Alleged

Alleged is a word that is overused, misused, and annoying to hear when repeated over and over again in regards to specific crime stories.  For instance, it's irksome to read headlines such as this from the Chicago Tribune, "Death penalty sought for alleged Boston bomber Tsarnaev".  Really?  First off, how is it possible for a death penalty to be sought for an "alleged" bomber?  Shouldn't the death penalty be specifically setup for the actual bomber?  As for alleged, how many other people are being alleged to be the bomber in this case?  If there aren't any other suspects and the evidence is overwhelming against Tsarnaev, why not call a spade a spade?

The Oxford Dictionary defines allege as follows: "claim or assert that someone has done something illegal or wrong, typically without proof that this is the case."  This would strongly imply that when someone is first arrested and the evidence is just being sorted out, that it might be okay, to call the accused perpetrator, alleged.  But even in this case, the use of the word allege is rather weak, unless you feel that the police typically arrest people without rhyme or reason, in which case using the modifier, allege, may have merit.

A far more effective way to report crime information, is to state the facts as presented by the police or the prosecutor's office.  If you have something to add to these facts, you should add them, but by reporting what has been stated by the police or the prosecutor you will come up with a sentence such as "the police stated today that they have arrested the Boston marathon bomber," as opposed to saying that Tsarnaev is the alleged bomber.

Further, as the trial winds its way down through our legal system, you can then report that the accused Boston bomber is in jail, and further that the accused Boston bomber has been charged with the specific charges that the prosecutor's office has filed against him.  Presenting the news in this manner is a more straightforward, honest, and meaningful way to convey the actual news of this case to your audience, as opposed to the misguided step of adding the modifier, alleged, over and over again, which essentially mitigates a crime and the criminal that should not be mitigated whatsoever.

The additional problem of using the word alleged, inappropriately, is that this word essentially changes the world from a world of facts and falsehoods, from reality and fantasy, into a world in which the press is incapable of simply reporting the news in a manner that is sensible.   If newspapers and news reporters are so unsure about factual events, that they constantly have to modify simple statements with a world such as alleged, how is it possible to report anything that is actually news?  Ultimately, you must make a stand, perhaps sometimes despite your prudent standards your stand is incorrect or inaccurate, the facts that you have reported in good faith to the public later are shown to be incorrect, you can correct this, modify this, and apologize for this, as opposed to the endless silly loop of alleging this or alleging that.

What are we here for?

Socrates rightly stated:  "… that the life which is unexamined is not worth living."  Yet, how many of us go about our business on any particular day without ever reflecting upon this thought.  Certainly, you can live life without ever examining it, without ever reflecting upon it, without ever asking the question, but if you don’t make a concerted and focused search for the meaning of life, you are hard-pressed to then discover that 'eureka' moment when everything here begins to make sense.

But it goes much further than that, if you don't examine your life and if you don't pursue the question as to why we are even here, the decisions that you make in life will in all probability be significantly different than if you did ask the question.  Living a life in ignorance of the meaning of life, imprisons you and makes you far more susceptible to demagogues, and makes you far more amendable to the dictates of the State. 

Everyone does have the opportunity to ask the question as to why we are here and in consequence to build that foundation that brings meaning and purpose to our life.  The question must always be asked, because if we don't know where we are going, or what our purpose is in living, how then is it conceivable that we should ever safely arrive there? 

The first thing that you must realize is that you are your own person, with your own thoughts, your own movements, your own decisions, and your own life.  No one can live your life for you, except for you.  Circumstances that you face may have quite a heavy influence on how your life is lived and how your life is played, but the circumstances that you face are not you, these are merely the conditions that you must deal and live with.

Some of us are born rich, some of us are born poor, some of us are born in 'free' countries, and some of us are born in repressive regimes, some of us have more intelligence than others, better circumstances than others, and more of this or less of that than others.  Each of us is not the same person as we relate to the world, in fact, none of us are the same person throughout the stages of our life and the paths that we may take.  We are defined by the decisions made or thrust upon us and our reaction or implementation to same. 

All of the above implies that we recognize that our true self cannot be the physical body but rather must be our soul which is housed within our material self.  If, instead we believe that somehow the physical is all that we ever could be, than it is to the physical, to the material, that we will devote the entirety of our energies in a futile attempt to take something that is finite and extend it to infinity.  Once we comprehend that our soul is eternal, that our adventure here on earth is a cycle of birth, material death, and re-birth, we will recognize that we are here to give away or to pass onto posterity our wisdom, our clarity, our compassion, our goodness, our balance, our service, and our sharing to all those that will receive it.

Truth

We are admonished in a court of law to "…tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God."  A command such as this is very straightforward, yet so many of us end up breaking it, bending it, waiving it, or ignoring it, in which none of those things do justice to truth.    In the Bible we read in John 18:37-38, "…Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. 38 Pilate saith unto him, What is truth?"

Pilate asks the question that we should all ask, because truth is a very important concept; it is at heart the very foundation of law, along with being the very foundation of Christ's incarnation on earth.  Yet so many of us, see truth, as something that is pliable, changeable, subjective, and variable, in which none of these can possibly be valid reflections of truth.  Truth is immutable, it cannot change, it is non-variable, it is always the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  Anything less than this, is not truth, it may touch upon truth but that is not enough, and consequently it is not truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Anything less than the whole truth is a form of deceit, or ignorance, or lying, or manipulation.  But what of people that believe that when each of the six blind men who touched different parts of the elephant and therefore came to quite different conclusions about the beast were in their way, telling the truth.  This metaphor presses the point that in order to come to the correct viewpoint, you need not only vision and comprehension, but also a dose of humility that instructs you that although your viewpoint appears to be true, that it may not be actually true, certainly may not be the whole truth, and that strict adherence to your viewpoint, while denying others their say, is wrong-headed.

Truth is not an easy concept for most people to get their heads around, because truth demands absolute adherence to its law.  It is we, humans that must muster up the courage, and the discipline to recognize the supreme importance of truth or suffer the consequences of our failure.  Truth is a demanding master which harbors no deceit or shortcuts.  You cannot con truth, you cannot short-circuit truth, and you certainly cannot modify truth.  To do any of these things will tarnish your own image and dull your own mind.

