form of taxation, there would probably not be much of a peep of a protest, because it would just be seen as just another tax, annoying or not, to go with all our other taxes, and the citizens of this country, would almost certainly just accept it.  In fact, this is pretty much how things are done in America, presently, in which a significant amount of taxation is hidden from the view of the consumer, by being priced into the product being purchased to begin with which is often regulated and controlled by Federal law. 

While it is true that the colonists won the Stamp Act battle, so too it is true, that ultimately they lost the tax battle war.

Medical Expenses and Bankruptcy

In 2015, over 800,000 people filed for bankruptcy in America, to which, previous studies indicated that a substantial reason behind such bankruptcies were unforeseen medical bills, along with the aftermath of this unpleasant event.  For instance, if you have been working and are injured, hurt, or become ill, all of the following may also occur, such as: medical issues preclude you from continuing to work, your home necessitates a second mortgage in order to pay medical bills, credit is damaged, overall income has been truncated or significantly reduced, transportation issues, piled up bills from other creditors, and so forth, of which the proximate cause of all of these issues coming to the fore, is the medical issue in the first place.

While the government likes to believe that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has helped to ease some of these problems, that may be true to a point, but the monthly premiums for these medical plans are definitely high, the deductibles are burdensome, the out-of-pocket expenses are deliberately opaque, as well as these plans don't cover everything, and they certainly don't cover lost income and other assorted issues that a medical problem brings to a family dependent upon steady and reliable income.  In 2013, as reported by nerdwallet: "unpaid medical bills are expected to be the No.1 cause of bankruptcy filings…"  We shouldn't be surprised by such a statistic mainly because as reported by esquire.com: "56 percent of Americans said they have less than $1,000 in their checking and savings accounts combined," as well as reported by offthegridnews.com in 2015: "40 percent of consumers surveyed said they lived paycheck to paycheck."

All of the above indicates that an entire families' infrastructure can easily come crashing down, when a given family suffers through unexpected medical bills.  It seems self-defeating in these types of situations for the government to offer little or no recourse for those burdened under heavy medical debt, except to file bankruptcy or to suffer through the consequences of falling further and further behind on monetary commitments with the inevitable consequences of damaged credit, late fees and penalties, along with higher associated interest rates, as well as the invariable harassing phone calls and mailed billing statements that reflect the certain fact that accumulating bills are significantly past due.

You might think that having unexpected health issues and medical expenses, would be suffering enough, without also taking away the very home and/or disrupting the lives of fellow Americans, yet, way too often that is the case.  While there might not be any easy solutions to this problem, the current version in which particular unfortunate individuals at their greatest time of need are basically pushed to the brink, and subsequently economically devastated for years to come, while also possibly suffering from what now is a long-term physical debility, is hardly becoming of a nation with the wealth and reputation that America represents.

The fact of the matter is that medical expenses are very high in America, with those same expenses rising at a rate far exceeding inflation over the last few decades, yet for many people their wages have barely, if even, kept up with inflation.  This would signify that when it comes to healthcare, more low-cost alternatives must become available to those most in need, in which, through technology, through screening, through efficiency, through algorithms, through more usage of generic drugs and long-standing medicines no longer under patent, through registered nurses and medical students taking more responsibility for patient care, cost savings can be generated and pass through to those most truly in need of a reliable hand and considerate care. 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and 1984

As technology has gotten more ubiquitous, more powerful, and more pervasive, all of the average citizens civil rights have come under assault, all under the false flag of safety, security, and domestic tranquility.  While there are a significant amount of Americans that will eat the propaganda that this nation's leaders foist upon them, there are many people that recognize that the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2002, was the day, that America, no longer represented life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness but instead degraded itself into believing that nothing was more important than citizen safety, compliance, and domestic non-confrontational interactions. 

While those that run our Para-military police departments, our armed forces, and our DHS, liked to profess that all good citizens have nothing to fear, the word "good" as used in this description, means, subservient in all ways to the State.  That type of obedience is consistent with the type of obedience that is expected by totalitarian regimes, which demand from its citizens, that they will behave in certain specific ways or suffer the consequences.

The Department of Homeland Security is the excuse for our government to have access to everything that we do and say, without limit, without proper supervision, without Constitutional authorization, and thereby to sacrifice our freedom, to sacrifice our conscience, all for the sake of safety.  While it is true that pigs in a pigpen are safe, it also true that they aren't free, and further to the point, it is true that one day they will be slaughtered for the role of a "good" pig is to be served on a plate to its ultimate master.