When Christ tells us that He bears witness unto truth and that those that believe in truth hear His voice, He is speaking a literal truth to us.  The truth that Christ speaks of is not obvious to the uninitiated nor is it obvious to the unenlightened.  When none of Christ's hand-picked disciples were able to comprehend Christ's mission before Pentecost, then we take some solace in knowing that we are not alone in our shortcomings and errors.  To know truth is to know God, and that can only come through revelation, a process that for most takes guidance, desire, and surrender to that still, small voice within.

The Evolution of Voting

Voting has vastly changed since the inception of this great country, whereas voting was once restricted to strictly white property-owning males, voting is now readily available to all adults of age eighteen and above with little restrictions to your ability to vote.  Additionally, even though states have historically set their own standards and definitions as to how, where, and whom is eligible to vote, these variations have been for the most part standardized over recent years, so that voting in America truly has become democratized and by virtue of the fact that the ballot is now available to all, voting in elections does represent the people as a whole.

Initially in America, suffrage was limited to white male property owners, in which the thinking of that day and age was that voting should be limited to and also reflect those that were mature individuals, established, respectable, and that had a vested interest in their community.  However, over time, the property requirement was removed from most States, due in part to new States being added to the Union that did not require this particular restriction, the devastation of the Panic of 1819 in which overextended credit led to bank and property ownership failures, and the fact that the rural population had a higher proportion of eligible voters as compared to city dwellers that could not afford to buy or had a need to buy land in town.

The fact that the voting requirements had changed is the probable reason why Andrew Jackson was elected in 1928, in which he was considered to be the choice of the common man, as opposed to the previous Presidents that had been elected, all of whom were considered to be of a more refined class, east coast based, educated and/or wealthy. 

After the civil war, the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, which gave the vote to all males, regardless of race or color.  Unfortunately, all States, but in particular southern States were able to circumvent this new Amendment and new law over time, in which the Southern States also added poll taxes, so that in order to vote, you had to pay for that privilege, which implicitly eliminatedmany impoverished blacks from voting.  Additionally, saddled onto your capacity to vote, unless you had been grandfathered in, were so-called "literacy tests" which were in effect, tests that had little to do with literacy and a lot to do with purposeful failure for those that were targeted in which the questions were setup in such a way, that you were destined to get the answers wrong.

In 1920, the 19th Amendment to our Constitution was ratified, which gave the right to vote to women, in which slowly but inexorably over time, the percentage of eligible women voting increased so that at the present time, women outvote men.  In fact, in the 2008 Presidential election, 65.7% of eligible female votes voted vs. just 61.5% of men, in which the number of women that voted was 70.4 million vs. only 60.7 million men.  Because women do not vote in lockstep with men, but instead have their own issues and agendas that mean most to them, voting and its incumbent results have changed forever in America.

Finally, in 1965, the national Voting Rights Act was passed into law, which effectively rolled back the arbitrary and discriminatory rules made previously by most Southern States to preclude minorities from registering and voting, allowing the vote to become truly democratic for all citizens of the United States for the first time.  Therefore, today, each adult (non-felon) citizen of the United States has the same capacity and capability to cast their vote. 

The ballot box is effectively ours.

The 9-11 Conspiracy

There is something about secrets and the opportunity to receive and to divulge inside knowledge that absolutely enchants people.  Conspiracy theories have probably been around since governments were created by mankind and will be around as long as mankind has governments.  It's intuitive to believe that the less transparent and also the more secretive government agencies are, the more prone we are to believe in conspiracies.  Additionally, with our government having done all sorts of scandalous activities against other governments, not to mention our government having historically targeted undesirable peoples for relocation or worse, and the deliberate manufacturing and disclosure of "doctored" documents and the like, people have a right to be suspicious of their government and the things that they are told.  Quite simply: people lie, governments lie, people deceive, governments deceive, people will do preposterous things and so will governments.

However, when it comes down to the 9-11 attacks that took the lives of about 3,000 people, and injured many others both physically and emotionally, the conspirators have it all wrong, well wrong, and they dishonor the innocent civilians that died from those attacks and their families, along with dishonoring the brave police, firemen, and good Samaritans that lost their lives, and additionally they dishonor their own country, by believing and giving credence to a lie that has virtually no basis in truth.   

The lies that persist around the 9-11 terrorist attacks are meant primarily to put forth an agenda that is both anti-American and anti-Semitic, under the guise that those that perpetuate this 9-11 lie are true Americans for having brought this story to light.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  It is absurd, an incredible stupidity, to believe that the American government, for instance, first coordinated the 9-11 hijacked commercial airplanes to deliberately crash them into the World Trade Center, and then with perfect timing and precision set off hi-powered explosive charges within the towers to take them down. 

The only real thing that the conspiracy theorists get right is that the Bush Administration used the 9-11 terrorist attacks as a pretext to attack Iraq and Afghanistan, as opposed to a more reasoned response.  Additionally, and quite unfortunately, the 9-11 attack was used as an excuse to restrict our freedom and our rights domestically, all under the guise of big government providing us necessary protections from enemies that wish us harm, in which freedom and rights once taken, are difficult to get back. 

At the end of the day, though, we should also ask, who profits most from these 9-11 theories, and that answer would be those anti-Semitic voices that never wish to be silent, no matter how dubious their claims.  Trying to pin the 9-11 attacks on some sort of devilish Zionist conspiracy is a bold attempt to take the obvious truth and twist it inside out.  Yes, it's unfortunate that we and the western world are dependent upon Middle Eastern oil, and yes, it's unfortunate that we have an uncomfortable and uneasy relationship with the autocratic and totalitarian regime in Saudi Arabia, in which perhaps the United States fears upsetting this valued country that leads the world in oil exporting, despite the inconvenient fact that fifteen of the nineteen hijackers on 9-11 were Saudi Arabians.

When it comes to the 9-11 hijacking and the tragedy that ensued, there is no conspiracy.  These attacks were successful beyond belief for Saudi Arabia's Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda.  People have forgotten, but should not have, that Tower One of the World Trade Center was previously bombed in 1993, by middle-eastern terrorists, in which this attack killed six people, and injured another 1,000, but the desire by these terrorists and their bombing was to bring the entire Tower down.  They didn't, at least, not on that particular day.