George Orwell's seminal book, 1984, was written as a warning that the State, far from being our benevolent friend, far from looking out for the common citizen's concerns, far from being both fair and impartial, had its own vested interest in how it would prefer society to be, and not too surprisingly a society in which the citizen serves the State, a society in which the State controls everything, including the past, the present, and the future, as well as the mind being itself controllable and manipulated by the State, presents the type of intrusive encroachment upon individuals and their will, that the end result, is compliance to the all powerful State.

The Department of Homeland Security is aptly named, and completely unnecessary in times of war, or for that matter, in times of peace.  The DHS aggrandizes unto the State, all power, all for the benefit for those that are the real power brokers of the State, so that each individual outside of this elite can be looked upon as having value only in the sense of the value that they can provide via labor or its equivalency to the State, and all others, that have little, no, or negative value, are treated in essence as enemies of the State, enemies of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security wants you to believe that there is an international bogeyman that is going to terrorize our citizens and only Homeland Security can stop it.  Homeland Security wants you to believe that we are always in danger and only Homeland Security can stop it.  Homeland Security wants you to believe that safety is only possible if we as citizens consent for everything about us to be monitored, processed, stored, and analyzed. 

In exchange for all our liberties and freedoms being sacrificed, Homeland Security promises that they will protect us, when in actuality, by so doing; they have dehumanized us, and successfully manipulated us into vacating our unalienable rights, and making a god instead of our masters of Homeland Security.

Dreams, Loved ones, and your Subconscious mind

There are plenty of things that we take for granted each and every day, mainly because they have become routine to us, but upon reflection, we should pay more attention to them.  For instance, each of us must have a proper amount of sleep which varies from person=to-person, but within sleep for all of us our conscious mind becomes quiescent and silent while our subconscious mind takes over.  In addition, for each of us, although again it differs person-to-person, we dream while we sleep, whether or not we can remember our dreams, how vivid our dreams are, and so forth, differs, but each of us dreams, during our periods of sleep. 

Our dreams through our subconscious mind are akin to our own private movies, in which, all sorts of activities and action takes place, all being accomplished while we lie somnolent in bed.  Because these dreams come forth from our own subconscious mind, they have importance primarily to the dreamer of that dream, as compared to being universal in its symbols and thereby applying to all, although there are dream motifs that are consistent within cultures and certain contexts.

To demonstrate one of the primary differences between our conscious and subconscious mind, we know that within our conscious mind whether we are courageous or not, whether we are a soldier or not, whether this person is still alive or not, and so forth, whereas in our subconscious mind facts that we take for granted, about who and what we are, are suspended in disbelief, so that in our dreams, we can be in an entirely different time zone, in an entirely different city, in an entirely different period of our life in regards to our age, have facts about our current life changed such as not being married, even though in reality we are, being with friends that we haven't seen in years, being at a former job that we haven't worked at in years, and poignantly engaging with loved ones from our past, that have physically left this world. 

There is something very special about having a dream with someone close to you that is no longer physically here, but within your dream, they are alive, and you and they are doing various activities together.  While these particular dreams can signify all sorts of things, the most obvious thing, that it signifies is that physical death is not the end of life, that although our precious loved ones from our life are no longer physically here, their soul, their spirit, exists, and subsequently their soul breaks through the dimension that traps our conscious mind so often into believing that we exist solely in time and space, whereas freed from such men-activated constraints, in our dream world, time and space are seen correctly as an illusion.

This means that in our dream world, we easily can gravitate to the past, to the future, to those alive, to those dead, and so forth, because our subconscious mind is not restrained by the "intelligence" of our conscious mind.  There are many, many things that happen to us in our lives that mean a lot to us, so to once again, be able to be with those that were part and parcel of our lives, is a welcomed relief.  It is a reminder that death is best seen as the release of our soul from the physical confines of the body, presenting an opportunity perchance to be again with those that we love most, and to interact with them in a dimension that limits not itself.

Healthcare and Inflation

According to cms.gov, "From 2000 to 2009, health-care spending grew by an average of 6.9 percent each year," whereas inflationdata.com indicates that for the decade of 2000 to 2009, that the average annual inflation was 2.54 percent per year, signifying a massive difference between these two numbers, and in this current decade of benign inflation, that gap has only continued to rise between healthcare and its associated costs including insurance premiums v. ordinary inflation for the mass of other consumer items that people deal with on a continuous basis.

The fact that more and more money for the average American is spent on healthcare as a percentage of one's income is great for those in the healthcare industry while adversely impacting the budget and ordinary needs of the American citizen.  Healthcare or the lack of fair pricing within healthcare is also one of those industries, more than any other that effectively is the cause of bankruptcy for a significant portion of our population in which huffingtonpost.com reports that: "A recent Harvard University study showed that medical expenses account for approximately 62 percent of personal bankruptcies in the US."

There are a lot of fundamental problems within healthcare in which two of the biggest are healthcare premiums and the other being the lack of transparency in regards to healthcare medical costs.  In regards to healthcare premiums, many consumers are rather clueless as to what they have or have not signed up for, and what their healthcare plan does or does not cover, and don't really address that issue until they try to utilize their healthcare plan only to find out that it doesn't cover them for some needed surgery or healthcare or the coverage percentage by the health insurer either maxes out at a too low level or the "sharing" of expenses is too high for the insured.  This would signify that healthcare policies that cost considerable amounts of money aren't really well understood by the consumers that buy them, and in addition, that often healthcare companies in order to maximize their profit make it their policy to deny legitimate claims or coverage, so as to take advantage of consumers that are unable to fight or figure out the system.  In addition, people that visit their medical doctor or are hospitalized seldom are shown exactly what they will or won't be paying for, specifically in regards to the medical cost, how long, how much, and so forth.  In fact, to a large extent once you are checked into a hospital, it is almost akin to having sacrificed your civil rights, and you are for better or for worse, a captive audience, subject to all sorts of procedures, necessary or not, that you literally have no say about, but are in conjunction with your healthcare policy, stuck paying for.

The fact of the matter is most of our everyday shopping is quite transparent in that there is a price, the store honors that price, and a decision to buy or not buy that item is left to our discretion.  When it comes to our health, though, most people are at a material disadvantage from the get-go in the sense that they aren't feeling well to begin with, which is the primary reason why they are seeking that healthcare, and there is in almost all cases no a la carte menu of medical expenses that they can choose from yet they are mandated to pay whatever that the ultimate cost will be.

In point of fact, healthcare will continue to far outpace inflation into the foreseeable future as long as the healthcare industry is allowed and permitted to conduct their business in their traditional opaque way, without full disclosure and without true authorized consent.  Too often the healthcare industry gets a free pass, and thereby too often fleeces the vulnerable consumer, whereas its primary purpose should not be selfish profit but instead to first, do no harm.

Fake Credit Cards for People with Really Bad Credit

According to mernalaw.com, in 2015 there were: "…819,240 bankruptcies filed nationally," and in each of the years 2010-2013 there were more than 1,000,000 bankruptcies filed each year.  This signifies that in America, that there are literally millions of people that have filed bankruptcy over the last decade, in which depending upon the bankruptcy filed; it takes seven to ten years for that bankruptcy to be fully discharged from your credit history.  What this means for those individuals, is that something that many people take for granted, such as an unsecured credit card, is simply not available or difficult to obtain as an option typically for these people, especially in regards to your basic MasterCard or Visa card. 

In the credit card world there are different tiers of credit cards available, based on your credit score and income, in which, the best credit card for most people is one that is both unsecured, that is you do not have to put up collateral such as money to obtain it as well as no annual fee, program rewards, as well as a low or reasonable interest rate.  Next, there are credit cards that are unsecured, but require an annual fee, or have a higher interest rate or both.  Then there are credit cards, that while still unsecured, have an initiation fee, and then a monthly credit card fee just for the pleasure of having the credit card, as well as a high interest rate, typically marketed to people with bad credit, but not considered to be hopeless.  For those with rather anemic credit, there are secured credit cards, in which the typical policy is for the consumer to set up a specific savings account which is used as collateral for the credit card, and depending upon that deposit and credit worthiness, a credit limit is established.  Finally, there are people in which because of bankruptcy they have not only terrible credit, but have demonstrated to credit card issuers that they are willing to go through bankruptcy to discharge such debt, not exactly the type of person that most credit card companies will welcome. 

Yet, for whatever reason, or however it occurred, people that declared bankruptcy, and/or have atrocious credit have a real interest in pursuing and receiving a credit card, for a lot of reasons, of which the primary one is simply, convenience.  We live in a world in which people need to buy food, need to purchase gas, need to purchase other assorted items, and so forth, in which, because most people are not paid daily, but rather are paid weekly, or bi-weekly, or monthly, don't have ready money, but in reality, do have money coming, or its equivalency, but often not enough money is available to them at their moments of need. Those people desire therefore a credit card to cover those expenses, but unfortunately, while doing their search online, for instance, are steered into what are in essence, fake credit cards, that rather than being universal and thereby a credit card that one can use at virtually any store for anything subject to the credit limit, find themselves, instead, being offered a "credit card" that is only good for one or perhaps a couple of specific online stores, and that's it.