Slavery Today in Arabia and Africa

On February 1, 1865, nearly 150 years ago, Abraham Lincoln signed into law the 13 Amendment to the United States Constitution which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude.  While this may not in practicality brought full justice, full human rights, and full citizenship to those and their offspring that were formerly oppressed, it did set the solid foundation which began to build the case law that would be fundamental in allowing those peoples to break free from the heavy chains that had formerly separated them from full liberty and rights within this country.   Even today, with a man of color as our President, long standing prejudices have not been completely eradicated from this country, but the Promised Land which is our birthright within America, is nearly within grasp of all of our collective hands.

Yet how many of us are aware that Niger abolished slavery in 1960, that Saudi Arabia and Yemen abolished slavery in 1962, that the United Arab Emirates abolished slavery in 1963, that Oman abolished slavery in 1970, and finally that Mauritania abolished slavery in 1981.  As shocking as this information may be, one must remember that simply abolishing slavery as a law does not mean that slavery as an institution has been eliminated within a country.  Practices of long-standing within countries are not easily eliminated by the stroke of a pen and any law that is not consistently administered through police enforcement in conjunction with its proper legal authorities is a law without real effectiveness or worth, and consequently despite slavery being outlawed in these countries, slavery as an institution still exists, even if labeled as a different name.

Slavery still exists in countries such as Mauritania, Oman, and Niger, to name just a few countries, it may not be called slavery by those who practice it, but for all intents and purposes there are many people within these countries that are slaves.  If you are compelled to work for a person in whom you are not directly compensated, you are abused or constantly threatened, in which you are also not permitted freedom of movement or communication, and you have little or no access to education, than you are effectively a slave.  Slavery, today, is much easier to practice in rural areas in which because of the remoteness, the lack of outsiders that are permitted access to an insular community or are unaware of a particular family's dynamics, the paucity of documentation and identification, and the general disinterest in law enforcement in those areas, leaves those that have the local power within that area to enslave those that have no authority, knowledge, or knowhow to extricate themselves from slavery.

Slavery is also practiced within cities by limiting the freedom of movement and access to the outside world of those that are enslaved to within the family confines at all times.  People that are especially vulnerable to slavery are ones that do not speak the same language, and/or illiterate, and/or different tribe, and/or specifically don't have the same religion as those that enslave them.  When it comes to slavery within Arabia and Africa, it isn't so much that nobody knows, it is much more about how the practice has been driven underground, somewhat repackaged, effectively ignored by the authorities, and protected and/or embraced by those that believe that they are your superior by birthright or status.

Professional Athletes' Salaries

In the four major sports in the USA, the sport with the lowest average salary for players resides in the NFL which still registers a staggering wage of $1.9 million dollars per season, and that's the lowest of the major sports!   At first, this amount of pay appears to be ludicrous but it's far from ludicrous; in fact, the players are almost certainly being underpaid!

In the NFL there are a total of 32 teams in which initially we might appreciate the transparency of the owners divulging the salaries of their players to the general public, until we begin to realize that there are ulterior motives in play.  For instance, there are many companies that make it their standard policy that employees should not discuss their salary and benefits outside of the corporation, with the implicit thought also being that they don't want you to discuss your salary and benefits within the company either.  In fact, if anyone in the accounting department should deliberately divulge or not properly protect salary information about employees, this act itself would be cause for immediate dismissal.

The Green Bay Packers are the only NFL team that is publically owned, whereas the balance of NFL teams is privately owned.  In America, there are around 500 billionaires, but within the ownership of the NFL there are around 19 billionaire owners, perhaps a couple more or a couple less, depending on how you account for their assets and liabilities.  To put things even further in perspective, the Pittsburgh Steelers' owner Dan Rooney is generally considered to be the poorest owner of this lot and his estimated worth according to celebritynetwort.com is estimated at $500 million!  Clearly, the NFL ownership is not made up of the likes of you and me.  These men and women are the elite and some of the most powerful individuals in our country and consequently they are masters of the art of negotiation and winning.

Clearly, one should not get confused as to not understanding and comprehending the supreme difference between the top .001% and perhaps the top 1-2% in net worth and net income.  In the NFL the average career is considered to be around 3.3 years, and the majority of players (around 70%) in the NFL according to bestticketsblog are in the age group of 22-27 years, but:  "most NFL players don't make it to the age range (28 to 35) when they can start making serious money ($4 million a year and up on average)," as reported by bullfax.com. In short, although it is the players that make the game, as well as it being the players that we are watching on TV or in-person at the stadium, with the players risking their bodies and their minds in this violent sport, it is the owners that are the real money and the players are simply the tools of the trade.

To put things further in perspective, the NFL has a hard cap of how much money can be devoted to player's salaries each year and while this agreement also comes with a respective salary floor, one must ask the big question, to who does this floor/cap actually benefit the most?  You sure the heck know it isn't the players because what sane person would want to cap the amount of money that they can earn in a sporting business of high risk, high turnover, and high personal cost.  Sure, the player's compensation may look large, but that is only because the harvest is all so much larger.

New Identity

People make mistakes and have indiscretions.  There was a time when those errors and lapses in judgment were contained within the community or within the family, sometimes discretely and sometimes not, and that upon leaving that community, those indiscretions would in theory be left behind.  It's important that people do have the opportunity to begin again, to not have to be constantly reminded about things that are no longer relevant in their life in which judgmental people often use this as a pressure point to keep others in their place, all under the guise of "full disclosure".

 In today's world, getting that new identity, receiving that new start, is difficult to accomplish for many reasons.  First off, there is the proverbial "shooing yourself in the own foot" problem that is presented by the ubiquitous use of social media outlets in which photos, comments, or videos that were posted by yourself or others in which you are in a compromising positions can be an annoying source of constant embarrassment in which apparently the party never ends, even though it ended for you a while ago.  That is why applications like snapchat are so relevant to people, because it allows you to maintain control over photos that you send through your phone in which they self-destruct on the recipient's phone after a few seconds.   Instead, too often when we post or we send something through social media, even though later on we may delete our original, copies of our post are completely out of our control. 