 The rub for these fake credit cards lie in two distinct areas, in which, first of all, there are the fees, which might include all of the following: an initiation fee, a monthly fee, an application fee, a membership fee, and late fees, for that credit card.  In addition, the online store that they can shop at will for a certainty sell items at a significantly higher price point representing a premium to what the item would sell for at a regular website or a brick and mortar store.

In America, whether you want to commend it or disown it, entrepreneurs can make money all sorts of ways, including specifically marketing to the vulnerabilities of those with bad credit, by selling them the illusion that a particular credit card is going to help aid them in repairing their bad credit, or be of help to them during tight budgetary times, or whatever, when in reality, it is all about exploitation, and really nothing else.  The bottom line is that most people with bad credit and/or that have gone through bankruptcy have access to money through their job and possibly governmental benefits, and there are specifically companies whose business model is to get that money from those people, because they know that these people can be rather easily suckered.

Juveniles and inconsistent Justice

Most people along with the law for the most part, recognize that when a person turns eighteen, that they are no longer subject to juvenile jurisdictions but are now treated exactly the same as adults, with a few notable exceptions.  It is those exceptions which proves that the law is all over the place, because depending upon the city that you reside in, or the State, or what crime you are accused of, your justice will often noticeably vary. That is to say, sometimes the government treats a juvenile, that is someone under eighteen as an adult, and sometimes the government or private enterprise treats someone that is age eighteen to twenty, as if they were effectively neither a juvenile nor an adult.

This sort of inconsistency in regards to the law, almost always, is in the favor of the arbitrary State or its adjutants and almost always insufferable for those caught in its crosshairs.  Take for example, someone that simply wants to smoke a cigarette, whereas, for the most part previous to 1990, if you were sixteen, you could legally smoke, now depending upon the jurisdiction that you reside in, you have to be at a minimum eighteen, yet there are States, cities, and counties that have raised the age to twenty-one, with, of course, criminal penalties for those that fail to adhere to those guidelines.  So, for instance, if you reside in a community with the smoking age of twenty-one, yet you are only twenty when caught smoking, you will at a minimum be subjected to a fine, and possibly community service, for the possession and use of tobacco.  This effectively treats someone that is legally an adult, as something less than an adult.  Then, there is alcohol, in which in every State of the union, the legal drinking age was raised by 1986 to twenty-one, with significant penalties in most States, for being underage, and having consumed any alcohol at all, let alone enough alcohol that would typically trigger a DUI.  Again, this is a situation in which an adult is treated as something other than an adult.  So too, with private enterprise, in which most rental car companies insist that renters be at least twenty-five to rent a car, and some hotels insist that the lodger be at least twenty-one.  The one thing that surprisingly hasn't significantly changed over the last generation is the legal age of consent for sexual relations, which ranges from age sixteen to eighteen in all of our States.  So apparently, in America, the State cares more deeply as to whether you smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol, which are basically actions that affect your own body and your own consent, as compared to sexual relations which involves at a minimum, two persons, mutual consent, and the distinct possibility of conception. 

The above is demonstrated proof of the government treating adults of the ages eighteen through twenty as if they weren't adults, even though the penalties for their criminal actions of underage drinking or underage smoking are penalized as adults, which logically makes no sense.  Then, on the other hand, the government proving that it wants to lord it over and bully certain citizens, will take juveniles that are under the age of eighteen, and under certain circumstances, typically in regards to a serious criminal offense, but always at the discretion of the State, treat juveniles as if they were adults, and thereby try these juveniles in adult court.  That is hardly fair, because if you read it through carefully, what the government is saying is that when it, the government, determines that it wishes to treat a juvenile as an adult it will do so, and when the government determines that if wants to take an adult of ages eighteen to twenty and treat them as essentially as if they were a juvenile, but punish them as if they were an adult, it does that.

All of this essentially means that the government can treat its citizens, in particular its younger citizens, any which way that they want to, especially because juveniles and young adults don't have any real power in America, and thereby can be successfully slapped, used, and kicked around by the State.  The State exists to protect the status quo and they aren't young, and these privileged elites have no real interest in seeing youth served whatsoever, in fact, that is why, in any war, the ground fighting is always done by the poor and young, who are just old enough to die for their country at eighteen, but are not old enough to have a drink, smoke a cigarette, or in the future, even have sex.