In the corporate world, things get much more serious beginning at the time that we are born, as our Social Security number that is assigned and mandated for us is for all practical purposes also our national identification number.  Despite some rather listless consumer protections, this means that our education, our health, our finances, and other pertinent information therefore stick to us like glue, in which we can never opt out.  For instance, if you make some bad financial decisions, or have some financial hardship thrust upon you by being laid off, this data will be placed onto your credit report, in which you will suffer the consequences of this unfortunate event in regards to higher loan rates, restricted credit amounts, and even lessened employment opportunities, for a minimum of seven long years!

People mature at different rates, some much later than others, and people do not always remain the same.  For some people the past is a very definite prologue of the future, but for others, the past is truly the past, and they are a changed person.  Government documentation allows outsiders to often get a distorted view of ourselves, in which we are processed and valued, sorted and stacked, making the individual by definition to take a backseat to the data.   It shouldn't be that way, at a minimum; people should be allowed a reset button, a real second chance, a fresh start, or a new or revised identity.

Our national identification number is pinned upon us, whether we are ready for it or not, in which a significant amount of people don't understand or comprehend the ramifications of decisions that they make in a moment's time which will define them for all practical purposes.   Through our national identification number, incriminating information is used against us, perhaps even unbeknownst to us, and lessens our opportunities and our quality of life.

Maturity

Too many people, young as well as old, like to play the 'blame' game and refuse to take responsibility for their decisions and their life.  But your life is specifically defined by the decisions that you do make.  When you are an infant, your choices are relatively limited, and your decision-making process is immature.  An infant believes that the world revolves around them, that they should be fed when they demand to be fed, and washed and cleaned when they demand to be washed and cleaned.  This should just be a stage in life, but too many of us are infantile in our demands and needs well into adulthood.  As adults we want whatever that we want, right now!  We also get frustrated when we don't get our way, when people don't listen to us, and don't bend instantly to our needs.  We may not say it out loud, but it is always "me, me, me".

It would be better for us if we instead grow out of our infantile stage and recognize that our world actually consists of other human beings with their own needs and desires.  In order to grow and mature, we must therefore maneuver our way away from seeing the world with just our own set of eyes, but instead make the effort to see the world from another set or multiple sets of eyes.  While making this transaction there isn't any reason to assume that we know what other people are thinking, we can in fact learn much more by engaging others in conversations in which we are attentive to what they are actually saying and how they are behaving.  Often, the things that people discuss with you are quite simply the things that are most important to them.  Learning what other people are about will surprise you as you find that their priorities, perspectives, and personality may intersect with yours in certain aspects and be quite divergent in others.

Taking a real interest in other people is a definite sign of maturity.  You will find that as you reach-out and are more engaged with others that other people will reciprocate the same to yourself.  If, on the other hand, you are always in a hurry, always in a rush, always about yourself, always 'multi-tasking', you cannot expect that other people will express any real or deep abiding interest in you and your activities.  If you are trivial and shallow with others, you can expect that in whole people will be trivial and shallow with yourself. 

If you want friends in life, be sincere, interested, and friendly!  If you want mature and valued people in your life, treat people in a way in which they know that you value them, you value their friendship, and you value your conversations and time spent with each other.  Being immature is a habit; it doesn't have to be a habit that you carry with you for all of your life.  You can discard this habit and replace it with another.  Often the change that you want in this world, in your life, starts with yourself.  In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, slow things down a bit, contemplate, think, reflect, engage, smile, be friendly, be compassionate, be sincere, and be you.

Land Ownership and Freedom

When you are born, you own your own body, later you will own your own labor, and eventually if things go well, you will own your own land in which you will possess personal property, a dwelling, and the belief that your home is your castle.  While in theory you can live just fine without you owning your own home, there is something quite powerful and secure about being on your own property, free and clear.

The obvious disadvantage of not owning your own home, is that you are at the mercy of your respective landlord, and while people may very well vote with their feet, how if your feet won't take you too far, or further to this point, how if the landlords that you wish to bargain with, aren't interested in bargaining with you.  While there may be plenty of laws on the books that will protect you, the wheels of justice move excruciatingly slow and always favor the rich and powerful. 

When you don't own your own home, you are by definition, under the mercy and care of some other entity that in all probability does not have your best interests in mind.  It often doesn't matter how much money that you make, the clothes that you wear, your educational achievements, if at the end of your day, it is at the discretion of the powers-to-be as to where and how you are able to lay your head down to sleep.  Further to this point, when you are a renter, when you are a tenant, your personal freedom is further compromised by virtue that you are not the owner, therefore upon such and such notice or such and such law, the dwelling that you reside at, that contains your personal property, can be entered into for such and such purposes under some sort of due notice.  When things are going well for you, this may not be much of a bother or a burden, but in times of chaos and injustice, you will find that your personal position is far less than ideal and rather burdensome to be in.

Land ownership is power and it is control, and lack of these things places you in the uncomfortable position of the graces of good government, something that historically has been in rather short supply.

Additionally, when all hell is breaking loose, owning your own land at least gives you a foundation in which to make a stand on, whereas without it, you are fighting a war without a structure to help protect and to defend you. 

It is often said that you really don't appreciate things till those very things are wrested away from you.  Wars, many, many wars are fought over land, its value, its location, its minerals, its water, its people, and history is replete with the victors taking the land and the vanquished relinquishing control of said lands.  When you lose land you are all the poorer for that lost, and when you gain land you are all the richer for that gain. 

Land ownership, in the hands of the many, are the ultimate defense against the few and corrupt who would wish to take it away.  When many people are together that have similar interests, similar principles, similar assets, and similar desires, they are a powerful force that can turn back those that wish to take their land and their freedom from them.  Big government and big corporations have but one abiding objective, to see that they increase in power and influence over you, and that therefore you, the individual, do nothing to stand in their way, and without land your stand will be one on which you will defend yourself on those proverbial shifting sands.

Jail

Just the thought of jail brings immediate depressive feelings to most people.  Being incarcerated in jail, is that depression come to life in which your freedoms of movement, of thought, of time, of control of your physical body, are now severely restricted, and consequently these freedoms have been ceded from your control, and replaced by the State's control.   Given these rather dire circumstances, most people in jail are eager to be in contact with loved ones and welcome their visits and correspondence.

In my community, a new jail recently opened in 2012, and you would think that this modern jail would encompass security, justice, and compassion with state-of-the-art equipment, but it really doesn't and this jail has significant and fundamental flaws. 

The biggest flaw and mistake by far that this particular jail makes is that you, an upstanding citizen of the United States, are not allowed to physically visit with an inmate within the facility.  Yes, you are allowed to talk to the inmate via telephone, per prescribed rules, and you are also allowed to video-call the inmate per prescribed rules but physical contact is forbidden and even a face-to-face meeting in which Plexiglas or similar separates you from the inmate are also forbidden. 

This deliberate policy of non face-to-face visitations and non physical contact is both a cruel and unnecessary punishment.  It does a deep disservice to something that is both very human and also very necessary for no good purpose.  While the inmates in jail are there for various reasons, some of them are there for simply being not able to post bail for the particular offense that they are accused of.  Matthew 25:39 exhorts us to: "… when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee."   This jail doesn't allow true personal visitations as if the jailors there believe that they are above moral law, that they are allowed and permitted to be our judges.

While no doubt, those that run this particular jail, can come up with all sorts of reasons and excuses as to why they don't allow physical visitations, unless it is Counsel for the inmate, none holds water to the truth, which is that these visits are disallowed primarily out of spite and out of a misplaced belief that inmates don't deserve courtesy and respect, but are now mere property of the State. 

There are other things within this jail program which cost innocent family members both time and money, while allowing middlemen to get rich from these actions.  For instance, don't think twice about bringing in some of your mother's home cooking, inmates can't accept food from family members or outsiders, but they will accept commissary food items from mycarepark.com, as long as you have the money to pay for this service.  If you want to hand some money over to your loved one in jail, you aren't permitted to pass money onto them directly, you must instead use the smart deposit kiosk located at the jail for a fee and a minimum amount.  Inmates aren't permitted to accept letters, only postcards, but it's also against the jail's policy to accept a postcard with a stamp.  Also, forget about bringing in a Bible or other books to an inmate, they must instead be soft-cover and be mailed directly by the publisher or bookstore, and the amount of books cannot exceed three within any 30-day period.

Does punishment reduce crime?  The United States has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, but it's hardly crime free.  Bad laws, bad jails, and bad justice breed only contempt for the law.

The Unrated DVD!

Mass media entertainment companies are all about the money.  They like to take a movie that you are well familiar with, perhaps even one that you saw at the movie theatre, and somehow put a new spin on it, that will make you want to see it again.  While there are plenty of different spins, such as "director's cut", "extended version", and so forth, the easiest and quickest way to get that almighty dollar is the "unrated" version.  For the uninitiated, unrated, sounds like it's on the edge, that whatever you saw in the theaters or wish to see is going to now be something way and well beyond those limits.  Unrated--sweet!

The truth of the matter is far less envelope pushing.  The creators of these films are large media organizations that have no interest in pushing the boundaries of the public's taste outside of a respected norm, and these movie creators are well aware that they need the imprint of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and their "voluntary" rating system in order to get nationwide distribution of their particular movie.  When a specific movie is presented to the MPAA there will be a give and take as to what will or won't be allowed within the editing of the movie to achieve that final rating certification grade.  When certain big-budget firms are on the edge of a particular rating, they will use an experienced and connected go-between to work out the creative differences between what is desired by the studio and what is acceptable to the MPAA, in which smooth talking, political skills, and a certain charm will pay dividends for both parties.

Therefore, when cuts or modifications are made to a movie in order to achieve a certain rating, directors and editors of said movie are well aware as to what scenes were deleted, modified, or truncated and that version of the movie still exists as an alternate unrated and uncertified copy.  Consequently, it thereby becomes relatively straightforward to present in the future for the DVD set, an unrated version of the same movie with the previous scenes that have been excised or compromised in some way, becoming part and parcel of the DVD that is released to the public.

Of course, that is just one version of how an unrated DVD comes into being, a far more cynical version, is a director or editor of a particular movie, just adding in some additional curse words, or nudity, or more graphic violence, that previously weren't part of the original intention or version of the movie being released, but for purposes of marketing an unrated version are tagged onto the DVD in order to capture those unrated DVD sales.

In actuality, unrated DVDs are for the most part, the same as the movie, with a modest amount of more scandalous material added to it, in order to lure in unsuspecting buyers that they are receiving something that is substantially more in substance than what was shown at the movie theaters and to whet these viewers addled-brain appetites for more excess, when in actuality it's pretty much to do about nothing.

The rich, the poor, and the middle class

What defines a great country is the percentage of people that are middle class, because it is the middle class that are the salt and the good earth of that country.  You can define the middle class in a myriad of ways, but the most meaningful one to me, is that you are middle class if you are receiving little or no aid from government agencies, have your own home, your own vehicle, and a median income that is no worse than 25% less than the median for the median income in your community to up to 100% more than the median income for your community.  For instance, in 2012 the median income in the United States was $51,017, so an income range of $38,263 to $102,034 would be considered to be middle class.  That is not to say that those with incomes under $38K are then defined as poor, or that incomes about 102K as rich, but rather that those would be better defined as lower-middle class or upper-middle class, depending on their actual numbers, as contrasted to the poor and the rich.

There is a great disparity in income and assets for the rich and the poor in America, in which that gap has only widen over the last few years.  The rich are getting richer, and the poor are struggling and would be getting even poorer, if not for the great society safety net that is provided to them.  The ncleg.org reports that: "in 2012, 46.5 million people were living in poverty in the United States—the largest number in the 54 years the Census has measured poverty."  Whereas for the rich as reported by the nytimes.com we find: "the income share of the top 1 percent of earners in 2012 returned to the same level as before both the Great Recession and the Great Depression: just above 20 percent, jumping to about 22.5 percent in 2012…"

In America there are three worlds, the world for the rich, the world for the middle class, and the world of the poor.  In the world of the rich, we continue to see the growth of luxury residential complexes, capital investments, and high-end shopping centers with the most prestigious stores frequented by the rich and those that aspire to be rich, whereas the poor are under-served by virtually all the common amenities that we would desire such as safe parks and open spaces, grocery stores, shopping centers, good schools, restaurants other than just fast food, and the like.   The middle class are caught in-between these two worlds, worlds which vary from the darkness of despair and injustice to the pinnacles of power, money, and success.

The nytimes.com reports that: "in 2012, the top 5 percent of earners were responsible for 38 percent of domestic consumption, up from 28 percent in 1995…" In constant 2012 dollars the peak median income in America was in 1999 at $56,080 and in 2012 this had decreased 9% to $51,017.  Yet in those ensuing years, there was only one year in which our GDP growth in the United States was negative, but somehow the aggregate, inflation-adjusted median income decreased in that same time.  The conclusion is clear-cut, the rich have gotten richer, the poor have increased in numbers, and the middle-class has both decreased in numbers and lost income overall. 

The trend-line is clear, America a country that prides itself on being a beacon of hope, freedom, and liberty, has morphed and degenerated into a country that is clearly unequaled in its distribution of income, opportunity, life choices, justice, and dreams.

The Bigger our Government, the stronger our chains

A Government that can do all things for you is the same Government that can take away everything from you.  The Government at its worse is pure force, which will usurp everything from you, and at its best Government follows a quid pro quo philosophy.  They say there is no such thing as a free lunch and particularly when those benefits are provided by the Government; you can be assured that this is indeed so.  The Government provides us with retirement benefits, health care benefits, student loan benefits, food benefits, housing benefits, and all sorts of benefits not specifically enumerated, and in return Government  expects total loyalty from its subjects when it comes to the ballot box, when it comes to war, and when it comes to compliance with Governmental needs.

Citizens that believe that their shelter, nutrition, and health needs will continued to be met by their Government without any sacrifice or obligation on their part are missing the big picture.  There is always a price to pay for the receiving of benefits from Government agencies.  Always!    This price depends upon your stage in life and your capacity to serve the Government.  You will, for instance, be incarcerated by the Government for failure to adhere to certain standards or you will instead be the enforcer that makes sure that those recalcitrant citizens know their place.  Your children and your children's children will 'voluntarily' join the military or paramilitary or intelligence agencies or other agencies as needed for the Government or your benefits will be wrested away from you.  Obedience to the State will be rewarded with the necessities of life, and disobedience will be punished with the lack and access to those very necessities.

The Government has the capability of co-opting nearly everyone because their status is protected and upheld by legislation, law, and the power of arms.  Those that believe they are independent will find out soon enough whether they truly are independent, because without gainful employment, without access to money, without credibility and status, your ability to ply your trade is severely compromised.  Virtually all public companies that engage or contract with the Government are compromised and are willing to bend to the dictates of their pay-master.  Privately held corporations and individuals may or may not have freedom, depending upon how far up or how far down they are on the food chain, but when the law and the power that supports the law are felt like boots upon their supine neck, they will understand the true meaning of words like "freedom" and "subservience".

The bigger our Government gets, the stronger the chains are that bound and contain us.  When the Government knows our business, monitors our personal life, controls our educational and later our employment opportunities, the battle is effectively over.  A country once known as the land of the free and the home of the brave is a shadow of that once proud past.  True freedom comes from the autonomy of the individual in which we have the opportunity to do the things that we ought to do, and true bravery is the strength of character to fight for right in the face of wrong.  Those worthy patriots have for the most part been swallowed or eliminated or compromised by the State.

Senior Citizen Discounts

Senior Citizen discounts start at age 55 at a significant amount of stores, then considerably more are added at 60, then a few at age 62, and finally at age 65, if you're going to get a discount at a store or restaurant that offers discounts for seniors, than 65 is the last age hurdle that you will need to clear.  However, if you were to ask the average man or woman at age 55, whether they felt like a senior citizen at age 55, the universal answer would be no. 

Newspapermedia.com did a study on how America shops in which their 2011 paper which was based on the shopping habits of just over 2,500 adults and was conducted in the Fall of 2010, broke the shopping categories down into age groups of 18-34, 35-49, 50-64, and 65+.  There were fourteen purchase categories in which the 50-64 age category led in three of them, and the 65+ category lead in zero of them, and finished dead last in all of them.  The WSJ reported in 2012 that the age group 25-44 planned to spend $820 on Christmas purchases, but the 45-64 age group was not far behind at $760.

With life expectancy in the USA, at 78.7 years of age, is it possible, perhaps probable, that the moniker "Senior Citizen Discount" in which there are plenty of those discounts available starting at age 55, really just a setup to get those that are 55+ to spend money in particular stores on particular days in order to boost sales at the small expense of an additional discount?  The obvious answer is yes.  I mean, what's the point of offering discounts at a true seniors' age, such as 70+, when at that age they, for the most part, don't have the energy, the desire, or the interest in shopping like they once did?

After all, President Calvin Coolidge stated that: "…the chief business of the American people is business." Clearly, the senior citizen discount is to get bodies through the door in which many of the businesses, set up their specific senior citizen discount on a specific day in which business is normally known to be on the slow side, such as Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so that the mega-grocery chain Kroger will offer their senior citizen discount on Wednesdays, whereas Ross stores offers theirs on Tuesdays, and Michaels Stores does the same.

For those that have been designated as senior citizens for these promotions, times have never been better, as they can take advantage of the extra discount, feel privileged for having done so and save some money to boot.  Senior citizen discounts aren't going away anytime soon, in fact, they are here to stay and probably will continue to expand, the designation of such a discount sounds fair to the average American, because it seems fair to offer senior citizens a discount for all their labor, sacrifice, and work that they have provided throughout their lives.  Of course, the discount is democratic, it sure isn't merit-based, and it definitely isn't restricted to toothless little old ladies that can't stand erect anymore.

Our Constitution and Our Liberty

The United States would not be considered historically as the beacon of freedom for the world, if not for our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. Our Declaration of Independence declares: " We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."  Additionally, our Constitution in its preamble declares: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." These sentences contain the touchstone of America and in their words rest the entire meaning of our existence. It is of critical importance to recognize that our rights to life and liberty are inalienable rights that are provided to us by our Creator, and not by our Government, and further that these inherent or natural rights supersede the rights of our Government, in which our Government is to be our servant and not our master.

Unfortunately, the above viewpoint seems to be currently out of favor and instead we have courts that instead of ruling on the correct enforcement of law instead make new law.  This is not the intended purpose of the judiciary and to make matters more pernicious, it is this judiciary that once appointed to their posts, are appointed for life, creating an unwelcomed situation in which the people are unable to remove from their posts the very power that oppresses them.  Additionally, the judiciary acts and believes that they have a monopoly on the interpretation of the Constitution, if this then is so, the Executive and Legislative branches of our Government are virtually toothless in stopping the Judiciary from enacting or interpreting laws which are injurious or detrimental to the Constitution and to the people.  In fact, our Constitution as enacted is a Constitution of delegated powers in which powers that are not specifically enumerated are reserved to either the States or to the people themselves.  In short, over time, the Judiciary has overreached its boundaries, having infringed upon our liberty, which is in contradistinction to natural law which impresses upon us that our liberty is the reason for the Constitution being ratified in the first place and consequently anything that abridges our liberty and is not specifically enumerated within the Constitution is in violation of it.

Judges that believe that our Constitution is a living and breathing instrument, subject to the mores, times, and conditions of our age are out-of-touch with the actual intended meaning of the Constitution.  Either we are a people born of individual liberty in which the highest form of our Government that we have consented to is that we the people are its sovereign rulers with inalienable rights, with the only legitimate purpose of Government being to ensure that our rights are not taken from us through either foreign or domestic enemies or we have a Constitution which means whatever some Judge interprets it to mean, subject to his rules, his penalties, and his enforcement, in which we will either obey this edict or suffer the consequences for not doing so.

Either this is a country of liberty or it is not.  Our liberty comes not from our Government, but from our Creator.  Any Government that means to take away our life, our liberty, and our pursuit of happiness, is a government at odds with our Constitution and our Declaration of Independence.  Our Constitution was created and ratified to assure ourselves that these protections and these rights would never be violated without consequence and that as Thomas Jefferson said: "whenever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force."  

Our Government, unfortunately, has become a law unto itself, and we merely its little pawns.  This is far from liberty, far from freedom, and far from what we fought for and what we stood for.  It is up to us, to reassert the American way, piece by piece, brick by brick, inch by inch, or to be crushed by its tyranny.

Liquor advertising on Television

Advertising is a powerful medium, all the more powerful, when it is displayed on your TV in the comfort of your home in which you can see and often relate to a short story about the product that extols its benefits and attributes through the power and polish of advertising and marketing people who know their business and how to target their particular clients' ads for maximum effectiveness. 

Liquor advertising had been absent from TV from 1948 through 1996 by a voluntary ban from the industry itself, but in recent years this voluntary ban has been lifted and TV ads for liquor have been running consistently on cable TV stations, before recently migrating over and encompassing the major networks such as NBC and CBS on late night TV shows.   This change of heart by the liquor industry relies on its confidence that they will not receive any blowback from these ads that would negatively affect their previous ability to advertise on TV for wine and beer in which losing television access for these products would be a devastating blow to them.

The trade association that represents the liquor industry is the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) in which they have particular standards that their members must adhere to.  For instance, DISCUS states that the basic principles of their members when advertising are that: "digital marketing communications should be placed only in media where at least 71.6% of the audience is reasonably expected to be of the legal purchase age."   This principle says a lot about the liquor industry devious advertising standards when you realize that DISCUS is only discussing what their advertisers "should" be doing with their ads, using "reasonable" expectations, in which no more than 28.4% of viewers are of illegal purchase age.  The standard that DISCUS sets in which it is acceptable that up-to nearly 30% of their audience are viewing a product that they are not of legal age to purchase is a standard that is set far too high, especially considering the dangers of using said product.

The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc. (NCADD) states that: "alcohol is the number one drug of choice for America's young people, and is more likely to kill young people than all illegal drugs combined."  While you can make a very strong argument that liquor ads should be allowed on television because the product is legal for adults age 21 and older, you can make an even more compelling reason why those same ads should not be readily available for those that are underage.  The voluntary standard by DISCUS of at least 71.6% of the audience being of legal age is a percentage which is tragically too low.  DISCUS should amend their Code of Responsible Practices to increase that threshold to at least 90%, effective immediately, or find themselves endangered to a ban on all television advertising such as the tobacco industry suffered in 1970.

DISCUS states in their preamble that: "the overriding principle of our Code is to market our products to adults of legal purchase age in a responsible and appropriate manner."  It is high time that we held these purveyors of alcohol to this standard, a standard that they should only be too happy to comply with, or have them to suffer the consequences of their irresponsibility for a product that mandates it.

Government Debt Burdens Future Generations

Our current national debt is at 17.5 trillion dollars which equates to around $55,000 per every man, woman, and child in the United States which is an absolutely staggering sum of money that is owed by the citizens of this country.  But it gets much worse, as there are unfunded off-balance sheet liabilities which have not been factored into our true federal deficit for such items as government-guaranteed mortgages, government-guaranteed student loans, FDIC guarantees, social security guarantees, Medicare guarantees, and other trust funds guarantees, in which these off-balance sheet liabilities may total up to as much as 70 trillion dollars as estimated by economist James Hamilton of UCSD.  As bad as that is, it's shocking that our national debt did not first cross the 1 trillion dollar mark until 1982, so in the last thirty years, this government has run up a stunning and unprecedented deficit which is left for future generations to pay for.  This is both morally and fiscally wrong.

Our current deficit which continues to grow larger each year is the legacy that we leave our children and our children's children. I ask how fair is it to make the younger generation responsible for our parent's debts and our parent's bad decisions in which we had no part of it, no votes on it, and no power to prevent it, but yet upon their death their debts become our debts.  We read in Proverbs 13:22, "A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children…", but the inheritance that our forefathers leave to us, are an unreasonable and an almost immeasurable debt, which is the equivalent to a double-taxation or worse on our earnings and income, forever. 

Thomas Jefferson stated that "that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living," and not thereby to the dead.  Further to this point, we may ask, are the living to be the slaves and servants to the dead?  It's not difficult to understand the importance of not being in perpetual debt.  When you are in debt, your monies are compelled by law to go to your legally-protected creditors against your desired will, in which should you resist your fate you will suffer the indignity and the consequences of the removal of your personal property, liens on your salary, or a combination of both. Your diligent labors will no longer be a means to advance and sustain yourself and your family, but instead will become an instrument for your debt masters to extract all that they can from you.  This means that for all practical purposes you are not your own man, and further that you will never be your own man, and that you are compromised, easy to manipulate, and weak.

America has become a country in which there is a rush to take everything that can be taken, to be entitled to everything that one can be entitled to, without thinking through the consequences of those actions.  You cannot continually create something out of nothing nor repeatedly wring the bread from the sweat of other man's faces without facing the day of reckoning yourself at some point.  Karl Marx said: "Democracy is a form of government that cannot long survive, for as soon as the people learn that they have a voice in the fiscal policies of the government, they will move to vote for themselves all the money in the treasury, and bankrupt the nation.”

It is high time to demand fiscal restraint and accountability from our government.  The buck, my friend, lies with me and you.

Exploitation of Illegal Immigrants

In 1969 it was estimated by http://immigration.procon.org/ that our illegal immigrant population in the USA was approximately 540,000 in a nation of just over 200 million peoples, which works out to a percentage of about .27% of illegal immigrants in our nation.  Fast forward to 2011 and that estimate of illegal immigrants had grown to a staggering 11,500,000 in a nation of about 312 million peoples, which is a percentage of 3.69% illegal immigrants within our borders.  This means in those 42 ensuring years that our total population in America increased about 54% but our illegal immigration population increased a staggering 2000%.  This could only have come about by empowered interests in our nation aiding and abetting this massive increase in illegal immigration. 

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that in 2006 that 57% of illegal immigrants in America originated from Mexico, with an additional 24% from other Latin and Central American countries for a total of 81% of immigrants coming from primarily Spanish speaking countries that reside within close proximity to the United States.  While the USA is obviously a much desired nation for immigrants, whether illegal or legal, in order to maintain residency here, one must have some means of income or support.  Part of that support comes from our welfare society that has been created and expanded over the last few decades, and part of that income comes from performing jobs that are low-skilled, labor-intensive, have few language barriers, and are prevalent. 

Illegal immigrants are heavily employed in America as cooks, fast food employees, construction labor, housekeeping, gardening, janitorial duties, painting, and agricultural work.  In any business that is labor-intensive, the cost of the labor is of utmost importance to the owners of that business, whereas the makeup of the peoples performing that work is of little or no importance.  In fact, owners and managers of fast food restaurants like to pride themselves on their openness in hiring unskilled labor and in their increasing of diversity within the workplace.  The real answer, however, is that they like cheap, exploitable labor, and what better way to do so, than to take advantage of peoples that are both illegal and unable to speak or write English well.

America has actually gone back in time to bring back conditions similar to our antebellum days,  changed a few things here and there to give it a more palatable taste, and gone about business as usual.  Ask yourself this question, how is possible for not only the sheer numbers of illegal immigrants to get across our border, but for them to find shelter, employment, food, health, transportation, and the means not only to survive, but also to be able to through their sweat-labor, dedication, and thriftiness, to send back home funds to their impoverished brethren. 

America is quick to point out success stories of illegal immigrants, those that have gone on to apply and get granted citizenship or to receive their green card, become entrepreneurs in their own right, become bi-lingual, and to proudly wave the American flag, but all of these stories are built around a familiar foundation.  That foundation is that these immigrants are too often, exploited, abused, mistreated, ostracized, and often live lives that aren't even worthy of second-class standards.  Their masters, however, sip their proverbial mint juleps, and enjoy their modern-day plantations built upon the backs of those that only wish for the opportunity to straighten them.

Diesel Fuel

Our cars and trucks are primarily powered through petroleum, a hybrid fuel of petroleum and ethanol, a hybrid combination of petroleum and electric, or diesel fuel; although there is a multitude of other power and fuel sources for cars that are used in America, the primary ones are the ones listed above.  The first question to ponder when looking at these fuel sources is to know the overall British thermal unit (BTU) or heat energy for each of these fuels and their numbers are listed in order as follows:

                Diesel                  138,000 BTU

                Petroleum          118,000 BTU

                Ethanol                 76.000 BTU         

Clearly then we can see that diesel is the most efficient of these fuels by a considerable margin.  Currently, diesel fuel is priced higher than petroleum but part of the reason is the higher state and excise taxes for diesel fuel as contrasted with petroleum, and further that our refining infrastructure is setup for petroleum which far outsells diesel in the States. 

According to the U.S. Dept. of Energy, in 2001, 51.8% of car sales were diesel in the European market which contrasts to the USA in which just 3.2% of auto sales in 2012 were diesel.  This doesn't make a lot of sense in which diesel fuel is more efficient, fuel economy is better, and engine life is longer.   In almost all cases diesel cars depreciate at a significantly lower rate than petroleum base cars and this fact overcomes their purchase price being initially more expensive.  Unfortunately, in America, we have a tendency that when we see the same car such as Volkswagen Golf offered as either a diesel based vehicle or petroleum based vehicle, to notice exclusively that the diesel price of said vehicle is perhaps 10% higher, therefore we instantly conclude that only an idiot would buy the diesel version since the initial cost of the car is higher, gas stations typically devote no more than two pumps to diesel, and the cost of the fuel that runs the car is higher.  That is the disadvantage of not actually running all the numbers through which when taken into account factors such as: fuel efficiency which lowers the amount of money that you spend on fuel, depreciation, and upkeep (diesel engines have no spark plugs) clearly shows in most cases that diesel is on an overall cost basis: cheaper.  In fact, for the Volkswagen Golf as estimated by bankrate.com the savings over three years and 45,000 miles is approximately $5,013 for the Volkswagen Golf diesel over its gas version.

While the USA spends a considerable amount of time and resources on alternate versions of fuel for cars which run the gamut from vegetable oil to solar to electric, right in front of our noses, is a solution that will increase our fuel efficiency, is well proven, highly available, and can be scaled up in a very short period of time.  In the world of diesel v. petroleum, it is the USA that is the outlier.  That position needs to and should change.